Our New Covenant reading is from Acts chapter 17. Acts chapter 17. So if you please stand for the reading of God's word. We'll be reading verses 1 to 15. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis, excuse me, Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, this Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded. And a great multitude of the devout Greeks and not a few Jews of the leading women joined Paul and Silas. But the Jews who were not persuaded becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace and, gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, sought to bring them out to the people. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, these who have turned the world upside down have come here too. Jason has harbored them. And these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea, but both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens, and receiving a command from Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed." Our Old Covenant reading is from Proverbs chapter 24. Proverbs 24, beginning in verse 7. Verse 7. Wisdom is too lofty for a fool. He does not open his mouth in the gate. He who plots to do evil will be called a schemer. The devising of foolishness is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to men. If you faint, In the day of adversity, your strength is small. Deliver those who are drawn toward death and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, surely we did not know this, does not he who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does he not know it? And will he not render to each man according to his deeds? All flesh is the grass, and all men's glory is like the flower. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. I remember hearing the story of a bishop. I don't remember his name or who even told me the story. It was a while back. But his complaint was, he says, he's an English bishop. He says, everywhere I go, They serve me tea. Everywhere the apostle Paul went, there was a riot. And he was wondering why the contrast, why wherever he went, they served tea and why wherever the apostle went, there was a riot. What is the difference between that bishop's ministry and the ministry of Paul, the apostle? And I think it troubled him a little bit. Right. You know, what's going on here? Why is my ministry so different from his? Well, we'll talk a little bit about that today. What is what does it mean to minister to those who are in need? What does it mean to deliver those who are destined to destruction? How is that done? What's our part in that? I want to tell you a story a little bit about a place. There's a place in South America where there's this large, very large city. And beside this large city, as is necessary, is a large dump. a huge dump where all the refuse and all the trash of that city is taken and put on this dump. And there are people, whole villages, that form on the dump itself. They live off the dump. They eat the food that's thrown into the dump. They build their little shelters from the refuse pieces of cardboard or pieces of metal, whatever they can find. They build their homes. And there's children that grow up in the dump. on the side of this hill, eating what they find there, scavenging and taking these resources, selling what they think they can sell maybe, and living off the dump of the city. Now imagine if you went to one of these children and said to him, the one who always lived there, he knew nothing but the dump. He knew nothing but scavenging the food and finding the little treasures out of the dump and eating those things or taking those things and using them, playing with those toys that were found there. And he thinks it's pretty good. This place is pretty good. You've never known any better, never known anything different. He's got it made. There's some good food that comes in here. That's tasty. Look at that. Here's a treat. That's come in from that person's garbage. And he takes that and goes, and you go to this child and you say, I want to offer you a way out. Because if you stay here and continue to eat this filth and live in this filth, your life will be short. You're destined for death. This place is destroying you. You don't even know it. Because you don't know any different. You've lived here. You've been bred here. But I want to give you a chance to come out and go to a place where there's better life. A place on the beach. A home on the beach where there's fresh air and wind and fish that you can gather from the sea. And all these things can feed you and your life can be a lot better. And then that little child says to you, I don't want that. I'm content with this. That doesn't sound good to me. I like this. It's best for me. This is what I know. This is what I love. Well, if there was a little child like that, if there was such a child, he would be just like every other sinner on the planet who has not yet been renewed by the grace of God. We sit there and we live in our filth of sin and we don't even know any better. Our sin is destroying us. It's defiling us. It's wrecking our lives. And yet we will not move towards the light of life that's offered to us in Christ. We think, I'm content with my dump when it's offered to us everlasting life in Christ. Proverbs 24 7 speaks to this person and it calls him a fool. Wisdom is too lofty, too exalted, too high for a fool. The fool can't see, understand wisdom. He can't understand life in Christ. It's foreign to him. It's too high for him, too lofty. