Podcasts about Denarius

Quimbaya Gold CEO Alexandre Poirier-Boivin joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share news the company has signed a binding Letter of Intent with Denarius Metals Corp. to create a 50:50 joint venture aimed at formalizing and structuring existing small-scale mining operations within Quimbaya's flagship Tahami Project in Colombia. Located in the Antioquia Department, the Tahami Project spans more than 17,000 hectares across a district-scale vein system exhibiting similarities to the renowned DMSR system. The region has a long history of artisanal mining, and the area remains largely underexplored, presenting significant upside potential. The joint venture initiative complements Quimbaya's broader exploration efforts, including its upcoming 4,000-meter drilling campaign at Tahami South, while also addressing the need for improved access and stronger relationships with local mining communities. Poirier-Boivin emphasized that the partnership with Denarius Metals brings more than just capital—Quimbaya gains access to a highly experienced technical team with a proven track record in formalizing artisanal operations into legally compliant, profitable ventures. Under the terms of the agreement, profits from the joint venture will be shared equally between Quimbaya and Denarius. In addition, Denarius will contribute both technical and financial resources to support the formalization of artisanal miners through Colombia's mining legalization framework. By bringing artisanal operations into the formal economy, the joint venture is expected to increase transparency, improve safety and environmental practices, and foster long-term socio-economic benefits for local stakeholders. This collaboration could also serve as a model for sustainable mineral development in regions with a strong tradition of informal mining. #proactiveinvestors #quimnayagoldinc #cse #qim #otcqb #qimgf #GoldExploration #MiningNews #ColombiaMining #TahamiProject #GoldDrilling #DenariusMetals #JointVenture #JuniorMining #ProactiveInvestors

En nuestro espacio fintech de esta semana nos visita Gabriella Orille, consejera independiente en Denarius Finance, la fintech española que está revolucionando la banca para el sector salud.

The rulers and authorities sent spies that they might seize Jesus with their words. The question was "should we pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" Paralleling this scene and King Solomon's wisdom, we cover the gift of discernment and the gift of word of wisdom.  Matthew 22:15-22Mark 12:13-17Luke 20:20-26Luke 12:12-12:131 King 3www.messagetokings.com

"So give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." - Matthew 22:21This statement from Jesus is one of the most profound and thought-provoking verses in the New Testament. While it is often quoted in discussions about paying taxes, it carries far deeper implications. What does this passage truly mean for us as Christ-followers today? Let's explore its historical context and the spiritual truths that challenge us to live with a kingdom perspective.The Trap Set for JesusThe words of Jesus in Matthew 22:21 came during a tense confrontation between Him and the Pharisees. They sought to trap Him with a politically charged question:"Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"At that time, Israel was under Roman rule, and paying taxes to the emperor was a sore subject among the Jewish people. Saying “yes” would alienate Him from His Jewish followers, who resented Roman oppression. Saying “no” would paint Him as a revolutionary in the eyes of the Roman authorities.But instead of falling into their trap, Jesus turned the question back on them. He asked for a denarius—a Roman coin bearing Caesar's image—and posed a question of His own:"Whose likeness and inscription is this?"When they answered, “Caesar's,” Jesus delivered His famous response:"Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."On a surface level, Jesus affirmed that people should fulfill their civic duties, including paying taxes. The coin bore Caesar's image, signifying that it belonged to the government. By saying, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,” Jesus acknowledged the legitimacy of human authority.This teaching aligns with what the Apostle Paul later wrote in Romans 13:1-7, where he urged believers to submit to governing authorities, recognizing them as instruments of God's order. Paying taxes, respecting laws, and contributing to society are responsibilities of every Christian.Yet, Jesus did not stop with Caesar—He introduced a deeper spiritual truth.What Belongs to God?Jesus followed His statement: "Render unto God what is God's.” This raises an important question: What belongs to God?To answer this, we must look at Genesis 1:27, which tells us that humanity is made in the image of God (Imago Dei). Just as the denarius bore Caesar's image and belonged to him, we bear God's image—meaning our entire lives belong to Him.This truth calls us to complete surrender. While we owe taxes, respect, and obedience to earthly authorities, our ultimate allegiance is to God. He doesn't just claim a portion of our income—He claims our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.Many people compartmentalize their lives, separating the "secular" from the "sacred." Work, finances, and citizenship belong to the earthly realm, while prayer, worship, and church belong to God. But Jesus' teaching destroys this false divide.If everything belongs to God, then every aspect of our lives—including our work, relationships, finances, and civic responsibilities—should be offered to Him as an act of worship.By pointing to the coin's image, Jesus subtly challenges us:Whose image do we bear? To whom do we belong? Where does our primary allegiance lie?This is not just a lesson about paying taxes—it's about our identity and purpose in God's kingdom.Jesus' words also highlight the temporary nature of earthly governments compared to God's eternal reign. Rome's empire, like every human government, would eventually fall. But God's kingdom is everlasting.This is why Scripture reminds us:"Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ." - Philippians 3:20"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven." - Matthew 6:19-20While we must live responsibly within earthly systems, we do so with the understanding that our true home is in God's unshakable kingdom.Faithful Stewards in Both Realms"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" is a call to faithful stewardship both in earthly and heavenly matters. As followers of Christ, we are called to:Honor our civic responsibilities (pay taxes, obey laws, engage in society). Live with eternity in mind (prioritizing God's kingdom above all else). Offer our whole lives to God (because we bear His image and belong to Him).As 1 Peter 2:9 reminds us, we are "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession." This identity should shape every decision we make, including how we manage our finances, serve others, and navigate our role in the world.Ultimately, Jesus' response was not just a clever answer to a political trap but a profound statement of divine truth.While we live in this world, we are not of it (John 17:16). Our ultimate purpose is not to accumulate wealth, power, or influence in earthly systems but to live in a way that reflects God's glory.So, as you navigate financial decisions, work responsibilities, and civic duties, ask yourself:Am I honoring God with everything I have? Am I living as a faithful steward of both my earthly and heavenly citizenship? Am I prioritizing the eternal over the temporary?By faithfully rendering what is due to Caesar and God, we live as true citizens of heaven, bearing witness to His sovereignty and grace in a world that desperately needs Him.On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:I'm on a limited budget, paying for school, and my husband covers more of the bills. We've been asked to give small gifts at work, like $10 for the boss, and contribute to other occasions. But these little gifts have added up, and I've spent over $200 in the last month. I don't have the budget for this. Is it wrong or unchristian of me not to want to give? Should I have a different mindset or tell my co-workers I don't have the budget for this?I'm 57, and my wife and I are debt-free. We want to start a business together, but I'm unsure if it's too risky at my age. Am I ever too old to start a new venture? What process should I consider, and should I set it up as an LLC or sole proprietorship?Resources Mentioned:Faithful Steward: FaithFi's New Quarterly PublicationLook At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and AnxietyRich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich FoolFind a Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) or Certified Christian Financial Counselor (CertCFC)FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions most days at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on the Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. Visit our website at FaithFi.com where you can join the FaithFi Community and give as we expand our outreach.

En el foro de la inversión abordamos la Renta variable asiática con Fernando Fernández-Bravo, responsable de ventas institucionales de Invesco. Y con motivo del día internacional de los bancos nos preguntamos que sería un mundo sin ellos y su papel en la economía y el empleo con Alberto Azas, Portavoz de CECA; Elena Mesonero, Managing Director de CACEIS; Gabriela Orille, Consejera independiente de Denarius. el primer neobanco del sector salud y con Fernando Rodríguez, director de Desarrollo de Negocio de Bizum.

From Colombia's gold- and silver-rich veins to Spain's coveted base metals, Denarius Metals (CBOE CA: DMET | OTCQX: DNRSF) is developing high-grade polymetallic mining projects for a diversified portfolio.In this exclusive interview from the Nordic Funds and Mines 2024 event, held on September 25-26 in Stockholm, Sweden, Executive Chairman and CEO Serafino Iacono and Vice President of Exploration Alessandro Cecchi reveal their ambitious plans for three projects on the cusp of production. They detail the Zancudo gold-silver project in Colombia, set to commence production within months, scaling up to 1,000 tons per day by late 2025.In Spain, they highlight the Aguablanca nickel-copper project, poised for production in 12 months, and the polymetallic Lomero-Poyatos project, slated for production in two years. The executives also touch on the high-grade Toral zinc project, further diversifying their portfolio.Watch until the end to learn more about the company's de-risked status, the management's track record of building billion-dollar mining companies, and their path to production.Learn more about Denarius Metals: https://denariusmetals.com/Discover opportunities at Nordic Funds and Mines 2024: https://nordicfundsandmines.com/Watch the full YouTube interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2mKUftZTaIAnd follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

From Colombia's gold- and silver-rich veins to Spain's coveted base metals, Denarius Metals (CBOE CA: DMET | OTCQX: DNRSF) is developing high-grade polymetallic mining projects for a diversified portfolio.In this exclusive interview from the Nordic Funds and Mines 2024 event, held on September 25-26 in Stockholm, Sweden, Executive Chairman and CEO Serafino Iacono and Vice President of Exploration Alessandro Cecchi reveal their ambitious plans for three projects on the cusp of production. They detail the Zancudo gold-silver project in Colombia, set to commence production within months, scaling up to 1,000 tons per day by late 2025. In Spain, they highlight the Aguablanca nickel-copper project, poised for production in 12 months, and the polymetallic Lomero-Poyatos project, slated for production in two years. The executives also touch on the high-grade Toral zinc project, further diversifying their portfolio. Watch until the end to learn more about the company's de-risked status, the management's track record of building billion-dollar mining companies, and their path to production.Learn more about Denarius Metals: https://denariusmetals.com/Discover opportunities at Nordic Funds and Mines 2024: https://nordicfundsandmines.com/Watch the full YouTube interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2mKUftZTaIAnd follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

Erik Wetterling, Founder and Editor of The Hedgeless Horseman website, joins us to review his key takeaways from the Commodities Global Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida last week, and 4 resource stocks that had his attention from the conference.    We start off discussing the sentiment at the event, the types of investors and insights shared with fellow attendees, the multiple commodity focus, and the types of companies that caught his attention at the conference. Then Erik shares the value proposition on four of the specific companies he met with:  Golden Cariboo Resources Ltd. (CSE:GCC) (OTC:GCCFF), Denarius Metals Corp. (Cboe CA: DSLV) (OTCQX: DNRSF), Sonoro Gold Corp. (TSXV: SGO) (OTCQB: SMOFF), Amex Exploration (TSXV : AMX) (OTCQX : AMXEF).   * In full disclosure, the companies mentioned by Erik in this interview, are positions held in his personal portfolio, and also may be site sponsors of The Hedgeless Horseman website at the time of this recording.   Click here to visit Erik's site – The Hedgeless Horseman

Get an exclusive preview of the upcoming Commodities Global Expo 2024 with this insightful interview featuring Serafino Iacono, Executive Chairman and CEO of Denarius Metals (Cboe CA: DMET | OTCQX: DNRSF).In this Stocks to Watch interview, Serafino shares the latest updates on Denarius Metals' projects in Colombia and Spain, including plans to reach 75,000 ounces of annual gold production by 2025. Learn about the company's promising IRRs exceeding 230% and their strategy to unlock shareholder value. He also offers his bullish outlook on gold and silver markets, predicting gold to stabilize between $2,000-$2,500 and silver prices to potentially double. With a current market cap of $50 million and over $100 million invested, Denarius Metals presents an interesting opportunity for investors in the precious metals sector. Don't miss this preview of the Commodities Global Expo 2024, happening on October 20-22 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.Learn more about Denarius Metals: https://denariusmetals.com/Join the upcoming Commodities Global Expo 2024: https://topshelf-partners.com/Watch the full YouTube interview here: https://youtu.be/55FEqWP-XGIAnd follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

The more things change, the more they remain the same. In our present age of inflation, we are reminded of how Diocletian and other Roman authorities ordered price controls and other measures to hold down prices. None of these edicts were successful in bringing down prices.Original article: The Denarius and the Dollar: Price Controls Then and Now

The more things change, the more they remain the same. In our present age of inflation, we are reminded of how Diocletian and other Roman authorities ordered price controls and other measures to hold down prices. None of these edicts were successful in bringing down prices.Original article: The Denarius and the Dollar: Price Controls Then and Now

In the Parable of the Laborers, Jesus alludes to the end time harvest of souls up to the eleventh hour ministry. In this episode, we cover the harvest and the calling up of the idle workers in five successions. Jesus saved the best for last, and we should rejoice our names are written in the book.  Matthew 20:1-16Matthew 9:38Matthew 5John 2:11www.messagetokings.com

Discover how Denarius Metals (CBOE: DMET | OTCQX: DNRSF) is breathing new life into Spain's Aguablanca mine, one of Europe's hidden treasures for nickel and copper.In this interview, CEO Serafino Iacono shares the company's plans to reopen the Aguablanca mine, boosting Europe's nickel and copper production while also leveraging sustainability to lead the region's mining future.Visit their website to learn more: https://denariusmetals.com/Watch the full YouTube interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5vXWteB9k8And follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

Jesus says, "Many who are first shall be last, and the last first." I. The call to labor, vv1-7. II. The payment of wages, vv8-12. III. The character of the landowner, vv13-16. 

Could the key to unlocking the future's most advanced technologies be hidden in the mines of Spain and Colombia? Denarius Metals (CBOE: DMET | OTCQX: DNRSF) answers that question in today's episode.Join CEO Serafino Iacono as he shares insights into their groundbreaking projects—reviving old mines to produce the critical metals essential for everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.From high-grade gold and silver deposits in Colombia to the rich nickel and copper reserves in Spain, Denarius Metals is at the forefront of the green energy revolution. Learn more about their projects here: https://denariusmetals.com/Watch the full YouTube interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScaRy0oviF4And follow us to stay updated: https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalOneMedia?sub_confirmation=1

Luke 20:25 He said to them, "Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." Jesus spoke of a human government, and a higher order above human government, God's government. Jesus used a coin to remind his adversaries of a timeless principle: We've been made in the image of God. We bear God's image. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Will we give to God what is God's?

