Let's enter into a time of prayer just to ask for the Lord's help as we work through his word together. Please bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, I just thank you that we could celebrate this time, this season, to acknowledge the greatest gift that this world has ever received. Your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And what he accomplished on our behalf is so wonderful beyond really our complete understanding. that this time and this season would be not a time of sorrow or grief, but a time of great joy, really in anticipation of your turn. But ultimately, what that work has accomplished in our time in history, what that means for us today, what that means for those who call you Lord and Savior. I pray as we go through this text that love and peace and war and hatred would come to a greater understanding of what it means in its proper context. What it means as we navigate your created order. What it means for those who fail to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. What it means for those who do. And what it means for those who need to hear it and return to you, Lord, to walk in faith before you, to entrust themselves to your word. I pray that this would be a blessing to the hearers in Jesus name. So, so far we've examined Two chapters into the third here, and we've examined a poem. Let's read this poem together just to remind ourselves of the text to have the proper context, starting in chapter three, verse one. For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to tear and a time to sew. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. So in light of this, I want to think about the various relationships to time that we've examined so far. Of course, not exhaustively, but in some ways that we can better understand. God's providential hand in history and how that relates to our lives, what it means to us. First of all, time as we work through is unavoidable, right? We're bound to it. Think about, I mean, the very opening text in verse two says that we live, you know, we're born and then we die. So there's this period of time that we can't escape from although many attempt to and try to but we as I hope we've Worked through enough to realize that that's impossible. You can't By means of technology or anything even medicine advancements in medicine Escape the reality of death death is an enemy to us all and it's part of the curse and part of the fall but it's something that we can't avoid. It's a reality that we must face in all of our lives. Secondly, time is moving in a particular direction. It's linear. It has a purpose. which means history has a purpose. It's not cyclical, just looping end over end, which is what I believe Solomon is driving at in the first two chapters. This idea that if you were to peer out and only examine life as though it were under the sun, there was nothing beyond that, that you would look at and go, well, everything kind of just happens in cycles. which we've worked through. That's a real pagan view, a historically pagan view of understanding history. That time is just cyclical. There's really nothing else beyond it. It just keeps happening in its cycles. We're kind of just stuck in those things, and it's kind of doomed by fate, if you will, to repeat itself. But we know, biblically speaking, that God is providentially moving history in a particular direction. As we actually went through in our position on post-millennialism, we're suggesting that this is a crucial part in understanding eschatology. You must realize that God is unfolding and working out a redemptive plan in history, and that has a practical reality in history, which has a practical reality in our lives. It matters now who we are and what we do. A big part of the post-millennial argument is that God has gradually unfolded throughout history His redemptive plan beginning in Genesis 3.15 up to now. It hasn't been some cataclysmic event. And Jesus, when he came in his first advent, as we just sung, was king. He was acknowledged as king. And he is currently seated on his throne as acknowledged in Psalm 2 and acknowledged in Psalm 110. He is currently and actively putting His enemies under His feet, redeeming all things to Himself by the blood of His cross. And the final enemy, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, is death, the very thing that we must face. And so we believe Lord Jesus Christ being victorious in history, as history is this redemptive plan moved toward a linear end, an ultimate aim, a telos, that he will have demonstrated a victory placing all of these enemies under his feet gradually over time as expressed by the prophets. History is moving towards something. History is meaningful. God cares about history. God cares about His glory being demonstrated and worked out in history. Which leads us to our next point. History, or time, is the great exposure of all of our efforts and intentions. Note how in the flow of the text here that we're born and then we die, right? And then there's all these things that we do in between this birth and death, right? Things like planting and plucking up, we kill. And we heal, break down, build up, and so on. It describes what we do in our life. And what's interesting is time, in this sense, exposes the reality of where our hearts are at, where our intentions are. Our efforts in these things expose our worldview, if you want to put it that way. Think about that. And now concluding our study here through this poem, I want to make a point or argue that time is conclusive. Time itself is conclusive, so if you