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 2, and he says there's a reason why people cannot see. They live in death. They live in squalor of sin, ruining their lives, and they can't see wisdom. It's too high. It's too lofty for them. The reason is that their hearts have not been made anew. They have not been born from above. Here's what the apostle says. He says, now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God. He's contrasting. There's the spirit of this world. That's the person on the dump, living in sin, thinking that they enjoy it. And that's all they know. They don't understand the offer of the gospel. And then he says, we've not been given that spirit, that spirit of the world. We've been given the spirit that is from God. that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. And then he says this, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Until a person receives the Holy Spirit of God, the wisdom of God will sound foolish to him. The way of life in Christ will sound crazy to him. It doesn't make any sense. He's like that child on the dump. I don't want to go to the beach. I don't want to live on the beach. I like it here. That is the one who is the fool, and wisdom is too high for a fool, says the writer of Proverbs. And the fool says, I want this. I want this sin. I want whatever it is that's satisfying my lusts now. I don't want that everlasting life. That's distant. I can't see that. So when the Proverbs say, don't be envious of evil men nor desire to be with them. Here's what the fool says. The fool says, what? Can you see the prosperity of evil? Can't you see how well these evil people are doing? Can't you see that this business is flourishing? And I know he's a crook. But it's flourishing. Can't you see it? I see that. You say, don't don't hang out with evil men. And I see that. And I'm going to trust my eyes rather than your word. That's what the fool says. Doesn't make sense to him. He can look at his own eyes and see that the wicked person is prospering. And when you say he's not, ultimately, he can't see in the future. He can't think that far distant. It's too high for him. And so the writer of Proverbs says he will not open his mouth in the gates or he does not open his mouth on the gates. Matthew Henry, his commentary on this on this passage, says this to young men, young men take pains to get wisdom. It's going to be hard. That's one of the reason the fool doesn't want to get wisdom, I'm going to have to study, I'm going to have to work hard, I'm going to have to try to understand. It takes work to gain wisdom. It's easy to be stupid, right? You don't have to do anything to do that. You just continue on your way. But it's going to take diligence. And Henry says, Take pains to get wisdom so that you might be qualified to speak in the gate. So that you might be qualified to have an impact in the public realm. The gate was the place where the leaders of the city came together at the gate and they led the people. They made important decisions for the community. And Henry's saying, you need to be qualified to take the lead in the gate. But you won't be qualified if you're lazy and you're not willing to seek wisdom. Pursue wisdom. Don't be the fool who says it's too hard to get. It's too much work. It's too high for me. No. Pursue wisdom. Wisdom is strength. And that's what we learned back in Proverbs 24, verse 5. A wise man is strong. Yes, a man of knowledge increases strength. So pursue wisdom. Listen to Matthew Henry. And he says eventually these evil men get a reputation. Remember back in verse 1, he says, don't be envious of evil men. Don't desire to be with them. Because in the end, they fail. In the end, they do not prosper. Part of this is revealed to us in verses 8 and 9. Look at verses 8 and 9 in Proverbs 24. He who plots to do evil will be called a schemer. They're going to get a reputation. If you're always plotting some scheme, some plan to do evil, it's eventually going to catch up with you. You're going to get a reputation. Oh, he's always into something. He's always causing trouble, always devising something. Verse nine, the devising of foolishness is sin. It's not just the doing of foolishness or doing of evil deeds that sin, it's the planning of them. It begins in the heart. It begins in the mind. It's the devising. It's the plotting. That, too, is sin. Notice verse nine, the devising of foolishness, not the doing of foolishness, just thinking about it, planning it. That is sin. It says you will be called a scoffer. In the Hebrew, it's an interesting phrase, or excuse me, a schemer. You'll be called a schemer. It says the phrase there is Baal Mizimoth, which means the lord of mischief. You will get a reputation as the lord of mischief if you're always scheming, always got some plan to devise evil and foolishness. But the plotting of evil, the devising of foolishness is sin. Sin does not begin with the act. Sin begins right here. with a plan. Sin begins in the heart. It begins when you start to think, I want to do this, I desire this, rather than what God desires for me. I wasn't planning to say this, but I'm going to say it. This morning we got news that a young man who was in our church in West Virginia died. 22 years old. Killed. And he died from an overdose of drugs. His dad was an elder in the church. It was pretty, just in your face, shocking to us. But he'd always been rebellious. He'd always refused to listen to his parents. He would not walk in the ways of righteousness. He walked in the ways of folly. And that's heartbreaking. I don't want that to happen to any here. Walk in the way of wisdom. Foolishness leads to death. Sin leads to death. And the devising of foolishness is sin. God counts it as sin. You might think, well, what are my thoughts? My thoughts are not that important. You know, they're just little airy things that float around here and they're changing from moment to moment. No, it is the root of sin. It is the fountain from which all sins flow. If the heart is corrupt, if the mind is devising foolishness, I assure you, it will come out eventually. And it