Speaker 1:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicoston.com.Speaker 2:Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the privilege and the blessing it is to gather. As Your people, we don't take this for granted. What a blessing it is to gather and experience Your presence and give You Your due glory. We worship You, Father, and we thank You that the only way that we were allowed back into the Father's house, into the Father's presence was because of the sacrifice of the Son.And Jesus, we thank You that You came and You lived a perfect life obedient to the Father, to the very last drop on the cross. And we thank You that You did that to provide a way, to provide a gateway into the Father's house. And we thank You that when we repent of sin, You do forgive us of our rebellion, of our hostility toward You, and we do acknowledge that that's real. In many ways, often we live as if You don't exist or as if You're not God over certain parts of our life where we just block that section out and live in indifference toward You and Your will. So we ask for forgiveness for that.We pray from the holy Scriptures today that You teach us, that You, Holy Spirit, minister to us in a way that only You can. And I pray, do point out those places of rebellion in our hearts and in our lives and give us the grace to submit ourselves holistically to You. Lord, bless our time with the holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark, and the title of the sermon today is The Insanity of Killing God.A few years back, I remember reading about a famous child actor who upon growing up claimed that he had divorced his parents. He claimed to have divorced himself from his parents. He said the words and perhaps he even filed some of the official legal documents, but of course he could not divorce himself from the reality of the origin of life.As we meditate on Holy Week, the most important week in all of human history, we're given a front row to what happened to God when He became one of us. A few years ago, there was a famous song and there's a line that went, "What if God were one of us?" Well, He was and we killed him. And just imagine the insanity of doing this to really think that you can get rid of God. And you might not live in just complete outright vocal rebellion toward God, but you might live as if God is dead to you. Meaning the idea of God is so distant from your life, He might as well be dead to you. And aren't you doing the same thing as the Jews and the Romans? Aren't you attempting to kill God?But you can't kill God. He's eternal, of course. Jesus, when they tried to keep Him down, they couldn't. He came back from the dead. And that shouldn't be surprising knowing who Christ was. We should have all seen that one coming. What is surprising is that anybody would want to kill God. Why would you try to liquidate the one who gave you life? You literally bear His image. His image is printed upon you. You're His. You belong to Him.Why do we have this hostility in our hearts? Because we don't want to give up authority to govern our lives as we please. The stubborn grip on the throne of our lives leads to our self-destruction. Because you can't kill God, you can't get rid of the stubborn fact that God is, He always will be. And it would be wise of us to make peace with God while we still have a chance, while we're still alive, to accept His fatherly authority, to accept His love, to accept his provision and His protection, and to give Him His due, which is obedience of faith from the heart, to glorify Him, honor and worship Him.And if you meditate upon it, it is absolutely insane to rebel against God because you won't win. He always wins. He's God. And rebelling against God will always lead to self-destruction, but still there's a desire to rebel. Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's greatest writers who knew all about self-destruction intimately, he coined the phenomenon of willful self-destruction as, quote, perverseness.In one of his works, the Imp of the Perverse, Poe contends that just knowing something is wrong is the one unconquerable force that makes us do it. We all have an overwhelming tendency to do wrong for wrong's sake. We're all tempted by the forbidden fruit. And often, it's not the fruit itself that irresistibly draws us but the fact that it's forbidden. Don't do this is sometimes the only reason why we're tempted to do it. The forbidden is a powerful magnet pulling on our sinful hearts because deep inside, if we're honest, we absolutely despise someone telling us what to do, even if it is God, especially if it is God. And in our text today, Jesus reveals this innate suicidal enmity toward God and He graciously offers to save us, and He does it by allowing his own destruction, His own self-destruction, so to speak, to save us from our self-destruction. And thereby, He provides the means to replace, to plant that enmity toward God with love and obedience. Today, we're in Mark 12:1-17. Would you look at the text with me?"And He began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." But those tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours." And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.' What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.Have you not read this Scripture? "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes."' And they were seeking to arrest Him but feared the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them. So they left Him and went away. And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap Him in his talk. And they came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not?' But knowing their hypocrisy, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.' And they brought one and He said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to Him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him."This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. First, our three points to frame over our time. First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. Second, suicidal enmity toward the messengers. And third, suicidal enmity toward the Son.First, suicidal enmity toward the Father. After Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Passover week, Holy Week, and He entered by receiving the worship from the people, they cried out, "Hosanna, God save us." He received their acclamations and did not reject them. And by doing so, He's throwing down the gauntlet. The time has come for Him to do a face-off with the spiritual authorities of the day. And after deflecting the religious leader's hostile challenge to His authority in the previous text, Jesus tells a parable here, and it's a powerful parable. And a lot of people think parables are just stories. They're not. Parables are used as verbal weapons. And here, Jesus Christ is leveling a wrecking ball of a parable. And what are they weapons against? Against the people, not the people themselves, but the ideas that they are promulgating, the ideas that they represent.And what are the ideas that Jesus is wrecking here with His words? They're ideas of authority. He's demolishing their man-made authority structures which put them higher than God. And this, friends, of course is very highly relevant because this is every single person's problem. We put human authority above God's authority, and no one is higher than God and no one is higher in authority than God the Father. Read Matthew 23 this week as you prepare for Good Friday. Matthew 23 is the sermon that got Jesus crucified. He was murdered because of His words. That's how powerful of a wrecking ball they were. Jesus' sermon, Matthew 23, destroys all of the authority structures of Israel of that day. And in Matthew 23:8-9, Jesus says this, "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth for you have one Father who is in heaven."Now, anyone listening at that time was incredibly offended by these words. In one sentence, Jesus dismantles the Jewish system of authority showing them no, a rabbi is not higher than God himself. God's word and not human tradition is preeminent in authority. And then He says don't call anyone father in one fell swoop. He is dismantling the system of authority in the Catholic Church that has a man at the very top of the system of authority. Jesus says don't call anyone father. And I've always found it confusing that Catholics call priests father but don't let them ever become a father. That's all confusing and Jesus knocks all that down.How did Jesus teach us to pray to the Father? Our Father. Jesus didn't pray to Jesus. Jesus prayed to the Father. And this is important that when you do pray, pray to God the Father because it reminds us who's in charge. It reminds us who has ultimate authority over us. He created us, He cultivates us, He protects us, and He owns us.Mark 12:1, "Jesus began to speak to them in parables. 'A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and leased it to tenants and went into another country.'" We're not told how the man got the capital that was needed to buy the land and buy the equipment, the infrastructure, et cetera. Most likely this is a man that had to work for years, maybe a decade plus, to accumulate the capital, and he takes on risk and he works really hard and he does this in order to reap a harvest from his work.And the main purpose of verse 1 isn't just to elaborate details of the allegory, et cetera. The details here are to show that this is all done in love. This is a man who worked hard with the land, with his hands, with what the Lord has given him to create something beautiful. And what's the fence for? The fence is to protect what this man has lovingly created. He of course here represents God the Father. Later on in the text, we know that he sends a son. Therefore, he is a father. The man represents God the Father, and the Father is a creator, he's a cultivator, and he's a protector. The fence was there to protect from external threats, but it turned out that the threats were internal.And this is a good reminder of every father's job. If you've been given the blessing of being a father, your job is to create, to cultivate, and to protect. Protect the child from threats, external and internal. We are to teach our children about sin within and we are to protect. We are teach them about the sinful flesh that is hostile toward God, and we are to teach them that there are consequences for sin. Yes, God does give grace, He does forgive, but we want to prevent you from the consequences of sin. And we are to teach them about grace and teach them how to flee sin and pursue righteousness because living righteously delights God the Father's heart. And when God is delighted, He delights to bless.The imagery and the details used in this text are taken from Isaiah 5 where the vineyard stands for Israel and the man for God. An ancient Jewish and Christian texts interpret the tower and the wine vat in Isaiah 5 as the temple and its altar and defense may stand for the walls of Jerusalem. Would you look at Isaiah 5:1-7 with me? "Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked forward it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, oh, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked forward to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?And now I will tell you what I will do in my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting. And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed for righteousness, but behold, an outcry."So God is saying He's entrusted His people, the people of Israel, with His law, with His prophets, with His temple, with His priests and with land. And the expectation was that they would bear fruit for the Lord. The religious leaders were expected to govern Israel by God's Word, and the people were to be self-governed by God's Word. That didn't happen. So this man that planted this vineyard built the walls around it. He leases it out to tenants. They draft a lease with clear expectations, a clear payment for the rent, for leasing the land, and then the man went into another country.The application for all of us, the broader application is very clear. What this parable is telling us is that we are not our own. That we are not owners. That we do not own our lives. No, our time is leased to us. Our health is leased to us. Our bodies are leased to us from God the Father. You are a tenant, not an owner. And verse 2, "When the season came, he," the father, "sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard." So at the proper time, at time of harvest, he goes. And his graciousness, his generosity is evident in the text in that he doesn't demand most of the crop. He doesn't even demand half of the crop. No, he just wants some, some of the fruit of the vineyard. In biblical narrative, fruit is often a term to designate a life that's lived in obedience to God, a life in which people use the talents, the opportunities, the gifts that God has given us, our very lives for the Lord. And then the Lord loves to bless the fruitful life with more fruit.And here, what we see, one of the things that we notice here is there is a clear relationship between the tenants and the owner. It's a hierarchical relationship. It's a vertical relationship. A lot of people when they think about Christianity and they say, "No, Christianity is not a religion. It's a relationship." And I say, "Yes, it is a relationship. We are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself." And to love the Lord, and that's the summary of the commandments, we keep His commandments. That's what Jesus said. "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." And so we are not to forget that our relationship with the Lord is not horizontal and He is in charge, He is God, He is in authority. The relationship is offered to us by the grace of Jesus Christ. And the only way you enter into relationship with God the Father is on your knees, in humble repentance, forever defying His authority.And do the tenants pay their rent? No, of course not. Verse 3, "And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed." What are the tenants doing here? They start acting like owners. Why should we pay you? We did all the work." And they forget that they were gifted, so to speak, that all this work that was done prior. In a sense, they disown the owner. It's almost as if the owner doesn't exist. And this is happening nowadays with squatter's rights, et cetera. That's exactly what they do. The tenants decide that they're the owners and they're exercising so-called squatter's rights.How does this appear in our lives, in our world? Well, it's when people start looking at reality and think, "I'm going to decide how reality is. I get to decide what truth is. I'm going to live my truth. I am in authority of the definition. These are the values that I've chosen for myself, the reality that I've created. It's my body, therefore my sexuality, therefore my moral code. I decide. I'm a master of my own fate, the captain of my own soul." And here, what Jesus is doing is exposing the sinfulness in our rebellious hearts, this desire to claim ownership. But to claim ownership of yourself, to live as if you are your own, you're usurping the owner.And why do they act like this? Why do we act like this? Because we are born in a flesh that is hostile to God. Romans 8:7, "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot." So the hostility has to do with the law. When we see God's law, we see God's demands upon us and we're hostile that God, You would demand these things. The owner just wanted a portion. He wanted some of the fruit of the harvest.And how does that apply to us? Well, the Lord wants all of us. He wants our whole life. But you know that you are living in ordered worship to the Lord. You are living underneath the authority of the Lord when you do govern yourself by the Ten Commandments. And you realize that the commandments are the way of life. This is the path of freedom.And one of them, the first commandments says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That's the very first one. The fourth commandment says, "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath day holy." And there God makes a very specific, very clear demand. "One-seventh of your time, one day a week is mine." And by the way, this is how you grow. This is one of the greatest means of grace where you just commit and say, "Lord, I'm going to give you Sunday. Lord, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. Lord, I'm going to devote myself to the scriptures in prayer on Sunday." The Lord also tells us in the commandment, "Thou shall not steal." And God Himself, in Malachi 2, points to the commandment and he says, "You're stealing from me by not bringing the tithes to me." And there, we get very specific that God does want 10% of our earned income that we give to Him, give to His kingdom, or give to His church.Well, once you start getting very precise that this is what the commands demand of us, well, this is where people begin to experience the hostility within our hearts. For most of us, unbelief in God or lack of belief, it's not a head issue. It's not that there's not enough evidence. No, it's a will issue. Do we want to do the will of God? And there's hostility there. Intellectual skepticism for Christianity is often nothing more than a flimsy veneer covering deep-seated hostility.Aldous Huxley, the philosopher who coined the term agnostic and author of Brave New World, he said this, "I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning. For myself has, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality of Christianity because it interfered with our sexual freedom. There was one admirably, simple method of justifying ourselves, agnosticism." Thomas Nagel in The Last Word writes, "I want atheism to be true. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that."These tenants know that they are tenants and they hate it. They want to work for their own profit. They want to be the owners. And in many ways, we would rather like them live with this illusion of independence or self-sufficiency. But the day of reckoning is coming and the owner was sending messengers to try to get the tenants to come to their senses. And this is point 2, a suicidal enmity toward the messengers.In verse 4 of Mark 12 says, "Again, he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully." Sometimes when I preach a sermon, someone comes up to me and say, "Pastor, that was a great sermon, good sermon." And I always say the same thing. I say, "Praise be to God. And also, I'm just the messenger. Just the messenger. I'm like the mail man. I'm like UPS guy. I like that I'm bringing you packages." I like the UPS guy because he can park anywhere he wants, sidewalks, et cetera. But I say that tongue-in-cheek because I'm always thinking about this parable. "Oh, you like that? Keep coming back." We're going to continue preaching the text. And there will be messages in which you realize that, "I don't like that message. It doesn't make me feel good. It offends my sensibilities." So when you hear a sermon like that, for me, I'm just a messenger. I'm just the UPS guy. Don't kill me.If you try, there's many a lesson here, if you are called to proclaim the Word of God and to do it very publicly, do it out front, if you are called as a man of God to proclaim the Word of God, become a pastor, I just want you to know you will get opposition and the opposition is going to be hostile. And as the world becomes more and more in hostility toward the Lord, just know there will be a cost for bringing the clear message. They struck him in the head. They wounded this gentleman. And here, this series of messengers are echoes of the prophets that the Lord sent to his people and they suffered ill-treatment from their fellow Israelites. And Jesus also taught in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Blessed are you when others persecute you and revile you for my name's sake. Great is your reward in heaven."Mark 12:5, "And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others, some they beat and some they killed." The immediate application is that God sent prophets to the religious leaders to tell them, "Hey, stop acting like owners. Tend God's vineyard with God's Word for His prophet." And you see the incredible grace of this owner. He could have just called the authorities on these people. They could have been thrown out. No, he sends a messenger. He sends another messenger. He sends another messenger. Just incredible patience on this man's part.And this is what God had been doing all throughout salvific history of holy Scripture. He promised, "I will not leave myself without a witness." So He kept sending them. Jeremiah sent to the people, was beaten on multiple occasions, thrown into a pit, and finally stoned to death. Elijah, Amos, both of them were banished and forced to hide in caves. Ezekiel was murdered after a sermon. Habakkuk was stoned. Zechariah got chased into the temple and stoned near the altar. Uriah who prophesied around the same time as Jeremiah, he tried to escape into exile but the king tracked him down, brought him back to Israel, and ran him through with a sword. The prophet Micah was punched in the face by false prophets. Isaiah was put into a log and cut in half. And that's not even to mention what happened to the apostles.The religious people of the day, as they're hearing the sermon, they thought they looked at their past and the past of Israel's relation to the prophets and they thought it was something that they had grown past, that they were too righteous, that they were too morally upright to do something like this. And the irony, of course, was that they're about to do something much worse than their fathers had done in that they're going to kill the Son of God.There's an important lesson here for us. When you hear about the sins of people before us or sins of people today, it's so easy to look on people with disdain as if we've somehow progressed past sin. We have not. We do all each. We have a fallen heart. So when we see someone who sins, we shouldn't say, "What's wrong with them?" We should say, "What's wrong with the human heart? What's wrong with my heart? There go I, but for the grace of God." And it is grace that God sends messengers into our lives, and what do they tell us? They remind us that there is a God who is over us. He's the owner, we're the tenants. And if we've been living as owners, we are to repent because a day of reckoning, a day of judgment is coming.There will be times, dear Christian, that you won't like the message, the message of Scripture. You won't like when a brother or sister, they bring the message to you. And by the way, this is why it's so important to be part of a church, be plugged into a church, be part of a community group where you're walking with brothers and sisters, where you've covenanted together. So that when there does come a moment where you need someone to call you out, your brother and sister are there and they say, "You've given me permission to do this by joining the church. I need to bring this message to you." At those moments, do not reject the messenger. At those moments, receive the message humbly and bring it to the Lord and say, "Lord, is there truth to this?"If you don't like the message, don't just leave. It is tempting in those moments when someone calls out your sin to just bounce, to go find a church who don't really talk about sin, where they tickle your ears, where they give you a palatable message, where you just feel good about yourself all the time. No, no. You need a church that calls you out. You need a church to remind you of how much of a wicked sinner you are so that the cross of Jesus Christ is so much more meaningful. Lord Jesus, You save me from the sin. We need this reminder that we are not the owners and that God is a God who makes demands of us. There's many a church today that preaches a message about a God that demands nothing, a God that does nothing, one whom we can control with a modest investment of time and money. In those churches, those people aren't really seeking the true God of the universe.Romans 3:10 says, "None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God." Now, CS Lewis in his work called he Miracles, he has this tremendous low quote. "An impersonal God, well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness inside our own heads better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap, best of all. But God himself alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband, that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hushed suddenly. Was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion, man's search for God, suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found him? We never meant it to come to that. Worse still, supposing he had found us?"God sends us messengers. Sometimes it's through preachers or pastors. Sometimes it's through brothers and sisters. Sometimes it's through providential life circumstances that they shatter the illusion that you're in control. Sometimes it's just looking in the mirror and you're like, "Oh, what happened?" We're aging. That's what happened. The fragility of life where you get that phone call where a beloved has cancer, a beloved is in the hospital, all of a sudden your worldview just shatters. And those are all gracious reminders that we are living on borrowed time. Sometimes it's unfulfilled longings where you work for years, you work for a goal to become something, to become a person, to achieve something, and then you get it and then all you feel is emptiness inside because you realize, "I worked so hard for so long for something that doesn't satisfy."Lewis writes elsewhere. "If I find myself desires which nothing in this world will satisfy, the only explanation is that I was created for another world." God shows His grace toward us in this story in repeated ways. He sends messengers, messengers to remind them, "Hey, you want to be in a right relationship with the owner. It's for your good. You're going to flourish." And also, this is a good owner. He gives him a vineyard. I don't know if anyone's ever done a vineyard tour in California, Napa Valley. I've never done it. I've driven by. I've looked over covetously. No, I've repented. But this is majestic. This is the reason why lots of these great movies, the end with a vineyard, it's almost like heaven. It smells nice. There's grapes. There's wine, and praise be to God.But this shows the graciousness of the owner. What a great God we have. He's not just a lawgiver. He could have just created a prison, thrown them inside and said, "You're going to do what I say." That's not what he does. In love, He says, "Okay, here's everything that I have created, I've cultivated, I've protected. I'm entrusting it to you. Keep growing it. And all I ask for is a portion in return." If God were merely a lawgiver, I could in a sense understand people against Him. But He's not just a lawgiver. He's the giver of every good and perfect gift, including His law. He is the source and fount of every blessing and yet people spurn Him.The tenants don't listen to the messengers so the owner sends his son, and this is point 3, suicidal enmity toward the Son. Verse 6, "He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally, he sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." The phrase "beloved son" echoes a story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac. God came to him and said, "Take your son, your only son, your long-awaited son, your beloved son, and sacrifice him." Finally, He sent him to them last of all eschaton in the Greek. It's a technical term for the end of days. "Perhaps they'll respect my son." In verse 7, "But those tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours.'" "This is the heir, come."And readers, if you're reading this for the first time, you would imagine that okay, tenants, they finally come to their senses when they recognize the son as the father's surrogate. And perhaps if they sat down and reason things out, they would say, "Come on, let's get out of here. What are we doing? The judgment of the owner is coming down upon us." But instead of adopting the prudent course of respecting the son, they adopt the insane one of murdering him. And it's absolutely insane because there is no court that would've accepted the fact that their owners, especially if the owner was killed or the owner's son was killed. And this is a very well resourced father. What do they think is going to happen if they kill the father's beloved son? Here, we see suicidal enmity has blinded them to the insanity of this plan.And what are they longing for? For freedom from the owner. And this is what a lot of people want today. They want freedom from God, not recognizing that there is no freedom from God. We are designed to find our true freedom and right relationship with God and right relationship with his laws. True freedom isn't found when we usurp all control or all rules. It's found when we find the God who created us. We're created in His image. He knows how we're wired and He knows how we are to operate, to flourish. And we do that according to His law. The world says there is no truth. You make your own truth. And Jesus responds and He says, "No, I am the truth. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."And what's the truth? The truth is that you are a sinner. I'm a sinner. We've transgressed God's law. But Jesus is a savior and He loves you. His love frees you to love Him back. And if we love Him, we keep His commandments. And here again, we see just how incomprehensible the mercy of this owner is and how incomprehensible the mercy of God is. After they kill messenger after messenger after messenger, He sends His beloved Son. "Come, let us kill him." That phrase is an echo of the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. And since the tenant's words are identical with those of Joseph's evil brothers, we see a connection.The tenants of course act irrationally. And that's what God charges Israel with in doing in Isaiah 1:2-3. Chapter 1:2-3, "Hear, oh heavens, and give ear, oh earth, for the Lord has spoken. 'Children have I reared and brought up but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey it's master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not understand.'" What do they do with the son? Verse 8, "And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard." The language here is reminiscent of the cross that Jesus Christ was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem. The greatest evidence for our deep-seated hostility to God is the one time in the history of the world when God made himself physically vulnerable, people arrested Him, beat Him, tortured, crucified, and murdered Him.John 15:23-25 says, the words of Christ, "Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father, but the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. 'They hated me without cause.'" It's like the Lord of the sheep, the great Shepherd, Jesus Christ. It says if He summons a few sheep from the flock and sends them back to the flock and say, "Teach the sheep how to live, teach the sheep my ways." And what do the sheep do? The sheep take them and begin to kill them. And then the shepherd becomes the sheep and the sheep slaughter him.Well, it turned out these weren't sheep at all. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. And what do you do with wolves who destroy sheep? You destroy them. And that's Mark 12:9, "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others." The owner of the vineyard and the greatest courtyards is the Lord, the Lord of the vineyard. It's the same word that's used for God in the Old Testament, Yahweh. There will be a time when Yahweh comes back. There will be a time where the Lord of the vineyard is going to come and He's going to judge. He'll come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.Who are the tenants in the immediate context? The Jewish leaders recognize that Jesus is talking about them. They view themselves as the tenants. They realize exactly what he's saying and they want to kill him. That's the insanity of it. He's calling the shots. He's telling the parable, "Do not do this. Do not kill the son." And they plan to kill the son. And if you follow this parable closely, you realize the removal of the tenants from the vineyard and transferring it to others. Jesus here is talking about deposing the Jewish leadership from spiritual authority over the people of God and then transferring that spiritual leadership to the church where Jesus Christ is the head of His body, the church. She is His bride. He is the head. And all throughout the Book of Acts, we see them wielding that authority.And you see that through the history of Jerusalem when it was destroyed in the Jewish war in years 66 through 73 as the church grew by the power of the Spirit. Therefore, the banished tenants represent Israel and the favored others, the early church which was the fusion of Jews and Gentiles who represent true Israel. Israel has lost its status as the people of God as symbolized by the catastrophic defeat in the Jewish war and has been replaced by the church. In Mark 12:10, Jesus continues, "Have you not read this Scripture? 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and this was the Lord's doing and it was marvelous in our eyes.'"Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18, one of the five Psalms of the Hallel sung throughout Passover week. And when he entered in Jerusalem and everyone cried out, "Hosanna in the highest," they were quoting from the Psalm as well. So Jesus here quotes Psalm 1:18 and He says, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." He's talking about Himself. "I will be rejected but I am actually a foundational stone, the cornerstone for the church, for the people of God." And that cornerstone imagery, it's very clear. That's the most important stone in the foundation. But here in this text, in particular in Isaiah 28, it talks about Jesus as the foundational stone. But here for cornerstone, the Greek word for head is used. It's the head stone. And some commentators have argued that this is the elevated cornerstone or the key stone in the arch of the temple. And evidence for this is there was a head of the corner crowning the temple of God.So in one sense, Jesus Christ is our foundation, but he's also the crown of our lives. He's a crown of the church. He is the head of our lives. He was rejected, but his rejection led to our acceptance. Therefore, it's marvelous in our eyes. The father, when he sent the son, He said, "They will respect my son." And in a sense you read that and you're like, "That seems highly naive. Messenger after messenger was killed. Why do you think they're going to respect your son?" In a sense, yeah, they didn't respect him. But in a sense this is also prophetic. There will come a time when everybody will respect the name of Jesus Christ. Either we accept His name, either we accept His authority and lordship over our lives now in humility, we come humbly, or we will be humbled when He returns for the second judgment. When the son shows up, he's killed out of enmity. But the wisdom and the beauty of the glory of the gospel is the very killing that comes from their enmity is the very way in which God slays that enmity.Verse 12, "When they were seeking to arrest Him but fear the people for they perceived that He had told the parable against them, so they left Him and went away." They still fear the crowd because the crowd is still with Jesus so they need to hatch a plan where they take the crowd support away from Jesus. And that's what the next part of the text is about in verse 13. "And they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap him in his talk." The Herodians are mentioned here because Herod was a proxy of Caesar. So he would collect the taxes from the Jewish people and the taxes then funneled through his coffers would go to Caesar. Obviously, he made a killing off of it.So the Herodians, they wanted the people to pay the taxes, hot button issue. And they know it's a trick because Jesus, if you say, "No, don't pay your taxes," now we can appeal to Caesar and he's going to kill you. If you say, "Go and pay your taxes," now the people will say, "Oh Jesus said you were the king. Why are we supporting Rome?" So that's the trap.Mark 12:14, "They came and said to Him, 'Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And should we pay them or should we not?'" They start by saying, "You are true," which is hypocritical because he is true. They're unwittingly witnessing to the truth. But a few lines earlier, the chief scribes sent a question. They said through their proxies, they said, "By whose authority are you doing the things you're doing?" And here, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we know you are true. We know whose authority." Obviously they're being hypocritical."You are true." That means there's no sin, there's no lies, there's no prevarication. "You do not care about anyone's opinion," meaning you fear God over people. So when people's opinions contradict the will of God or the teaching of God, you don't care. "And you are not swayed by appearances," meaning you don't judge by appearances. You don't show partiality. And in that, in this, he's reflecting God Himself for Samuel 16:7. "But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance on the height of his stature because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" And the trap here is they're saying, "Lord, if you don't care about anyone's opinions, you definitely don't care about the emperor's opinions."And the Messiah according to Isaiah 11:3 would imitate God in making impartial judgments. Isaiah 11:3, "And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear." And Jesus, we know that You truly teach the way of God. That's what Jesus came to do, teach the way of God. And then the question, is it lawful to pay tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or should we not? And then here are the taxes, the poll tax that Caesar demanded off of every person. How does Jesus respond? Verse 15. "But knowing their hypocrisy, their pretense, He said to them, 'Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.'"Denarius was a Roman currency. You pay Roman taxes with Roman currency. Denarius represented a day's wage. And if you take the coin, on the front, it was inscription. There was Tiberius with a laurel crowned head. And then the inscription around his head said "Tiberius Caesar, son of the deified Augustus, himself Augustus". And on the reverse side it would say Pontifex Maximus, which is high priest. On the one side it says he is Dei. They were deifying Caesar, and he's also our high priest. Blasphemous. And this is why the Jews had a problem with these coins is blasphemous.And Jesus said, "Bring me one." In verse 16, "They brought one and he said to them, 'Whose likeness and inscription is this?' They said to him, 'Caesar's.' Jesus said to them, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him." I remember when I read this for the first time as a kid. I fell in love with Jesus because I was like, "Ah, Jesus is the best trash talker. He's better than anybody. He puts it."But the deeper you study the Scripture, you realize just the profound depth of the wisdom of God. They start the conversation with a battle for authority and He ends the conversation with a battle of authority. Who wins? God Himself. What is Jesus saying here? He's saying, "Whose image is on that coin? Caesar's. Okay, give unto Caesar's what is Caesar's." And then he says, "Whose image is on you? Whose image is on you? Whose image and likeness is on you? Give unto God's yourself what is God's genius." The coin which bears the image of Caesar, we give to Caesar. We however, as men and women who bear the image of God, we owe ourselves to God. We will give Caesar's unto Caesar but we will not render unto Caesar what is God's even if Caesar demands it. No, we won't.So this is a reminder for us friends to give what is God's to God. Give your whole life as a living sacrifice to the Lord. Bring your Sabbath to the Lord. Give your tithes to the Lord. Use your talents for the Lord's kingdom. And we do this because we long to, not just because we're obligated to. Know that duty has become a choice. John Newton in Amazing Grace writes, "Our pleasure and our duty, the opposite before. Since we have seen His beauty, are joined, depart no more." Our pleasure and our duty, it is our pleasure to do our duty for the Lord. Newton's friend William Cowper wrote, "To see the law by Christ fulfilled and to hear His pardoning voice changes a slave into a child and duty into choice."And what's the only thing that can heal our hearts of our enmity and hostility toward God? It's recognizing and accepting the love of God for us. Corinthians 5:18 says, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."If you're here today and you're not sure where you stand before God, if you were to die today and you're not sure where you would go, today, you have a decision to make. If you do not repent of your sins, if you do not place your faith in Christ, if you do not accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and His grace, if you died today, you are going to be separated from God for all eternity and His wrath will be upon you in a place called hell. But thankfully, you're not dead yet. Thankfully, we still have a chance to repent. And thanks be to the work of Christ, we can be forgiven. If you don't admit you're an enemy, you'll stay one and you'll be crushed when Christ returns to judge. If you admit you're an enemy, you'll no longer be one Lord, I have been an enemy. I have been in rebellion. Lord, forgive me. I accept your amnesty. Lord, welcome me into your kingdom.Matthew 21:44, "And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. And when it falls on anyone, it will crush him." Either allow your hard heart to be shattered by His love and then He heals it or remain at war with God, which is suicidal and you will be crushed. We come humbly to the Lord or we will be humbled in the judgment. Either you say to God, "God, Thy will be done. I'm not my own," or God will one day say to you, "Thy will be done. You are your own. Go."I'm going to close by praying the Lord's prayer as Jesus taught us to pray. And you're welcome to pray in your heart with me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil.Father, we thank You for sending your Son, and Lord Jesus, we thank You that You went to the cross with eyes wide open. You knew the cost and it was a terrible cost, but You did that in order to atone for our sins. And we thank You, Holy Spirit, that You're with us today. And I pray, if there's anyone who is still stuck in their rebellious ways, I pray, Lord, melt their hearts. I pray give them spiritual resurrection of their souls in this Holy Week. I pray that this week will be holy in their lives, that they will be drawn into Your kingdom and into Your church. And Lord, bless us this week as we meditate upon your final week before the crucifixion. And Lord, give us opportunities to share the great gospel with our friends, neighbors, or anyone else who would listen. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Kyle Hansen will have the view from the sidelines for Saturday's Cat-Griz showdown. The MTN Sports sideline reporter joined the show to talk a crazy high school sports season and his thoughts on the Brawl. Plus: former MSU quarterback and current Houston Texans assistant coach Denarius McGhee chimes in on the rivalry, and Pete Hamill awards the Class AA Player of the Week.