put all these matters together, it's unavoidable, it's moving in a particular direction, it exposes the reality of our hearts and tensions, what we put our hands to and what we do in this life with our dash, right, the beginning of birth and death, that in the end it's conclusive. And what do I mean by that? Time, being that it's in God's hands, serves to prove a case. Think about that. Time is like the ultimate prosecutor in that instance. It serves to prove a case. One that should be decisive and convincing. That's what conclusive means. Time, if you will, is proving a case about the reality of our hearts. Who we are and what we are. And it's unavoidable in the end of it all, right? Consider how many points in Scripture are made regarding the hand of God revealed in time. Just think about that. You can think of so many texts where the hand of God is revealed in time, and how his unavoidable purposes expose evil works, and how conclusive it really is. As I was thinking through this, I thought, you know what, that's exactly what the structure of prophecy is, isn't it? So God being the owner of time, sovereignly in control over it, what does he do? He conveys and reveals a reality about man's heart. Then he provides some instruction, right? He grounds us in the way we ought to be thinking of things, the way we ought to be looking at things, which is what? As a reflection of God's image bearers, as a reflection of his glory, honoring the Lord in all things that we do, right? And that prophecy grounds us back into reality. And then what does it do? It points to a particular end. If you continue on this pattern, this will be your ultimate end. And what does it say? Over time, The reality of your hearts and desires will be exposed in time. It'll be unavoidable. You can't escape it. Why? Well, what have we said? We live in a God-rigged world. We live in a moral fabric designed by God that is unavoidable and inescapable. And time, ultimately, over time, exposes it to the extent where God says, not only will that happen, not only is that a guaranteed promise, which should be the foundation of all of our preaching, by the way, Anytime you're preaching to yourself or you're engaging the external world, the foundation of your preaching should be that very thing. Grounding yourself in the reality of God's Word, grounding others in the reality of God's Word despite their response, refuting those made-up imaginations that people make up for themselves, wanting to avoid and escape this idea that God's in control of all things. But think about even foretelling of future events to come. God says, I am so in control of time that not only will expose reality around us, but that I will carry out my will perfectly despite what you try to do to fight against it. That's fascinating to me. So we don't really live in an open theistic world. We can't. Because in an open theistic world, if you're unfamiliar with open theism, a theology that God is learning as we are, God sort of set things in motion deistically and allowed things to kind of work out and unfold. And then he is kind of working in harmony with history to, in a way, weave his will to be carried out. But really, in a sense, God doesn't know necessarily how it will all come to an end because God is learning as we are. How could that be the case when God says Himself, I will accomplish my will, not that I'm learning and growing along with you, but that perfect will was predestined and foreordained before the foundations of the world, according to Paul in Ephesians 1, was laid. I'm in control of time. Time is mine. And you are creatures and you are limited to it and you live within it. And by the way, if you try to violate my will and go against it, time eventually will expose those things. And not only that, but because of my ownership of time, I will bring all things to the conclusion of my will. It'll be decisive. It'll be matter of fact. It'll be exactly how I called it to the point of sheer precision. We're celebrating a holiday. the first advent as an example of that. Jesus Christ was promised by the prophets. The Lord promised the woman, Eve, at Genesis 3.15 that a Redeemer would come. That He would crush the head of the serpent. But then He also promised that that serpent would have enmity to the seed of the woman. And that's what I want to dive into today. We need to be very careful in understanding the reality of what we're facing. God is sovereignly in control, He directs time, and we must face that fact. And this realization, if we really think about it, if we step back, it should place us not only in awe, but in incredible fear of our Creator. That He dictates and structures all things according to His perfect will, not our whims. And this is what people need to be reminded of today, including myself. So let's compare for a brief moment. Remember, we're comparing two people groups in this text. I believe that's exactly what Solomon is addressing here, right? That might be new to some, that might actually be novel in some cases. When you read commentators, we were just discussing this this morning, Rob and I, that this is not something that you hear very often. It's not like you just came up with it, right? There are definitely people who teach this view. But there are two perspectives that are being addressed here, two worldviews. Again, one under the sun and a heavenly perspective. And it's being constantly interwoven throughout the entirety of this argument. If you're listening to it, I just sat down this morning again just to refresh myself. I listened to it, again, it