will come out in ugly ways. It comes out in death. Foolishness. Devising foolishness is sin. Jesus said out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemies. That's what comes out of the human heart. And so if we're to survive as Christians in this wicked and perverse generation, we got to kill that. We got to kill those sins. If you are not killing sin at the heart level, dealing with it there, it'll kill you. And we need to realize that this is about war. There is an enemy out to take your soul and you must fight for life. But the scoffer eventually also becomes an abomination to man, he says. Eventually, even the scoffer is hated by men. The scoffer is an abomination to men. Now, who is the scoffer? The scoffer, I think I can sum up the scoffer in these words. Is that a word? I don't know if that's a word. But that's the scoffer. He's above everything. Everything is below him. The way he deals with life is he mocks it. It's easy to mock. You can scoff at things all day long. And sometimes we think that's intelligence, but that is not intelligence. That's not wisdom. Anybody can make fun of stuff. Just go around and make fun of things and mock it. roll your eyes and look down on everything. That's the scoffer. And eventually, he is what Scripture says is an abomination to men. He does no good for himself or for others. He just mocks and scoffs and everything. And so He warns us here at the beginning of these Proverbs, don't have anything to do with sin in your heart particularly. Get down to the root. Get down to the fountain from which these things are overflowing and clean the fountain. Clean the inside of the cup and the outside will be clean, Jesus said. So that's where we need to deal with sin today in our own hearts. Now, verse 10, he says, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Trouble is coming. The day of adversity is coming. You will have trouble in life. You've already had it and you'll have more trouble is coming the day of adversity. And the question is, will you be able to stand in that day? Will you be able to stand in the day of adversity or will you fall? Will you fail? And he says, if you do fail, if you faint in that day, your strength is small. Now, he could just be making an observation that's pretty obvious. If the day of adversity comes and you fail there, you're weak. You are not strong. There is no strength in you. He could just be making the observation that you don't have much strength. But the New American Standard translates it a little differently and brings out another possible understanding of the Hebrew. It says, if you are slack, that's different from fainting. If you are slack, In the day of distress, your strength is limited. In other words, when the adversity comes, when the trouble comes, if you get slack and say, well, I'm not going to deal with it. I just hope somebody else handles that. I don't want it. I don't want to deal with that. If you are slack and will not engage, if you will not rise up and face the adversity and the power of the Holy Spirit and with courage. Your strength is small and also your strength will be limited. Matthew Henry says it this way, sums it up really shortly in one little sentence. If we faint in adversity, if we are slack in the day of adversity, this is evidence that one, our strength is small and it is also a means of weakening us further, diminishing our strength even further. So the day of adversity is coming. What will you do? Will you arise to the occasion? Will you fight and stand firm for Christ? Or will you faint? Will you be slack? Will you hope somebody else will take care of that? And then your strength will be diminished even further. I think that's what's happening in our culture. The Christians for generations have not stood up in the day of adversity. We have let the wicked just overrun us and have not stood up. And our strength has diminished generation after generation after generation. But if you faint the day of adversity, your strength is small. We must arise. And he deals with a very particular case where Christians must arise, where the wise man must arise and face adversity. And that is in verses 11 and 12. Deliver those who are drawn towards death and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. Deliver those who are drawn towards death and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. The poet does not tell us any specifics. He doesn't tell us why they're being led to death, who is leading them to death. Why are they stumbling to slaughter? Is it disease? Is it injustice? Is it hunger? Is it war? Is it oppression? He doesn't tell us. It's left very open-ended. But wherever you see someone drawn toward death, you're to deliver them. Wherever you see someone stumbling to the slaughter, you're to hold them back. Don't go that way. That little kid on the dump. You go and you offer him a way of deliverance. We can take you out of here. And if he persists, you pick him up and you carry him. Of course, he has parents. You've got to deal with the parents. If he's an orphan sitting on this dump, you take him. If he says, no, no, I must continue to eat this that's poisoning me. And you say, you hold him back. No, don't eat that. Whatever it is, wherever there's death, we draw, we're drawn towards death. We hold them back. We deliver them, if at all possible. This happens several times in the Bible. Just a couple of examples. The Hebrew midwives. The Hebrew midwives were told by Pharaoh to kill the infant boys, the little male infants, to destroy them. They said, no. They wouldn't do it. And they delivered those children from death. Esther. Esther hears of Haman's plans to destroy her people. And she goes before the king. And she stands up in that day of adversity and speaks the truth to the king. And God delivers his