Europa Metals Ltd executive chairman Myles Campion joins Proactive's Stephen Gunnion with news that the company has submitted a formal licence application for the Toral mining project in Spain. Campion said the milestone follows three to four years of dedicated teamwork through the process of exploration, evaluation and the prosecution of planning at Toral. The application came under an exploration campaign agreement with Denarius Metals Corp and Campion said the company will continue to work with Denarius, which has a two-stage option agreement to earn a 51% stake in the project. He said 2024 will see the recommencement of drilling and work commence on a preliminary economic assessment. Europa Metals is a lead-zinc exploration company focused exclusively on European projects. The company believes Europe, and in particular Spain, is an unrealised region for modern mine development and that the opportunity to create new mines within a best-practice social and environmental framework, near first-class infrastructure, is significant. #ProactiveInvestors #EuropaMetals #AIM #JSE #Toral #DenariusMetals #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

In this episode, we take an indepth study of Matthew 20. Connect with us through our website www.bibleindepth.com You can also support this ministry to continue spreading the gospel by becoming a patron. Please visit the Patreon link below to support us as a network. https://www.patreon.com/bibleindepth

Scripture: Luke 20:20-26 Sermon: “Show Me a Denarius. Whose Head and Whose Title Does It Bear?” Sermon Series: Jesus is the Question - Minister Theodore Jones Solo: “At the River” arr. by Aaron Copland Jordan Rose Lee, soprano Suzanne Hertel, Piano

Scripture: Luke 20:20-26 Sermon: “Show Me a Denarius. Whose Head and Whose Title Does It Bear?” Sermon Series: Jesus is the Question - Minister Theodore Jones Solo: “At the River” arr. by Aaron Copland Jordan Rose Lee, soprano Suzanne Hertel, Piano

Mark 12, 14-17: Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay, yes or no?' Seeing through their hypocrisy he said to them, ‘Why do you set this trap for me? Hand me a denarius and let me see it.' They handed him one and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?' ‘Caesar's' they told him. Jesus said to them, ‘Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.' This reply took them completely by surprise. In response to this trap, set between the pharisees and the Herodians, on the delicate question of taxes to Caesar, Jesus responds with this phrase: Hand me a denarius and let me see it. Music: Francisco Tárrega's "Lágrima" performed by Pepe Romero on an 1888 Antonio de Torres. Thumbnail: Julius Caesar 44 BC. AR Denarius was minted at Rome by moneyer M. Mettius 44 BC.

#34 in a Series on Mark - Take Up Your Cross: Jesus' Sacrifice, Our Calling

Day 27 | The Art of Grief | Bible in a Year | Soothing Rain | Female Soft Spoken Bible This video contains the Bible in a Year Plan, with the soothing sound of rain falling, as I whisper and softly read, to soothe you 2 sleep, Genesis Chapters 48:17 - 50:26 and also the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 20. Afterward, we will end with the Eventide Devotional portion from “God Calling” and an invitation to accept Christ as Your Lord and Saviour, encouraged by the Word of God. God bless you!

There’s an old saying that goes “It pays to serve Jesus.” Does it? May God bless you as you engage in worship. Please feel free to leave feedback/comments to let us know you joined in worship. If you’d like to contribute to the ongoing ministry of Two Rivers Community Church of the Nazarene please use this link: paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/64291

Dans l'Antiquité, Liber Pater était aux Romains l'équivalent de Dionysos pour les Grecs, à savoir le Dieu de la Vigne et du Vin.  C'est aussi le nom du vin créé par Loïc Pasquet en 2004 dont il nous a conté la raison d'être dans le précédent épisode (20 Divin #39).  A force de persévérance et grâce à des rencontres qui vont changer le cours de sa vie, Loic Pasquet va réussir le tour de force de créer en seulement 13 ans, le vin le plus cher du monde (au moment de sa mise sur le marché).   Je vous propose d'écouter les grandes étapes de  cette ascension fulgurante, les autres projets de Loïc Pasquet, en particulier son vin blanc sur l'ïle de Naxos et son association des Francs de Pied. Bonne écoute

SUBSCRIBE to Kay & Olu Taiwo's Youtube Channel!https://www.youtube.com/c/KayOluTaiwoMany things have been said about Jesus. Some have identified him as a good man, prophet, or king.But one bizarre description used for Jesus, is that of socialist.In this video, I provide an explanation of the concept of socialism. Additionally, I do a verse by verse analysis of Jesus' own words to demonstrate what Jesus taught about private property.Get BOOK by Kay & Olu on VISION: The Vision Guided Life: God's Strategy for Fulfilling Destinyhttp://visionguidedlife.com/#order SUPPORT THIS MINISTRY FINANCIALLYhttps://www.vflm.org/join-the-clubDOWNLOAD our Bible Scholar Apphttp://thebiblescholar.comFOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIAWebsite | https://www.vflm.orgInstagram | https://www.instagram.com/visionguidedlife/Twitter | https://twitter.com/visionforlife1Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/visionguidedlifeTiktok | https://www.tiktok.com/@kayolutaiwoTO INVITE ME TO SPEAK:Want to have Kay and Olu Taiwo come and speak at your next event?https://www.vflm.org/invite-the-taiwos

Matthew 26:6-13 -      Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast You're the reason we can all do this together! Discuss the episode here Music written and performed by Jeff Foote.

Pastor Bill: [0:00] Hello and welcome to season 3 episode 78 of the Berean Manifesto. Intro And Outro Music Pastor Bill: [0:08] And love for the modern Christian I'm Pastor Bill and I'm joined as always, by baldy over here Pastor newms all the way from the state of Tennessee and the last week I said joined by always instead of as always and we had some fun with that and I made it. Pastor Newms: [0:24] There was no by you just said joined always. Pastor Bill: [0:29] Joined I always whatever it was. Pastor Newms: [0:31] You just said joined always lies if we were conjoined and it was very we did. Pastor Bill: [0:35] We had a lot of fun with it and I clipped it and I put it on my twitch my Tick-Tock so that was a lot of fun so. Pastor Newms: [0:44] Yes I'm talking about the new shirt. Pastor Bill: [0:47] Bigs pointed out this is the the next shirt design that we're highlighting that we're going to be selling at Dallas Pride on June 4th we've got a nice. Heart ish looking symbol and the middle it's not. It's open to interpretation what it is but if it makes me I when I see it I see like it's kind of like a heart you know and then it's just fully loved along this one side and it's got the two scriptures in the and the website down there, and so that's one of the shirts and then it's got all the colors of the rainbow and once again it is featuring a saint, there's just turned and positioned in a in an interesting way to yeah to. The heart looking shape so this is one of the shirts that will be selling it pride cool all right passengers how was your. Pastor Newms: [1:52] Looks pretty good I worked a bunch and play games bunch and did not, we did not stream this week for the church we did know gaming with the pastors are our gameplay was quite Limited. Pastor Bill: [2:11] We didn't do a lot of gaming even. Pastor Newms: [2:13] Will you didn't you were busy. Pastor Bill: [2:15] I was making that I said we I was making that Mother's Day present for my chillins mama. Pastor Newms: [2:26] Yeah and so not a ton of stuff real busy at work work is work is crazy busy right now is I don't see it slowing down anytime soon. Pastor Bill: [2:37] Can I just say this shirt is super soft. Pastor Newms: [2:40] Didn't you get the kinds that we really like. Pastor Bill: [2:44] Um for the new Free Hug shirts I did, this is not quite the same blend but it is so soft that I'm tempted to just not wear an undershirt in the future when I wear these shirts. Pastor Newms: [3:00] That's interesting I. Pastor Bill: [3:02] Which is weird for me. Pastor Newms: [3:03] I realized like 30 seconds before going live then I'm not even wearing a graphic tee and I'm just literally wearing a George shirt from Walmart and, which I usually don't do on Sunday nights. Pastor Bill: [3:14] But you love those George shirt. Pastor Newms: [3:15] Love these George sure I don't know what it is about them recently that they are just phenomenal they've upped their game which. Pastor Bill: [3:24] Nominally. Pastor Newms: [3:25] Which is crazy because. Pastor Bill: [3:28] Prince Ali yes it is he. Pastor Newms: [3:32] I don't like Target I was I'm always been a Walmart person it might have something to do with work. Pastor Bill: [3:38] Now you're going to you're going to upset the cult of. Pastor Newms: [3:41] I understand it's fine. Pastor Bill: [3:42] We're going to get angry. Pastor Newms: [3:43] I'm sure that's not the only one we're going to get angry emails about by the end of this night but that's beside the. Pastor Bill: [3:47] Man. Pastor Newms: [3:48] So I wouldn't do a Target and like zaidi and said targets close have gone downhill and I went in there and it looks, Walmart like all the all the things were just piles of clothes and there was trash in the aisles and it was it was all kinds of like. Pastor Bill: [4:23] I love that it looked like Walmart and then proceeds to list off all of these horrible things that we're going on. Pastor Newms: [4:32] But the quality of clothes supposedly has gone down I don't know I don't buy their clothes I barely by Walmart clothes I barely buy clothes I still have clothes from high school. Pastor Bill: [4:44] Minion gun on Twitch says that they love targets button up shirt. Pastor Newms: [4:48] Never tried one they might they might be. Pastor Bill: [4:51] I wouldn't know. Pastor Newms: [4:52] They might be great. Pastor Bill: [4:53] I used to buy you know I used to buy a lot of clothes from Walmart until I got too big they don't so close in my size, and target has never sold clothes in my size, once I you know turn 16 I couldn't buy clothes it targeted me more because they were all too small for me so yeah and now I exclusively by a big and tall stores for everything not because I'm tall but because, um so I don't really have a favorite for clothes Walmart or Target because none of their clothes fit me you'd think in the country with an obesity epidemic, um we would be easier to get clothes for a fat person but it's not it's not easy getting close as a fat person, so Pastor Newms: [5:45] No it's not um how was your week. Pastor Bill: [5:52] My week was good I feel good this week, I got up at a good time most days I wasn't like drugging myself on the bed and and so I've just I don't know I've had a good feeling this week I've gotten, back to being able to eat salads every day this week I did that so that that always helps make me feel a little better too but I don't know I just had to really good good week and I look good. So all right well it's time for getting to know the pastures and we've already gone through my whole deck. Pastor Newms: [6:31] So Pastor Bill: [6:32] And I thought I had another interview deck but I don't see it I'll have to look for it again this week so we'll go ahead and pull a card from your deck and see where we go. Pastor Newms: [6:41] All right so what would your dream house look like be as descriptive as possible. Pastor Bill: [6:50] My dream house be as descriptive as possible. Pastor Newms: [6:53] Not where you live is that pretty much the only way. Pastor Bill: [6:58] So I want a house that's got like one floor for each person and then one floor, as the communal living area at the bottom and then it's got to have the elevators and then all Glass Walls once you get above a couple of floors so you can see the scenery out, and other than that I don't really have any of them just give me some elevators get me up there. Pastor Newms: [7:25] See you in mines exactly the opposite it would be completely underground cave system Style with you know everything that that. Pastor Bill: [7:34] But see that's the beauty of our relationship is it could be the same building. Pastor Newms: [7:40] With lots and lots of rooms. Pastor Bill: [7:42] Yours floors could be sub and my floors could be out and and Minion got on Twitch made a nice callback to an Audio Adrenaline classic. Pastor Newms: [7:51] He just wants a big house a big big house. Pastor Bill: [7:55] Big house a big big house with lots and lots of rooms big big yard where we can play football that sounds like my father's house. Pastor Newms: [8:08] Yeah it's it's definitely. Yeah I am not one that cares a lot about what the house looks like I'm more about the function, I don't like a lot of windows I don't like a lot of that kind of stuff I prefer, closed spaces underground is nice also because the heating and air bills are lower because it holds temperature better and these new 3D printed houses are pretty nice if you 3D printed the bunker and then. Pastor Bill: [8:47] Something that happened this week as well you brought up 3D printed houses and zaidi was like a what now. Pastor Newms: [8:54] What what's a 3D printed house. Pastor Bill: [8:56] What are you talking about 3D print and I bet in her brain she was literally thinking of the little 3D printers and like 3D printing one little piece at a time. Pastor Newms: [9:05] And putting it together because she's like she's like like a prefab house and I'm like. Pastor Bill: [9:19] Yeah they come in with a big machine and it spits out concrete in the design around and around and back and forth around around just like 3D printing its snake. Pastor Newms: [9:31] Yeah it's a lot of fun. Pastor Bill: [9:36] So you'd live underground and I would live up as high as possible, and it could all be the same house and I could just feel like I need to go to the studio and I get in my elevator and I hit sub-sub bait subfloor one and that's like this the studio like we worked there and, record podcast and stuff that'd be fun. 11 or but one end or both of us needs to win the lottery a couple times and make that a reality. Pastor Newms: [10:02] Good luck. Pastor Bill: [10:04] That's that's why they'll never happen for me right there good luck. Pastor Newms: [10:12] And yes Biggs we actually cuz me and Biggs were doing a puzzle today we had the windows open to you know so we didn't have unnatural light and we did we complained the whole time and, yes the only thing above ground I believe needs to be a castle turret just. Pastor Bill: [10:32] A moat and some turrets. Pastor Newms: [10:33] Just a moat and some turrets in everyone's like where's the rest of the house uh-huh. Pastor Bill: [10:37] It's underneath is underneath that I need the. Pastor Newms: [10:39] Don't worry about it. Pastor Bill: [10:41] You do if you don't know you don't need. [10:48] All right so, let's Unite we are. Going to be breaching something that's touchy and I think everybody saw this coming because of everything that's been going on this week but first thing I want to I want to poll is. Are we. Team depth or team heard because it seems like it would be hard to be team heard it had to be like Team Russia to be team heard at this point. Pastor Newms: [11:22] It's real hard to, I have not consumed all of it on purpose but I know I have been boycotting d.c. for a while just, from the beginning so I'll let that you can take that to mean whatever you would like. Pastor Bill: [11:48] Because you are already team death. Pastor Newms: [11:49] Yeah so but the. Is either person perfect know both people had issues made mistakes blah blah blah. I believe one didn't lie as much and I believe one didn't. Cause issues as much but it's always hard in those types of situations too. Do you know we have a we have a thoughts process of, we have to believe you know, certain aspects we have to love we have to respect we have to you know and so I've left it very much I don't know as Phoenix said, as the evidence is come out we're pretty much able to make some determinations but it is still always hard with situations like that. Pastor Bill: [13:12] All right everything came out this week was a leak from the Supreme Court. Pastor Newms: [13:20] There was. Pastor Bill: [13:20] Right there was a leak from the Supreme Court and the leak said and it was a draft of a. A majority opinion the majority opinion means it's the the winner of a, of a court case to have a majority opinion someone's chosen to write the majority opinion and someone's chosen to RIT right the dissenting opinion the majority opinion is of well this is why the court agreed and gave favor too the dissenting opinion is always well this is why certain judges voted against in a court case. Pastor Newms: [14:01] Hm Pastor Bill: [14:02] And this majority opinion LED everyone who read it to believe because it almost point-blank said it that the cases of Roe and Casey were both going to have to be overturned. Moving forward and so this put a lot of people up in arms and there's a lot of turmoil going on and there's a lot of, rhetoric being used now back and forth but what. [14:41] Hertz is the right word me the most is the Christian rhetoric so I want to start off and and just, relate something from my past right quick and then we'll look at a couple of scriptures and then we'll break down kind of, how we should look at situations like this I'm not going to tell you what to believe on the topic your, a human being that's capable of hearing from the Holy Spirit and making your own mind up but I want to I want to, just illuminate the areas and and it's going to be tough it's it's it's a tough issue but we don't shy away from tough issues just because they're tough, um we want to talk about things like this and not Echo chamber talk but actually have a critical conversation about, you know how we see things and how we portray ourselves and how Christianity is being portrayed and so. Take a trip back with me several several years ago before. Not before I get shortly after 9/11. Pastor Newms: [15:54] Okay. Pastor Bill: [15:55] So 9/11 happens and. Everybody's searching for a sama Bin Laden right Asama Bin Laden hadn't been captured yet Saddam Hussein hadn't been captured yet and so, everyone is looking for these guys and I'm working at a Christian Ministry and we're having this prayer time, every morning every morning as a department we would get together first thing in the morning and we would have prayer we would have worship we would have you know just a little time just to reset our hearts and our minds from being out in the world so that we could do work in the ministry space. [16:37] And we're having this prayer time and the person that's leading that day starts praying that God would be with the soldiers that are hunting for Saddam Hussein. And kill him and it broke my heart. Because may I understand from an American standpoint, we're in a war with those people be I understand from your political standpoint he is your enemy see I understand from a worldview you know he's hurting his people. But I also understand that historically throughout scripture God has moved on dictators. And turn their hearts and led whole Nations to repentance and Revival. [17:41] And instead of praying for God to move and for God to do what God does and for God to intervene and for God to change the heart and for God to revolutionize the country and for God to, we're praying for this leader to be killed. And I just can't. [18:07] Can't reconcile that kind of thing with my heart with my beliefs with my thought process I am, I'm pro-life and when I say that I mean I am anti-death penalty I am anti-war I am. Pastor Newms: [18:25] Annoyingly so huh aye aye vote huh I said annoyingly so. Pastor Bill: [18:35] Annoyingly so and so War I am yes I'm anti abortion but no I'm not anti. [18:45] Woman who finds herself in a situation I believe that people should be loved no matter what, um it's like there's the one song, walk a mile in another person's shoes and it's got the whole verse about the girl who the young man told her you know all baby we're going to be together forever and I love you and and then, they get intimate and she becomes pregnant through months later he's you know he's onto something new, and she's a teenage girl left with this decision of you know this is this is going to wreck my whole life she makes tickets decision to go get an abortion and she's met at the abortion clinic with people calling her a sinner and a whore instead of oh baby girl, let me hold you let me love you let me take care of you I'm sorry you're in this situation instead of actually doing Ministry to the person we've over and over and over and I say we because I'm a believer that, I take responsibility for what we as Christians do, the church it's not enough to say well I don't personally do that but that church over there is doing it until we're all on the same page we're all guilty for what that church is doing. [20:13] And so that's where we are right now in this situation so let's I just I want to talk about I just want to bring up a couple of scriptures and then will you know will dig more into. How we should look at all of this but the first thing is there's there's the bump the scripture bump scripture which was John 15 and 19 and. We're going to have to remove this statement why are my caught my comments not going to Twitch. Pastor Newms: [20:50] I don't know it didn't when I did it earlier to I fixed it. Pastor Bill: [20:53] We're going to have to remove a statement from its context but not take it out of context okay, so this is Jesus talking he says if the world hates you understand that it hated me before it hated you, if you were of the world the world would love you as its own however because you are not of the world I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you now we're not going to talk about whether or not the world hates us or is persecuting us or whatever. As an American in in in this day and age is a Christian I don't feel persecuted I feel what's the word I'm looking for. Pastor Newms: [21:37] What's the word you looking for sometimes. Pastor Bill: [21:40] Discriminated against very slightly. Pastor Newms: [21:45] Very. Pastor Bill: [21:46] But nowhere near to what I see people of other color receiving, I don't feel that kind of discriminated and I certainly don't feel persecuted like say the Muslims trying to live in China right now that are in are in actual concentration camps, I don't I'm not living that life I don't feel any of that I'm free to go to church and to share the name of Jesus and to you know read my Bible and to pray in public eye I don't feel hated, but what the idea that I want to pull from here is, you are not of the world so when we look at these situations we see these things going around on around us we have to remember, that we don't have to get caught up in all that we don't have to let it sway us, to and fro and affect us to the point where we're distraught or overburdened or were you know at a loss for how to respond because we're not of this world. [22:56] We're here but we're not of the world, we're of different stock okay and then the other thing I wanted to talk about, marked it with my my thing and I don't know where it was okay here we go it's Kitty type this in for me newms it's Matthew chapter 22, and we're going to start at verse 15 and go through 21. [23:31] Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to trap him Jesus by what he said so they sent their disciples to him along with the herodians, teacher they said we know that you are truthful and teach truthfully the way of God you don't care what anyone thinks nor do you show partiality, tell us then what you think is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not, perceiving their malicious intent Jesus said why are you testing me Hypocrites show me the coin used for the tax they brought him a Denarius whose image and inscription is this he asked, Caesars they said to him then he said to them give then to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are gods, when they heard this they were amazed so they left him and went away now. [24:26] A lot of people strictly use this to go you see there you should pay your taxes, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's given to pay your tithe you should pay your taxes right there says, that's not exactly the idea that they do is cut that is covered but that's not exactly what's going on there what's going on there is almost literally the separation of church and state. The state is one thing and you given to the state what is do the state the church is another thing and you given to the church what is the church. The state should not be telling the church how to do ministry as in you can't tell me that I can't feed the poor, like some of the laws that have been passed in California where it's illegal to how have food lines out on the street now you can't feed the poor you shouldn't be able to tell me that I can't have a Bible study, which I'm not talking about covid I'm not I get it I understand putting a restriction on people but with today's technology that is not an actual restriction that is just a change of mode I mean look at us. Pastor Newms: [25:42] Yeah we changed. Pastor Bill: [25:43] Right here we changed modes, um the church State shouldn't be putting limits on the church within reason of ministry now the state can go no no no no you're not going to come in and bite a bunch of people with snakes, that's an actual health hazard we're going to have to cool a Bosch that the state can do that okay I get that, but at the same time Christians shouldn't be trying to legislate morality. [26:19] Or not even morality but try to take, um historical precedence from our religious beliefs and say will it's always been like this so it's the law should be like this. That's not how that works the state should serve the people as a secular institution and the church Serve the People, as a church, can they coexist and even work together one help the other get his job done and one help the other get their job done absolutely that that would be brilliant that would be beautiful, but for people to go in and say we need to overturn Roe versus Wade. [27:15] You're killing babies and my faith tells me we shouldn't be killing babies okay, you're allowed to feel, that your faith instructs you that all life is precious and that life begins at a certain point you're allowed to feel that. Okay you're not allowed to pass a law. That then tells other people they have to feel the way your faith tells you to feel, they don't have that faith not all of them and the ones that do have that Faith perhaps they've grasp a hold of First Corinthians chapter 13 and realize that there is faith, there is hope but greater than those more important than those is love. And if we're not loving others first and foremost. Then we're doing a dish Justice to our faith and were stealing. [28:29] Okay so for you to stand outside of an abortion clinic and yell you're killing babies. And you're going to go to hell that is not love, for you to stand outside of an abortion clinic and say do you need a ride home after do you need someone who can talk to you before and after if you choose to go in. [28:57] I'm here for you I'll take you to a meal let's let's work through this that's love right. But if you want to get rid of something like abortion that you see as a violation of your faith. Then you have to figure out how to do that long before. They're at an abortion clinic long before they become pregnant and long before they're even in a relationship. Right, we have to destigmatize sex for one because right now the way we the church handle sex is with a veil, we stigmatize it we mystify it we hide it and so young people come up under this this Veil and they go oh well I have to hide that I can't let you know, that I'm feeling that way I can't let you know that I'm doing that thing, and then they're having unprotected sex they're having dangerous sex they're having sex that leads them to pregnancy long before they're ready, and then chain kicks in and what are their options. [30:24] What are they supposed to do, are they supposed to come to you in that shame and fear and talk about this thing that that's this consequence of this thing that's happened they couldn't even talk about the act of, before because we created a lifestyle of Shame surrounding sex okay, we have to demystify that to we have to teach about and make available contraceptives all your give them permission to send your given permission sin I am not I'm not, I'm giving them a safety net because sex happens, I taught my son I've taught my kids I can tell you the right way to do something over and over and over and over and over and over but until you're in the situation you can't know how you're going to respond. Period. Pastor Newms: [31:22] And it always fails talk to you. Pastor Bill: [31:24] And if all else fails go talk to him. Pastor Newms: [31:26] Shit. Pastor Bill: [31:30] We have to get rid of shame we have to demystify we have to make available contraceptions and teach about safe sex. Okay we have to teach you about this where to teach you about how it happens, why it happens what you can do to prevent it because it's not enough to say you can't get an abortion you have to bla bla bla we have to teach people how to prevent that from happening on both sides, young ladies need to know, what is going to happen to their body in this process and young men need to know if you do the deed you're responsible. [32:16] The mama as far as I'm concerned for my son if he gets a girl pregnant and she chooses to get an abortion I don't hold her accountable for that I hold him accountable for that life. He is accountable for the baby that just got taken to an abortion clinic. It's not on her it's on him now her parents can go deal with what's on her that's fine. But as far as I'm concerned he has a responsibility that he just threw away, and got a girl pregnant instead of doing the right thing taking the right steps choosing protection choosing situations that were better before he got into the heated. Right there's too much in our culture of well that's not the man's responsibility that's the ladies responsibility, and I grew up no lie I grew up seeing on TV and I can't believe I'm about to say this, one good thing that ever came out of my step dad's mouth, if you get a girl pregnant it's your responsibility to drive her up to that clinic and you have to pay for any procedure so you think about that before you get involved in a sexual relationship. [33:46] And so that stuck with me. I was responsible if I got a girl pregnant that was my fault I did that it didn't happen to her I did that to her. And I see a lot of that not being taught we don't teach young men by and large that they are responsible for their actions and they have to take responsibility for those actions. Pastor Newms: [34:12] Sadly we do the opposite sadly we demonize women for oh well you know how were you dressed how were you it's not a woman no no no it's a man's fault, when. Pastor Bill: [34:27] And now we're now we're we're preaching on the rape issue. So often a woman will report rape and the questions that come out of the police that's been documented over and over and over again is what were you wearing where were you walking where you junk how were you / trying yourself, that is not relevant in any way shape or form to catching the dirtbag, who forced himself on to this young lady and getting Justice for that young lady and if that young lady who's been raped, wants to get an abortion because that trauma is too deep and too rough and too vile for her to deal with I can't blame her for that, period she need any girl that's been raped whether it was pregnancy or not needs counseling, possibly a psychiatrist a psychologist a counselor and I'm not talking about okay first off that's not me I'm not a licensed counselor I have the title pastor, Pastor newms has the title pounced Pastor neither one of us are licensed counselors that's not what I'm talking about, I can I can give you a hug and I can love on you and I can treat you like one of my daughters. [35:55] But I am not licensed to help you deal with that trauma and there are a lot of pastors out here that have the right heart and the right intent and they want to love you and they want to help you but they're not qualified, paid to be dealing with those situations there are pastors out here that want to help with marriage counseling but aren't qualified to be a marriage counselor they're not license they're not they haven't trained they haven't gone through what needs to happen, um and then you've got the problem of incest, I don't even want to touch that one because that's so deep and dark and twisted and and confusing that I don't even begin to understand that situation. And so I'm going to leave that to someone else my main point here is. [37:02] We are different people all inside the one person right we've got our secular selves, and then we've got our faith-based selves we've got our hope base elves and we've got our love bass selves, our secular cells myself I'm States right person writes person I don't believe the government should be making laws, that limit a state's ability to govern, I don't believe the Supreme Court should be making decisions that limit a state's ability to make those decisions I believe the decision should be left up to the state, and mainly I believe that because states are run on a more democratic level closer to the people, and are easily more easily able to represent the actual people than the federal government that's why I hold that view. I also believe that the amendments to the Constitution, and the Supreme Court should and do exercise their rights to withhold power from governments to protect people, in this case Roe versus Wade and Casey versus, forgive me I can't remember who the other party in that case was but Rowan Casey passed in the Supreme Court because of privacy right. [38:31] That's why they were passed because the federal government the state government the city government the County Government, has no business sticking their head into your doctor's office and saying you can't get that kind of Medical Care. [38:53] That was the understanding was that everyone had access to a doctor everyone was seeking a doctor's opinion. We don't live in that world quite in that world anymore and most people didn't then not everyone has a doctor overseeing our medical care and we're left, to make medical decisions for ourselves that we're not trained to make which is another point, we should be training our children in sex ed, and by children I mean sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade I don't mean fifth grade and Below although in some states, in some counties there are fifth grade and below that are already having sex and getting pregnant so in some instances in those counties yes they should have sex ed earlier, but we should be training sex ed because they need to know if I stick this there this will happen. [39:57] They need to be trained about that they need to be trained in all these medical issues will what happens if I go get an abortion what's going to happen to me what's the other going to be in Revit ramifications of that had there been long-term effects of that because, yes there have been lots and lots and lots and lots of women that have been negatively impacted, by their abortion procedure not all but lots, and they needed counseling they needed to talk to someone and that kind of care just isn't provided because we're not taught to need it and, we put shame on people that find themselves in situations where they need help. [40:44] And that's the opposite of what we should be doing especially the church especially Christians shame shouldn't be part of the conversation for us, that should never be part you should never feel shame going to your pastor going to your church, and that's not the culture that by and large we you know created as, a church as you know a whole all of us together all right so there's that there's the circular you then there's the faith you that says, life is precious God knew us before he formed us in our mother's womb he has thoughts and plans for his thoughts of to prosperous thoughts of a future and a hope, Jesus loved us so much that he came and died for us yes your faith should inform you of all of those things. Your faith should also inform you that the mother are the young lady who's being faced with this crisis in her life, got also new and knows and loves and cares for, and how would God as a father respond to that young lady. [41:56] When she finds out how would the most perfect being in the universe respond if their child I messed up I got pregnant. [42:07] Okay there's the hope you hope says everything's going to work out. [42:14] How is everything going to work out if we're leaving people Stranded by the wayside. In their hour of need or we're not preparing for it we're not supporting them through it we're not walking with them through it how is Hope served in that. [42:31] And then there's the love which we've harped on a lot in this you know context there's the love. Love does not envy love does not boast love does not build itself up, it believes all things you know this is love love I had this example of this young lady, but wasn't it hung lady but I was driving Uber Kimber fear was an Uber or Lyft ride but I was driving and this woman was in the car and she was telling me that at one point in her life she was homeless. And she was homeless because she chose to be homeless she was out with her boyfriend her boyfriend was homeless she was on drugs and she was living on the side of the road over by Lancaster in Fort Worth. And there were living there because they could get free drugs there and, every day from the day she left home to go live with her boyfriend and saw the road every day her mother brought her a warm dinner and fresh blankets. [43:45] I told her she loved her spent time with her and her boyfriend there on the side of the road where they lived, and at the end of that she would go back home and say you're welcome home anytime she did that for three months straight every day before this girl realized, my mama actually loves me and I'm throwing my life away. Told her boyfriend they need to get clean he broke up with her she moved back into her home she found salvation and she started going to church she got involved in Ministry but it was that love, that her mother was bringing her everyday, our culture says if your kid messes up and chooses drugs and moves out and go lives on the side road with their boyfriend then you need to exercise tough love and let them learn their lesson, that's not love love brings a hot meal and a blanket fresh blanket every night. [44:49] And while you're working through your stuff love says I'm right here when you're ready I'm right here I'm not going anywhere I love you. And that's the kind of love that God has for us sent his son to die. Cuz we were born into a nature of enmity with God, Adam and Eve. Chose enmity with God they chose a sin nature we were born into something as slaves as victims and God is sitting there going, whenever you're ready to stop being a Slave to turn away from the things that are hurting you I'm here. I'm ready. And God has also said now I want you to know that if you don't turn away from those things that are hurting you the path you're on is going to lead you there. [46:06] Is a place called hell in your word Hell Fire Brimstone gnashing of teeth I don't want that for you. I don't want you to go there and I'm patiently waiting for you to decide that you don't want to go there either. And you don't want to continue to be hurt in your life and you don't want to continue to you know and life doesn't get perfect because life is still life. But you spiritually have a hope and life is different when you have hope you sis. [46:46] And so that's my thoughts on this episode that isn't about row. Because it's not about Roe it's not about Casey it's not about Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard it's not about any of those things it's about are we as Christians. Loving. Those around us and living our life and portraying love and how we see and respond to those things. Because you may feel like it's a victory for Roe versus Wade to be overturned you may feel like that's a victory but your victory. Maybe someone else's crisis gone into chaos. [47:50] And you may Jigger Victory may just be the straw that pushes them over the edge to do something drastic. Something awful something they may not survive. That's unacceptable everything to add that Pastor newms. Pastor Newms: [48:35] We as Christians have to respond in love to all things and often we don't. Pastor Bill: [48:53] This podcast comes out every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time wherever you get podcasts we also record this live on Sunday evenings at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, and you can catch and be a part of it on Twitch Facebook or YouTube, you can go to our website at www.kttape.com house to figure out which twitch which Facebook and which YouTube those are, you can also see our backlog of all 377 episodes that came before this one it's actually more than that it's 380. [49:34] Three because there was one Easter week that I did one episode every day and I called it point 1.2.3.4, anyway our whole back leg is there you can go see if there's something that ministers to you if you found this episode, uplifting informing and gave you a better sense of faith hope and love for your life and you feel like it would help someone else please share it, send it to someone else we we want to reach as many people as possible with faith hope and love that's the point, and so if you could share that with people that you know it would help that would be awesome we want people to be helped and if anyone listening to this needs to reach out to us, info at EK dot house or you can utilize the phone number on the website, you can text that I can text bakic I get it on my phone you can leave a voicemail I get the transcription of that on my phone as well, and yeah we want to have an actual relationship with people that need love. Utilize that if you need to. All right so that's what we got going and then we have Dallas Pride coming up in a month let's just under a month. Pastor Newms: [50:57] Just under. Pastor Bill: [50:59] Huh and so that'll be fun we're going to do ministry there and hopefully we'll see some people there that we know from past years and some maybe some people come up and hey I found your podcast or hey I found you on Twitch or, it'll be good and then we're giving away a gaming monitor right for. Gaming with the pastors are giving away a game in monetary. Pastor Newms: [51:24] Yes. Pastor Bill: [51:25] Look at me with that blank face like you didn't remember we. Pastor Newms: [51:29] I forgot I did I did forget, I was like oh yeah we are yeah. Pastor Bill: [51:35] Yeah I was looking at them today trip try to pick out the right one, to make the art because I got to make a QR code first scanning and bekele the yard yeah so all right so that's what we got coming up I love you guys have a great. Intro And Outro Music Pastor Bill: [51:58] And until next time.  