takes only like a half an hour. You listen to it, and you really start to begin understanding what Solomon's driving at. And he repeats himself a lot. But in his repetition, he first starts with life only unto the Son, and then he begins to weave in the heavenly perspective. And then he brings in a godly perspective, and what it means to walk in wisdom in God's creation. and what it means to be a creature in His sight. And at the very end of it, how does He conclude? That we're to fear God, man's whole, is to fear God and obey His commandments, knowing that God will bring into light and expose all things, even those things that are in secret. So as we think about that, let's compare real quick the wicked perspective or the wicked understanding of what time actually is. This is interesting. Think about, in many ways, they believe time under the sun is inexplicable, it's meaningless, it's directionless, and it's inconclusive. It really doesn't matter. It's quite the opposite of what we find in Scripture. Listen to this article on how time was created by a timeless point, an atheist explanation of space-time. Quentin Smith proposes a rejection here, quoting him, of both the theistic and the standard atheistic explanation for the beginning of the universe. As he goes on to say, the theist holds that God caused the Big Bang. The theist holds that God caused the Big Bang. The standard atheistic story is that the Big Bang was uncaused. It is argued that the Big Bang, and hence all of space-time, was caused. It was caused by the simplest, timeless point. This hypothesis is to be preferred to the theistic hypothesis because it can be shown to be more probable," unquote. And you can find that if you're interested in the, what was it, the, I'll think of it in a second. I just totally blanked my mind. Why am I forgetting that? Anyway, I had a bullet and I forgot. I'll figure out where that bullet came from and then I'll share it with you. So in scholarly circles, they're saying that this idea that the simplest timeless point was the beginning of all things, it was a cause, and it's to be preferred to the theistic hypothesis because it can be shown to be more probable. Yeah, I see some shaking of the heads, some like confusion faces around. You should be confused at that. It's really interesting. So here's some questions that I have for that. You mean that is to say, atheistic friends, it is more probable to believe nothing caused something. It's more probable to believe that nothing caused something. Okay. That's definitely undoubtedly wishful, but that's certainly not probable. You wish something, nothing cause something. You hope nothing cause something, really. And really, I'd like to understand his scholarly position and explanation of what simple, timeless point is. What is a simple, timeless point? And how did that cause the so-called theoretical Big Bang? So, indeed, men work really hard to try to dismiss and explain away their Creator's existence, whom they know, Paul says in Romans 1, and work to come up with an alternative theory for time, because they don't want to be thought of as accountable within that time frame, that time actually has meaning, that time is conclusive. Think about how critical that is. Now, what would be the practical implications if you really believe that hypothesis was more probable. You'd have to give up an awful lot of things, wouldn't you? You'd have to give up, really, this idea that there was a universal morality, wouldn't you? This idea that we don't live in a moral fabric. that really is just everything's kind of, you know, came from nothing. And really, you got to give up logic. You got to give up all rationality to hold to a position like that, don't you? And it seems awfully a bombastic faith to say that something came from nothing. They're staring at you with the most scholarly language, and they're telling you really in all its simple terms is something came from absolutely nothing, by the way. And you need to believe that and own that. Now, you might ask, what in the world does that have to do with the text today? I was laughing when I thought that. We have to deal with time first, and then we have to go, well, wait a second, what does that have to do with love or hatred, war and peace, and how does that demonstrate the conclusiveness of time? You might be eager to figure out how in the world I'm going to weave all this together. Well, think about this. First of all, both love and hatred, war and peace, are essentially joined at the hip, aren't they? You can't have hatred for something unless you have love for it. It's out of your love for things that you have hatred for other things. And it's as a result of that, that you will pursue peace based on a certain love and hatred for things, and war might be the necessary result based on your love and hatred for things. Think about that, how all they work together. There's no way of avoiding a certain understanding of hatred without having a certain understanding of love, right? You hate things because you love certain things and vice versa. Peace is a result of love for things, isn't it? And a pursuit of peace sometimes requires war, doesn't it? Think about it. You cannot distinguish these things apart from one another. Now, what happens when we put these things into a pressure cooker called time? which is really interesting when you think of it this way. It's profound. You put love, peace, war and hatred in the pressure cooker of time. There are two principles that work, right? Oriented from two worldviews about how to define this concept