Podcasts about klans

The Brothers finish what they started, and conclued their thoughts on ork society with the Klans of the Orks, mainly the Goffs, Freebooterz, Blood Axes, and Snakebites. Hope you enjoy this exciting conclusion of Ork Society! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ian-crombie0/support

" Ah! Sehe ich da etwa einen anderen Zabrak? Und ein Nachtb...""Du kennst mich nicht."- ein Zabrak-Barkeeper zu Darth MaulDie Zabrak sind eine kriegerische und stolze Spezies, bekannt für ihre Kraft und Ausdauer und auch dafür zu den besten Nahkämpfern und Waffenschmieden der Galaxis zu gehören. Ihre Spezies hat sich jedoch aufgespalten in zwei sehr voneinander unabhängige Subspezies. Während die Einen auf ihrer Heimatwelt Iridonia und in ihrem eigenen kleinen Sternenreich blieben, haben die Anderen auf Dathomir einen dunkleren Pfad eingeschlagen und sich auf die dort angesiedelten Machthexen eingelassen.Erfahrt in der neusten Folge von Datacrons alles über dieses faszinierende Volk und taucht ein in die Mysterien der Klans der Nachtschwestern und Nachtbrüder.

They say never meet your heroes, but we're so glad we got to meet two of ours, as they gave us the shot of hope at the end of our conversation that we all need, considering everything that's happening around us currently.  To be honest, we had been looking forward to this conversation ever since David Louie (Episode 212, if you want to go back and listen) made this introduction, and it was everything we had hoped it would be. Not only because Doug Jones and Bill Baxley are legal powerhouses, but also because they were just two men, doing what they believed to be right, because perhaps they were the only ones who could have fought this fight.  And that - the power of one, standing in your beliefs and speaking up for those who cannot - is something we should all carry with us from this conversation.   What to listen for:  How two white men growing up in the South came to their belief in and advocacy of equal justice  The role that witnesses - especially the white wives of Klans members - played in the various trials, both in positive and negative ways What these lawyers would say to people who diminish the ongoing impact of systemic racism, and claim that “slavery happened so long ago”... The most powerful way young people can do so that lawmakers hear their voices About Doug Jones:  A celebrated prosecutor who brought long-overdue justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Doug has built his career on fighting impossible battles. In 2017, he shocked the political establishment by winning a special election to fill a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama—the first Democrat to do so in 25 years in the state. On Capitol Hill, he quickly built a reputation as a well-regarded and effective legislator, passing more than two dozen bipartisan bills into law in just three years.  Doug's first job after graduating from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University was as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Sen. Howell Heflin (D-AL). Following his stint in Washington, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1980 to 1984. Doug left government service in 1984 and was in the private practice of law in Birmingham, Alabama, until President Bill Clinton nominated him to the position of U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. His nomination was confirmed by the Senate in November 1997, and he served as U.S. attorney until June 2001. It was while serving in that position that he successfully prosecuted 2 of the 4 men responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church—finally bringing full justice and closure nearly 40 years after the attack that killed four young girls. Along with taking on the Ku Klux Klan, he indicted domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph and prosecuted other criminals who sought to use fear, hatred, and violence to inhibit the rights of others. Doug is the author of Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights which recounts a key moment in our long national struggle for equality and the successful prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members 40 years later. In 2022, Doug was selected by President Joe Biden to be the Nomination Advisor for Legislative Affairs to help to guide the selection, nomination, and successful confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court of the United States. In this role, Doug continued to upon the important relationships he had established while in Congress to help gain bipartisan support for the President's nominee.  Today, Doug is of Counsel with ArentFox Schiff, a Senior Distinguish Fellow with the Center for American Progress, and is involved in a variety of different political and civic organizations. Doug resides in Birmingham, AL with his wife, Louise, and dogs, Scout and Dakota. He has three children Courtney (married to Rip Andrews), Carson, and Christopher as well as two grandchildren, Ever and Ollie.  About Bill Baxley:  Bill Baxley was elected Attorney General at age 28. Remarkably, he was already a seasoned prosecutor, having tried dozens of jury trials as District Attorney in Houston and Henry counties. He served as Alabama's Attorney General from 1971 to 1979 and its Lieutenant Governor from 1983 to 1987. As Attorney General, Bill served as lead trial counsel in every major action on the State's behalf, civil and criminal. He aggressively prosecuted them all. He appointed the state's first African-American assistant attorney general, who later became a federal judge. His successful prosecution of Ku Klux Klansman Robert Chambliss for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is featured in the Spike Lee documentary, 4 Little Girls. His legal accomplishments are also documented in Lay Down with Dogs, Until Justice Rolls Down, and numerous other publications. Throughout his career, Bill Baxley has served in the Alabama Army National Guard, beginning as an enlisted clerk and rising through the ranks to retire as Colonel, JAG Corps. He has successfully represented clients in the United States Supreme Court, the Alabama Supreme Court, and in appellate and trial courts over which they exercise jurisdiction. He primarily represents large business corporations yet continues to represent individuals of modest means. Those efforts have earned him the distinction of being selected as a Fellow in the International Academy of Trial Lawyers as well as being recognized by his peers as a Super Lawyer.   Also: Listen to Episode 31: Birmingham Church Bombings – How Did We Get Here on Dear White Women for a historic look at this tragedy

It's just the fellas today on Cash Daddies, but there's plenty to discuss. Howie has seen the light on $BUD, after shares tumbled last week, and Sam talks ESG and its role in the current market, before we conclude with Howie's pick of the week. Copy James at www.copymycrypto.com/sam!Head over to tradearies.com/cashdaddies for the big $100 promotion! Cash Daddies on social media: https://lnk.bio/d1sj/ Check out Sam's dates: https://samtripoli.com/events/This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5876593/advertisement

"Die Asche der Taung schlägt stark im Herzen der Mandalorianer!"- Auszug aus den traditionellen Versen Dha Werda VerdaDie Taung sind eine nomadische Spezies, deren Heimatwelt das heutige Coruscant ist. Sie sind schon seit vielen tausend Jahren aus der Galaxie verschwunden. Doch ihr Erbe lebt fast unberührt in den Mandalorianern weiter, zu denen sie schlussendlich aufgestiegen sind. Doch wie ist dieses in Klans aufgespaltene Volk zu einer der Größten und wehrhaftesten Mächte in der Galaxie geworden? Wie wurden aus den Taung die Mandalorianer? Und warum existiert ihre Spezies zur Zeit der Schlacht von Yavin nicht mehr? Was ist der Kanon der Ehre und wie werde ich eigentlich ein Mandalorianer?Das alles und mehr erfahrt ihr in der neusten Folge Datacrons! Lauscht eurem Lieblingsmandalorianer Kryos, der seine Findelkinder Leif und Yrm in die Gebräuche seines Volkes einführt.

Karen-Ann Lucyk MacDonald joins us to chat about so much stuff. From nursing, to alternative healing and genetic testing, freedom and independence, First Nations and super soldiers, new app's for your phone for healing frequency and working with some of the doctors and scientists speaking out about the latest totalitarian nightmare.   We also get into driving without insurance, the international law of Klans, bio feedback, blood types, DUMBS, Canadian media, peri steam hydrotherapy, micro dosing, protecting ourselves, black goo/graphine oxide, mission darkness and Justice for the VAX…..   In the second half we talk about epigeneticsm, project ascension, 5g cows, adrenochrome, Turtle Island, The Bear Clan, the China Study, plant based vs meat, the Andromeda Council, treatise on copper tablets, bio resonance, cloning, shungite water, the end of our agreement, the deep state and take over the powers that shouldn't be.    See links to Karen's stuff and her email…    https://newsinsideout.com/2020/08/dumbs-2021-trump-positive-breakthroughs-gene-decoder-klanmother-nurse-karen-macdonald/  DUMBS & 2021 Trump Positive Breakthroughs: Gene Decoder & Klanmother Nurse Karen MacDonald WATCH ON TRUETUBE@NewTube https://newtube.app/user/TrueTube/xNV9sqL   WATCH ON TRUETUBE BLOG: https://exopolitics.blogs.com/truetube/2020/08/dumbs-2021-trump-positive-breakthroughs-gene-decoder-klanmother-nurse-karen-macdonald.html   https://newsinsideout.com/ https://geniusbiofeedback.com/ https://www.insighthealthapps.com/ Kalm13@protonmail.com Klanmother13@gmail.com   See links to other stuff we chatted about during the show: https://www.youtube.com/user/022367ASM Project Incension  https://blog.nationalcitizensalliance.ca/tag/stephen-garvey/ https://grimerica.ca/2018/03/18/ep275/ Tony Pantalleresco  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXrZSajlZhw&ab_channel=Novobiotronics Ted X shattering cancer with resonant frequencies https://nevessence.com/ http://realrawfood.com/ https://vaxjustice.org/#   To gain access to the second half of show and our Plus feed please clink the link http://www.grimericaoutlawed.ca/support. Help support the show because without your help we can't continue to address these controversial topics. If you value this content with 0 ads, 0 sponsorships, 0 breaks, 0 portals and links to corporate websites, please assist. Many hours of unlimited content for free. Thanks for listening!!   Support the show directly: https://www.patreon.com/grimerica   Get your Magic Mushrooms delivered from: Champignon Magique  Mushroom Spores, Spore Syringes, Best Spore Syringes,Grow Mushrooms Spores Lab Get Psychedelics online   Our audio book page: www.adultbrain.ca Darren's book www.acanadianshame.ca   Other affiliated shows: https://www.13questionspodcast.com/ Our New Podcast - 13 Questions www.grimerica.ca The OG Grimerica Show www.Rokfin.com/Grimerica Our channel on free speech Rokfin   Join the chat / hangout with a bunch of fellow Grimerican's  www.grimerica.ca/chats   1-403-702-6083 Call and leave a voice mail or send us a text   Check out our next trip/conference/meetup - Contact at the Cabin www.contactatthecabin.com   Leave a review on iTunes and/or Stitcher: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/grimerica-outlawed http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/grimerica-outlawed   Sign up for our newsletter http://www.grimerica.ca/news   SPAM Graham = and send him your synchronicities, feedback, strange experiences and psychedelic trip reports!! graham@grimerica.com InstaGRAM https://www.instagram.com/the_grimerica_show_podcast/    Tweet Darren https://twitter.com/Grimerica   Purchase swag, with partial proceeds donated to the show www.grimerica.ca/swag Send us a postcard or letter http://www.grimerica.ca/contact/ ART Napolean Duheme's site http://www.lostbreadcomic.com/  MUSIC Tru North Felix's Site sirfelix.bandcamp.com