Loic Pasquet, proprietor and winemaker at Liber Pater and Denarius, and president of the Franc de Pied association, talks about importance of ungrafted "pre-phylloxera" vines.

Want to break the movie film industry?! Look no further than DeNarius Allen, when it comes down to laying it all out on the lane he is proof.   Quitting his 9-5, moving on faith to Atlanta and not knowing where his next check will come from but relying on his faith and his hard work to break into the Film Industry as a Camera Assistant.   DeNarius is on some real Pursuit of Happiness type story, and I love it! I need everyone trying to achieve a dream to look into his story and see what this guy was willing to sacrifice to secure his dream!

Matthew 20: 1-16Andrew and Edwin take a second look at the gracious vineyard owner parable. What unified each of the laborers in the vineyard even though they came at different hours and accomplished different amounts of labor? The Master in whose vineyard they decided to work. There's the key to discuss.Read the written devo that goes along with this episode by clicking here.    Let us know what you are learning or any questions you have. Email us at TextTalk@ChristiansMeetHere.org.    Join the Facebook community and join the conversation by clicking here. We'd love to meet you. Be a guest among the Christians who meet on Livingston Avenue. Click here to find out more. Michael Eldridge sang all four parts of our theme song. Find more from him by clicking here.   Thanks for talking about the text with us today.________________________________________________If the hyperlinks do not work, copy the following addresses and paste them into the URL bar of your web browser: Daily Written Devo: https://readthebiblemakedisciples.wordpress.com/?p=8588The Christians Who Meet on Livingston Avenue: http://www.christiansmeethere.org/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TalkAboutTheTextFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/texttalkMichael Eldridge: https://acapeldridge.com/ 

Matthew 20:1-16Andrew and Edwin take a first look at Jesus's parable about the laborers in the vineyard coming in at different hours. What does it mean for the first to be last and the last first? They especially try to keep it in the context of Jesus's comments to Peter at the end of the previous chapter.Read the written devo that goes along with this episode by clicking here.    Let us know what you are learning or any questions you have. Email us at TextTalk@ChristiansMeetHere.org.    Join the Facebook community and join the conversation by clicking here. We'd love to meet you. Be a guest among the Christians who meet on Livingston Avenue. Click here to find out more. Michael Eldridge sang all four parts of our theme song. Find more from him by clicking here.   Thanks for talking about the text with us today.________________________________________________If the hyperlinks do not work, copy the following addresses and paste them into the URL bar of your web browser: Daily Written Devo: https://readthebiblemakedisciples.wordpress.com/?p=8576The Christians Who Meet on Livingston Avenue: http://www.christiansmeethere.org/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TalkAboutTheTextFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/texttalkMichael Eldridge: https://acapeldridge.com/ 

2021 brought many exciting new opportunities for the 2DaysD channel. Though most of the posting of 2DaysD took place on the YouTube channel in 2021, there was still some good news from the analytics from the podcast site. This podcasts reviews both the podcast and YouTube venues of 2Days Denarius, which is beginning to see true measurable and steady grow since the middle part of the year. Take a listen to the update, along with a sound devotion toward the conclusion of this podcast.

Serafino Iacono, Executive Chairman and CEO of Denarius Silver Corp. (TSXV: DSLV) discusses the company's recent acquisition of the Lomero-Poyatos deposit and their growth plans for the upcoming year. Denarius Silver Corp. is a Canadian-listed public company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development and eventual operation of mining projects in high-grade districts, with its principal focus on the Lomero Project in Spain and the Guia Antigua Project in Colombia.

JMART CAST is J-Mart's Monday Morning Podcast. Like Bill Burr but bettah :PToday's episode is about:my kids Halloween costumedisappointment from the final episode of Squid Gameanimal based diet experiment in Novemberrolling with a BJJ professor and getting crushedwearing the wrong gi to BJJ classmy wife hanging upside down to make baby turnvisiting friends with new baby in Barriemy kid getting sickChow Chow dogsRoman denarius coin debasement and BitcoinConnect with J-Mart on Social MediaInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/jmartfit/​Twitter - https://twitter.com/jmartfitFacebook page - https://fb.me/jmartmoves​Medium page - https://jmartwrites.medium.com/Newsletter - newsletter@jmartfit.comYou can also check out my State of Health Podcast (health education geared) on the platform of your choice:Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/state-of-health/id1540500767Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/280adseGOPdxg6cZZrTqbR?si=gBPeEknXR0y7gW1DuZpSxQAmazon Music - https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/01bb34c0-00a2-45e2-8627-95c32aba7c0e/state-of-healthStitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/state-of-healthGoogle Podcasts - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5yZWRjaXJjbGUuY29tL2QzZGIwODYxLWJmODItNDc0Mi1iZGYzLWMyZDAxODQ4ODY2Ng==Referral LinksShakepay - Sign up with my link and we'll each get $10 to buy crypto:https://shakepay.me/r/HNT0N6QWild Meadows Farm — https://wildmeadowsfarm.ca/register?referral_code=V2OMFtc5XYJdBlockFi — https://blockfi.com/?ref=153dfa59Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/state-of-health/donations

Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast You're the reason we can all do this together! Discuss the episode here Music written and performed by Jeff Foote.

Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast You're the reason we can all do this together! Discuss the episode here Music written and performed by Jeff Foote.

Photo:  Denarius featuring the emperor Marcus Aurelius   1/2  @RichardAEpstein  @HooverInst   Redistributing tax dollars: State funding for the public good? https://www.hoover.org/research/infrastructure-distortions   Pro:  Once those roads, rails, pipes, and wires are acquired by the state, they are often subject to traditional common carrier obligations of universal service at reasonable rates, whether the state retains operational control over these facilities or transfers them to private parties. The use of state power for infrastructure is thus tied to a credible theory of market failure. .. Permissions: Source | Tantalus Coins, uploaded by Rasiel Suarez Author | Rasiel Suarez Rasiel at English Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publishes it under the following licenses: w:en:Creative Commons attribution share alike  This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  Attribution: Rasiel at English Wikipedia You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.  

Photo:  Roman aqueduct.   @RichardAEpstein  @HooverInst   Spending the denarius.  https://www.hoover.org/research/infrastructure-distortions      

The College Tapes | CONTENT WARNING: This episode of The College Tapes contains coerced experimentation and panic attacks. Listener discretion is advised. Oliver returns to Boston (and Mark), bringing secrets, a sketchy arranged meeting, and a lot of baggage. For more information, please visit thecollegetapes.com

Matthew 20:1-16 - Laborers in the Vineyard   | The Storyteller  |  Sam Holm  |  Preached 7-04-21  10:45am  |  Summer Series  |  Tag: July 4th, Independence, Vineyard, Workers, Denarius, Pay, Fair, Grace, Work, Parables, Jesus

Matthew 20:1-16 - Laborers in the Vineyard   | The Storyteller  |  Sam Holm  |  Preached 7-04-21  10:45am  |  Summer Series  |  Tag: July 4th, Independence, Vineyard, Workers, Denarius, Pay, Fair, Grace, Work, Parables, Jesus

Denarius Silver Corp (TSX-V:DSLV) (FRA:682) Executive Chairman Serafino Iaocono tells Proactive about the group's recent acquisitions of Colombia-based silver and gold-focused Guia Antigua and Zancudo projects. The group has a Letter of Intent to acquire Spain-based Lomero-Poyatos gold-focused project. Iacono detailed planned drilling advancements for each project, and he adds, the group is still on the hunt for future acquisitions of projects, perhaps focusing on silver and copper.