of love and peace. Because as a result of it, hatred and war come. So let's ask the first question then. Who or what defines love or peace? Who gets to define that? Think about our present circumstance. When we deal with, for instance, let's just use an example of our own time, when we deal with the LGBTQ community, one thing that often comes out to us as we're sharing the gospel with them is what? Why don't you just let love be love, man? Love wins in the end, right? That seems like a very virtuous statement, doesn't it? Just let people love each other. May I point to you that you believe in a hypothesis that either the Big Bang was a story of something uncaused causing something, or that you believe that this simple timeless point caused reality and not Creator. And may I point to you that you're not allowed to have a moral fabric where you're to say to me and demand to me that love ought to be love and love ought to win. Where is love in your materialistic only uncaused cause story, timeless point in reality universe? You don't get to make that up and you don't get to demand me to own that by the way. That's weird that you would even expect that. Why do you even care about love winning? Why are you so willing to go to war with those? Who don't tow the line to your understanding of love? And why are not Christians willing to go to war with that understanding? It's very strange. How one defines love will determine what they hate, right? Think about what Jesus said, Matthew 6, 24. He said, No one can serve two masters, for either will hate one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. As an example, you can't serve God money. One is your master, not the other one. They're two mutually exclusive masters. Also, too, the way the One defines peace will determine what they are willing to go to war to defend. Let's ask some questions. What is peace? Where is it found? And why do we so ardently search for it? What drives our desire for peace? Where do you suppose that comes from? In a pointless, coincidental chance existence an uncaused or a cause-caused something. But why do you want peace? Why is peace such an important thing for you? Again, quoting Bonson, where do you find peace? Growing on trees or in cupboards. Please show me where your desire for peace comes from because that's certainly not part of the material world. It's not. Love is not and peace is not. Think about that. Now here's the heavy-hitting question that we all must ask ourselves as we engage with people who believe that all that they have is under the sun. And for those who are unbelievers in this room, this is exactly what you believe. If you believe no God exists, no creator exists, you are not accountable to that creator, you hold to a position that defines peace on its own. And the question is, can true peace be realized with differing definitions? Can true peace be realized with differing definitions? Let's dig into that a little bit further. Let's contrast the two people groups real quick. The wicked have a self-defined perspective of reality. It's self-centered and it's self-glorifying. Again, the wicked have a self-defined perspective of reality that's self-centered and self-glorifying. Is it possible, holding this perspective alone, to achieve peace in society? Is it possible? I hope I see some heads shaking, no. Think about it. Why? There is a way that seems right to man. We've quoted this text a number of times. Proverbs 14, 12, okay? There's a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death. I'm going to do what I want to do based on my own initiative, my own volition, my own desires. I'm going to be led by my passions, my own imaginations, and then I'm going to demand somehow peace to occur in society. That's impossible, ladies and gentlemen. That is impossible. Yet what's interesting is what? People pursue it, don't they? And they demand it, they want it. Listen to the things that you hear out of our president's mouth. The demand for peace in society. They point to a particular people group and they say, this people group is causing all of the destruction and chaos in society right now. This group of people, let's take it to a logical conclusion, need to be eliminated. This group of people need to be silenced. This group of people are the ones that need to be removed, exiled. That's what it leads to logically. That may not be said overtly right now, but that's exactly the direction it goes in. May I prophesy, according to God's word, that if it continues in this pattern, that is exactly what will occur unless Christians stand. Isaiah 48, 22 says, there is no peace, says the Lord for the wicked. So you have a group of people who are self-centered, self-focused, self-defined reality, saying to you, love must win. They don't believe that they're image bearers of God. They don't believe that they are created. The world was not created by God. Some simple, timeless point created everything, okay? Take the simple, timeless point argument and develop your own genesis. Everything that we experience, everything that we see under the sun is based on this simple timeless point that has really no meaning. It's not incidental. There's no purpose, and it's inexplicable, and it's probably the case. We don't know it most certainly to be the case, but it's probably the case. And in doing so, you then begin to value yourself a certain way. I get to value me. I get to say what I am. I'm not an image bearer of God, like God says in Genesis 1.26. I'm not an image bearer of God. I get to then define the reality of what I am. I'm not a man, and