No amata atkāpies Lielbritānijas premjers Boriss Džonsons. To prasīja viņa pārstāvētās Konservatīvās partijas deputāti. Iemesli ir saistīti arī ar karantīnas režīma pārkāpumiem Dauningstrītā,  izšķērdīgu savas oficiālās rezidences renovāciju un nepiedienīgā uzvedībā apsūdzēta kandidāta iecelšanu augstā amatā. Džonsons gan amatu pametīs tikai tad, kad tiks atrasts viņa pēctecis, kas varētu notikt septembra sākumā. Pretendentu amatam pietiek. No amata atkāpies arī Šrilankas prezidents Gotabaja Radžapaksa, bet šīs demisijas iemesli ir pavisam citi. Tie saistās ar plašajiem nemieriem, ko valstī izraisījusi smagā ekonomiskā krīze. Protestētāji bija ielauzušies prezidenta oficiālajā rezidencē un kancelejā, taču Radžapaksa paspēja aizbēgt pirms demonstrantu ierašanās. ASV nerimst diskusijas par Augstākās tiesas spriedumu, kas faktiski liedz sievietēm tiesības pašām izlemt par abortu. Jūnija nogalē Augstākā tiesa atcēla pusgadsimtu senu spriedumu, kas atzina, ka šādas tiesības sievietēm ir noteiktas konstitūcijā. Līdz ar to ASV štati ar savu likumdošanu drīkst būtiski ierobežot vai aizliegt abortus. Tiek lēsts, ka šādus ierobežojumus vai aizliegumus varētu ieviest puse no ASV štatiem, turklāt 13 no tiem šādi likumi jau ir pieņemti. Aktualitātes vērtē TV24 žurnālists Kārlis Streips un Latvijas Universitātes asociētais profesors Daunis Auers. Džonsons aiziet Pagājusī ceturtdiena. 7. jūlijs, kļuva par pavērsiena punktu vienai no spilgtākajām personībām mūsdienu Eiropas un pasaules politikā – šai dienā Lielbritānijas premjerministrs Boriss Džonsons paziņoja par atkāpšanos no amata. Šo soli praktiski neizbēgamu padarīja divu viņa kabineta ministru – kanclera jeb finanšu ministra Riši Sunaka un veselības  sekretāra Sedžida Dževida – demisija, kam sekoja apmēram 60 zemāka ranga valdības locekļu atkāpšanās. Konkrētais situācijas detonators bija konservatīvo partijas parlamenta darba organizētāja vietnieka Krisa Pinčera nepiedienīga uzvedība, kādā privātā ballītē uzmācoties dažiem vīriešu kārtas viesiem. Lai gan līdzīgas epizodes Pinčera sakarā bijušas zināmas arī iepriekš, tas nav kavējis Džonsonu iekļaut viņu savā administrācijā. Tomēr šis atgadījums nebūtu kļuvis izšķirošs, ja ne virkne citu skandālu, kuri pēdējā laikā satricinājuši toriju partijas frakciju. Skaļākais no tiem saistīts ar ballītēm, kuras notikušas vairākos valdības birojos laikā, kad valstī bija noteikti strikti pulcēšanās ierobežojumi pandēmijas dēļ. Vienā no šādiem saviesīgiem vakariem piedalījies arī pats premjerministrs, par ko bijis spiests samaksāt policijas noteikto naudassodu. Tāpat pēdējā gada laikā seksa skandālu dēļ no amata nācies atkāpties diviem toriju partijas deputātiem, un vēlēšanās uz viņu vietām jūnija beigās konservatīvie zaudēja. Džonsona kabineta reputāciju apēnoja arī pieķeršana lobēšanas normu pārkāpšanā un nekontrolētos partijas sponsora naudas tēriņos premjera rezidences remontam. Ievērojot Borisa Džonsona nozīmīgo atbalstu Ukrainai tās karā pret agresorvalsti Krieviju, viņa demisija izraisījusi teju sajūsminātas reakcijas no Kremļa pārstāvju puses, savukārt Ukrainas prezidents Volodimirs Zelenskis paudis nožēlu. Vairāki Eiropas Savienības politiķi, t.sk. Īrijas premjerministrs Mihals Mārtins, pieminējuši Džonsonam viņa lomu „Breksita' procesā un pauduši cerības, ka viņa aiziešana nākšot par labu dialogam ar Lielbritāniju. Boriss Džonsons paliks premjera amatā līdz brīdim, kad Konservatīvā partija ievēlēs jaunu līderi. Balsojumam konservatīvo frakcijā jāsākas šodien, un tam nominēti astoņi kandidāti, starp kuriem ir demisionējušais kanclers Riši Sunaks un pašreizējais kanclers Nadims Zahavi, ārlietu ministre Liza Trasa, tirdzniecības ministre Penija Mordenta, bijušais ārlietu ministrs Džeremijs Hants. Klans zaudē varu Šrilankā Ietekmīgu ģimeņu jeb klanu loma Šrilankas politikā nav nekas jauns. Pagātnē valsts augstākos amatus ilgākā laika periodā ieņēmuši vīri no kalnrūpniekiem Senanajakēm vai Bandaranaikēm, kuri gadsimtiem ilgi bijuši eiropiešu koloniālo varu dienestā. Arī valsts dienviddaļas plantatori Radžapakšas ieņēma administratīvus un politiskus posteņus jau britu koloniālās administrācijas laikā pagājušā gadsimta pirmajā pusē, taču valsts politikas priekšplānā šis klans iznāca tikai 2005. gadā, kad par valsts prezidentu tika ievēlēts Mahinda Radžapakša. Ar prezidenta gādību viņa vairāki ģimenes locekļi drīz tika iecelti augstos valdības amatos. Tiek lēsts, ka atsevišķos laikposmos klana pārstāvji tieši vai netieši kontrolējuši apmēram 50%, pēc dažām aplēsēm – līdz pat 70% no valsts budžeta izlietojuma. Par politisko platformu ietekmīgajam klanam kalpo Šrilankas Tautas fronte, kas ietilpst apvienībā Šrilankas Tautas brīvības alianse. Lai gan šī apvienība tiek raksturota kā kreisi orientēta, pati Tautas fronte tiek dēvēta par konservatīvu. Radžapakšas sevi pozicionēja kā valsts lielākās etniskās grupas singāļu interešu aizstāvjus pretstatā tamilu u.c. minoritātēm, un šī nacionālistiskā ievirze līdz šim nodrošinājusi klanam nozīmīgu elektorāta atbalstu. 2019. gada prezidenta vēlēšanās uzvarēja Gotabaja Radžapakša, dažus mēnešus vēlāk ieceļot savu brāli Mahindu Radžapakšu par premjerministru. Klana varu vēl vairāk nostiprināja 2020. gada parlamenta vēlēšanas. Tomēr problēmas, kas uz pēdējo gadu globālo krīžu fona smagi skārušas nestabilo Šrilankas ekonomiku, izraisījušas plašu sabiedrības slāņu neapmierinātību ar varu. Nu jau vairāk nekā gadu šrilankieši izjūt akūtu pārtikas un degvielas trūkumu, kam pēdējā laikā pievienojušies arī strāvas padeves pārtraukumi. Jau kopš šī gada sākuma valstī vērsušās plašumā neapmierināto iedzīvotāju protesta akcijas, kuras vara mēģinājusi slāpēt ar policijas spēku, laižot darbā asaru gāzi un ūdensmetējus, kā arī organizējot savu atbalstītāju uzbrukumus demonstrantiem. Galu galā pēc asiņainām sadursmēm šī gada mijā no amata atkāpās premjerministrs Mahinda Radžapakša. Tomēr protesti nerimās, un nu kārta pienākusi viņa brālim prezidentam. 9. jūlijā saniknots pūlis ieņēma prezidenta rezidenci galvaspilsētā Kolombo, un drīz pēc tam prezidents paziņoja par savu gatavību atkāpties. Vairākas dienas par viņa atrašanās vietu nebija drošu ziņu, līdz šorīt kļuva zināms, ka bijušais prezidents kara lidmašīnā pametis valsti un devies uz kaimiņvalsti Maldīviju. Saskaņā ar Šrilankas likumdošanu vara valstī jāpārņem parlamenta priekšsēdētājam, kuram 30 dienu laikā jāsarīko jauna prezidenta vēlēšanas. Tomēr sabiedrības vispārējā neapmierinātība ar varu liek izteikt skeptiskas prognozes par iespējām stabilizēt politisko situāciju un bažas par valsts ieslīgšanu politiskā haosā. Abortu un ieroču problemātika ASV Pēdējās nedēļas saasinājušas uzmanību uz ilglaicīgām Savienoto Valstu iekšpolitikas problēmām, kas iezīmē nozīmīgas idejiskas šķirtnes amerikāņu sabiedrībā. Pirmkārt, jāmin Savienoto Valstu Augstākās tiesas 24. jūnija spriedums lietā Dobss pret Džeksonas Sieviešu veselības organizāciju, kas faktiski atļauj štatu likumdevējiem noteikt aizliegumus un ierobežojumus abortu veikšanai. Tas maina apmēram kopš pusgadsimta Savienotajās Valstīs iedibināto likumdošanas praksi, kas atzīst šādus aizliegumus par neatbilstošiem Savienoto Valstu Konstitūcijai. Izšķirošais notikums šai ziņā bija Augstākās tiesas 1973. gada spriedums lietā Rou pret Veidu, kā arī 1992. gada spriedums lietā Organizācija „Planned parenthood” pret Keisiju. 24. jūnija spriedums argumentēts ar apsvērumu, ka minētie agrākie spriedumi nodrošinot tiesības, kas gan izrietot no Konstitūcijas, taču neesot „dziļi iesakņotas nācijas vēsturē un tradīcijās”. Kā atzīmē daudzi komentētāji, šāds spriedums atspoguļo pašreizējo tiesas idejisko ievirzi, kas mainījusies, Trampa administrācijas periodā ieceļot amatos vairākus konservatīvi noskaņotus tiesnešus. Spriedums nepārprotami ignorē lielākās daļas amerikāņu sabiedrības noskaņojumu, ciktāl, saskaņā ar aptaujām, pavalstu tiesības liegt izdarīt abortus atbalsta vien apmēram trešdaļa amerikāņu. Savukārt jau gadiem cilāto jautājumu par šaujamieroču brīvo pieejamību saasinājusi kārtējā asiņainā šaudīšanās. Šoreiz traģēdija izvērtās Hailendpārkas pilsētā Ilinoisas pavalstī, kur 21 gadu vecs vīrietis 4. jūlija Neatkarības dienas parādes laikā atklāja uguni uz svinību dalībniekiem no Smita un Vesona pusautomātiskās šautenes. Ieņēmis izdevīgu pozīciju uz stūra ēkas jumta, šāvējs nogalināja septiņus un ievainoja 25 cilvēkus, vēl vienpadsmit cilvēkiem gūstot traumas šaušanas radītajā panikā. Var piebilst, ka šis ir tikai asiņainākais no pēdējā laika publiskas šaudīšanās gadījumiem, kas Savienotajās Valstīs notiek teju ikdienas. Šomēnes vien, neskaitot Ilinoisas šāvēja upurus, publiskās vietās nošauti jau vairāk nekā 20 amerikāņi. Sagatavoja Eduards Liniņš.   Eiropas Parlamenta granta projekta „Jaunā Eiropas nākotne” programma.* * Šī publikācija atspoguļo tikai materiāla veidošanā iesaistīto pušu viedokli. Eiropas Parlaments nav atbildīgs par tajā ietvertās informācijas jebkādu izmantošanu.  