Daily Biblical encouragement from Nerdy Christian Podcasters, Bloggers and Content Creators. Join the Squad at www.NOGSquad.com Support this podcast

Two messages back we learned that our first responsibility to our leaders is to pray for them and to give thanks to God for them. I hope this week you prayed for the president of your prime minister, or whatever leader God has placed over you. I hope that you also thanked God for them. For some of you this teaching – to pray and to give thanks – is a tough pill to swallow. Maybe you did not vote for this particular leader. Possibly he or she does not represent your values. Or this leader is corrupt. Whatever, God expects it of us. Prayer is our first and most important calling toward our leaders. So please pray for your leaders regardless of their politics. In the last message, we learned that God appoints human leaders over us. And for that reason, we are to subject ourselves to their leadership as long as their leading is not in conflict with God’s Bible. When the Bible disagrees with our human leaders we are to obey God and be willing to suffer the consequences. We looked at the Apostles in Acts 5. The apostles told the religious leaders that they had to obey God before they would obey men. We considered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were willing to suffer the consequences that come when a believer chooses to obey God rather than men. Today we will continue to look at our responsibility to our government.  Today the key thing we will learn is that God expects us to be the very best citizens we can be.. Let’s pray. The Purpose of Government Let’s open our Bibles to Romans 13. Last week we studied Romans 13:1-2. Today we will pick up at verse 3 and read through verse 5. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. Within this text, we find the primary purpose for government and we also find God’s expectation for our lifestyle under this government. Let’s look at 1 Peter 2:13-17 Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, 14 or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— 16 as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. 17 Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. The primary and the original purpose of government is to restrain evil. This purpose was first established by God in Genesis 9:5-6. The flood of Noah is in chapter 7 of Genesis. In Chapter 8 God delivers Noah and his family back on dry ground. In chapter 9 God makes a covenant with Noah. Just prior to making the covenant. God teaches Noah about the importance of life, especially the life of mankind. People would begin again to populate the earth. Sin was already present in the hearts of Noah and his family. Soon there would be wickedness done against other humans. God wanted Noah and us even to understand how much He, God, valued human life. Let’s read. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man. God has placed a high value on the life of all mankind. Everyone is created in the image of God – whether that person lives a good life or an evil one. When someone murders another person they kill an image-bearer. God says in Genesis 9 that it is the responsibility of people to then take the life of the murderer. Even when an animal kills a man that animal is to be put to death. Why? Animals just act out of their nature. The reason again is that God places the highest value on human life. Humans are image-bearers. For this reason, the animal must die. The unconditional covenant between God and mankind called the Noahic Covenant is found here in Genesis 9. Bits and pieces of this same covenant are found in Genesis 6 and 8. Look at Genesis 8:21 And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. They’re hardly off the ark and already God is acknowledging the sinfulness of man. Our imaginations within our hearts are evil. The ultimate end of such evil is murder. God in Genesis 9 states that murder must be dealt with and the way to deal with it is capital punishment. Capital punishment becomes the responsibility of the government. In fact, the restraint of all forms of evil is the purpose of government. Why Should We Obey Our Leaders? Reason One There are two basic reasons why we should obey our leaders. The first one is so we will avoid punishment or their wrath. Return to Romans 13. Look at verses 3-4 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. God places a person in a leadership position to retrain evil. When a person does evil the government official becomes God’s avenger. Those that murder, the government is called to execute wrath. The wording “bear the sword” in verse four is in reference to capital punishment. Romans typically executed criminals by beheading them with a sword. Crucifixion was rarely used and only for the worst of offenders. When the government executes someone, they are acting on behalf of God. There is some great advice in this passage for the believer. It is found in verse 3. “Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same.” You’re driving over the speed limit. You come over a hill and there sits the police officer. Your heart begins to beat faster. Your palms sweat. You hope he had his radar off. But no. On come the blue lights. Busted! Here is what that verse is saying. If you don’t want to fear the police office, don’t speed. God expects all Christians to be good citizens. We are expected to obey the laws and live peaceably in our communities. Reason Two There is a second reason why we should obey our leaders. We then obey our leaders to avoid their wrath. We also obey our leaders because of our conscience. Look at Romans 13:5-7. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. What is meant by “for conscience sake”? It means we obey because it is our duty to God. Obeying the laws of the land is a way we serve God. It is a way that we bring glory to God. The conscience is our moral compass or our moral awareness. It is a part of our personality that makes us feel guilty when we violate the law and it is the thing that makes us feel good when we follow the law. We should want to please God in our actions. Our behavior should be pleasing to God. Turn to Hebrews 13:18. In Hebrews 13:18 the writer of it asks that the reader to pray for them. There are two distinct prayer requests. The second request is in verse 19. He wants to return to them soon. So prayer is necessary for that to happen. The first request is in verse 18. Let’s read that. Pray for us; for we are confident that we have a good conscience, in all things desiring to live honorably. The write of Hebrews desires to live honorably. When you live honorably you will have a good conscience. When you live honorably you obey the laws. You are a good citizen. Remember 1 Peter 2:13-17 Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, 14 or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— 16 as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. 17 Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. Here’s an Example of How We Should Obey Let’s go back to Romans 13 and see how Paul teaches us to obey our leaders. He commands us to pay our taxes and fees. Romans 13:6-7 says, For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Out of fear and for consciousness' sake we should do our duty and pay our taxes. Jesus taught this very thing. Look at Mark 12:12-17. 13 Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. 14 When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? 15 Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” 16 So they brought it. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” 17 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him. Many of you know this story. The Pharisees and the Herodians (Herod’s people) were trying to trick Jesus. Either possible answer – “yes” or “No” – would be viewed negatively by someone. If Jesus says “Yes, we should pay taxes” the Jews would be upset. And if Jesus said, “No!” Then the Romans would be upset. Jesus tells them to give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. But what does He mean “to God the things that are God’s”? Possibly He is talking about the Temple Tax? But more than likely He is speaking of spiritual matters, such as worship. The Caesars often viewed themselves as gods. On a Denarius there was a picture of the Emperor. On this coin, it was probably Tiberius. On the Tiberius coin, there was his image and an inscription – “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus.” We must never make our leaders into gods. Leaders must never claim deity. But sometimes we do and sometimes they do. Like Romans 13, Jesus is teaching loyalty to the state, to the government. And He is also teaching loyalty to God, not man. Conclusion Let’s return to our opening. In that, I asked you if you had been praying and giving thanks for your leader. I have been praying for President Biden and Vice President Harris. Let me encourage you one more time to do the same – pray for your leaders. Last lesson we learned that God has appointed our leaders. For that reason, we are to subject ourselves to them. But when there are things that are not in line with God’s word we are to obey God and suffer the consequences. Today we built upon that teaching. We learned that God gave us government to restrain evil. For that alone, we should be thankful. God calls us to obey our leaders for two reasons. So we will not experience punishment And to serve God. Overall the God has taught us to be the very best citizens we can be.

The year 2020 brought a difficult time for our nation and many people who have suffered loss of jobs or illnesses. In spite of the many changes and challenges that we face, God is still on His throne - and there is Christmas! Today, Rev. Thomas sets aside his normal teaching topics and talks about Christmas and what makes it special from his perspective. This includes talking about the songs, Carols, movies, and shows that we cherish. But most important of all, Christmas is about the Gospel of Jesus Christ - that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). This is an episode to enjoy that will make people think of their own Christmas favorites - and certainly will encourage them to think about their relationship with Christ as well.

Growing up in the small town of Rock Hill, SC, our next guest DeNarius Allen graduated and relocated to Atlanta with dreams of film making. With some experience on set, he interned and learned from those around him, to later create his own production company centered around photography and graphic design. With other talents ranging from cinematography to grafting and camera operation, listen in as he'll discuss some of the skills of the trade, the importance of networking, and some of the classes he offers. Check out his story and our new CF story “I wish it was that easy”. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/charles-johnson282/support

This podcast episode begins with the story of John the Baptist's beheading.  It expands into a discussion of baptism as originally practiced by the Jews and how John's baptizing was different.  Early Quakers felt that outward water baptism as a ritual should be laid aside. The true baptism is inward.   Henry examines the Greek words for “prophet”, “miracle” and “raise”.  The session continues with the story of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves.  A participant points out the parallel between the feeding of the multitudes and the Last Supper.   Henry compares the quiet prayer of Jesus to Quaker waiting worship.  He then describes where Jesus had his “headquarters”.  He also explains the value of a denarius so that we can understand the possible cost of feeding the multitude.  The danger of taking all scripture literally is explored.  There is more to focus on than the fact of the miracles. The following is a glossary of the words examined in this session…BAPTISM, BAPTIZE:Baptisma n. - immersion, baptismBaptizō v. – immerse, wash, baptize Prophētēs n. - prophet - one who speaks on behalf of another (i.e. for God) Dunamis n. - powerDunamai v. - can, be able RESURRECTION, RESURRECT:Egeirō v. - wake up, get up, lift up, rise up, raiseEgersis n. - a waking up, resurrectionAnistēmi v. - restore, stand something up, raise up.Anastasis n. - resurrection, a rising up Basileus n. - kingBasileia n. - kingdom, domain, dominion Dēnarios n. - Latin denarius n. - denariusAnēr n. - man (a male, husband), pl. andresAnthrōpos n. - man, human beingThe number “40" as a symbol of a significant transition from before to afterSēmeion n. - signMiraculum (Latin) n. - miracle

BIBLIOGRAPHYDavies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Vol. 3. International Critical Commentary. London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004.Keener, Craig S. The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI;  Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009.Mitch, Curtis, and Edward Sri. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2010.Mass Readings Explained with Dr. Brant Pitre

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RESOURCESDavies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Vol. 2. International Critical Commentary. London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004.Faithlife Corporation. “Denarius.” Verbum, Computer software. Verbum Factbook. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife Corporation, June 15, 2020. https://ref.ly/logos4/Factbook?ref=bk.%24denarius.Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida. "ἀσσάριον." Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies, 1996.Mitch, Curtis, and Edward Sri. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2010.Mass Readings Explained by Dr. Brant PitreVerbum Bible Software - www.verbum.comREFERENCESMatthew 9:33-34 - "The crowds were amazed and said, 'Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.' But the Pharisees said, 'He drives out demons by the prince of demons.'"Matthew 4:23, 9:35 - These verses form an "inclusio" demarcating the first "book" of the Gospel of MatthewEzekiel 34:23, 30-31 - "'And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd [...] And they shall know that I, the LORD their God, am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, says the Lord GOD. And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord GOD.'”Matthew 10:1-2 - "And he called to him his twelve disciples [δώδεκα μαθητὰς / dodeka mathetas] and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. The names of the twelve apostles [δώδεκα ἀποστόλων / dodeka apostolon] are these [...]"Jeremiah 20:7-9 - "You seduced me, LORD, and I let myself be seduced; you were too strong for me, and you prevailed. All day long I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage I proclaim; The word of the LORD has brought me reproach and derision all day long. I say I will not mention him, I will no longer speak in his name. But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding back, I cannot!"Philippians 2:10-12 - "At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

Caesar can keep his Denarius - but what do we give to God? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/peter-zwaans/message

Given the rather unusual title of this Christian broadcast ministry, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take time to explain how this ministry and its name came about. In truth, even though it's based on a denarius, or day's worth, of faith for a day, it really has been the culmination of life experience in walking and growing in faith in the Lord. Great things from God are often borne from our greatest challenges! But if we walk in faith, service, holiness, and in His love, we will see our Lord reach out in times of our greatest need and shape us in ways we never thought possible when we submit to His calling and will. Be encouraged! Let's take this faith journey together and be all that God called us to be! Conformed to the image of Christ! (Rom. 8:29)

Jesus refutes those who sought to trap him, revealing his wisdom and our hope.

Yooooooo we back again! This is Episode 6 and I am joined by my bro DeNarius to discuss why we allow certain people have access to us and who access is about to get DENIED

Knowing the Bible for Yourself (Pt. 2) It will never do to be hearers of the word only and not doers of it; James makes this very clear (Jms 1:22).  Yet at the same time, to be a doer of the word without first hearing what is being asked is to walk in ignorance.  How many, armed with good intentions and loaded with zeal have gone out of the starting blocks with pace, only to be later disqualified because they were in breach of the rules.  You cannot compete in a race without obeying the rules and you cannot obey the rules unless you first know what those rules are.  Thus, it is incumbent upon us as students of the Word of God, to rightly divide (Grk. to cut straight) the word of truth that we might not be ashamed (2 Tim. 2:15).     If the Bible was a single book, composed by a single contemporary author, that would be one thing.  If we had any questions or doubts about the meaning of what is written, we could simply ask the author.  What happens when you have a book written by upwards of forty different authors, across a number of continents with the earliest of these writing some 3500 years ago?  In this second teaching part, we explore the role of dictionaries and commentaries in serving to better aid our study of the Bible, especially when bridging the gulf of history and culture. Download teaching notes (pdf) http://traffic.libsyn.com/bethesdashalom/2a_Basic_Tools_for_Bible_Interpretation_Pt1.pdf

Abstract: This note provides a brief overview of Roman economic history and currency in order to throw light on the value and significance of the two debts illustratively used by Jesus in his parable to Simon the Pharisee. Though we cannot with accuracy make the claim that a Roman denarius was always the daily wage, we can […]

Abstract: This note provides a brief overview of Roman economic history and currency in order to throw light on the value and significance of the two debts illustratively used by Jesus in his parable to Simon the Pharisee. Though we cannot with accuracy make the claim that a Roman denarius was always the daily wage, we can […]

Abstract: This note provides a brief overview of Roman economic history and currency in order to throw light on the value and significance of the two debts illustratively used by Jesus in his parable to Simon the Pharisee. Though we cannot with accuracy make the claim that a Roman denarius was always the daily wage, we can […]

Welcome to Episode 3 hunnny! Today I am joined by Bria and DeNarius to discuss “Protecting Your Peace.” Enjoy! Be sure to follow the official IG @itaintjustyousis --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We cannot be saved and sit idle. We have to deligently work in HIS vineyard! We are saved to help save others!

Pastor Matt Herndon kicks off a new sermon series called True Story about the parables Jesus taught. The story of the laborers in the vineyard teaches us to understand the sin of envy.

Please fill out the Survey so I can bring you better information and more of what you like https://survey.libsyn.com/adapt2030 Bear from Bear Independent and David DuByne from ADAPT 2030 discuss how society may shift as a dozen cycles from economy to climate overlap for something massive around 2023. As we descend deeper into the Grand Solar Minimum this information will help protect your families during these changing times. Bear Independent YouTube Channel Bear Independent FB Using wood and biomass for home heating China’s economic activity all showing down trend Bank runs across China Stock up on food, seeds, water Continuity of government does not include the average citizen; you are on your own Monthly food costs in the USA are 10-15% of monthly wages A Denarius for a measure of wheat, three measures of barley for a Denarius A day’s wages for a measure of wheat 13 lbs of wheat for a denarius FEMA Year Zero for global crop losses and food disruption ADAPT 2030 Climate Revolution  https://payhip.com/b/3sVi Keep Your Families Grand Solar Minimum Prepared Visit my Sponsors: ADAPT 2030 (PATREON) My Patriot Supply Long Term & Emergency Food  True Leaf Market Heirloom and Organic Seeds ADAPT 2030 AMAZON SHOP **ADAPT 2030 Social Media**  ADAPT 2030 YouTube Channel OilSeedCrops.org  HOME Page

Montana State running backs coach DeNarius McGhee joins Colter Nuanez on the Bobcat Roundtable originally aired on 104.7 and 105.7 FM The Eagle in Bozeman and Big Sky. 

We're on our second week focussing on Generosity as a core value. And today we have Raj sharing with us.

Nesta 19ª edição do Drops de Economia e Finanças os professores do grupo Denarius conversam sobre o tema “Bancos Digitais”. Saiba como você pode aproveitar essa novidade que se tornou tão popular no país. Escute já! https://ia601404.us.archive.org/9/items/19dropspodcast/19_Drops_Podcast.mp3

Trottier discusses such parallels. Layman's terms. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/iantrottier/support

Nesta 17ª edição do Drops de Economia e Finanças, os professores do grupo Denarius conversarão sobre o tema “Como economizar com novas tecnologias?”. Escute já! https://ia601406.us.archive.org/25/items/17dropspodcast/17_Drops_Podcast.mp3

This week Pastor Mark returns to the gospel of Luke and leads us in considering yet another attempt by Jesus' detractors to catch him in a trap. Consider with us the role of governing authorities and right approach to them and how we are to "give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

Nesta 14º edição do Drops de Economia e Finanças, os professores do grupo Denarius conversaram sobre a Previdência Social – Regime de Repartição x Regime de Capitalização. Este tema recente que tem aparecido muito nos jornais pode afetar a sua vida e a economia de todo o país! Escute já! https://ia601502.us.archive.org/2/items/14DropsPodcast/14_Drops_Podcast.mp3

On this week On this week episode of the James Salazar Media Podcast.  James talked about his bad back,covers episode five of Game of Thrones and gives his prediction for episode six and read some headline from futurism.com

Often times Christians are trapped between having integrity as believers and observing what the laws of the land require. Joanne Hagemeyer examines the familiar passage about the lawfulness of paying taxes to Caesar. Listen as she gives insights into the double meaning Jesus was revealing and the principles we can apply today.

The religious leaders tried again to catch Jesus in a saying. And they failed again. They hoped that Rome would take care of Jesus by exposing His supposed insurrectionist ideas about the propriety of paying taxes. But Jesus showed their hypocrisy and open rebellion against God when He asked, -Show Me a denarius.-

Melvin Gaines

The master of a vineyard sends a series of workers into his vineyard to collect the harvest. He hires workers all day long, even some who work only one hour. Nevertheless, gives all, and beginning with those who worked only one hour, the exact amount, one denarius. Those who worked all day long were paid last and they grumbled that though they did the heavy work they received no more than those who worked one hour. The point is that God will do what He will and we should not begrudge His generosity.

Paul Graham 00:44:34

Workers In The Vineyard God is like a generous estate owner, who is always going out into the marketplace of the world inviting all kids of people to join Him. He finds people standing idle, without purpose or prospects and offers them a place, and then rewards them all equally with His mercy and grace. And yet, Jesus teaches us in this parable that our old selfish hearts can still try to find fault with Him. If we are not careful our hearts become suspicious that God is holding out on blessing He owes us, and He is being too merciful on others who have not measured up to the standards we feel we have achieved. Jesus tells this parable to His followers in order to expose their misunderstanding of God's outrageous grace, and their own dangerous pride.

INTRODUCTION: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  (Mark 12:17).  These have been called the most important political words ever spoken, and rightly so.  Jesus was being put to the test by the Pharisees and the Herodians.  They thought they had Jesus cornered when they asked Him if they should pay taxes.  They thought they had Him on the horns of a dilemma, if Jesus said yes the Jews should pay taxes then that would make Him unpopular with the general public.  And if He answered No, then the Herodians were present and could make sure His anti-Roman opinions would be known and get Him into trouble. These words clearly illustrate the two different kingdoms of God and man.  They show our responsibility to each and the priority of giving ourselves first to God and then the duties of being a citizen.  It is not a case of either or but both and.  In Mark 12:15 Jesus asks for a Denarius, and asks, ‘whose image and inscription is this?’  The Roman coin had on one side an image of Tiberius with the inscription, ‘Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.’  By implication the coin was claiming that Tiberius is also in some way divine, obviously an empty claim with no basis laying no obligation on anyone to give him actual worship.  So when Jesus says give to Caesar that things that are his, the coins are literally his, and since he is not God all he gets is money in the form of taxes.  But since Jesus says give to God the things that are God’s, what bears God’s image?  We do, and so although we must pay our taxes and give Caesar his money, we must give ourselves our whole... Read More Source

Who is your ultimate authority? Jesus establishes an authority that is completely different than the authority of the government and state. Jesus says, “come to me all who are weary, and I will give you rest.” Jesus deserves all our worship and authority.

What does it take that a currency loses the trust of its users, although it has functioned for centuries? We will tell you using the example of the Roman denarius.

Charles, Rashaun, Denarius, and Jeff are up to something.Plus, Martell wants you to pick a side, pick a side. Send us questions, comments, and business inquiries to hereforitpod@gmail.com "TRUTH OR DARE" hosted by XXX Star Beaux Banks August 9th at Green Lantern DC with doors opening at 9pm $15 Entry via TruthOrDareXXX.EventBrite.com https://www.facebook.com/events/1940277506216247/ Social Studies – Healthy friendships are vital for mental wellness. Toxic Relationships https://youtu.be/wPwck0EQkgs Maintaining Friendships https://youtu.be/o9ulSfCGMUs Sexual Health – Disclosure - and when it should happen - matters. Follow us on social media @HereForItPod and hereforitpod.com www.instagram.com/hereforitpod www.twitter.com/hereforitpod www.facebook.com/hereforitpod Don't forget to leave us a comment or review on Apple Podcasts! Search our name in the Podcasts app, click the Reviews tab, click Write A Review. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/here-for-it/id1218394155?mt=2

Pastor Marcus concludes Part 2 of the message of the servants being sent into the vineyard.

Pastor Marcus preaches on the workers sent out into the vineyard.

Intro 0:00:00 News 0:01:37 DOT Swap 0:01:40 Vitalik dead prank 0:04:20 Tezos ICO starts 0:05:15 Classic Ether Wallet 0:07:42 Market Report 0:09:53 DOT Giveaway 0:25:35 Random Coin - Asch 0:27:07 New Coins 0:32:01 BogCoin 0:32:30 ThermoCoin 0:33:07 Yjenco Coin 0:33:35 DAS 0:36:20 Future Gold 0:38:01 Durer Coin 0:38:53 ShitCoin 0:39:49 700 Coin 0:40:44 Dorf Coin 0:41:16 Like Coin 0:42:50 WolfgangAmedeausMozart 0:43:31 Slevin 0:44:21 BoobsCoin 0:45:21 Digitas 0:47:03 Blue Bear Cool 0:47:24 ICO's 0:48:24 Coin Listings 0:49:25 Cryptopia(Ecobit, JetCoin, Minereum) 0:49:33 Bittrex(SNT, DCT, XEL, MCO) 0:49:44 Yobit(TLOSH, 420G, SOLAR, HYPERX, OCEAN, ACRN, LBTC, EUROPE, SOCC) 0:50:01 Novaexchange(INFO, TDC, EGAME, COOC, THC, FDGT, EUUC, SYNC, DNR, ACRN, IKON, PHX) 0:50:17 Livecoin(LEO) 0:50:36 Coinexchange.io(Dari, Stackbit, Europe United, Denarius, Cyclone) 0:50:45 Liqui(Status, Storj, Monaco, Adex) 0:50:55 1 Year Birthday (808 Coin) 0:52:13 3 Year Birthday (Quatloo) 0:52:48 Outro 0:53:24

Guest speaker Ronnie Pierce on Matthew 20 for Northside's 51st Homecoming Service.

Archaeologist Jens Ulriksen tells about the silver denarius coined by Louis the Pious. Coins were more than just money; they were pieces of Christian propaganda.