I'm not a woman. I'm just blank slate. And I get to dictate and determine my reality. I am the master of my own destiny. And then, I get to define relationship structures. And then within those relationship structures, the family. And then within those relationship structures, the marriage. And then within the relationship structures, society. I get to build a whole legal system around that too, because I want to take dominion over that. I want others to respect that. I want, ultimately, peace. I want to express my own version of love, and I want to find peace in the midst of doing that. And for those dissenters, those who might disagree, there's the door. All from Genesis chapter one, ladies and gentlemen. Imagine that. What does God say? Well, there's a way that seems right to man, Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but its way is the end of death. You decide to come up with your own reality. You decide to dictate morality on your own. Which is what we do when we sin. Instead of taking God at his word, we say, well, God, you know, you have a theory. Satan has a theory. My own heart has a theory. I think I'm going to kind of test these things and work these things out. And he says, well, there's a way that seems right to you. But God weighs the heart in another proverb in the same subject, and it's in his death. There's a way to walk in wisdom, which is to listen to God, heed his word, take him at his word, apply his word and walk in it, or death on the other end of that. And guess what the great pressure cooker does to us all? Time faces us and death comes. It's inescapable. And it also reveals the reality of these two worldviews. Let me give a case in point example. When you hold to a culture of death, And you believe that eliminating your unborn children will prosper your country. What we see right now presently in our country is an example of people who hold to the principles of death and demand by force down your throat that you believe them, hold to them. And they say to you, it's because you're not loving and you don't care about peace is the reason why you're not towing the line. Those people will work to eliminate you from society. History 101 will demonstrate that quite clearly. One of the greatest examples of all being who? Nazi Germany, Hitler. The final solution was based on that very principle. The final solution was based on, you are unfit for society. Why? Because you don't tell the line with our ideology. You don't understand what it means to be the perfect person. Hitler probably saw himself as a very righteous and good person, contrary to what most people believe. He saw himself benefiting society to the greatest extent, and he was the one that was willing to bring a war that would end all wars. That war was to eliminate the chaff from society, from the world. And he was going to take it to the world's end. To what? Ultimately, in the end, usher in peace. He gets to define love. He gets to define what peace is. And in doing so, the final solution would be the ultimate answer. You might not think of it that way, but that's exactly what was behind it. And there's nothing new under the sun, ladies and gentlemen. That's been happening since the dawn of time. Just read the scriptures, read the history books, and you'll find over and over, cyclically, I call it the bell curve of revolution. Think of it this way, the bell curve of revolution. In the beginning, there are early adopters to the revolution. Why? Because they're sick and tired of what was happening over here. All this tyrannical despotism, the communism, and all these horrible things. They're the early adopters of revolution. They call for revolution, and they say, hey, let's get more people online with this, and then more people swing in, and then you have your early adopters, and then your later adopters, and then your laggards, right, at the very end. We are in a laggard period of revolution, the American Revolution, or the Presbyterian Revolt, depending on what you want to call it. We're in a laggard period. You know what happens to the laggards? They forgot what the early adopters stood for. in this revolutionary period. See, if they were able to speak to the revolutionaries, I guarantee you Joe Biden would not be president. I promise you he wouldn't be. I could say that quite emphatically he would not be. This man stands for absolutely nothing America stood for, at least in its early founding. He might have been taken out to the streets beaten and flogged for his ideology that he currently holds. Yes, you can clip that and share that with them. I hope you do. He probably should be beaten and flogged for the kind of ideology that he holds. Seriously, there's no way our nation's founders would have endorsed a man like Joe Biden to be our president. And let me say, probably presidents for the last 100 years. These men do not stand on the same principles early American founders did. Why? Because they hold to a self-centered reality, that they get to dictate reality. They get to do what's right in their own eyes. They get to determine what love is, and then they get to define what peace is, and they're the ones who get to enforce it. And it's not based on biblical principles, right? So let's now contrast with the God-fearing perspective, a biblically defined perspective of reality, which is honoring and glorifying to God in all matters of life and faith. Jesus provides us the foundation. Daniel and I were talking this morning before we went into Sunday school. Daniel said, you know what? In theory, this is all great, right? It's