Als Jugo ist man es gewohnt, für latent kriminell gehalten zu werden. Böser Blick, Messer in der Tasche, zack ist das Schutzgeld erpresst. Doch abseits rassistischer Klischee hat der Balkan natürlich auch wirklich ein Problem mit organisierter Kriminalität. Und zwar ein gewaltiges. In dieser Episode schauen wir uns speziell zwei Länder an: Serbien und Montenegro. Denn viele wissen zwar, dass es hier so etwas wie eine eigene Mafia gibt, aber das war es auch schon. Dass tatsächlich einer der größten Kokain-Händler Europas aus Montenegro stammt und derzeit unter recht komfortablen Bedingungen mal wieder einen Prozess in Belgrad erwartet, dürfte hingen im Westen den Wenigsten bekannt sein. Ebenso die Hintergründe eines Streits zwischen zwei Klans aus einer montenegrinischen Kleinstadt, der in Europa schon gut 50 Menschenleben gefordert hat. Und natürlich hat das ganze auch mal wieder ganz viel mit Politik zu tun. In dieser Folge also werfen Danijel und Krsto einen Blick auf die Strukturen, die Hintermänner und ihre Kontakte in höchste Regierungskreise. Unterstützt werden sie dabei von Jelena Radivojević, Reporterin des Investigativportal KRIK aus Belgrad. Nebenbei erfahrt ihr, warum die beiden Moderatoren mal wieder klandestin in einem Hotelzimmer hocken, welchen Verkaufswert Koks in Brüssel hat und warum wir uns schweren Herzens von einem liebgewonnenen Balkan-Despoten verabschieden müssen.

Chinas dynastische Herrschaft beginnt vor etwa 4000 Jahren mit der Errichtung der Xia Dynastie. Nachdem Yu der Große die Herrscherwürde vom letzten mythologischen Kaiser Yao erhält, schafft er die traditionelle Nachfolge ab und etabliert die dynastische Herrschaft seines eigenen Klans. Allerdings bleibt weiterhin fraglich, ob die Xia Dynastie tatsächlich existiert hat oder doch ins Reich der Mythen und Legenden gehört. Der Podcast auf Twitter Email Adresse Musik: Shenyang Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/

Chinas dynastische Herrschaft beginnt vor etwa 4000 Jahren mit der Errichtung der Xia Dynastie. Nachdem Yu der Große die Herrscherwürde vom letzten mythologischen Kaiser Yao erhält, schafft er die traditionelle Nachfolge ab und etabliert die dynastische Herrschaft seines eigenen Klans. Allerdings bleibt weiterhin fraglich, ob die Xia Dynastie tatsächlich existiert hat oder doch ins Reich der Mythen und Legenden gehört.Twitter Account des PodcastsEmail Adresse des PodcastsMusik:Shenyang Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Heavenly father, we gather, and we come to you in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. By the power of the holy spirit, we ask that you open up your holy scriptures to us as we begin to plum the depth of the riches of the treasure stores that is the Book of Romans. I pray give us receptive hearts and engaged minds. We pray give us a deeper, more robust understanding of the gospel. And more importantly, we pray help us know and love you deeper than ever before. Also, we pray that you make each one of us more effective servants of Jesus Christ. Make us more fruitful believers and a more fruitful church. And we pray during the sermon series, build your church and your kingdom in Boston and beyond. And we pray all this in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, amen.We're beginning the Book of Romans today, which is kind of a big deal because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. We preached through it kind of in 2016. We did a flyover. I did like three chapters first Sunday. And I talk really fast, but even that didn't help. So I think this is the first time we're going to go verse by verse through this book. It's going to take us probably a year. I don't know. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here till Jesus takes me home. And the reason why this book is ... Like every single introduction to every single commentary, to every single book on Romans, to every single sermon series, right here, right here is when the author, the pastor gets up and he's like, "This is the greatest book ever. This is the most impactful book ever."It's true. It's true. I don't think I really need to do it, but it is. We would not have Western civilization if it were not for the Book of Romans. The Book of Romans is what sparked the Great Reformation. The Book of Romans is why we are not Catholics. The Book of Romans is why we believe in the Bible. This is the most powerful book in the New Testament. And I hate to do that because that's like saying like one of your kids is better than the other kids, but in some ways they're more differently gifted. Okay? You love all of them equally, but they're different. That's just a fact. The Book of Romans is the most impactful book of all the books in the Bible. And the Bible is the most influential book in all of world history.And the Book of Romans, the whole thing is about the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the greatest news that could ever be, the greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level was not the end of World War II. It was not a cease fire. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level is not a full cure to the greatest enemy, the greatest disease. It's not the banking system breaking down and all of our mortgages and student loans and credit card debt just gets wiped out. That would be some tremendous news.The gospel's better, the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, we have access to the presence of God. We can have all of our sins, our debts, our trespasses, everything wiped out. We are innocent before God. We have total immunity, total forgiveness, total reconciliation. And this changes absolutely everything. That's what this book is about. The Gospels are about the work of Jesus Christ. The Book of Acts is how to reach the world. The Book of Romans is given to us to rebuild the world. Here's the gospel. It changes everything. It's going to help you put your life in order. It's going to help you take the chaos of your personal life, your personal relationships, everything in your life, put it into order. And that changes absolutely everything.We can be cured from the greatest disease, sin. We can be freed from the greatest enemy, death. We can overcome our second greatest enemy, Satan. We can become children of God. And it's all because of the work of Jesus Christ. We're justified by grace through faith. Now I have to stop and pause and I wonder. So Martin Luther, the great reformer. He's the guy who like looked at the Catholic church and he is like, "We're doing it wrong. We're just doing it wrong." And he got his 95 Theses. He nails it to the door in Wittenburg. We're doing it wrong.And what he said was, "We're not saved by our works. We're not saved by fulfilling the law. There's nothing we can do to be justified before God. There's nothing we can do to have all our sins forgiven. We're justified by grace through faith." That's true. Praise God. I wonder if Martin Luther showed up in 2022, and I wonder if Martin Luther got a taste of some of the teaching in the churches in the United States. I wonder what he would say. I wonder if he would say something along the lines like, "Hey, Christians, I think it's time for a new reformation." The problem is we're so decentralized, there's nowhere really to nail the next 95 Theses. I don't know. Where would you put it? I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem with the American church.I think what he would say is, "Hey, it is justification by grace through faith, but you still got to do the other stuff. You still have to know the Bible. You still have to obey God. You still have to follow God. You got to follow Jesus Christ." He said that literally in his first thesis of his first 95 Theses. The first one says, "When the Lord, Jesus Christ, said repent and believe, he meant that every single one of our days will be a day of repentance." We repent and believe as we follow Jesus Christ in obedience. If your faith in Christ does not produce transformation, sanctification, does not produce affections for Christ, does not produce a desire for holiness, a desire to mortify sin, a desire to share the gospel, if you do not, as a Christian, have a desire to serve God, then I submit to you you're probably not a Christian. If you are forgiven by God, you will become transformed into the image of the son of God.There aren't different levels of Christians. There are in terms of rewards, and that's a different sermon. But in terms of just being a Christian, there aren't different levels. Like what it means to become a Christian is you become a follower of Jesus Christ. That's what the whole book is about. The justifying faith changes a person. It regenerates you. You now have a desire to follow the Lord. And I'm so thankful for this church. This church is full of believers who are a hungry for God's word, hungry.I started putting out these sermon guides. I send it out with the newsletter every week. They're like between 7, and 9, and 10 pages. And people email me all the time. They're like, "This is so good." I also have typos in there that if you find one, then you let me know, you do get a chicken wing. And I also have jokes in there, every once in a while, to see who's listening, just once in a while.So I think we're ready for the Book of Romans, Mosaic. Do you? Do you think so? I think we're ready. We'll go slowly for now. Today, we're in Romans 1, 1 through 7. Romans 1, 1 through 7. Would you look at the text with me? "Paul, a serving of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand, through his prophets, in the holy scriptures, concerning his son who was descended from David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection, from the dead Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be safe, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts."Three points to frame up our time before holy communion, first, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission of Christ. Second, faith in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. And third, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. First, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission to Christ. Verse one, Paul, he begins with. Paul introduces himself a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. He introduces himself. This is what people do when they write a letter. Who is this guy, Paul? If you've been at Mosaic for a while, you know, you're familiar with him. We went through First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. We've gone through his of epistles.Just to give you a little recap, he was born in Tarsus as Saul. So he was born in the Roman empire in a Roman city. So he was given Roman citizenship. So most likely he grew up in a very cosmopolitan city, people from all over the world. So he was multilingual. He knew Greek, Koine Greek, the language of the day. He knew Hebrew because he grew up in a Jewish family. He grew up going to synagogue. He knew Aramaic because you had to and to know parts of the Old Testament, and Book of Daniel in particular. And most likely, he knew Latin as well. So incredibly educated early on in life. People realized that he was precocious. He has a very keen mind. Of all the apostles, everybody knew who the smartest guy was. Everyone knew who was the most sophisticated theologically, philosophically. He's a genius.Peter, who was the closest apostle of Jesus Christ, Peter, in his writings talking about the writings of Paul, he says, "And Paul," as he wrote in the other scriptures, he calls the writings of Paul a scripture. And he says some of the things that he writes are hard to understand. That's Peter himself. Peter's like, "I have to say, he talks about Jesus. He follows Jesus. I don't know what he's talking about. The predestination stuff, all that, I don't know." But that's Paul. Everyone knew he was a genius. He was on track to becoming one of the greatest probably rabbis. And he was a man of ambition, not just intellect. And his ambition was to get as high as he possibly could in the hierarchy that was the Jewish faith. So much so that he most likely had the Old Testament memorized. How do I know that he had the Old Testament memorized?Because he writes at least 13 of the epistles, maybe 14 with Book of Hebrews. We're not sure. He doesn't attribute it to himself, but as he's writing, he's writing in prison. He's writing in house arrest. He's writing as he's traveling. He doesn't have his books with him. He writes one of his epistles. "Hey, could someone please bring my books? I don't have my books." So as he's writing the epistles of the New Testament, and he's quoting the Old Testament, he's quoting it from memory. He's a genius. He studied under Gamaliel, which is like I used to say Harvard. This is the Harvard of theology, but Harvard hasn't produced a noteworthy theologian in probably 200 years. So the highest theological school you can think of, that's Paul, like super ambitious. Like to modernize Paul, if Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro could have a child, that would be the apostle Paul. That's him. And so he's driven and he's taking over the world and he's doing it for, he believes, Judaism, which is religion of God.And then he hears about Christians who follow this guy named Jesus Christ. It's the messiah. And then he died. He was crucified by the Romans and the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Jewish people altogether. And then Paul says, this is demonic. This is a heresy, starts persecuting Christians, starts killing Christians. He get it's papers from the church in Jerusalem to go to Damascus, to arrest more