SPOILER ALERT! In this episode we talk about our usual comic book news, lots of trailer talk including Justice League: Gods & Monsters, Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens, & Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. We talk about episode one of season five of the HBO series Game of Thrones, and also episodes 3-6 of the new hit Netflix series Daredevil! Come join Scott, Vince, & Nick in the BoomCast as we talk Game of Thrones! Comic Book News & Trailers00:44 Wonder Woman director change02:11 Justice League: Gods and Monsters05:24 Star Wars: E7 Trailer20:35 Snowpiercer segway21:37 Batman V. Superman Trailer27:15 Marvel Fans V. DC Fans V. Star Wars Fans Game of Thrones S05 E0133:35 The Boomcast is mixed on their favorite characters, but they all love the Emp. Vince clued Scott & Nick in on Denarius being the Daughter of the Mad King. They were clueless! The dragons hit puberty, Sansa and Little finger is a creepy situation, great intro with the flashback. Did Jaime want to bone down with his sister next to the body again? We thought so. Are all the unsullied castrated? Tyrion grew a beard, which segways into Willow. We apologize. Scott didn’t understand blue screen and how the Brownies were done for the movie when he was a kid. 55:00 HBO Now and Hulu Plus talk turns into Fast & the Furious movies DareDevil S01 E03-0601:00:00 We start it off by talking about Lawman and Steven Segel running. Such a violent death for the red headed killer, and all his own doing. Vince really likes the crime drama element of the show and the guys agree. This show hits all the genres. Debra Ann Woll’s actual BF is blind which makes her more attractive to the crew. Did we get a glimpse of Bullseye? 01:19:57 DC movies up to date talk turns into Michael Bay bashing, which is fine.01:28:30ish Guardians of the Galaxy talk01:33:21 Closing time01:35:10 Bob01:35:19 After Credits Did you like what you heard? Leave us comments/reviews and follow us on Twitter/Instragram: @Scottlost, Nick - @Thr3tlvlmidnite (T), @Thretlvlmidnite (IG), Vince - @MonsterHanro (IG)

One Kingdom After Another I would Like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 42. And as we continue to go through Isaiah, I want to urge you every week to take the Scriptures and look at the word of God and feed on it. I just move systematically through these chapters, and try to explain what these phrases say. So I'm really very easy to follow, in that regard. Like a very slow-moving target. You know exactly where I'm going, God willing, next week Isaiah 43. So just get ready for it, but we're just going to try to walk through Isaiah 42 today and just feed on the amazing array of images and words, the rich array of words that the Lord has given us here specifically, I believe describing the ministry of Jesus Christ and building a kingdom through astonishing gentleness. And so that's what we're going to see today. Twenty-five centuries ago, the Prophet Daniel had visions at night and recorded for us in Daniel 7. And in his vision at night, he stood on the shore of the sea and he saw the deep sea stirred and churned up by the four winds of heaven. And up out of this churning sea, came four great beasts, one after the other. And each of these beasts were ravenous and powerful and two of them in particular, specifically depicted as ripping their enemies to shred and devouring flesh. Though we would imagine that all four had that tendency and that nature. And these four beasts represented four great empires that came up out of the churning mass of humanity and took center stage for a while in succession, one after the other. The Babylonian Empire, and then the Medo-Persian Empire, and then the Greek Empire and then the Roman Empire. We've seen since that time over the twenty-five centuries, the exact same patterns. Empires that have been built by viciousness and wickedness and by the pride and arrogance of man and hatred for neighbor, and murder and pillage. This is the way that the world builds its kingdoms, this is the way the world builds its empires. But about five centuries after Daniel, another king stood in front of a representative of the Roman Empire. This gentle, humble Jewish carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth on trial for his life before Pontius Pilate, was being charged with insurrection, with being a king to challenge Caesar. And Jesus said this: "My kingdom is not of this world." I think what he meant by that is, "My kingdom has nothing of the nature of the kingdoms of this world, it doesn't derive its origin from the world, it's other worldly, it's supernatural, it's a different kind of kingdom." And you look at the next statement he makes there in John's Gospel, He says, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest from the Jews." So, the nature of the kingdoms of this world is this fighting and this conquest but now my kingdom is from another place. Pilate said, "You are a King, then!" Jesus said, "You are right in saying that I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. And everyone on the side of truth, listens to me." Now, that is how Jesus Christ builds a whole different kind of kingdom in this world and he's been building it for centuries now for millennia, a gentle, irresistible advance of a kingdom that's built by Jesus speaking the truth to people who desperately need to hear it. And they having ears of faith opened by the Holy Spirit, able to hear the saving gospel repenting of their sins entering into, that's the language, entering the Kingdom of Heaven and then thriving in it forever. That's the way this gentle king builds, irresistibly builds his empire. And how radically different is it from what we see in world history? Introducing the Servant of the Lord So we come now in Isaiah 42, to the first of four significant prophecies in this section of Isaiah. And we're introduced to this character known as, the servant of the Lord. "Behold my servant," we're going to see that right from verse one, and the servant passage is so-called by those that study Isaiah are very famous, they're well-known, the servant of the Lord is portrayed. And then as things unfold over these chapters, you're going to see the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 42, we're going to see him in Isaiah 49, and then again in Isaiah 50. And then most famously of all in Isaiah 52 and 53, culminating in what's known as clearly the suffering servant who builds an empire by his own suffering, by his own death. Now, the interpretive challenge comes for us, even in this very chapter, in Isaiah 42, when he uses the term "servant" also to refer to Israel, to Jacob and Israel, etcetera, to the nation of Israel. So we're going to have to face that. He calls his servant in this chapter, "Blind and deaf." And said, "Who is blind and deaf, like my servant." Well, I would never use the phrase blind and deaf to refer to Jesus, who I believe the suffering servant definitely is, so we have a challenge. So I think this is how I harmonize all of this. Israel was called on to be God's servant to witness to the glory of God in this world, but failed through their wickedness and idolatry. Jesus is the personification of everything Israel was supposed to be as the Son of God. He said, "Israel is my first born son," he said that to Pharaoh, "and you wouldn't let him go so I'm going to kill your first born son." He calls him his first born son. Israel is God's first-born son on Earth but that servant, the Jewish nation sinned. And so God sent His own son into the world to embody and fulfill everything Israel was meant to be and do as the servant of the Lord in the world. So that's how I harmonize it. We're going to begin as we just walk through this, Isaiah 42. I. The Gentle King and His Irresistibly Advancing Kingdom (vs. 1-7) By looking in verses 1-7, at a gentle King and his irresistibly advancing kingdom. And in verse one, the Lord presents his chosen servant. Look at verse one. "Behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight, I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations." So, the prophecy begins in every translation but the NIV, with the word "behold." Now, I love the NIV, been memorizing the NIV84 for years. They just don't like the word "behold," I don't know why but I love the word behold. You're saying, "But it's a bit archaic." That's why I love it. It's kind of like "behold." We're having something unveiled here, something dramatic, something unusual. So we don't use the word very much. I challenge you, later today to use the word "behold" in a regular sentence. Find some way to use the word "behold", it's a great word. "Behold, lunch is ready," something like that. But it's a greater unveiling, it's an unveiling of this servant of the Lord. He's unveiling a mystery, something that we have not seen before. And he is chosen by the Lord, he was chosen or elect. And the fuller revelation of Scripture is that Jesus was chosen by God the Father for the role as our Messiah, our Savior, before the foundation of the world, before the beginning of time. Isn't that amazing? Think about that. 1 Peter 120, it says, "He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was now revealed in these last times for your sake." So He is chosen and then revealed, so we had the same kind of rhythm here. Chosen but revealed. Again, Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. So in other words, his death on the cross was in some sense a done deal before God said, "Let there be light." And so, here is the servant of the Lord, "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen." And he is anointed by the Holy Spirit, he says, "I will put my Spirit on Him." He's anointed by the Holy Spirit to do the will of God in ways that no one ever has before, since. The word Messiah or Christ, means Anointed One. He is anointed with the Holy Spirit. Now the relationship within the Trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the relationship between the second and the third person of the Trinity, between Jesus and the Spirit is an infinite mystery. It's something we cannot fully understand but the New Testament presents some amazing insights for us. Though we would think and we should think that God the Son is omnipotent, omnipotent and needs no help to do anything. Yet, it seems he did nothing apart from the expressed will of his Father and apparently also did nothing except by the power of the Holy Spirit. So now if you're going to push me and say, "Could Jesus have done a miracle without the Holy Spirit?" I would say, "The question makes no sense to me, that's not the way the Trinity works." He would not have done anything apart from the power of the Spirit anymore than he would have done anything apart from the will of His Father. There's no "apart from" in the Trinity, that's the perfect unity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. But it's by the Spirit that Jesus spoke every word he spoke and it's by the Spirit that He did every miracle he ever did. And so we have this language here in Acts 10:38, Peter speaking to Cornelius and said, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him." It was by the Spirit that Jesus was presented to Israel as Messiah. At his own baptism, John the Baptist, baptized him and the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. And it was by the Spirit that Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by the devil, and it was by the Spirit he was led out of the desert holy after his temptations ready to do his public ministry. Jesus did everything by the power of the Spirit. The Father’s Delight in the Son Now, it says also, in verse one, "Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, in whom I delight." Isn't that beautiful? Think about this, meditate on how much the father loves the son, how much the Father delights in the son. It's a sweet meditation. But the "Father loves the son," Jesus said, "and shows him everything he is doing" and he reveals this very powerfully. John Piper wrote a book called "The Pleasures of God," I would commend it to you. It's... He called it a prequel that was written after "Desiring God," but it's basically the pleasure of God in being God. And one of the great pleasures of God the Father is in the perfect reflection or radiance of God's glory through God the Son. The Father loves the Son with an infinitely passionate love and the beautiful thing is our salvation is a subset of that. He loves us in Christ, isn't that amazing? And Jesus could say, "As the Father has loved me, even so I love you." And so that's a powerful love that he has. And so this voice came from heaven at the baptism of Jesus saying, "This is my Son whom I love, with him I am well pleased." Isn't that powerful? The Father delights in the son, he loves him, he's well pleased with him. And Jesus himself said, in John 8:29, "The one who sent me is with me, he has not left me alone for," listen to this, "I always do what pleases Him." Wouldn't you love to be able to say that to your Heavenly Father? "Father, you know that today throughout the day, at every moment, I always did what pleased you." Well, that's a goal for us in sanctification, but it's a finished fact for Jesus. He always did what pleased the Father. And so, "Here is my servant in whom I delight. He's my chosen one and all my delight is in him." Jesus Brings Justice to the Nations And so it says, Jesus "will bring justice to the nations." It says it twice. He's going to bring justice. The nations are languishing, under the boot of injustice now. Those empires that came up out of the sea, those four beasts, they made their way through the world by crushing tyranny and injustice. It's what the human heart does as puppets of Satan, the puppet master. And Satan's the dragon, in Revelation 13, behind the beast coming up out of the sea, he's the puppet master and he makes his satanic human servants do wicked, evil things. He's a murderer, they're murderers. He's a liar, they are liars. And there's this oppression and injustice at the root of all of these human governments and empires. This injustice. And you just think of the history of it. We can just think about literature, think about famous books like "The Count of Monte Cristo." I think that's an interesting story. You remember how Edmond Dantes was arrested on trumped-up charges by a corrupt official who's trying to protect his own reputation, ships him off to the Chateau d'if on the charges of being a Bonapartes. He's trying to get Napoleon back from exile and back in power again. When he gets there, he meets this godly man, the Abbe Faria who's at the Chateau d'if and has been there for decades under charges of being opposed to Napoleon. So here's this man who's opposed to Napoleon from decades ago while Napoleon was in power, in prison with a man who's opposed to him. And they're both there and they can't get out. So, how many people are languishing in prisons all over the world because of injustice, crimes they didn't commit? Or things that they're accused of that aren't wrong, like being a Christian? Injustice all over the world. Or think about Ben-Hur, for example. His boyhood friend charges him wrongly with assaulting the governor and just wipes away his whole family and puts him on a slave galley, injustice. Recently, my family, we've watched "To Kill a Mocking Bird." You know, that famous story of racial injustice and a crime that this individual didn't commit. Godly, African-American man charged with a crime that he didn't commit, and evidence is so clear he didn't do it and then he's convicted and found guilty. There is injustice all over the world. And frankly, we know as Christians, the only answer to this is not that you would be in power instead of that person. No, I hope you know yourself. I hope you know that if you or your group were in power, it would be just about the same thing. Give it a little time and the corruption of your own heart will float to the surface, that's not it. We need a perfectly incorruptible king, amen. And we need one who will speak only words of truth and that is only Jesus, the King of kings. And he is the only hope for the islands, for the distant coastlands, he's the only one that can bring justice to this world. And oh, are we crying for it. We're yearning for it. The Bruised Reed Now, as we look at this king, I tell you, verses two and three are some of the sweetest verses in the whole Bible. Some of the sweetest verses in the whole Bible, quoted in Matthew 12. That's the first time, perhaps, you came across them, as the Apostle Matthew ascribed them to Jesus. So I'm just going to go right to this is Jesus, because Matthew gives us the permission to do that, he is describing the servant of the Lord Jesus and it says of him in verse two and three, "He will not shout or cry out in the street or raise his voice in the streets, a bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out." Now, these are verses that you could read in Matthew 12, and just read right over and not really know what it's saying. It wasn't until I read a Puritan writer named Richard Sibbes, on the bruised reed. And I would commend that to you, you can read it online for free. That I had my eyes opened to what was being depicted here, what is being depicted here is the astonishing gentleness of Jesus in His ministry. The supernatural gentleness of Jesus dealing with broken and frail sinners like you and me, that's what it's talking about. Jesus builds his kingdom differently than all of these empires or emperors of the world, he builds it systematically and gently. Through gentleness, he builds his kingdom. Now it says that he doesn't shout or quarrel, perhaps, or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. You think about in the 1930s and '40s as the Nazis would be seizing control first of Germany and then of a better part of Europe. I mean, you think about these jack-booted Nazis running through the streets at night and is screaming and you hear, "Schnell, Schnell," and all that, and pounding on doors and it's just loud and boisterous and terrifying. Jesus is not like that, he doesn't build his kingdom by a frothy harangue, by some dictator into a microphone. Or a street proclaimer of communism, let say in St. Petersburg in 1917, something like that, standing up on a wall and whipping people up into revolutionary frenzy. That's not what he does. Or perhaps during the Middle Ages, Herald of the King going out to announce to these down-trodden and crushed peasants that there's yet another raft of taxes that's going to crush them even further. This is not what Jesus does. He doesn't build his kingdom that way, no such harsh cries needed by Jesus or by his messengers. "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news" who what? Proclaim peace. We are peace-loving and we bring a peaceful message. So He doesn't quarrel or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. The kingdom advances quietly, it advances like yeast hidden in a large amount of flour. It just permeates little by little, that's how it advances. And now it comes to this incredible description, "A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out." I believe the only time that Jesus ever describes himself directly with an adjective, he uses the word "gentle." Remember in Matthew 11, he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart." Jesus describes himself as gentle or meek and humble in heart, that's His nature. He is a meek or a gentle Savior. So now we have two questions in front of us, two sets of questions. Question number one: What is a bruised reed and what does it mean that Jesus will not break it? And what is a smoldering wick? And what does it mean that he will not snuff it out? First, the bruised reed. Picture a piece of marsh grass, broad-bladed green grass growing up by the side of a pond. That's how I picture it. And it's growing up tall but fragile, it sways to and fro in the wind. Picture it's just weakness, it's not a mighty oak or a seed or anything like that but it's just a piece of grass, barely noticeable. But this grass beyond its fragility is bruised, okay? In some way, it's become damaged. You could imagine it trampled by a cow or a horse or something like that or perhaps, just creased. You could imagine a crease going, it's hanging down, maybe by a slender, green thread. It's just about, just about severed. Just about ready to fall off. This has got to be a person, a human being going through extreme agony of soul. Going through extreme trial and difficulty, frail and weak, just about to die perhaps, or just about to give up. It might be a Christian who's going through severe tests and trials of various sorts. It might be a non-Christian who just is about ready to give up in this world, it's a human being though. And what does it say about Jesus? He will not break that bruised reed. He is able to take a fragile broken-hearted sinner and bind them back up again, supernaturally. It's amazing, the skill that he has. It's amazing the gentleness he displays with fragile sinners like you and me. And you think about the little tubules, xylem and phloem. I had to look that up, forgot my biology. But these little tubes that feed, that their circulatory system of the grass and Jesus is able somehow to bind that back up again. So it's not just gentleness, but exceptional skill at putting together a human soul. That's what I think of when I think of a bruised reed, he will not break. Think of the gentleness Jesus displayed in dealing with sinners. Think about that paralyzed man and his friends are digging through the roof and the first thing Jesus sees, their faith. And says, "Take heart son, your sins are forgiven." I don't think he fully realized the significance, the magnitude of the judge of all the Earth saying those words to him. Take heart son, your sins are forgiven. Or to that woman with the flow of blood that just wouldn't stop and she touches him and then Jesus has that interaction with her and says, "Daughter, your faith has head you. Go in peace." Same kind of thing. I love the encounter in Luke's Gospel where the widow of Nain is burying her only son, and the grief is just immeasurable. And the entire community is grieving with this woman and Jesus comes up and stops the funeral procession, as only he can. Don't you wish you could do what he can do? But he stopped that funeral procession but before doing anything, he goes up to the woman and says, "Don't cry." I mean it's amazing, his first priority is he wants to minister to her, this widow who's losing her only son now and says, "Don't cry." Do you see the gentleness of Jesus, the incredible gentleness? And then he raises his son from the dead. Like I said, don't you wish you could minister like Jesus? But Jesus knows what he's doing. And for us, the promise of final resurrection should be enough. Amen. It's going to come. The Lord will raise him up or her up, it's going to come. Those were just signs of the future resurrection. But Jesus has astonishing gentleness, he knows how to draw us through amazingly painful trials, things we thought we could never endure. And he knows more about what you can endure than you do, and he'll pull you way beyond what you thought you can handle. And it's not because you can handle it, it's because he will never no never, no never forsake you. And He sustains you and feeds you and the inner man, and he won't let you die. So that's what I think it means, a bruised reed he will not break. The Smoldering Wick What does it mean, a smoldering wick he will not snuff out? Well in Hebrew parables, it's about the same thing, but a slightly different image. Again, it's Jesus' gentleness in dealing with weak, frail sinners. Only this time, we're pictured like a flame. You blow a candle out and it's still glowing but lots of smoke, so you got the glowing ember there on the wick. But there's a lot of smoke and it's just a fraction of a second away from going out entirely. And you know when it does, then lots of smoke comes and then it's gone. We're like that, we are not raging bonfires of piety and faith and godliness, that's not who we are. We are fragile flickering flames. And he knows even when you're down to just an ember, a glowing ember, he knows how to nurse you back into a strong raging flame again of piety and godliness and love for God. He knows how to do that, how to breathe on you. Just the slightest too much breath and it's gone, it's out. But Jesus will not snuff out that flickering ember, he knows how to nurse you back to spiritual health. So the overall message is that Christ is the gentle, skillful physician of the soul. He's able to deal gently with weak and wounded sinners by that amazing, supernaturally, wise, astonishingly gentle power. By that, he builds his empire one broken-hearted sinner at a time. Isn't that beautiful? That's how this empire is getting built by this gentle Savior. The Irresistible Advance of His Kingdom And in this, we also see the irresistible advance of the kingdom in verses three and four. Bruised reed he will not break, smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness, He will bring forth justice. Verse four, "He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. And in His law, the islands will put their hope." So the advance of this gentle kingdom is irresistible, it can't be stopped, there's nothing Satan can do to stop it. He will build His Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. It's going to advance despite its meekness and gentleness and apparent fragility and weakness. And it says here in this text that he is definitely going to bring forth justice. The thing the islands yearn for, the ends of the earth yearn for, he's going to bring forth this justice. He's going to establish justice on earth. And what does this mean? Well, I think justice means. That we will be righteous in our relationship with God and with others, first with God. He will justify us through faith in Christ. He's going to bring forth justice between us and God by taking our wickedness and sins on Himself and dying on the cross for us. So we will be justified by faith in Christ. Made right with God, that justice he establishes first. Then he establishes horizontal justice person-to-person, the Golden Rule flourishes in his kingdom. We will do to others what has been done to us. God's been gracious to us, we'll be gracious toward others. It's a different kind of kingdom. And governing forces, governing rulers will use their position humbly like Jesus who is a servant King and it's going to be a just kingdom. And notice that it says that, "He will not falter or be discouraged." I think that's put in there because this kingdom advances against all odds, against entrenched forces of evil. A number of months ago, I mentioned something I heard from Kevin Deyoung in a sermon, and I had mentioned it here. Sometimes we who are messengers of the Gospel feel like all we've got are spitballs against a reinforced concrete bunker. Do you ever feel that way? It's like, how can this beat that? You look at the world with all of its wickedness and power and big issues are going on and we just have these words that we're believing and preaching and talking about, it doesn't seem powerful enough. And so, there's going to be a temptation for the workers of this kingdom to falter and be discouraged because it seems like it could never happen. But it says here, Jesus "will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law, the islands will put their hope." The Sovereign Power of Almighty God Guarantees this Success Now, how do we know that this is going to happen? Well, look at verses five through seven, the sovereign power of almighty God guarantees this success. Look at verse 5-7. "This is what God the Lord says, He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the Earth, and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people and life to those who walk on it. 