very abstract. Give me some concrete things that I could base my decisions off of in a day-to-day basis. kind of a case-by-case scenario. What principle should I be operating in as I enter into the world based on a biblical foundation that gives me the guidelines, if you will, that doesn't necessarily define it for me, but at least provides the principle by which I should make the decisions? I said, well, that's great, man. And he's not even here right now. He's out there. providing security, maintaining peace, a good thing. It's a very good thing. Works in necessity. But I thought, you know, what an important question. Really important, because what ends up happening is we could say, yeah, this is all great theology, Jeremy, but how do I go to work in this? You basically just described, you shattered and refuted the unbelieving worldview. The wicked definitely pursue their own ends, but what do the godly do? Well, Jesus answered that. He provided the foundation, the moral foundation, the principle by which we should be governing our lives, the principle by which we should define love and peace. Here it is, you shall love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. That's it. That simple fulfills all the law. Now we go, okay, but that was the Old Testament, Jeremy. No, it's the New Testament. Jesus said that's the greatest commandment. As a matter of fact, Brian brought this to my attention a few weeks ago. I thought it was great. He not only commands this and says this is what fulfills all the law, but Jesus actually gave us a greater law. He says there's a greater commandment that I give you. What? That you're to love one another as I have loved you, as Jesus himself has loved you. Think about that. That profound principle is the exact way that we ought to be governing our life. It's the way we should be building a godly society. Go back to Genesis chapter 1. If we built a legal system based on this essential principle, one that we have a Creator who created all things, and He made it very good. He created us in a moral fabric. He created us in His image. male and female, and he created a relationship structure which is beautiful, explained in Genesis 2. The marriage which Jesus points to as the pinnacle of marriage, as the example, marriage exemplar, right? That a man should leave his family, he shall be joined to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. And they are to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion. They are to steward God's creation well. They are to lord over it, take dominion. They are to govern it well. And they're to do it together. And if all of this holds together, the way shalom, the principle of shalom is achieved is by what? Loving God and loving your neighbor. And loving God, by the way, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. all of these faculties together. This is how we build a legal system. And then that legal system should reflect peace or shalom in society. The end of it all should reflect shalom. Shalom meaning peace and peace not just in the sense of this internal peace. It's more complete. It's actually something that is made whole or in its entirety and completeness at perfect rest. Okay. That is only possible with what? When man's relationship is right first and foremost with their Creator. Secondly, man's conscience is clear before God. Your conscience must be clear before God. It must be right with yourself, right? Third, right with your neighbor. Right with God, right with oneself, right with their neighbor. Solves a lot of the world's problems. Look, we just figured it out in just a half an hour. We just solved the world's problems. And how is that possible? In Christ. It's only possible by the promulgation of the gospel. When man is made right with God through Christ, they receive what? A new heart, a new mind. They are a new creation in Christ Jesus. This should motivate you to preach the gospel to every creature, to all the ends of the world. Why? Well, you should be motivated that you want heaven restored to earth, that there would be a rightful order, peace with men and their creator. And when men are at peace with their creator, they're at peace with one another. Isaiah said, excuse me, well yeah, Jesus through Isaiah. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind stayed on you because he trusts you. Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. And what did Solomon ask for? Listen to this. He says, give your servant therefore an understanding of mine to govern your people that I might discern between good and evil for who is able to govern this your great people. The wisdom is direct is moral. The wisdom is oriented around good and evil. It's saying, God, I'm going to take you at your word. I'm going to love you and acknowledge you in my life. And I'm going to I want to govern your people well. Well, I can only govern your people based on the wisdom that you give me. And where does wisdom come from? God's word, the foundation of his law. But that was the Old Testament, Jeremy. No, it's the new two. We are just as required to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. And I would say even more so now in Christ, because Christ has commanded that we love one another as he's loved us. We are just as obligated today to encourage, not only in our own individual life, a rightness before God, right? To guide and govern our hearts as new creatures in Christ Jesus with a new heart, a circumcised heart, with His law written upon it. Will we be caused to walk in His statutes? As Jonathan mentioned