Christians on the road to Damascus. Jesus says enough is enough. You're mine. And he converts him. Paul had no choice in the matter. He had zero choice in the matter. Sometimes people ask me like, why are you a Christian? I'm like, because God made me a Christian. That's my only answer. God made me a Christian. God just told like you're mine. That's it. Did I get a vote? I got no votes. I got zero votes. God just said you're mine, called me to become a Christian.That's kind of what happened with Saint Paul. He did not have a choice. He did not enlist. He got drafted. And he got drafted by the king. Now you are my apostle. So that's Paul. He still has the zeal. He has the knowledge of the Old Testament. He is called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Although he knows the Old Testament scriptures like no one else, but that's because the Gentiles too need the Old Testament scriptures. And he reasons with the Gentiles, not just from extra-biblical cultural resource, he goes to the scriptures. He goes to the prophecies. He's like, "Look, it was all planned. It was all predestined before the foundation of the world."The question before us today is what made this guy so effective? How many people today do we think about, 2000 years after their life and death, do we think about on a daily basis? Well, Christians all around the world, this is millions of people, think about Saint Paul all the time. He's made an impact on the world. No matter what you think of the guy, we have a Saint Paul Street down the street. We have a Saint Paul Street. I can't believe Brookline still hasn't changed the name. I think it's coming. It's not going to be Saint Paul. It's going to be something else, but it's still there.That's what I'm saying. He's made an impact on the world. What made this guy so powerful? Was it just his intellect? I don't think so. What is it his worldly powers, material, power, influence? No, it was his spiritual power. It was the spirit of God working in and through him. Yes, he was a chosen vessel. Yes, he was one of a kind. Yes, he was handpicked by Jesus. The resurrected Christ showed up to Paul, but can we learn something from his life to help us become more spiritually powerful?I think this is what a lot of people are craving. We're craving this. Our generation is craving this spiritual power. People are seeking spiritual power. We know the material world is bereft of spiritual power that will actually change things and satisfy our souls. How can we grow in spiritual power? We can learn from Paul. As he introduces himself, he gives the first and most important identifier. The thing that distinguishes him, the thing that distinguishes his identity more than anything else, he says, Paul, and what does he call himself?A servant of Christ Jesus, a servant of Christ Jesus. Now the word for servant here, I need to do a little work, is the Greek word, δοῦλος, not διάκονος. διάκονος means servant. δοῦλος does not mean servant. δοῦλος means slave. And when New Testament uses this word in other places, sometimes they translate it slave, and sometimes they translate it servant, which I have a problem with. If you are translating the Bible, you got to be consistent. If you pick servant, go with servant the whole time. If you pick a slave, go with slave the whole time. And I understand why. I've read all the papers, scholarly papers. I know why they chose the word that they did because of the cultural connotations, the cultural sensibilities that come with the word slave.Now I ask you to put those cultural sensibilities aside when there's a very important biblical truth to know. That's number one. The other thing I want to say is like at what point do we say no to cultural sensibilities and say too bad? No offense, none taken. God's word is God's word. Like when the culture comes to us and says, you can't say the word father, God the father. We're against the patriarchy. Yeah, we don't want to use father. Can we use parent? God, the parent? No, you can't. How about God the son? Can we change God the son to like God the child? No, we can't. This is part of biblical truth. So cultural sensibilities, you can go mess with language out there. Do not mess with this. If you mess with this, like this is sacred. I will die for this. No, we are going to obey God's word and we are going to interpret it as it stands.So the word here is δοῦλος and this is really important. And I say this is important because sometimes in New Testament, the decision's made one way or the other. But I'm going to give you one text where you got both and showing that Jesus Christ actually attributes this word to himself. He calls himself δοῦλος, slave. He calls himself that here. And he calls himself that in Philippians chapter two, where it says. "He, though being God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped and made himself human, taking the form of a servant." That's the word δοῦλος. So Matthew 20:25 through 28, "But Jesus Christ called to them and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles has lorded over them, and the great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant."And that's the word διάκονος. We get the word deacon from it. This is a person that serves, as contrasted with verse 27, "Whoever would be first among you must be your slave." δοῦλος. "Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, Jesus Christ said, 'Even as the son of man." Jesus came primarily as a slave. He came to serve us. He came to do the father's bidding. He wrestled with the father's bidding. In the Garden of Gethsemane he cries out, "God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." And then he says what a good slave would say. "It's not my will, but yours be done." So Jesus Christ died in humiliation as a slave, paying the penalty for our sins. He was buried, rose from the dead, and in 40 days, he ascended to the right hand of God.Is Jesus Christ now a δοῦλος? Oh no, he's not. He was a δοῦλος. He was a slave. Now he's the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. What's the difference being servant and slave? I'll tell you the difference. A servant is hired. A slave is purchased. A slave is owned. A servant meets the obligations, gets paid, and then leaves. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of Christians view Christianity. "God, I will serve you as a servant a couple hours on Sunday, a couple hours in CG, couple hours in maybe devotions, as long as you pay me with my blessing. If you stop paying me with my blessing, I'm out. If you do something that I do not like, I'm out. If there's any suffering in my life, I'm out. If following you and not sinning is too hard, I'm out." That's a servant mentality.A slave mentality is, "Hey, I was a slave to sin. I was a slave to Satan, and Jesus Christ ransomed me with his blood. He purchased me with his blood. No, I'm not my own. So all of my time, all of my talents, every single aspect, every ounce of my life and my energy, everything I have, it's the Lord's. Lord, what would you have me do?" Christian, this is at the core of your identity. Can you say this? Can you say this proudly? I am a slave of Jesus Christ. I'm a δοῦλος of Jesus Christ. And that's the only place, by the way, you can be free. It's counter-cultural, counterintuitive. Satan promises us freedom and only offers us enslavement.Jesus Christ promises us a yoke. He said, "Come, come after me." He promises a cross. You're going to have to deny yourself on a daily basis. You're going to say no to yourself all the time. And in that relationship with Jesus Christ, you will find a freedom that you have never experienced before, a freedom of the soul. Jesus Christ gives you the barriers, the boundaries that you were designed to flourish in, in a relationship with him. It gives us the path to freedom.Being enslaved to Christ is how you become the best, most powerful version of yourself. When enslaved to Christ, you aren't enslaved to anything or anyone else. You are worshiping the creator. You only fear the creator. You're not enslaved to any other person. You're not enslaved to things. Submit yourself to Christ, and he gives you the power to break through any enslavement, including any addiction. We live in a day and age where more people are addicted to more things than ever in the history of the world. More people died from the drug overdose last year in the United States than they did of COVID.We're addicted. We're addicted to our phones. We're addicted to social media. We're addicted to entertainment. We're addicted to substances. We're addicted to food. Were addicted to people. We're addicted, addicted, addicted. We're enslaved. We're not free. We're not free. This is the most enslaved generation ever in the history. We are just enslaved. And Jesus Christ comes and he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father but through me." Yes, it's very narrow. It's very narrow. There's only one way to the path to life. There's only one gate. There's only one way, and it is narrow. And there's very few that find it. It's the only way that leads to life.Look at Luke 17, the words of Jesus Christ. "Will any of you who has a servant slave plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field?" So the story is the master has some servants. The servants are working out in the field all day. It's hot. They're exhausted. They come back from the field and then Jesus says, "What do you think the master's going to say when he has come to the field? Come at once and recline at table." Is the master going to say, "Hey, I prepared dinner for you guys. Hey servants, hey slaves. I prepared some dinner. You want to sit down? You had a long day." No. "Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward, you will eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty?'"Did you get that text? I love texts like this because this is savage Jesus. I read text, I'm like, yeah, savage. By the way, if you're new to Mosaic, this is how most churches preach the gospel. They're like, "Hey, Jesus came to serve you. Repent of your sins. And then you're a Christian. All right. Let's baptize you all right. Hopefully we'll see you again. Ever." Yeah, we don't do that. What we do here is we say, if you're a Christian, yeah, Jesus says you are to obey him, repent, and believe. If you didn't obey at some point, repent. He's got grace, but you still got to keep preventing. And then if you're not a believer, this is what we say. "Hey, you got to count the cost of becoming a Christian. And you also got to count the cost of not becoming a Christian."You count the cost of becoming a Christian, and I'll say, this is how you become a Christian. You repent of your sins. You trust in Jesus Christ. You believe in him. You submit to him and you become a Christian today. All of your sins are forgiven. But you know what happens when you wake up tomorrow? You got to repent and believe again. And the day after that, yeah, you got to repent. You got to keep doing it. So if you become a Christian today, you got to become like you're a Christian every day for the rest of eternity. And it's hard. That's what we say.So count the cost. We say that. And then count the cost of not becoming a Christian. Count the cost of not becoming Christian. There's only one way to eternal a life. There's only one way to forgiveness, and that's Jesus Christ. And the cost of not becoming Christian is if you die without Christ, apart from faith in Christ, you will spend eternity in hell, all of eternity, eternal conscious suffering. That's just how it works. That's how it works. So we ask that you repent. We say it's hard, but God gives you the holy spirit and God empowers us to live life as conquerors.Paul is called to be an apostle. So he's a servant slave of Jesus Christ. And he's called to be an apostle. Apostle means an official representative, envoy, commissioned and taught directly by Jesus Christ. That's what it took to become the first apostles, the first 12, they had to see the resurrected Christ and they were taught directly by Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I was called. I'm called to be an apostle." So this is for every Christian who's in this deconstruction phase, which just means you are becoming an apostate and the deconstruction never leads to reconstruction with scriptures because you get rid of the ... Like all of those people, what they do, this is all the false teachers.They say, we like Jesus. We don't like Paul. We like Jesus. This is Paul's opinion. We don't like Paul. And Jesus is nice. Paul's not. And I submit to you haven't read the teachings of Jesus or understand what he really believes in terms of the Old Testament he viewed it in all his holy scripture. But say Paul was commissioned by Jesus Christ. So to reject the writings of Paul is to reject the writings of Christ by the power of the holy spirit. So we're not apostles, but we are ambassadors of Christ. And this is really important. Paul knew his calling. Do you know yours? Yes, we're slaves of Jesus Christ, but do you know your particular calling? How would you fill that in? Called to be a what? Called to be a what? Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you have a calling that is greater than your job, a calling, a vocation.What is that for you? And I would submit to you for as long as you live here, you are called to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ, here to this city. Second Corinthians 5, 17 through 21. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. 