'I the Lord have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand, I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles. To open eyes that are blind and to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.'" So the reason this kingdom is going to advance and will never fail is because omnipotent God is behind it. Verse five gives God's credentials. "I the Lord who created heaven and earth. I spread them out, I created the earth. And not only that, I give breath to everyone who walks on the Earth. Their hearts are in my hand, their life is in my hand, I can build my kingdom." And so this powerful God is behind this kingdom, He who gives breath to every person who walks on the face of the earth. But now, we're ushered here into the councils of the Trinity. An inter-trinitarian conversation is happening here, the father is speaking to the son. That's the way I read it. So often when good things are said to you in the text, its like, "That's me." Friends, that's not you. Unless you are the light for the Gentiles and a covenant for the people. Okay? It's not you. So, who's being addressed and who's speaking? The son is being addressed by the Father. The Father is saying to the Son, in verses six and seven, how it's going to go. "I am God. I am the creator of the ends of the Earth." "I have called you in righteousness." He says in verse six. "I will take hold of your right hand. I will keep you and will make you [Jesus] to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles." "That's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to, through you, open eyes that are blind. I'm going to, through you, free captives from prison. And through you, I'm going to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness." The Father's giving him his marching orders. This command I received from the Father, this is where it comes. Isn't that powerful? Think about that, this inter-trinitarian conversation. Now how is Jesus a covenant for the peoples? Remember at the last supper, Jesus held up the cup and said, "This cup is the blood of the New Covenant in my blood." Jesus's death on the cross is the new covenant, His death in our place is the New Covenant. God the Father made it so. I will make you to be a covenant for the peoples and a light for the Gentiles and you're going to open blind eyes." This is Jesus's marching orders. II. The Message of the Kingdom Results in Joyful Praise (vs. 8-12) Now, in verses eight through 12, we see the message of the kingdom resulting in joyful praise. So there is this message that's going out to the ends of the earth and it's going to result in the ends of the earth, praising Him. Now, it begins in verse eight, with the centrality of God. Look at verse eight, "I am the Lord," he says, "That is my name, I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols." So God is exclusive here. He's saying he's the only God, "There is no other God. I am the Lord, I am Yahweh. That is my name. It's my special covenant name and I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols." God makes his claim to exclusivity here against the idols of the nations. He's the only God there is and His glory as God, he will not share with another but he does share it with Jesus. Now, think about that. He will not give His glory to another, but he's going to share it with Jesus. What does that make Jesus other than God? The fierce monotheism of Isaiah rules out the Jehovah's Witness lie. Do you see it? There's no way that Jesus can be a god, but not the God. There's just no way because very plainly, God shares His glory with Jesus. You know what it says in Hebrews 1:3, "The Son Jesus is the radiance of," what, "God's glory." The radiance of God's glory. And yet, he says here, "I will not give my glory to another." Jesus prayed in John 17:5, "And now Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you," what, "before the world began." "I had a glory with you, we shared it." Glory as what? As God. "Now, give it back. The radiant display of my position as God, give it back. You laid it down in the incarnation. But make me obviously, apparently glorious now that I finished all the work you gave me to do." It's an awesome thing that he's saying there. The Credibility of the Messenger: A Track Record of Fulfillment So then the Father establishes his credibility as a messenger, he should be listened to because of his track record. Look what he says in Verse nine, "Behold the former things have taken place and new things I declare before they spring into being. I announce them to you." So what's he saying there? Fulfilled prophecy. "I have a good track record of predicting the future and making it happen. Been doing it for centuries. I predicted the flood to Noah. What happened? Flood. I predicted that a childless couple, Abram and Sarai would have a son and they did. And not only that, I predicted that Abraham through Him, he would have descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and as sandy as the seashore, and it happened." And he predicted that his descendants would be enslaved in a country not their own for 400 years, and it happened. And he said, he would punish that nation and bring them out powerfully to live in this place in the Promise Land, and it happened. He has an incredible track record of predicting the future, making it happen. Even in the book of Isaiah, he predicts that the Assyrians will invade and go right up to the neck of Judah in Jerusalem, but not conquer the city of Jerusalem. He actually said very specifically, they wouldn't enter the city, or even shoot an arrow there. He didn't have time. They were all dead. God, sovereignly predicted what would happen and made it happen. Now, He's predicting new things. Now, I don't think the new thing is the Babylonian exile, and the recovery. That's part of it, but that's small potatoes. Why do I say that? Because the real thing is the suffering servant, and the salvation that Jesus brings to the ends of the earth. He said, "I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to predict this new thing that's happening, how all we like sheep have gone astray and each of us has turned to his own way." I'm going to tell you all about that. "He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities." I'm going to tell you new things you haven't heard before. And they're going to happen. So that's his track record. God should be listened to because he knows the end. The Joyful Response to the Message And all of this results in joyful praise. "Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth. You who go down to the sea and all that is in it. You islands and all who live in them. Let the desert and its towns raise their voices, let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice. Let the people of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the mountain tops. Let them give glory to the Lord and proclaim His praise in the islands." You know the result of all of this, of all of this gentle Savior, building a kingdom, advancing is praise, it's worship. When we were singing, when Daniel was leading us and we're singing, that's what God was getting after. And more beyond that, when you in your quiet time tomorrow, when you kneel down and you, and then you sing or you just say, "God, thank you for saving me I worship you and I praise you," just... Or middle of the day, that's what God was doing, turning you from an idolater to a worshipper of the living and true God. And so in Verses 10-12, he's saying, "Sing to the Lord," what does he call it, "a new song." We hear about that in the book of Revelation. Let's sing a new song celebrating salvation through Jesus, His praise from the ends of the Earth. And he says, "You who go down to the sea," sailors, let the sailors, the ones that go down in boats and ships on the sea, let them go to distant places, that's the only way you can reach the islands. So let them get on boats and let them go to those distant islands, and let them tell of this God and His suffering servant. And let the distant islands hear of this gospel and let them give forth praise to Almighty God. That's what it's saying. Verse 11 is so sweet, "Let the desert and its towns raise their voices, let the settlements where Kedar lives rejoice." Well, what's that? Well, that's what Bible search software is for. Kedar. Alright, so type it in. And up comes Genesis 25:13, the first born son of Ishmael. Ishmael, you remember Ishmael, the other son of Abraham, the one by Hagar, the slave, talked about her... About them in the book of Galatians, "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son." and all that. Yeah, but when he was cast out remember, Abraham's heart went after his son. And he prayed, "Oh, that you would protect Ishmael and watch over and bless him." God heard his prayer and allowed him to thrive, and multiply and have 12 sons and they are the desert dwelling Arabs. The sons of Ishmael living in the desert, Kedar is their first born. And there will be representatives of Kedar at the throne of grace in heaven, Amen. There will be Ismael-ites through faith in Jesus Christ, not by Islam, Islam's a lie. But by repentance and faith in Christ, they will be there and they will worship Jesus Christ. Isn't that awesome? And let it happen when God says, "Let the settlements of Kedar rejoice." It's like him saying, what, "Let there be light." And there's nothing that can stop it. By His sovereign grace, some of Ishmael's descendants will come to faith in Christ. There'll be a representative there. Same thing with Sela, which is connected to Edom, ever heard of Edom? Again, rejected like Ishmael. Rejected. And yet, some of his descendants will be there around the throne worshipping Christ. It's an incredible thing, God is able to step into emptiness and brokenness and create something where there was nothing before. III. The Zeal of the Warrior God Rescues His Captive People (vs. 13-17) Now, in verses 13-17, the zeal of the warrior God moves out to rescue his captive people. One of the biggest problems we have in life, the things we struggle, if the God of the Bible, the God of Isaiah 40 is so powerful, why doesn't he do X?" Have you ever struggled with that? "If God is so powerful, why won't he heal my husband or my wife or my child? If God's so powerful, why won't he save my mother? Why won't he save my co-worker? If God is so powerful, why do things like ISIS happen with little children. Damming the name of Christ... Christians getting beheaded. Why does that happen if God is so powerful? Why is God silent? And we struggle with that. Well, God addresses his silence here, look at verses 13 through 15. It says there, "The Lord will march out like a mighty man. Like a warrior, he will stir up his zeal. With a shout, He will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies." Verse 14, "For a long time, I have kept silent. I've been quiet and held myself back." See that? That's the silence of God, he's holding Himself back. "But now like a woman in child birth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation, I will turn rivers into islands and dry up the pools." So in the middle of verse 14, we have the silent God waiting a long time. Why does he do it? Well, he says in Second Peter, he does it to give time for repentance. He allows people time to repent, he also does it because he's got a fullness of time, he's got his perfect time when he's going to move out. Then he uses two really amazing images to describe himself. A mighty warrior going forth to battle, which he's going to win, and a pregnant woman about to give birth crying out in her labor pains. So I meditated on this, this is what you get to do in Isaiah. Interesting images. How do they relate? Noise and victory, that's how I put them together. Mighty warrior with a battle cry, going out and wins the battle. The woman writhing in pain and crying out giving birth to the healthy baby. So up to this point, God's been quiet and nothing it seems is going on. But he's going to move and when God moves, suddenly things happen. So do not wonder about it, do not lament. Pray, be patient, wait on God for his timing but there'll come a time when He will move out like a warrior. Now, isn't it amazing? We have these different images. Now, I'm not talking about the pregnant woman now, the images of the bruised reed and the smoldering wick plus a mighty warrior crying out in battle and crushing His enemies. How do you put that together? That's Jesus' Lion and Lamb, do you see that? He is very tender-hearted to his children, but he is terrifying to His enemies. And when He goes out like a warrior he cries out, and he wins. And he will go out, and He will defend his people. He will rescue them, Verse 16, "I will lead blind by ways they have not known along unfamiliar paths, I will guide them. I will turn the darkness into light before them, and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do, I will not forsake them." This is Jesus saying he's going to save us. He's going to bring us along the path that leads to heaven. Now, the immediate context could be the exiles going back to Jerusalem and that's fine. But again, small potatoes compared to a multitude from every nation on a road that leads to eternal life in heaven. He's going to lead the blind by these roads and he's going to rescue the captives and He will never leave us nor will He forsake us. How sweet is that? And yet, verse 17, they are still going to be some who trust in idols. Who say to images, "You are gods." They will be turned back in utter shame. There's a warning to any who will not repent and believe in this great Jesus the Savior, that if you'd cling to idols, you will be turned back in utter shame. IV. The Shameful Condition of God’s Sinful People (vs. 18-25) Now, the final section of this, we'll deal with quickly and then get to application. The shameful condition of God's sinful people. So the chapter ends with a powerful explanation of why God's chosen people are going to be in exile to begin with. Why are they even going? Why is Israel going to get carted off by the Babylonians? Now, God must do this because it's going to be easy to misunderstand. People are going to think that the reason that happened was that God lost in battle to the Babylonian gods, Tammuz, or Bel or Nebo, or whatever their gods were. That is not the case. God actually says in Deuteronomy, he's afraid of people thinking that…That's an interesting thing, God afraid of people coming to misunderstandings. So He sends His prophets, ahead of time to say what he's going to do. They're going... Also the Jews are going to misunderstand and say, "We're the oppressed, we're the crushed, we're the ones that are being beaten down unjustly," and all that. It's not unjust. They're getting punished for their sins, and that's what he's dealing with here. Look at the verses, verse 18 and following. "Hear, you deaf. Look, you blind and see." So call to the blind and the deaf. Verse 19, "Who is blind but my servant and deaf like the messenger I send. Who is blind, like the one committed to me. Blind like the servant of the Lord." Verse 20, "You have seen many things, but you pay no attention, your ears are open, but you hear nothing." This is language that Isaiah consistently uses for the idolatrous Jews. Be ever-hearing, but never understanding. Be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make their eyes closed and their ears dull, so that they cannot understand. So the Jews should have been God serving in the world, but they're blind. And who is blind like them? Their blindness was unlike anyone else's blindness. Now, here's the thing, the whole world was blind. How then was the blindness of the Jews worse? Well, look at verse 21, "It pleased the Lord for the sake of His righteousness to make his law great and glorious, glorious means bright and shining." Let's say you have two blind men, one of them is in a pitch-black cave and the other one's in a brilliantly lit room. Which of the two has a more obvious clear blindness? Isn't it the one in the brightly lit room? The one in the dark cave, it's not so clear the nature of his blindness 'cause there's no light to see. And so here, the Jews surrounded by the brilliance of God's Word, the brilliance of his law shining and radiant and they couldn't see it. They couldn't see the glory of God in the writings of Moses and the prophets. Psalm 19, "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, the statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart." Listen to this, "The commands of the lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." They should have been able to see the glory of God in the commandments of God. But they couldn't, they're blind. So who's blind, like Israel and deaf like the messenger I send. And so because of that, they're going to be plundered for their sins. The Plundering of Jacob God's Just Punishment for Sin Verses 22 through 25, "This is a people, plundered and looted all them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They've become plunder with no one to rescue them. They've been made loot with no one to say 'send them back.'" That's what's going to happen to the Jews. "Which of you will listen to this or pay attention in time to come? Who handed Jacob over to become loot and Israel to the plunderers?" Who did this? God has not along for the ride, God actually sent the Babylonians. He sent them for they would not follow his ways, they did not obey His law, so He poured out on them His burning anger, the violence of war, it enveloped them in flames yet they did not understand it, it consumed them but they did not take it to heart. I wonder if even today, the Jews that go down to the wailing wall and they bow and pray before the wailing wall, do they take to heart and understand why that building was destroyed? Do they understand what God is saying here in Isaiah 42? It's because of the sins of the nation, the idolatry of the nation that all of this happened. V. Applications Application. Well, central application of this has got to be this: "Come to me, all you who are wary and burdened and I'll give you rest." Come to Christ, trust in this gentle Savior. Do you feel like this, sometimes, do you feel like a bruised reed, smoldering wick? Do you feel like you're at the end of your rope? You might be lost, you might be a non-Christian, you might be on the outside, but you're like, "How can I get my sins forgiven?" Come to Christ, He's gracious and merciful and will forgive sins, His blood shed on the cross, His resurrection on the third day, everything you need for salvation as a sinner. Everything. And then once you've come to Christ, he's going to bring you through severe trials. We're going to talk about it, God willing, next week. He's going to bring you through the fire and the water, but He will never leave you or forsake you. What are you going through? It's amazing the number of people in our church that are struggling with cancer right now, it's amazing to me. And struggling, well. For the glory of God going through severe trials. Maybe you feel bruised by all of this, bruised reed. Maybe you're like, "I don't want any more medical procedures to me, no more." And you're feeling bruised, even it might be literally bruised by yet another attempt to get blood out of your right arm or your left arm. You're just at the end of it. Or maybe you're just beaten and down-trodden by the trials you're going through. Understand verse two and three, "A bruised reed, He will not break, he will bind you up." Ultimately, set your heart... Your hope, your heart on the resurrection and the glory to be given to you in Christ returns and that's where he's going to set everything right. In the meantime, He will sustain you and strengthen you. Secondly, friends at the horizontal level, can we not be gentle with each other? Can we not be arrogant, self-righteous sinners who act like we would never sin like this person? Can we not remember how much God's forgiven us, can we not be mindful of the 10,000 talents of forgiveness you've gotten and not choke someone else who owes you 100 Denarius? Let me speak plainly. Can we not be as forgiving to one another as God has been forgiving to us? And then when God brings broken-hearted people into our lives, can we not set aside our business and just sit down and pour out love, and prayer, and ministry on one another? Can we not draw together and just look around and say, "What's going on in this person's life, or that person's life? We're going to watch over one another in brotherly love." We've got to be like this, we've got to be like Christ. A bruised reed He will not break, I'm not going to break it either. A smoldering wick he'll not snuff out. I want to learn how to kindle someone's heart back into flame in Christ. I want to be like that. I think we need to be a community like that. And you need to pray for your elders to be good shepherds like that. That's a special skill that the Lord needs to increase in us so that we can shepherd people with this kind of gentleness. Can I commend to you to go online and look up Richard Sibbes, S-I-B-B-E-S, Bruised Reed, and read it. It's unbelievably encouraging. It will bless you. Worship Jesus, this chapter says to sing to him, from the ends of the earth. Guys, do you realize that's us? We are the ends of the earth when it comes to Jerusalem. What do you think, if you could have described North Carolina to someone who lived in Jerusalem in the first century, they'd say, "Ends of the Earth." Only way to get there is going down to the sea in a boat. We're it, we're the ends of the earth. Let's praise him, Amen. Let's sing to him a new song. When Daniel has us get up to worship, let's worship like never before next week. Okay, how was that sound? Good? Amen. Energy, passion. Let's sing to him a new song like we've been saved because we have been. Let's praise Him. And let's not underestimate how much power Christ exerts every day as a mighty warrior to destroy His enemies. He is so gentle with us but he is with a shout, going to go out and destroy His enemies. So let's not wonder why God's silent and waiting, and all that. Let's know the time will come, we'll hear Christ shout in the heavens. And he'll come down to Earth. And then finally, let's be excited about unreached people group ministry. Today, let's say especially for the settlements of Kedar. Look up Ishmael-ite descendants, Arab... Go online, joshuaproject.net or some other place and find some Arab settlement that hasn't heard, some Bedouin tribe and pray in light of Isaiah 42. Let the settlements of Kedar rejoice, and pray that that ends of the earth will hear the gospel and believe. Close with me in prayer.