people. Whatever place we see wickedness and perversity, people drawn to death, stumbling to slaughter, It is our job to stand up to that and stop it. To hold them back. To deliver them. To hold them back from stumbling to the slaughter. Deliver them from death. It says in verse 12, we can't make excuses and pretend we didn't know. Now, I could make excuses to you and you might believe me, but I didn't really know about that. I had no idea that was happening. But that doesn't work with God. If you say, surely we did not know this, verse 12, does not he who weighs the heart consider it? He who keeps your soul, does he not know it? And will he not render to each man according to his deeds? We live in a culture of death. There are many being led to death in this culture, which is to be expected. It's the judgment of God. Probably number one on the list is abortion. Daily, women take their children and take them to the abortion mill and kill them for convenience sake, because they don't want the trouble that a baby will bring. So they kill those babies every day, legally, in our land. And our leaders, our rulers, who are supposed to do justice, say, it's OK. No wrong here. The blood of the infants cries out. People are led to death and leading their own children to death every day in their culture. But it's not just there. The assisted suicide is being legalized all over the states of this country. People are allowed. The civil magistrate does not say, stop, don't go to death. Do not stumble to death. Do not stumble to destruction. No, go ahead. That's what they say. Go ahead. Do it. Matter of fact, get somebody to help you. What do you do in a culture that allows someone to help another person murder themselves? What kind of perversity is that? Think about that for a minute. In Germany, they had a problem with this. This man put it out in a newspaper and said, I'd like to get somebody to eat. Anybody want to volunteer for me to kill and eat them? He had several volunteers. He chose one, killed him and ate him. All voluntary, all consenting adults. It's just a form of assisted suicide. German didn't know what to do with this guy. killing and eating people, but they volunteered for it. That's the perversity this leads to. Assisted suicide leads to that kind of thing. What are the courts going to do with that? So he helped him kill himself and then he ate him. When there is no God, this is the kind of stuff we get. Or at least when we believe there's no God. But there is a God. And he tells us as believers, do not allow this to go on. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. Deliver those who are drawn toward death. And we're going to oppose this stuff. Are we going to say, I didn't know? Does he not know who weighs the hearts? Doesn't he consider it? He who keeps your soul, does he not know it? And will he not render to each man according to his deeds? And then there's the coming euthanasia for the elderly. They're a burden. This is already going on. In the socialist countries where the socialist medicine, the elderly people are being euthanized, they're being put to death because they're a, quote, a burden to society. They're stumbling towards death, stumbling towards the slaughter. And that's because Christians in the day of adversity did not stand. So what will we do? How are we going to live? We see the ones stumbling to the slaughter all around us. Well, there's plenty of work to do, and we can't do it all, right? You're one person. I'm one person. We're one small congregation. But we have a duty to hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter and to deliver those drawn towards death. There are women who go to the abortion mill and kill their children up here in Bristol. We have people volunteering there. It's not called for everybody. But to go there and call out might be something you're called to do. There's a crisis pregnancy center in Bristol as well and in Johnson City. It may be your duty to volunteer there to help. It may be your duty to call out to the politicians, the judges, the legal leaders, the magistrates who have the responsibility to stop this wickedness. It may be your duty to go to them and hold their feet to the fire and say, you're allowing the killing of... You can say, I didn't know it, I didn't know it. But he who weighs the hearts considerate. And you say, I can't do anything about it. No, you could do something about it. We could stop abortion in this state next week if we wanted to. We don't want to. Our leaders don't want to. And so they stumble to the slaughter and we do nothing about it. So there is need to maybe to pressure our leaders to end abortion now. Stop the killing. But I want to tell you one other thing. It's related to this. We have just the physical death. There is definitely this physical death in our culture. We need to resist it. But there's even something more. More pressing, possibly, and it may be the root, I think it is the root to all this other death. That our neighbors are stumbling towards the slaughter spiritually. They're dead in their trespasses and sins. And because of that, they desire and allow these things to happen. They need to be born from above. They need you to witness to them. They need you to tell them the way to life. Second Timothy 2, 24, 26, Paul tells Timothy, the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition. If God perhaps will grant them repentance so they may know the truth. that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. We live around people all around us in our work, in our neighborhood who are like that little boy on the dump. Who thinks they have life, but they're in death. They're separated from God. There are those who are being led to physical death, but how much more are those who are being headed to the second death? There is