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," that means all Christians. "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, you might become the righteousness of God."We're ambassadors. We're sent from the king. We're sent here. We're sent to do what as ministers of reconciliation to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, to call people to faith and repentance. Doesn't matter where you study, where you work, where you build, where you live, what you produce and where you vacation. Never forget that this is your identity. You are a slave of Jesus Christ to live a life in a hundred percent submission to him. And we are ambassadors to the city. And I say this because this is the only way we reach the city. If we're in this mentality of like, I come. I'm here to be served. Let me get fed real quick. Let me get my worship on. Let me get some prayer going. Let me do a little communion thing and I'm out. I'm going to continue living my life however I want. We're never going to impact the city.If you don't have fire in your belly for Jesus Christ, you don't have fire for evangelism, then you're not an ambassador. You're just a bench warmer. Do you want more of the power of the holy spirit in your life? Well then you need to start thinking about what the holy spirit is thinking about. What's the holy spirit thinking about? Where is the mind of the holy spirit? The mind of the holy spirit is focused on the gospel. The holy spirit is all about the gospel and converting people, saving people. The word gospel, Ευαγγέλιο, is good news, glad tidings, appears 76 times in the New Testament, 60 times in the writing of Paul. This was the purpose of his life.Second, faith throws in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. Verse two, "Which he, God, promised beforehand." What did he promise? The gospel. "He promised the gospel through his prophets and the holy scriptures." This is crucial. And every Christian should know that there are prophecies in the Old Testament, that God had made promises centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, 1,700 years, a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ.And these prophecies stand still. Like you can't get rid of them. And I know this because in seminary, I took this class where we were talking about the New Testament, use of the old Testament. And in it, as we're talking about prophecies, the Old Testament, the professor was like, "Yeah, there's prophecies, but they've been largely debunked." Debunked by whom? And this is the whole ... Like this back in the day, I didn't realize. I learned this with fact checkers the past two years. Fact checkers didn't really exist.By the way I grew up in the 90s. It was tremendous. It never got better. Everything went downhill after I graduated high school, 2001, it went downhill. It was terrible. So if you came of age after that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So the 90s were tremendous. And the whole fact check thing, that didn't exist until like other people started checking on what the mainstream media was saying. They're like, "That's not true. That's not true." And then all of a sudden, these fact checkers who were financed by the same people as mainstream media, all of a sudden, these fact checkers are like, "Yeah, that's largely false." No. The fact checkers, let me just say about theology. They've been doing this for centuries. And I finally realized that's the trick of Satan. And he does that with scripture. And the whole thing of like, "That's not true because we fact checked it and it's not true because we said it." That's all the argument is.And then you look at the arguments, and all they do is they change the date that books are written. So Daniel, for example, they were like, "Yeah, Daniel wasn't written when it's in the seventh century, BC, when he said that he was written. It was actually written in the second century BC." And I was like, "Professor, why?" And they're like, because the prophecies are too accurate to have happened beforehand. Well, that's a preposition of disbelief and I reject that as lies from Satan. So prophecies are true. They're in scripture. And there's nothing you can do to them because the prophecies are written centuries before anything. They're there. You can say it's not true, but based on what? That's first of all. And then second of all, mathematically, it's airtight.So here's a few of these prophecies that Saint Paul is looking at. And the reason why he's looking at is to show that holy scripture has a divine author. It's written by the Lord. And particular prophecies he's talking about, the prophecies about the Messiah that are coming. So prophecies in regard to his birth, I'm just going to give you a handful, "That he would be called Emmanuel. And that the Messiah would be born of a virgin." This is Isaiah 7:14, written 700 years before the birth of Christ. "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she'll call his name Emmanuel." I didn't pick the self-fulfilling prophecies. There's some prophecies where it's like, Jesus is going to enter Jerusalem on a donkey. And you can look at that and be like, "Yeah, Jesus knew that ahead of time. That's why you got the donkey, not the horse."I'm picking the prophecies that you cannot self ... You cannot be like, "I am going to be born of a virgin." You can't do that. There's nothing you can do that. It's in the Bible. "That he would be born in Bethlehem." This is Micah 5:2, "But you, oh Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the Klans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be a ruler in Israel, who's coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. That his birth lace would it suffer a massacre of infants." That's Jeremiah 31:15, and this is prophesying about what Herod would do and his attempt to kill Jesus. Satan always wants to kill babies. Jeremiah 31:15, "Thus says the Lord a voice is heard in Ramah, a lamentation, a bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.""The prophecy that he, the Messiah, would be the son of man, fully man and son of God," Isaiah 9:6. "For to us a child is born human. To us a son is given, son of man. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God. Who is this child that's going to be called mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace? Prophecy that this one born of a Virgin from Bethlehem, this one who is the son of man and the son of God. This one would suffer for our sins." Isaiah 53, 4 through 6, the whole chapter, but 4 through 6, "Surely he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows. Yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastising that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."A prophecy that he would die. He would be executed with a piercing through his hands and feet, and this Psalm was written 300 years before crucifixion was invented as capital punishment by the Persians. This is Psalm 22, verse one begins, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" What Jesus said on the cross. And the verse 16, "For dogs encompassed me. A company of evil doers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. For my clothing they cast lots."And prophecy that this one who bore our sins would not remain dead." Psalm 16:10, "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption." Or prophecy that he would be seated at God's right hand, Psalm 110, verse one. "The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for your feet, until I make your enemies a foot stool." If you just take eight of these prophecies, and the mathematicians have done the work, you can find it online. The chances of someone fulfilling just eight of these prophecies centuries after they are made. And this is the most conservative estimate. The chances of this are 1 in 10 to the power of 17. This is mathematically impossible for one person to do this, to fulfill all of this. And Saint Paul, he is the apostle to the Gentiles, and he wants the whole world to know the power of God's word, that God, whatever God promises comes to fruition, therefore, why would you not believe the word of God?Romans 1:3, "Concerning his son, all these prophecies concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh." The good news, it's all about Jesus Christ, is prophesied in the Old Testament. And by the way, I just gave you verses, if you look at the Old Testament as a whole, and if you see like the whole process of God choosing people, the whole process of God, giving animal sacrifice system, the whole priesthood system, the whole law, everything in the Old Testament, the Passover, the temple, everything in the old Testament, it all points to Jesus Christ. Good news is about Christ, a physical descendant of David. This is important to key identify that the long-promised Messiah, the coming king, is going to be a descendant of King David, Israel's greatest king.Now Jesus Christ was the son of Mary. He was the adopted son of Joseph because Mary had Jesus by the power of the holy spirit. So Jesus descended from David, according to the flesh, through Mary. Verse four, "And was declared to be the son of God, and power according to the spirit of holiness. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord. He was declared to be the son of God." Was he the son of God before being declared the son of God? Yes. What he's getting at is that there were these two stages or two states of Jesus' ministry. The first one was in humiliation. Jesus Christ did come as a δοῦλος. He came as a slave and he came to serve us by dying for our sins. During his earthly ministry, Jesus served in meekness and loneliness and humility, in many ways hiddenness. When he showed and revealed his power, it was always a surprise to people. There was a hiddenness.Well, after his resurrection, he was declared to be the son of God. Through his resurrection, we see his power and his glory. Jesus didn't begin to be the son of God at his resurrection, but he began his exalted reign on the throne, seated at the right hand of God, the father. Like this right here, this verse and this truth, this is the linchpin of Christianity. Everything hangs on this. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead? If Jesus Christ came back from the dead, there's no excuse for anybody to reject him. None. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead?Well, of course he did. Of course, he did. How else do you explain Christianity? How do you explain the rise of the Christian church? How do you explain the fact that the church is the greatest human movement in all of world history? How do you explain all the good that came from Christianity? How do you explain all the lives being transformed on a daily basis? Jesus Christ came back from the dead. Paul saw him. The apostles saw him. And they were willing to go to the death for this truth.Point three, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. And that's verse five, "Through whom we have received grace." So God gives grace and apostleship. He gave apostleship to Paul to bring about what's the point? What's the purpose of everything that God gave you, Paul? To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. God gives Paul grace to be a Christian and grace to affect in the world, among the nations, obedience of faith. And basically, this is God's call to every single human being.We are to surrender to Jesus Christ. We're to believe in him and obey. True faith obeys. True faith works. And by the way, to believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior is actually the first act of obedience because Jesus commands that we are to repent and believe. Jesus commands, "Come to me, all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus commands it. So faith is an act of the will. A lot of people think faith is just in the mind, like when everything makes sense, when I have enough evidence, then I'm going to become a Christian. Or they think faith is a matter of the heart, of affections, when I love God enough.Well, that's not what faith is. Faith is an act of the will. Just like true love. True love isn't a matter of sentiment or affections. True love, at the core, is an act of the will. I choose to love you. I choose to sacrifice for you. God, I choose to believe and submit my life to you. It's an act of the will. So if you are not a Christian, you're living in disobedience. And Jesus Christ is calling you to repent and believe and obey.A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. And I think it's because a lot of people just misunderstand the Bible and Romans. For some reason, I don't know who did this, but for some reason, someone decided to pit the Book of James against the Book of Romans. I think it was Luther early on. This is what Luther does. He was doing a thing. He's reforming the European church. He has a clear agenda. He's doing this. But he said Romans is all about justification by grace through faith. And he said James is all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works.And I wish I could sit down with Luther. I will one day. We'll sit in heaven, we'll drink Wittenburg beer, and we'll talk theology. He'll be there. I will too because I'm predestined. And I will say this, "Hey, Martin Luther, verse five, and then chapter 16, I think it's verse 26." Obedience of faith, that's the whole point. That's the book end of the Book of Romans. It's not just faith that justifies and then you can live any way you want. It's obedience of faith. It's obedience of faith. He's like, "This is the whole purpose. This is the whole purpose of the book. This is my thesis statement." And by the way, I know how radical this is. I've done the research. I haven't seen many people talking like this about Romans.So Mosaic, I guess it's on us to lead the reformation in the American church, to redefine the word faith. Faith isn't just what you think about a thing. It's not about what you think about God. It's not about what you believe about God. I don't care how good your systematic theology is. I don't care about your philosophy. Do you do it? Do you do the thing? Do you follow Jesus Christ? We're not saved by our works. We're saved by grace through faith. We repent when we fall and then Jesus picks us back up and we keep following. But you have to obey. You have to follow true faith. There's obedience of faith. And without this obedience of faith, without this growth, without this progressive godliness, without this holiness, there's no promise that you will see God.If you say, "I prayed a prayer when I was a kid. I walked down the aisle. I got some feelings at some conference. That's why I'm a Christian." I don't want ... Are you a Christian? Did you follow Jesus this week? Are you pursuing holiness this week? Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." Romans 6:16, "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you're slaves of the one to whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness."And then continues in Romans 1:6, "Including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ." Jesus Christ is the one that calls people to salvation. Christians do not choose Jesus Christ, not initially and not ultimately. God initiates our experience salvation process by calling us to Christ. And once drawn to Christ, we belong to him completely forever.Are you called by Jesus Christ? If you're a Christian, this is your answer. "Yeah. I'm called by Jesus called me to himself. I'm his. I belong to ... I'm called to belong to ... I'm not my own." He continues the same theme. I am a slave. I'm not my own. And by the way, this language of calling, like I'm going to sprinkle it here. But as we continue, as we ramp up to chapter 8, chapter 9, 10, 11, 12, as we get into election and predestination, I'm just telling you right now, I'm going to preach the text as it says, feelings aside. I'll let the Lord deal with the feelings.In Romans 1:7, "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." To all those in Boston, why is he writing to Rome? I'll tell you why he is writing to Rome. He knows that God called him to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations. And he's like, "All right, I'm just a guy. I don't have any resources. I'm not a billionaire. I don't have the connections. I don't have anything. I'm just going to ..." Okay. What would I do if God really called me to this? I'm going to go to the greatest city, Rome. I'm going to write to the greatest city, of the Christians in the greatest city. And I know if I reach the Christians there, and they really get the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then as people come and go from all over the world at this intersection, at these crossroads that are in Rome, all roads lead to Rome.And Saint Paul knew that the greatest impact that he could have was reaching a place like Rome. This is why we're in Boston. For as long as you're here, like we minister here, and a lot of you will leave. New people will come. And I'm just going to be up here. I'm just going to be declaring the word of God. Verse 5 is just what it says, to affect the obedience of faith among all the nations. That's why we're here. This is of strategic importance. He writes to Rome, "Loved by God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Christians are loved by God."He doesn't stop there, "Since God loves us, he wants the best for us, to be saints. And God wants us to be set apart from sin, wholly devoted to him in holiness." How? By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is not cheap grace. And I'm going to close here before communion by reading a few excerpts from the Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, some timely words."Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ's living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his good. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye, which causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him."Costly grace is the gospel, which must be so again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow. And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of his son. You were at a price. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God."So we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. Holy communion is for repented Christians. So if you are not a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Instead, meditate on what you've heard. Or if you choose to become a Christian today, as an act of the will, you believe in Jesus Christ, submit your life to him, and repent of your sins, you're welcome to partake. If you are a Christian living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or better yet, repent of that sin and ask for the Lord's power in overcoming it here on out.I'm going to read first Corinthians 11, 23 through 32. Then I'm going to pray a prayer of repentance and confession. I welcome you to pray with me. As I read. If you haven't received a cup with the bread, please raise your hand, and one of the ushers will give you one.First Christians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then. So eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself."""That's why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world." Let us pray.Lord God, my father, the first and the last, the giver of life and every good gift, as your child, I want to live and pray in a way that pleases you. And I pray for the help of your spirit in order to learn to pray and to persist in praying until it becomes a duty that I love to perform. I pray that you will give me great joy in the time I spend in communion with you. I dare make requests of you, not because of any good in me, for without your mercy, there is no good in me.I approach you boldly based only on the righteous work of my savior and brother Jesus Christ, your son, to whom you gave me before the foundation of the world, who showed compassion to me, even when I was an enemy, dedicated to pleasing only myself, full of self-righteous pride. I pray that you will search my heart and reveal my sin to me, make me abhor I sin, and make me sincerely repent and turn away from evil, to ask your forgiveness, and return to you.Allow me to see your open arms, always willing, even eager to forgive and forget my transgressions and welcome my return to you. Sanctify me, Lord. According to your word and the timeframe you have appointed for me, allow me to see an increase in my obedience and devotion to you as long as it keeps me from becoming self-satisfied in any way. Make me content with what you give me and encourage me to love people when they are unlovable, as you love me. I pray all these things in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who died in my place for all sinners given to him by the father. Bless our time of holy communion as a reminder of what Christ did on the cross on our behalf. Jesus, we thank you. Bless our time of holy communion. I pray this in the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit, amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Heavenly father, we gather, and we come to you in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. By the power of the holy spirit, we ask that you open up your holy scriptures to us as we begin to plum the depth of the riches of the treasure stores that is the Book of Romans. I pray give us receptive hearts and engaged minds. We pray give us a deeper, more robust understanding of the gospel. And more importantly, we pray help us know and love you deeper than ever before. Also, we pray that you make each one of us more effective servants of Jesus Christ. Make us more fruitful believers and a more fruitful church. And we pray during the sermon series, build your church and your kingdom in Boston and beyond. And we pray all this in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit, amen. We're beginning the Book of Romans today, which is kind of a big deal because I've been waiting for this day for a very long time. We preached through it kind of in 2016. We did a flyover. I did like three chapters first Sunday. And I talk really fast, but even that didn't help. So I think this is the first time we're going to go verse by verse through this book. It's going to take us probably a year. I don't know. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here till Jesus takes me home. And the reason why this book is ... Like every single introduction to every single commentary, to every single book on Romans, to every single sermon series, right here, right here is when the author, the pastor gets up and he's like, "This is the greatest book ever. This is the most impactful book ever." It's true. It's true. I don't think I really need to do it, but it is. We would not have Western civilization if it were not for the Book of Romans. The Book of Romans is what sparked the Great Reformation. The Book of Romans is why we are not Catholics. The Book of Romans is why we believe in the Bible. This is the most powerful book in the New Testament. And I hate to do that because that's like saying like one of your kids is better than the other kids, but in some ways they're more differently gifted. Okay? You love all of them equally, but they're different. That's just a fact. The Book of Romans is the most impactful book of all the books in the Bible. And the Bible is the most influential book in all of world history. And the Book of Romans, the whole thing is about the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the greatest news that could ever be, the greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level was not the end of World War II. It was not a cease fire. The greatest news ever proclaimed on a global level is not a full cure to the greatest enemy, the greatest disease. It's not the banking system breaking down and all of our mortgages and student loans and credit card debt just gets wiped out. That would be some tremendous news. The gospel's better, the gospel of Jesus Christ, because of the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of our lord and savior Jesus Christ, we have access to the presence of God. We can have all of our sins, our debts, our trespasses, everything wiped out. We are innocent before God. We have total immunity, total forgiveness, total reconciliation. And this changes absolutely everything. That's what this book is about. The Gospels are about the work of Jesus Christ. The Book of Acts is how to reach the world. The Book of Romans is given to us to rebuild the world. Here's the gospel. It changes everything. It's going to help you put your life in order. It's going to help you take the chaos of your personal life, your personal relationships, everything in your life, put it into order. And that changes absolutely everything. We can be cured from the greatest disease, sin. We can be freed from the greatest enemy, death. We can overcome our second greatest enemy, Satan. We can become children of God. And it's all because of the work of Jesus Christ. We're justified by grace through faith. Now I have to stop and pause and I wonder. So Martin Luther, the great reformer. He's the guy who like looked at the Catholic church and he is like, "We're doing it wrong. We're just doing it wrong." And he got his 95 Theses. He nails it to the door in Wittenburg. We're doing it wrong. And what he said was, "We're not saved by our works. We're not saved by fulfilling the law. There's nothing we can do to be justified before God. There's nothing we can do to have all our sins forgiven. We're justified by grace through faith." That's true. Praise God. I wonder if Martin Luther showed up in 2022, and I wonder if Martin Luther got a taste of some of the teaching in the churches in the United States. I wonder what he would say. I wonder if he would say something along the lines like, "Hey, Christians, I think it's time for a new reformation." The problem is we're so decentralized, there's nowhere really to nail the next 95 Theses. I don't know. Where would you put it? I don't know. I don't know. That's part of the problem with the American church. I think what he would say is, "Hey, it is justification by grace through faith, but you still got to do the other stuff. You still have to know the Bible. You still have to obey God. You still have to follow God. You got to follow Jesus Christ." He said that literally in his first thesis of his first 95 Theses. The first one says, "When the Lord, Jesus Christ, said repent and believe, he meant that every single one of our days will be a day of repentance." We repent and believe as we follow Jesus Christ in obedience. If your faith in Christ does not produce transformation, sanctification, does not produce affections for Christ, does not produce a desire for holiness, a desire to mortify sin, a desire to share the gospel, if you do not, as a Christian, have a desire to serve God, then I submit to you you're probably not a Christian. If you are forgiven by God, you will become transformed into the image of the son of God. There aren't different levels of Christians. There are in terms of rewards, and that's a different sermon. But in terms of just being a Christian, there aren't different levels. Like what it means to become a Christian is you become a follower of Jesus Christ. That's what the whole book is about. The justifying faith changes a person. It regenerates you. You now have a desire to follow the