In Jesus' parable of the laborers in the vineyard we are confronted by the generous grace of God. Are you thankful for His grace or do you grumble at how He extends His generosity?

A look at the way the Roman Empire has sometimes been used as an historical precedent for the European Union, and specifically the way that the integration of the Roman monetary system has been seen as a (sometimes justifying) precedent for modern European monetary union.

The trap was laid perfectly. The religious leaders of the day had Jesus cornered with a question. What would Jesus say? What would Jesus do? What can we learn from his answer that made everyone sit up and take notice?

Introduction: Life in Two Kingdoms At the center of the universe, both visible and invisible, there is a throne, and seated on that throne is Almighty God. And if you had the privilege that the Apostle John did in Revelation 4, of hearing a command, "Come up here and I will show you," what you would see is you would see that throne with everything centered around that throne, and all of Heaven ordered around the will of the one seated on the throne. But we live in an Earth in which that fact, that central fact of the universe visible and invisible, is systematically obscured and denied by the father of all lies, Satan. The essence of his lie is rebellion against that thrown, that's the essence of it. And we, the human race, joined in his rebellion through our ancestor Adam. And we have, as a race, been in rebellion ever since. And therefore the essence of the saving work of God is to take sinners like you and me, who are in essence, in rebellion against authority, in essence, in rebellion against God and restore us back into glad submission to that throne that I mentioned a moment ago. That's what he's doing. That is the saving work of Jesus Christ and therefore he began his Gospel ministry in Matthew 4:17, by preaching this "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And so I can't do any better than to say the same thing to you. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We have to repent. We have to come back under glad submission to the authority of God. That's the essence of our salvation and that's the joy of preaching that I actually could be instrumental through the power of the Spirit to help you and me do that very thing, repent and come gladly, under the yoke of Christ. Now, God, in His wisdom established human governments to help those who have not yet fully repented, who have not come back fully under the authority of that central throne to make it through this world without anarchy. And He has ordained human governments and He has ordained that we, His people, His adopted children should submit to those human governments. Now in Romans 1-11, we saw 11 chapters of doctrine. And how it is that God has worked in history through Christ to take sinners, rebels like us and redeem us, save us, cover over our rebellion, transform us by the power of the Spirit into new creations and bring us into a whole new way of life. Romans 1-11 in about four seconds... Alright? A hundred sermons about four seconds of summary. That is what God is doing through the cross, he's taking sinners and bringing us back under the throne. In chapters 12-16, He's explaining to us what our lives here in this world are going to look like as a result. Again, with Francis Schaeffer answering the question, "How then shall we live? How shall we live in light of Romans 1-11? And as we come to Romans 13:1-7, the issue is, how Shall a Christian, a spirit-filled Christian live with secular government? What is a godly way for us to live under secular government? In essence, the scripture is teaching that we are citizens of two different countries. And the fact that they are different makes for serious challenges. Now, in the year 410 AD, the Western world was shocked to its foundation by a historical fact and that is that Alaric and the Goths sacked the city of Rome, burned it, they conquered the Western Roman Empire. It was shocking. Rome is burning, the eternal city under pagan boots, the Western Roman Empire conquered? And that was a little less than a 100 years after Constantine had declared himself to be a Christian. There were some critics, some pagans within the Western Roman Empire saying Christianity has weakened the Roman Empire. It did fine before Christianity became the official state religion. Now look, we're weak. And some wondered if with the fall of the so-called Eternal City, that Christianity would fall with it because the Roman Empire had been protecting Christianity, had been taking all of its might, and its political machinery and military strength, and protecting the Christian faith. So some people thought. Well, there was a man at the time who knew better, and his name was Saint Augustine. And three years after the fall of Rome, he wrote one of the most greatest works, City of God. And what He says in the City of God is that basically Christians are members of an Eternal City but it isn't Rome. It's the Eternal City, the new Jerusalem which will come down out of heaven from God that we are citizens of the city of God but we are also citizens of another city, the city of man. And the city of man is represented by the rise and fall of one human government after another. Characterized by wars and rumors of wars and good kings and bad kings and all kinds of politics and machinery and all of that, that's the city of man. The challenge is that we Christians are called to be good citizens of the city of God and the city of man at the same time, and that's a problem. Because the city of man is made up of sinners who rule and reign sometimes very unjustly. And we are led to a problem. Now, this dual citizenship that we're talking about is clearly established in the life of the Apostle Paul. Paul was a Roman citizen and he claimed that status again and again consistently claimed to be a Roman citizen. For that's what he was. And he used it at a key times. For example, in Acts 22, he was being stretched out to be flogged by some Roman soldiers and he mentioned to one of them, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty?" Ahh. Shock? So they went and got the Roman commander and he hurried immediately to Paul and the commander went to Paul and says, "'Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?' 'Yes, I am,' he answered. Then the commander said, 'I had to pay a big price for my citizenship.' 'But I was born a citizen,' Paul replied," a Roman citizen. But yet Paul says to the residents of Philippi who are Christians, who just by the fact that they were members of the city of Philippi, were also themselves Roman citizens. He said our citizenship, Philippians 3:20, is in heaven. "Our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." We are citizens of whatever Rome we're under and we're also citizens of God. Citizens of the city of God. Now, that dual citizenship is going to bring us into some problems. And those issues, those ethical questions have plagued and troubled brothers and sisters in Christ for 20 centuries. Now you have in your outline there six ethical questions. As I kept writing and writing and writing on this sermon and we passed the 20-page mark, I said, now, that's too much alright? Because each one of those six ethical questions is the source of book after book, after book. And so therefore, we're going to have to do it in two weeks, not just this one week, but next week, and even then it will not be enough. We're going to talk about how we can be good citizens of the city of God and at the same time, good citizens of the city of man. We're going to ask some questions right in our text, we're going to ask questions. Is it lawful or right for Christians to pay taxes to a pagan government? Especially if we have a sense that that government is going to use our tax money for immoral things, what should we do about that? Right in our text, we'll look at that today. We're also going to start the first of those six ethical questions today, the others will remain till next week. 1. Are there limits to the obedience that Paul commands to secular government? Is submission to government absolute or are there limits to it? Next week, we're going to look at these. 2. Are there limits to opposition to secular government, for example, is armed revolt against a lawfully ordained government ever permissible? 3. We're going to talk about capital punishment, is it right for a human government to take human life? 4. We're going to talk about Christians participating in government, how much and in what manner, may Christians or ought Christian to participate in government? 5. And what about persecuted Christians, what should Christians do concerning the persecution of Christians by government either in our country or in other countries, what's our responsibility there? 6. And then this one question that has plagued so many, the issue of Christians in war, is it right for Christians to be involved in war? Should we follow the dictates of our government, if we're drafted or called to go fight for our country, etcetera, as citizens of a higher country are we to obey that call? We'll talk about that next week now. We're not going to answer every single question. We're not going to solve every riddle that will rise in your mind. What then is our purpose? Well, to bring some clarity to these issues and specifically more than anything to make you yearn and long for the day when Jesus Christ himself will set up his throne and God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, Amen. And I'm yearning for that and yes, to try to bring some insight and some truth to each of these ethical questions. My desire is that you would gladly happily submit to whatever authority God has established, to do it with delight and joy as far as you are able, but to have the wisdom to know when you are no longer able, when government for example, has crossed the line and is now compelling you to do something that will violate scripture or forbidding you to do something that God has commanded you to do, to know how to say no. I. Government in the Bible: Basic Principles Now, last time that we looked at this, we looked at some basic principles of human government in the Bible. First we established as I already did at the beginning of my sermon that God is Lord of Heaven and Earth. He rules over all things. Secondly, we talked about how God has delegated some of his authority to created beings. A third, we said that God will judge both the rulers and the subjects by how they handle the relationship. The rulers will be judged and the subjects, the citizens will be judged by what they do with it. Fourth, we said that God, actively, sovereignly rules over the ebbs and flows of history. He hasn't just let it go, he hasn't just delegated authority and then said, "Don't bother me with the details." God is intensely involved in the details and rules over all things. And we talked about how good government is a blessing from God for which we should be grateful. That it restrains chaos and evil. That it promotes and demonstrates God's passion for justice. It promotes order and peace and this order and peace is essential to the spread of the Gospel and to the ability we have to lead productive and godly lives in quietness as it says in one passage. And that good government encourages love and good deeds. And the key passage for a government as a good thing is Romans 13, as we've seen. We also said there's another theme and that is that bad government is a work of the devil, that bad government is a curse from the devil and the key passage on that is Revelation 13. It's easy to remember. There's a certain parallelism. Romans 13, government a good gift from God. Revelation 13, bad government a beast from the sea under the influence of the dragon, and that's what you have and therein lies the problem. II. Command #1: Submit to Human Government Now, the key passage for what we should do, Romans 13:1-7, Paul gives essentially, two basic commands. Command number one is submit for the Lord's sake, to every authority instituted among men. Submit to human government. And secondly, what we're going to look at this morning, give to the human government whatever it deserves, whatever you owe it, whether taxes or revenue, respect, honor whatever. And we'll talk about that today. Now, the command to submit, verse one, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities." We talked about that. It means a glad submission, gladly accepting a subordinate position, because it is glorifying to God. Submission we saw it was not demeaning or insulting in any way, and this command was given to everybody. Every soul literally must submit himself to the governing authorities, but especially to Christians. We listed... Paul listed seven reasons in verse one through five, I'm not going to go through them again. You can get the message and listen to it again. But, basically, Paul is saying Christians are not in the business of overthrowing Nero. We're not gonna be organizing to throw off the Roman government, that's not what we're about. We have another calling. And so, submit. That's what he says. III. Command #2: Support Human Government But he says here in the second command, they're to go beyond merely submitting, they're to actively support human government by paying taxes and revenue and respect and honor, look at verse six and seven. "This is also why you pay taxes for the authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes, if revenue then revenue, if respect then respect, if honor then honor." Was it shocking to you to see the cover photo there on the bulletin, that nasty 1040? You thought you were done with that a few weeks ago and here it is right on the cover of your worship bulletin of all things. What were they thinking? But that's how we pay taxes to the federal government. So it seemed appropriate to put the 1040 on there. This is what Paul is commanding. He's commanding that we should pay taxes. Now, resentment over the payment of taxes is not a new thing. Don't think it began with you when you finally started making enough money to have to pay a federal tax and file a 1040, it didn't start with You. Benjamin Franklin said "Nothing is certain but death and taxes." Do you think he spoke it gladly? Was he speaking as an act of gladness and worship? I am so glad about those taxes we get to pay. It's an old thing. I think about the revolution itself, "taxation without representation." That was the issue. They did not think it was right for them to be taxed without having representation at parliament. Recently I was driving to the District of Columbia and I noticed that all of the license plates say the same thing, "Taxation Without Representation" at the bottom, why? Because DC's not the member of any state and so there's no senators from that city and so they're arguing for DC statehood as a result, taxation without representation. Got me to thinking I thought it was interesting. Resentment over Taxes is an Ancient Issue But it's an issue. And many people have expressed to me how much they hate filing their 1040. It's not a happy time, it's not something they look on as an act of worship but you know, resentment over taxes goes further back than that. Even to Bible times, taxes were a big issue of Jesus' life. If you think about where he was born in fulfillment of prophecy Bethlehem. We know that it was because of the census that Caesar Augustus took of the entire Roman world, and behind that census (scholars are right in telling us) were taxes, so that the people would pay the tax and also so that they would have a sense of the population mass in each area, so they'd know how many troops to put, the legions... Where... How to distribute the legions. But it was about taxes. And so, because of taxes, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea. But then in Jesus' ministry was a major feature. Tax collectors were among the most hated people that Jesus ever ministered to. Everybody hated the tax collectors. Tax collectors were Jews who had gone over to the Roman side and were benefiting from the Roman occupation by collecting taxes and with the might of the Roman authority and military strength behind them, sometimes, read every day, collecting more taxes than they really needed to collect. And so they were filthy rich and very hated by the people. Moreover, they were in constant conversation with Gentiles, eating and drinking with them and going in their houses and breaking all the kosher rules and all this kind of thing. They were just ritually unclean all the time, and so tax collectors were the epitome of evil people to most Jews. Zealots hated the Romans, hated the tax collectors, hated the payment of tax and would have at any moment organized themselves and actually frequently did around that time, organize themselves to fight the Romans. Isn't it amazing how one of Jesus' disciples was Matthew the tax collector and another was Simon the zealot? And how both of them came to realize that allegiance to the city of God, the kingdom of Christ was higher than any of their earthly political callings and they became brothers and friends and loved each other deeply from the heart. Isn't it magnificent how God did that, how Christ brought them together. Now, Christ taught twice directly about taxes. Taxes and Christ Once was about the temple tax, the money that you would have to pay to go worship. And Jesus asked Peter, a principle, said, "'From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes, from their own sons or from others?' 'From others,' Peter said. 'Then the sons are exempt.'" Jesus said. What an interesting statement. In other words, should a son have to pay money to get in his own home? Now, before you parents get any ideas as a fundraising measure and all that, it will not work because the money they're giving you, for the most part, it'll be your own money anyway, and you'd just be building up resentment, charging your kids to get in the door, alright don't do it. Jesus said, No, They're free to come and go. Why should we have to pay money to be in my Father's house? "But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line fishermen and take the first fish you catch, and open its mouth, and there inside the mouth, you'll find what you need to pay the tax four drachma coin. Take it and use it for my tax and yours." You're thinking. "Oh, Lord, do it for me, do it for me." I'm wondering what would be in a fish's mouth that would be enough to pay the federal government at this point. Any check in there is long since disgusting, and you can't cash it. So I'm not sure what it would be. Federal government took in $2.1 trillion in tax money last year, spent 2.4 trillion. We'll get to that next time. But $2.1 trillion, that's a lot of money. But the more direct teaching on taxes came in Matthew 22 when some of Jesus' enemies came to try to get him in trouble concerning the tax money paid to the Romans. And they came to trap Him and said, "Is it right?" They come to Him, the Pharisees come with Herodians and they say, "Teacher, we know that you're a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, since you pay no attention to who they are," that is all fluff. You can just cut that and throw it in the garbage that is flattery, and Jesus knew it. "Tell us… is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" Now we get to it, let's not waste time on the flatter. Let's get to the point, Jesus said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?" Now, what is the trap? If Jesus says it is unlawful for us to have to pay money to stay in our own Promised Land, God promises to Abraham and we should not be paying taxes to the Romans as a result, what do you think is going to happen to Jesus. Next day, Romans come and they get him, and they kill him. But suppose he says "Or yes, we do need to pay taxes to the Romans. Romans are our rightful overlords," then the zealots are going to get him. Either way, they get rid of Jesus. And that was their goal. So he said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." Oh, the brilliance of Jesus. We're playing Tiddlywinks, he's playing 80 million level chess, at the higher level. You think you can trap Jesus, the mind that created the universe? You think you can put him where he doesn't want to be and he can't get out? "'Show me the coin used for paying the tax.' They brought Him a Denarius. 'Whose portrait is this, and whose inscription?' 'Caesars,' they replied. Then he said to them, 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God's." They were amazed. What are we going to do with that? We can't do anything with that. He openly said we should pay taxes to Caesar, we can't get him but then he says we should give to God what is God's. And what are the zealots going to say about that, other than hopefully to be humbled to know they're not giving to God everything he deserves. Oh, what an answer. That is the backdrop of Paul's command here in Romans 13:6-7. Yes, you should pay taxes. And Paul's reasoning, here in verse six, he said, this is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants. Do you see that word servants in verse six? The authorities are God's servants who give their full time to governing. Literally, God's ministers, like a minister of the gospel, Paul uses the exact same word in Romans 15:16, Paul there calls himself a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the Gospel of God. He uses the exact same word for the Governor Official. He's a minister of God with the priestly duty of keeping society together. It's just a different calling, he says. Very high view here. And therefore, the taxes you pay as you render to Caesar what's Caesar's enables that servant of God to do His work. They must be supported financially, because they give their full time to governing and so they have to be supported, so pay them the taxes. Taxes to a Pagan Empire? Now, some Christians might have objected to paying taxes to a pagan empire and a wicked ruler like Nero. They might say, "Why should we take God's money and give it in support to a wicked empire like that to help advance a wicked anti-Christian Empire?" they might have struggled with that. Does God really expect us to contribute financially to that? His answer is, Yes, that's your responsibility, it's his responsibility what he does with it and he'll stand accountable for what he does. But you must pay that tax. Christians struggle with that, I might say is it right for me to pay taxes to a federal government whose goal is to keep abortion safe, legal, and funded? Do you want your money going for that? I don't. I was thinking of another idea. You know how in some churches, you can designate giving? Why don't we do that with the federal government, we designate our taxes. I'd like it going to bridges and roads. Well, I favor educational programs. I'm into famine relief, relief for the poor, whatever. Well, can you imagine what society would look like, the things that would be super over-funded, and the other things that would not even be touched? It would be kind of interesting. I don't think that my plan is going to be adopted designated giving to the federal government, I don't think so. They will decide what they do with the taxes, and they're responsible for their decisions, aren't they? But you must pay taxes. Paul Goes Beyond Taxes But Paul goes beyond the basic level of paying taxes. He says in verse seven, "Give everyone what you owe him. If you owe taxes, pay taxes. Yes. But if revenue then revenue, if respect then respect, if honor then honor." There's a sense of obligation and debt here. We owe these people more than just the taxes. Yes, the taxes, the tribute, the word taxes, this is usually collected from all individual citizens as a tribute to the Roman overlord just to keep the government going. But then there's this other word revenues. These are fees and taxes more like a sales tax or a poll tax for using... Bringing a ship into a port of entry or using a bridge or some of these other things like a toll road. When I was in Japan, my wife and I, we crossed over one of the longest bridges in the world, the Seto Ohashi bridge, and it's actually a series of long bridges that connects the Island of Shikoku to the main land... Main island of Honshu, and it was an incredible bridge but it cost as almost actually over $100, the equivalent of $100 to drive it. I thought what a tax! I'd rather swim, of course, I wouldn't have made it. $100 to cross a bridge? Wow! Yeah. Pay taxes, whatever it is. But go beyond just the payment. There's the issue of fear and honor, a sense of respect. Every society has its way of showing respect to leaders. If you were going to meet the Queen of England, you might first have an interview with the protocol officer who'd tell you what you as a commoner would be required to do and you better do it if you ever hope to have another audience which you probably won't get anyway. But the point is that you are going to show respect to the Queen of England in a certain way. And what Paul's saying here is, that's appropriate. Do it. Do it. Whatever it takes. When I was in Kenya, on another mission trip, I saw the President of the country, Daniel Arap Moi. He was driving through a little town named after him called Moi's Bridge, and I was standing there surrounded my Kenyan friends, and for some reason I stood out. I don't know why, but I just did, and he saw me and pointed and waved. So I was wondering why but at any rate, maybe he just knew I was a guest in his home town. But he carried a Maasai stick, an older man's or an elder of the tribe stick as a symbol of his authority in the government. I asked one of my friends, I said, "If somebody came and kinda grabbed that stick, what would happen to him?" He said, "He wouldn't get two steps. He'd be cut down. It's a symbol of his presidential authority." And so it is also these protocols. In our country, we say to the President, Mr. President. Yes sir and no sir, that's what you do, and what Paul's saying is it's appropriate. When you're in a court of law, you say Yes, your honor, no your Honor. You just do, and that's appropriate. It's right. And these things are taught in families to begin with, aren't they? Children should address their parents reverentially. There should be titles of respect. Some families say yes or no sir, others. Yes mom, no mom, something like that but not just, Yeah, or whatever, as though the person you're talking to is a Yeah or whatever kind of person. Those people that we're referring to are referred to in the 10 Commandments. Written with the finger of God, Honor your father and mother, there it says, and so therefore you honor them by a show of honor, by speaking title of respect, and from then the parents should be saying any other governmental authority, whatever show respect, speak with respect to them from the very beginning. So therefore, how should Christians live with government? Well, we should understand that in so doing all of this submission, paying taxes, titles of honor, we are really worshiping God, aren't we? It's all flowing down from God's throne. It is a gift of the wise and loving God. And so therefore, every way that we show honor and that we submit, we're really worshiping God, aren't we? We're doing it because He established. And we're doing it in hope looking forward to the day when it will be Christ and Christ alone, directly and we will worship Him. It's an act of worship. IV. Six Key Ethical Questions Now, six key ethical questions in the two hours we have left. Why are you laughing? No, we'll just do one of them. Limits to Obedience: Is submission to government absolute or are there limitations? And the first is, okay, you've given the command, we should submit. The question is, is that absolute? Is it absolute? Does Government have the right to command any and everything it will to us and we must obey? That is an important question. Some Christians have taken Romans 13 as a requirement for unquestioning submission to human government. Others have taken the submission quite far. For example, Martin Luther did, German reformer. During the peasant Revolt of 1525, when the peasants who had legitimate grievances against their medieval overlords and who were legitimately right in bringing these grievances to the attention of their lords were not receiving any proper response and decided to revolt, the peasant Revolt of 1525, they thought that they would get support from Luther. Oh, how bitterly disappointed they were when Luther wrote one of his most vicious tracks ever, 1525 against the murderous and thieving hoards of peasants. That's not looking good, if you're a peasant reading that saying I don't think it's looking good. You open it up and you read. And he says to the princes and Nobles that they should crush kill and destroy these rebellious peasants. And his basic argumentation was they were rebelling against what God had ordained, God-ordained authority. The German sense of duty and submission to authority is a very strong national trait. They have a very strong sense of a chain of command. And we saw in the time of Hitler and the Nazis, the extreme form of this. As the Nazis took over the Protestant church in Germany, and made it its whipped pup with the exception of some courageous pastors who formed the Confessing Church and Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of those and were willing to pay the price for rebellion against Nazi domination over the church. But they argued Romans 13, Romans 13, Romans 13. This question of the limits of Christian submission to government is really an old one and the Bible has much to say about it. Peter and John were commanded by the Sanhedrin. They were given a very clear command by the Sanhedrin to stop preaching Christ and His resurrection. And their answer, Peter and John's answer in my opinion, stands for all time as a limit to Christian submission to government, a limit to it. In Acts 4:18-19, they called them in again, and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, but Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Alright, now what's the key though? Judge for yourselves whether it's right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. Now that "rather than" is huge, isn't it? You have to discern, are you forced to disobey God by this government injunction? Are you being forced to do something that violates your conscience? Are you being forbidden to do something that God's commanded you to do? Now, that's the issue. Later on in Acts the same issue comes up again. They call them back in. Say we noticed you're not obeying the command we gave you earlier. Well, they could say we already told you, and they did tell them again in Acts Chapter five, having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. "'We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said, and yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood.' Peter and the other apostles, replied, 'We must obey God rather than men.'" Again, "rather than". When the government forces you to violate your conscience, compelling you to do something that you know will break one of God's commandments or when the government forbids you to do something God has commanded you to do, you must say no. There's a limit to obedience, a limit to what the government can do with us. And it goes even into the Old Testament. The Hebrew midwives were blessed by God by disobeying, after disobeying Pharaoh's command to kill all the boy babies, they were blessed by God for that. And the Book of Daniel gives us actually repeated examples of godly people who refuse to obey an ungodly command and yet maintained a stance of submission to the government. Daniel and his friends would not eat the defiled food in chapter one, but they asked permission not to eat the defiled food. In Daniel Chapter three, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego will not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's gold statue. They're thrown in a fiery furnace but God rescues them. And then Nebuchadnezzar comes and gives them a lawful command. "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the most high God, come out, come here." Now, I've thought before they should said, "Come in and get us. Deal with that right now." Of course that's me speaking because I'm kind of rebellious at heart and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were not. They said, "Yes, King." And they came out. They did what they were told, it was a lawful command. Come out. Alright, that doesn't violate my conscience, bowing down does. You see the distinction? There's a difference. And then later, Daniel refused to obey the unjust command of prohibition against prayer. He was prohibited from praying to God. He could pray to king Darius but he was not allowed to pray to the true God. He went ahead and bowed down and was thrown in the lion's den. And he says, when he's brought out, he says, "I was found innocent in his [God's] sight nor have I done anything against you, O King." He was submissive to the king's authority but not on that point. And so he refused to obey. Christians suffering persecution under the Romans were forced to burn a pinch of incense to the deity of the Roman Emperor. They refused to do it, that would violate their conscience and many of them suffered as martyrs, as a result. Now, I tell you and be ready for it, be ready for it. So I don't know what the future holds. But in the future when human government gets as evil as it can be under the reign of the anti-Christ, the government at that time will try to compel you to receive the mark of the beast without which you will not be able to buy or sell. And you will need to discern and have the wisdom, it says, to know what the mark of the beast is and not receive it. You will need to stand firm. And apparently, anyone who does not receive the mark of the beast is going to be beheaded. You will need to resist the government at this point, because the command is evil, and wicked. And so it says in Revelation 13:16-17, "He [the anti-Christ] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark which is the name of the beast or the number of his name." What's so bad about that? Well, Revelation 14, "A third angel followed them, said in a loud voice, 'If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he too will drink the cup of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest, day or night for those who worship the beast and his image." In other words, in that era, if you don't defy human government, you will lose your soul. And this is the horns of the dilemma of living in two kingdoms. Do you see it? God has said No, the government will say yes, and you'll be forced. Be ready, be ready for that time. God will give you courage what to say. Why would you want to keep living under anti-Christ reign, anyway, when you could live under the reign of Christ, when you can be freed from this world by martyrdom, and go into the very presence of Christ. Why would you refuse to do that? And you won't if you're the elect of God, not one of you will. Just be ready, be aware it could happen in your lifetime or mine. Romans 13 says we must gladly as an act of worship submit to lawfully ordained authority. We must do that but there are limits to it. V. Summary and Application Now, what application can we take from this? Well, I would urge you to find the points inside you in which you are chafing under human authority and government and work on them. Humble yourself. I had an experience this past week, I went to Louisville to a great conference, had a great time, until I got to the Louisville Airport. And here I am. You preach on something and within a week or two, you're facing it. And there I was at the checkpoint thing again, taking my shoes off, dumping out my bag, spilling stuff on the ground, getting out my laptop, taking my belt off, hoping that I didn't need it for the next minute or so. I didn't. Everything was fine but it's very disturbing fluttering time. And you've got 10 people behind you, and I'm kind of a people pleaser. I want to just get through it as quickly as possible. And there on the other side is a guy who looked like he'd come straight from the Marines or something, 6'2", crew cut, looking kind of beyond me, over my shoulder. "Step forward, sir." It was kind of disturbing. Well, I had put my boarding pass and my driver's license in my breast pocket here for safekeeping. Have you ever put something for safe keeping and then you can't find it? Now, that document had already been checked four times. I do not exaggerate. But I stepped through the metal detector clean as a whistle, with pure intention in my heart. And he said, "Boarding pass." and so I went down here where I usually put it and it wasn't there. I thought I probably has dumped it on top. So I took a step forward toward the other side of the metal detector... Or the scanner thing. And he barked at me to freeze my blood, "Sir, not another step." "Ooooh boy, I am not a terrorist." So what it says in 1 John 3, The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. I'm not a terrorist. I'm a nice guy, really I am. The way it burned inside of me. I didn't want to be under a barked command of judgment. I just stood there kind of seething, actually, a little bit until I remembered, "Thank you, Lord. Oh yes, here it is." Showed it to him, he didn't say a word, just handed it back. Imagine if I said, "I want another connection with him. I wanted to have coffee with him or something, sit down and talk to him." But instead I felt something boiling inside me. And I have been working on it now ever since. And some of it, I think, is righteous in that I don't think we want to be barked at as an act of condemnation and all that. And if he knew me, if I were his brother or friend, he wouldn't talk to me like that, etcetera, but there's a reason he talks like that. And that's because of the evil in the world and he doesn't know me. And so for me, I have to pitch all those negative feelings and say, "Thank you, God, for people like that, who are standing at the post and doing their job. And if I'm so dunce headed as to not keep the thing in my hand, then that's my problem, next time I'll do better." As an act of worship, be glad of these people that are manning these posts while there's a need. But let me tell you something, yearn for the day when they won't be needed anymore. Yearn for it. And if I can say to you, with all the love of my heart, if you're here today and you have never bowed the knee to Jesus as Savior and Lord, the barked command of that guard, that border guard, will be nothing compared to the statement that Jesus will make, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Oh, dread and fear that day if you don't know Jesus. Jesus came and shed his blood so that now while you have time, you can believe in Him, you can bow your knee to him as your King, as your savior and accept him and yearn for the day when he will openly reign. You won't need faith then but you need it now. And if you do, your sins will be forgiven you, all of them. And he will take you into his eternal kingdom and you will reign with Him forever and ever. Close with me in prayer.