a second death, according to the scripture, and it is the lake of fire. So people all around us are being drawn to the second death. And it's our duty to say, stop, hold them back. Don't go that way. You're stumbling to the slaughter, the slaughter of your own soul. So we're called to be witnesses to them. And I want to I want you to adopt that mindset of when I speak to someone for Christ and speak to them about Christ. I'm not trying to shove my religion down their throat. I'm not trying to force my views on them. If you really believe this, you're trying to save their soul from the second death. They are stumbling to the slaughter of the second death. You are holding them back. And you need to think of it that way, I believe, because there's a lie that goes around our culture. I just had it pulled on me recently. I was talking to a young man who had left the faith, become an atheist. Invited him to some debate discussion. Let's talk about your views. What do you think? What do you say? You're an atheist. What do atheists believe if they don't believe in God? And invited him to debate. And he just shut me down right away. He says, I don't want you to shove your religion down my throat. Referred me to an article on the Internet that said how evil it was for Christians to shove their religion down people's throats. And I was just blasted back by this. And for a minute there, I was about ready to say, OK, I want to talk to you. But then I realized it was a maneuver to protect himself. I wasn't shoving my religion down his throat. We had a relationship. I was talking to him. I was just trying to say, let's debate these things. Let's discuss your atheism and the claims of Christ. That's not shoving religion down his throat. But he is so terrified that the words might get in there and he just wants to put you off and to push me back so much. He says, you're shoving your religion down my throat. That's not true. Now, are there people that possibly do that? Yeah, sure there are. Don't be that person. Right? Don't be that person. But if you have this mindset, the mindset that the writer of Proverbs gives us here, and it's really your mindset, it's really your heart's desire to save their souls from death. If you don't have that desire, if you really do want to just shove your ideas down their throat, don't do it. But if you really believe that there's a sovereign God who rules over the universe and they are destined to the slaughter, to the second death in the lake of fire, talk to them. Hold them back. They're stumbling to the slaughter. Deliver them as they wander towards death. And if that's your attitude, you have that right attitude, don't worry about that. You know, I looked at the Apostle, we read about the Apostle Paul there. That guy caused trouble everywhere he went. And you might have blamed him, right? Is he shoving his religion down people's throats? No. No. He would have been accused of that, I'm sure, right? No, He's trying to deliver souls from death. He's trying to hold back those who are staggering towards the slaughter. And that's what we're called to do as well. There are many opportunities. You have it in your neighborhood. We have this opportunity down the street here with these young kids in this neighborhood. Some 50 kids come to that. Opportunities to teach, mentor, maybe disciple. It's a possibility. That might be what God's called you to. You can't do everything. You can't even do a lot. Think about that. You can't even really do a lot, but you could do something. God's called you to something where you hold back those who are staggering towards the slaughter, where you keep back from death or seek to deliver those who are in from death to death. And I want to conclude with this one observation that is vitally important, vitally important. As though we are called here, deliver those who are drawn toward death, hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. And that includes the second death and that second slaughter. Ultimately, we can't do it. We can't hold it back. They will be like that little boy at the beginning who is intent with his dump and his all the things that are there. That's how they will be until the Holy Spirit awakens them. But the Holy Spirit uses your words, simple words of a believer, speaking to another person. The Holy Spirit can use your words, and you're rising up in that day of adversity to hold them back. And He, by the power of His Holy Spirit, can change that heart, give them a new heart. And then they leave death for everlasting life. That's what happened to us. We were all stumbling towards death, stumbling towards the slaughter. And someone came and spoke to me and said, don't go that way. And by some amazing work of the Holy Spirit, my heart was changed. And I said, I won't go that way. I will follow the Lord Jesus. And he can do it again. And let's pray that he will. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we pray you'd help us to love our neighbor enough to hold them back. Those who are being delivered We're drawn towards death that you would enable us by your word and spirit to deliver them. To give us courage to hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. Indeed, our strength is weak, but you can make us strong by your spirit. And so we pray you give us your spirit. Give us courage. I recall even in Acts just remembered how they called out for you to come by your spirit and that you came by your Holy Spirit and make them bold in the proclamation of the Kingdom. I pray You would come by Your Holy Spirit now, just as You did in that day in Acts, and that You would make us bold in the proclamation of Your Kingdom. I pray this in Christ's name, Amen. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all. so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. Amen.