this morning as he's teaching through this series, we're required to do that in our families too. Required to lead our families well. Teach our children in what? The fear and admonition of the Lord. That Paul says in Ephesians 6 that it might go well with them in the earth. It's the only commandment with a promise. And it's this one step that we miss somehow, I don't know, and I really don't understand. We miss, so we get the individual, we're like, yep, amen. We get the family, and we're like, yep, amen. And then all of a sudden, it gets to society, and we're like, whoa, bro, whoa, just love people. All of a sudden now, when we should be loving and telling people the truth, speaking the truth in love, We have a hard time with that. We even have fellow Christians saying, hey, I just love on people, man. I don't get all harsh with them and expose the reality of their lifestyle. Like, let's just use the LGBTQ community, for example. Let love win. They say, just be loving towards them, love them, bring them in. Right? Amen. But let's not redefine love. God is love and God thinks it's an abomination. As a matter of fact, Paul goes into great detail in Romans 1, where he uses that as an example of a denial of the creature-creator relationship, so much to the extent they've been given over to the destructive of their thoughts. The outworking of God's judgment in their life is homosexuality, and it's a destroyer of society. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that kind of language is really harsh. Let's be loving towards them. Are you asking me to redefine love as it was expressed in scripture? Or am I to speak the truth in love? standing firm despite the outcome, despite the response, and do what? Call people to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, that what? As such were some of you, but now you've been washed, cleansed, and made new in Christ. That is the most loving thing we can tell people. And it's the only thing that's going to bring peace. This false understanding of peace needs to be avoided. As a matter of fact, I go as far as to say it's an expression of hatred towards God and His Word when we neglect that responsibility. So the foundation of God's law is love. And it's God's love. Because God is love. God is the ultimate expression of love. It's one of His attributes. And the end result will be shalom. So apart from biblical ethics fundamentally rooted in the love of God and loving our neighbor as God has prescribed it, shalom will be impossible. And interesting enough, time will conclusively prove such. It will prove it on an individual basis, a familial basis, and a societal level, won't it? When we start to redefine what love looks like and peace. Another example, let's move from the individual, familial to societal. When an individual decides, well, I'm going to dictate what love is, I'm in love with this thing or I'm in love with this person or this type of person. Unless it's biblically oriented, it begins to introduce chaos into society. You've probably heard the term before, it's Christ or chaos, right? We either embrace Christ in his way, walk in his way, in the truth and in the light, or we are introducing in some way chaos. When an individual begins to dictate those things, chaos ensues. That especially is true if you have children, anybody have children in this room? When children hold this attitude in the familial space. When children begin to dictate their own rules, their own guidelines, what they think is in their best interest, it gets real crazy real quick, doesn't it? And what needs to happen? Peace needs, shalom needs to be restored through the rod, through correction. The same thing is true for us in society. The moment a society begins to take dominion and govern itself according to its own dictates, its own standards for love and peace, you guarantee war is going to happen. You guarantee hatred will be expressed. It will be either unbiblical or biblical formats. I love what Deuteronomy, right before they entered in the promised land, this was written in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 through 16. Listen to what it says about the law. See, I have set before you today life and good. Speaking of the law, I have set before you life and good. Think about what Jesus says, you know, God's commandments, they're not burdensome. They're good. I have set before you life and good, death and evil. Here's the choice, same as Adam and Eve. You're staring down the tree, if you will, right? The tree and the knowledge of good and evil, right? And the Lord's like, look, I've set before you, here you are again. I've set this before you, and this is a choice that you're going to have to make. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today by loving the Lord your God, Notice how the obedience to commandments is a direct correlation to loving God. Loving God and loving neighbor, right? By walking in His ways and keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, and then you shall live and multiply. This will be to your blessing. You'll live and multiply. And the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. That, my friends, was reiterated in the Great Commission. Jesus Christ has called us to love Him, to love His people, to love the world around you. Not to be partakers of the world in sense of the worldly ways, but to love His created order and to love your fellow image bearer. Love them enough to tell them the truth, to walk in the light, to be salt and light, to be a city set on a hill, okay? Stand firm, okay? And we have to remember that time as an exposed reality of this time, as the pressure cooker, will demonstrate the rise and falls of nations all throughout history for those who decide that they want to neglect this responsibility. The rise and falls of nations have come by the hands of those who decided they just don't want to be obedient to the Lord. And the Lord destroys them. The Lord lays them low. The Lord humbles them. And in some cases, the Lord prospers them for a time and then destroys them. And sometimes the Lord prospers them just as a result of what? His faithful being among them. Think of all those stories throughout scripture that demonstrate that. And it's a matter of time. A prophetic utterance is given where if they either heed it or don't, results, disasters called upon them. I want you to listen to the language of the Declaration of Independence for a moment. I want you to think about what our nation's founders had to say about the founding of this nation, particularly its Declaration of Independence in July 4th, 1776. Listen to this, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. and to assuming among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or property. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evidences, a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, nay, it's their duty, to throw off such a government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. What happened? Here's the conclusion. In describing the necessary foundation for societal love and peace, John Adams had this to say about the supreme law of our land. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other. Listen to what he said again. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people as wholly inadequate to govern of any other. Meaning, when the foundation is not biblical, when that is stripped away and you have no moral foundation anymore. And that moral foundation gets to, as it was said here, becomes light and transient. When the course of governance becomes, for whatever light and transient causes we want to come up with, at any whim, at any moment, come up with some new law, some new definition for speech law, some new definition of speech, some new definition of love, some new definition of peace comes after it. This is what true peace is, and unless you do it, you hate us. And therefore, we're going to war with you. At some point in time, men and women have to stand up for the truth and say, enough is enough. We've dealt with these evils for long enough. It's time to stand fast on biblical truth. It's time to point them out to the realities of what they're causing in society. It's time to take a firm stand against the culture of death. So we must be biblically moral and religious people, recognize we only have one life to live, that our dash matters in this life and also in the next. Despite what one believes, time will ultimately demonstrate what people work towards. This society is an obvious recognition of that reality, right? Despite what one believes, time will ultimately demonstrate what we work toward, it will expose what we truly believe, which is to say the worldview that we build our lives upon. And God will ultimately bring all things into judgment. So for the wicked, here's my word for you. Here's God's word for you. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 3, 7-8. For the corrected child, maybe those who are listening today and go, well, I haven't had those ideas and I haven't stood very firm and I haven't, maybe my expression towards others has been more hateful than it has truthful because I haven't been loving, I haven't been willing to love God and love my neighbor. Maybe you're corrected today. Hear this. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof. For the Lord reproves him who he loves and has a father and a son whom he delights. Proverbs 3, 11 through 12. Maybe for those who need encouragement to stand strong, hear this. We must live in the light of who we are, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, those in Hebrews 11. Those who have gone before us, though commended for their faith, through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect, Hebrews 11, 39 through 40. Going on in Hebrews 12, one through two, let us then therefore lay aside every weight and sin which clings to us closely. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And he goes on in 28 through 29, says, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. and thus offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire. Please bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, I thank You for this word today. This rebuke may be to some an exhortation to others. A call to repent to some. To recognize and acknowledge that unless we live before You as those who understand your light, who live in Christ and profess Him as our Lord and Savior, that we are contributors to the problem of evil in society. That if we define love in our own way, apart from what Scripture has revealed, that we are the prophets of war. That we encourage hatred toward our neighbor. Then unless we define peace in the way you've defined it, which begins in Christ with a right heart and a right mind, renewed and restored as new creations, walking in your statutes, loving you, that we will not govern society wisely. And unless we're willing to take a stand and stand firm today, then we will have reaped what we have sown. Lord, I pray this word be an encouragement to my brothers and sisters today, and that you be blessed by your word and by the preaching of it. In Jesus' name, amen.