Lord. And I'm so thankful for this church. This church is full of believers who are a hungry for God's word, hungry. I started putting out these sermon guides. I send it out with the newsletter every week. They're like between 7, and 9, and 10 pages. And people email me all the time. They're like, "This is so good." I also have typos in there that if you find one, then you let me know, you do get a chicken wing. And I also have jokes in there, every once in a while, to see who's listening, just once in a while. So I think we're ready for the Book of Romans, Mosaic. Do you? Do you think so? I think we're ready. We'll go slowly for now. Today, we're in Romans 1, 1 through 7. Romans 1, 1 through 7. Would you look at the text with me? "Paul, a serving of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand, through his prophets, in the holy scriptures, concerning his son who was descended from David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection, from the dead Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be safe, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts." Three points to frame up our time before holy communion, first, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission of Christ. Second, faith in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. And third, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. First, spiritual power increases in proportion to submission to Christ. Verse one, Paul, he begins with. Paul introduces himself a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. He introduces himself. This is what people do when they write a letter. Who is this guy, Paul? If you've been at Mosaic for a while, you know, you're familiar with him. We went through First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. We've gone through his of epistles. Just to give you a little recap, he was born in Tarsus as Saul. So he was born in the Roman empire in a Roman city. So he was given Roman citizenship. So most likely he grew up in a very cosmopolitan city, people from all over the world. So he was multilingual. He knew Greek, Koine Greek, the language of the day. He knew Hebrew because he grew up in a Jewish family. He grew up going to synagogue. He knew Aramaic because you had to and to know parts of the Old Testament, and Book of Daniel in particular. And most likely, he knew Latin as well. So incredibly educated early on in life. People realized that he was precocious. He has a very keen mind. Of all the apostles, everybody knew who the smartest guy was. Everyone knew who was the most sophisticated theologically, philosophically. He's a genius. Peter, who was the closest apostle of Jesus Christ, Peter, in his writings talking about the writings of Paul, he says, "And Paul," as he wrote in the other scriptures, he calls the writings of Paul a scripture. And he says some of the things that he writes are hard to understand. That's Peter himself. Peter's like, "I have to say, he talks about Jesus. He follows Jesus. I don't know what he's talking about. The predestination stuff, all that, I don't know." But that's Paul. Everyone knew he was a genius. He was on track to becoming one of the greatest probably rabbis. And he was a man of ambition, not just intellect. And his ambition was to get as high as he possibly could in the hierarchy that was the Jewish faith. So much so that he most likely had the Old Testament memorized. How do I know that he had the Old Testament memorized? Because he writes at least 13 of the epistles, maybe 14 with Book of Hebrews. We're not sure. He doesn't attribute it to himself, but as he's writing, he's writing in prison. He's writing in house arrest. He's writing as he's traveling. He doesn't have his books with him. He writes one of his epistles. "Hey, could someone please bring my books? I don't have my books." So as he's writing the epistles of the New Testament, and he's quoting the Old Testament, he's quoting it from memory. He's a genius. He studied under Gamaliel, which is like I used to say Harvard. This is the Harvard of theology, but Harvard hasn't produced a noteworthy theologian in probably 200 years. So the highest theological school you can think of, that's Paul, like super ambitious. Like to modernize Paul, if Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro could have a child, that would be the apostle Paul. That's him. And so he's driven and he's taking over the world and he's doing it for, he believes, Judaism, which is religion of God. And then he hears about Christians who follow this guy named Jesus Christ. It's the messiah. And then he died. He was crucified by the Romans and the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Jewish people altogether. And then Paul says, this is demonic. This is a heresy, starts persecuting Christians, starts killing Christians. He get it's papers from the church in Jerusalem to go to Damascus, to arrest more Christians on the road to Damascus. Jesus says enough is enough. You're mine. And he converts him. Paul had no choice in the matter. He had zero choice in the matter. Sometimes people ask me like, why are you a Christian? I'm like, because God made me a Christian. That's my only answer. God made me a Christian. God just told like you're mine. That's it. Did I get a vote? I got no votes. I got zero votes. God just said you're mine, called me to become a Christian. That's kind of what happened with Saint Paul. He did not have a choice. He did not enlist. He got drafted. And he got drafted by the king. Now you are my apostle. So that's Paul. He still has the zeal. He has the knowledge of the Old Testament. He is called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Although he knows the Old Testament scriptures like no one else, but that's because the Gentiles too need the Old Testament scriptures. And he reasons with the Gentiles, not just from extra-biblical cultural resource, he goes to the scriptures. He goes to the prophecies. He's like, "Look, it was all planned. It was all predestined before the foundation of the world." The question before us today is what made this guy so effective? How many people today do we think about, 2000 years after their life and death, do we think about on a daily basis? Well, Christians all around the world, this is millions of people, think about Saint Paul all the time. He's made an impact on the world. No matter what you think of the guy, we have a Saint Paul Street down the street. We have a Saint Paul Street. I can't believe Brookline still hasn't changed the name. I think it's coming. It's not going to be Saint Paul. It's going to be something else, but it's still there. That's what I'm saying. He's made an impact on the world. What made this guy so powerful? Was it just his intellect? I don't think so. What is it his worldly powers, material, power, influence? No, it was his spiritual power. It was the spirit of God working in and through him. Yes, he was a chosen vessel. Yes, he was one of a kind. Yes, he was handpicked by Jesus. The resurrected Christ showed up to Paul, but can we learn something from his life to help us become more spiritually powerful? I think this is what a lot of people are craving. We're craving this. Our generation is craving this spiritual power. People are seeking spiritual power. We know the material world is bereft of spiritual power that will actually change things and satisfy our souls. How can we grow in spiritual power? We can learn from Paul. As he introduces himself, he gives the first and most important identifier. The thing that distinguishes him, the thing that distinguishes his identity more than anything else, he says, Paul, and what does he call himself? A servant of Christ Jesus, a servant of Christ Jesus. Now the word for servant here, I need to do a little work, is the Greek word, δοῦλος, not διάκονος. διάκονος means servant. δοῦλος does not mean servant. δοῦλος means slave. And when New Testament uses this word in other places, sometimes they translate it slave, and sometimes they translate it servant, which I have a problem with. If you are translating the Bible, you got to be consistent. If you pick servant, go with servant the whole time. If you pick a slave, go with slave the whole time. And I understand why. I've read all the papers, scholarly papers. I know why they chose the word that they did because of the cultural connotations, the cultural sensibilities that come with the word slave. Now I ask you to put those cultural sensibilities aside when there's a very important biblical truth to know. That's number one. The other thing I want to say is like at what point do we say no to cultural sensibilities and say too bad? No offense, none taken. God's word is God's word. Like when the culture comes to us and says, you can't say the word father, God the father. We're against the patriarchy. Yeah, we don't want to use father. Can we use parent? God, the parent? No, you can't. How about God the son? Can we change God the son to like God the child? No, we can't. This is part of biblical truth. So cultural sensibilities, you can go mess with language out there. Do not mess with this. If you mess with this, like this is sacred. I will die for this. No, we are going to obey God's word and we are going to interpret it as it stands. So the word here is δοῦλος and this is really important. And I say this is important because sometimes in New Testament, the decision's made one way or the other. But I'm going to give you one text where you got both and showing that Jesus Christ actually attributes this word to himself. He calls himself δοῦλος, slave. He calls himself that here. And he calls himself that in Philippians chapter two, where it says. "He, though being God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped and made himself human, taking the form of a servant." That's the word δοῦλος. So Matthew 20:25 through 28, "But Jesus Christ called to them and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles has lorded over them, and the great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant." And that's the word διάκονος. We get the word deacon from it. This is a person that serves, as contrasted with verse 27, "Whoever would be first among you must be your slave." δοῦλος. "Even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, Jesus Christ said, 'Even as the son of man." Jesus came primarily as a slave. He came to serve us. He came to do the father's bidding. He wrestled with the father's bidding. In the Garden of Gethsemane he cries out, "God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me." And then he says what a good slave would say. "It's not my will, but yours be done." So Jesus Christ died in humiliation as a slave, paying the penalty for our sins. He was buried, rose from the dead, and in 40 days, he ascended to the right hand of God. Is Jesus Christ now a δοῦλος? Oh no, he's not. He was a δοῦλος. He was a slave. Now he's the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. What's the difference being servant and slave? I'll tell you the difference. A servant is hired. A slave is purchased. A slave is owned. A servant meets the obligations, gets paid, and then leaves. And unfortunately, that's how a lot of Christians view Christianity. "God, I will serve you as a servant a couple hours on Sunday, a couple hours in CG, couple hours in maybe devotions, as long as you pay me with my blessing. If you stop paying me with my blessing, I'm out. If you do something that I do not like, I'm out. If there's any suffering in my life, I'm out. If following you and not sinning is too hard, I'm out." That's a servant mentality. A slave mentality is, "Hey, I was a slave to sin. I was a slave to Satan, and Jesus Christ ransomed me with his blood. He purchased me with his blood. No, I'm not my own. So all of my time, all of my talents, every single aspect, every ounce of my life and my energy, everything I have, it's the Lord's. Lord, what would you have me do?" Christian, this is at the core of your identity. Can you say this? Can you say this proudly? I am a slave of Jesus Christ. I'm a δοῦλος of Jesus Christ. And that's the only place, by the way, you can be free. It's counter-cultural, counterintuitive. Satan promises us freedom and only offers us enslavement. Jesus Christ promises us a yoke. He said, "Come, come after me." He promises a cross. You're going to have to deny yourself on a daily basis. You're going to say no to yourself all the time. And in that relationship with Jesus Christ, you will find a freedom that you have never experienced before, a freedom of the soul. Jesus Christ gives you the barriers, the boundaries that you were designed to flourish in, in a relationship with him. It gives us the path to freedom. Being enslaved to Christ is how you become the best, most powerful version of yourself. When enslaved to Christ, you aren't enslaved to anything or anyone else. You are worshiping the creator. You only fear the creator. You're not enslaved to any other person. You're not enslaved to things. Submit yourself to Christ, and he gives you the power to break through any enslavement, including any addiction. We live in a day and age where more people are addicted to more things than ever in the history of the world. More people died from the drug overdose last year in the United States than they did of COVID. We're addicted. We're addicted to our phones. We're addicted to social media. We're addicted to entertainment. We're addicted to substances. We're addicted to food. Were addicted to people. We're addicted, addicted, addicted. We're enslaved. We're not free. We're not free. This is the most enslaved generation ever in the history. We are just enslaved. And Jesus Christ comes and he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father but through me." Yes, it's very narrow. It's very narrow. There's only one way to the path to life. There's only one gate. There's only one way, and it is narrow. And there's very few that find it. It's the only way that leads to life. Look at Luke 17, the words of Jesus Christ. "Will any of you who has a servant slave plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field?" So the story is the master has some servants. The servants are working out in the field all day. It's hot. They're exhausted. They come back from the field and then Jesus says, "What do you think the master's going to say when he has come to the field? Come at once and recline at table." Is the master going to say, "Hey, I prepared dinner for you guys. Hey servants, hey slaves. I prepared some dinner. You want to sit down? You had a long day." No. "Will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me and dress properly and serve me while I eat and drink. And afterward, you will eat and drink.' Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say 'We are unworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty?'" Did you get that text? I love texts like this because this is savage Jesus. I read text, I'm like, yeah, savage. By the way, if you're new to Mosaic, this is how most churches preach the gospel. They're like, "Hey, Jesus came to serve you. Repent of your sins. And then you're a Christian. All right. Let's baptize you all right. Hopefully we'll see you again. Ever." Yeah, we don't do that. What we do here is we say, if you're a Christian, yeah, Jesus says you are to obey him, repent, and believe. If you didn't obey at some point, repent. He's got grace, but you still got to keep preventing. And then if you're not a believer, this is what we say. "Hey, you got to count the cost of becoming a Christian. And you also got to count the cost of not becoming a Christian." You count the cost of becoming a Christian, and I'll say, this is how you become a Christian. You repent of your sins. You trust in Jesus Christ. You believe in him. You submit to him and you become a Christian today. All of your sins are forgiven. But you know what happens when you wake up tomorrow? You got to repent and believe again. And the day after that, yeah, you got to repent. You got to keep doing it. So if you become a Christian today, you got to become like you're a Christian every day for the rest of eternity. And it's hard. That's what we say. So count the cost. We say that. And then count the cost of not becoming a Christian. Count the cost of not becoming Christian. There's only one way to eternal a life. There's only one way to forgiveness, and that's Jesus Christ. And the cost of not becoming Christian is if you die without Christ, apart from faith in Christ, you will spend eternity in hell, all of eternity, eternal conscious suffering. That's just how it works. That's how it works. So we ask that you repent. We say it's hard, but God gives you the holy spirit and God empowers us to live life as conquerors. Paul is called to be an apostle. So he's a servant slave of Jesus Christ. And he's called to be an apostle. Apostle means an official representative, envoy, commissioned and taught directly by Jesus Christ. That's what it took to become the first apostles, the first 12, they had to see the resurrected Christ and they were taught directly by Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I was called. I'm called to be an apostle." So this is for every Christian who's in this deconstruction phase, which just means you are becoming an apostate and the deconstruction never leads to reconstruction with scriptures because you get rid of the ... Like all of those people, what they do, this is all the false teachers. They say, we like Jesus. We don't like Paul. We like Jesus. This is Paul's opinion. We don't like Paul. And Jesus is nice. Paul's not. And I submit to you haven't read the teachings of Jesus or understand what he really believes in terms of the Old Testament he viewed it in all his holy scripture. But say Paul was commissioned by Jesus Christ. So to reject the writings of Paul is to reject the writings of Christ by the power of the holy spirit. So we're not apostles, but we are ambassadors of Christ. And this is really important. Paul knew his calling. Do you know yours? Yes, we're slaves of Jesus Christ, but do you know your particular calling? How would you fill that in? Called to be a what? Called to be a what? Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you have a calling that is greater than your job, a calling, a vocation. What is that for you? And I would submit to you for as long as you live here, you are called to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ, here to this city. Second Corinthians 5, 17 through 21. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. 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," that means all Christians. "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, you might become the righteousness of God." We're ambassadors. We're sent from the king. We're sent here. We're sent to do what as ministers of reconciliation to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, to call people to faith and repentance. Doesn't matter where you study, where you work, where you build, where you live, what you produce and where you vacation. Never forget that this is your identity. You are a slave of Jesus Christ to live a life in a hundred percent submission to him. And we are ambassadors to the city. And I say this because this is the only way we reach the city. If we're in this mentality of like, I come. I'm here to be served. Let me get fed real quick. Let me get my worship on. Let me get some prayer going. Let me do a little communion thing and I'm out. I'm going to continue living my life however I want. We're never going to impact the city. If you don't have fire in your belly for Jesus Christ, you don't have fire for evangelism, then you're not an ambassador. You're just a bench warmer. Do you want more of the power of the holy spirit in your life? Well then you need to start thinking about what the holy spirit is thinking about. What's the holy spirit thinking about? Where is the mind of the holy spirit? The mind of the holy spirit is focused on the gospel. The holy spirit is all about the gospel and converting people, saving people. The word gospel, Ευαγγέλιο, is good news, glad tidings, appears 76 times in the New Testament, 60 times in the writing of Paul. This was the purpose of his life. Second, faith throws in proportion to humble knowledge of scripture. Verse two, "Which he, God, promised beforehand." What did he promise? The gospel. "He promised the gospel through his prophets and the holy scriptures." This is crucial. And every Christian should know that there are prophecies in the Old Testament, that God had made promises centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, 1,700 years, a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ. And these prophecies stand still. Like you can't get rid of them. And I know this because in seminary, I took this class where we were talking about the New Testament, use of the old Testament. And in it, as we're talking about prophecies, the Old Testament, the professor was like, "Yeah, there's prophecies, but they've been largely debunked." Debunked by whom? And this is the whole ... Like this back in the day, I didn't realize. I learned this with fact checkers the past two years. Fact checkers didn't really exist. By the way I grew up in the 90s. It was tremendous. It never got better. Everything went downhill after I graduated high school, 2001, it went downhill. It was terrible. So if you came of age after that, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So the 90s were tremendous. And the whole fact check thing, that didn't exist until like other people started checking on what the mainstream media was saying. They're like, "That's not true. That's not true." And then all of a sudden, these fact checkers who were financed by the same people as mainstream media, all of a sudden, these fact checkers are like, "Yeah, that's largely false." No. The fact checkers, let me just say about theology. They've been doing this for centuries. And I finally realized that's the trick of Satan. And he does that with scripture. And the whole thing of like, "That's not true because we fact checked it and it's not true because we said it." That's all the argument is. And then you look at the arguments, and all they do is they change the date that books are written. So Daniel, for example, they were like, "Yeah, Daniel wasn't written when it's in the seventh century, BC, when he said that he was written. It was actually written in the second century BC." And I was like, "Professor, why?" And they're like, because the prophecies are too accurate to have happened beforehand. Well, that's a preposition of disbelief and I reject that as lies from Satan. So prophecies are true. They're in scripture. And there's nothing you can do to them because the prophecies are written centuries before anything. They're there. You can say it's not true, but based on what? That's first of all. And then second of all, mathematically, it's airtight. So here's a few of these prophecies that Saint Paul is looking at. And the reason why he's looking at is to show that holy scripture has a divine author. It's written by the Lord. And particular prophecies he's talking about, the prophecies about the Messiah that are coming. So prophecies in regard to his birth, I'm just going to give you a handful, "That he would be called Emmanuel. And that the Messiah would be born of a virgin." This is Isaiah 7:14, written 700 years before the birth of Christ. "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she'll call his name Emmanuel." I didn't pick the self-fulfilling prophecies. There's some prophecies where it's like, Jesus is going to enter Jerusalem on a donkey. And you can look at that and be like, "Yeah, Jesus knew that ahead of time. That's why you got the donkey, not the horse." I'm picking the prophecies that you cannot self ... You cannot be like, "I am going to be born of a virgin." You can't do that. There's nothing you can do that. It's in the Bible. "That he would be born in Bethlehem." This is Micah 5:2, "But you, oh Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the Klans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be a ruler in Israel, who's coming forth is from of old, from ancient days. That his birth lace would it suffer a massacre of infants." That's Jeremiah 31:15, and this is prophesying about what Herod would do and his attempt to kill Jesus. Satan always wants to kill babies. Jeremiah 31:15, "Thus says the Lord a voice is heard in Ramah, a lamentation, a bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more." "The prophecy that he, the Messiah, would be the son of man, fully man and son of God," Isaiah 9:6. "For to us a child is born human. To us a son is given, son of man. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God. Who is this child that's going to be called mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace? Prophecy that this one born of a Virgin from Bethlehem, this one who is the son of man and the son of God. This one would suffer for our sins." Isaiah 53, 4 through 6, the whole chapter, but 4 through 6, "Surely he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows. Yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastising that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." A prophecy that he would die. He would be executed with a piercing through his hands and feet, and this Psalm was written 300 years before crucifixion was invented as capital punishment by the Persians. This is Psalm 22, verse one begins, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" What Jesus said on the cross. And the verse 16, "For dogs encompassed me. A company of evil doers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. For my clothing they cast lots." And prophecy that this one who bore our sins would not remain dead." Psalm 16:10, "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption." Or prophecy that he would be seated at God's right hand, Psalm 110, verse one. "The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool for your feet, until I make your enemies a foot stool." If you just take eight of these prophecies, and the mathematicians have done the work, you can find it online. The chances of someone fulfilling just eight of these prophecies centuries after they are made. And this is the most conservative estimate. The chances of this are 1 in 10 to the power of 17. This is mathematically impossible for one person to do this, to fulfill all of this. And Saint Paul, he is the apostle to the Gentiles, and he wants the whole world to know the power of God's word, that God, whatever God promises comes to fruition, therefore, why would you not believe the word of God? Romans 1:3, "Concerning his son, all these prophecies concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh." The good news, it's all about Jesus Christ, is prophesied in the Old Testament. And by the way, I just gave you verses, if you look at the Old Testament as a whole, and if you see like the whole process of God choosing people, the whole process of God, giving animal sacrifice system, the whole priesthood system, the whole law, everything in the Old Testament, the Passover, the temple, everything in the old Testament, it all points to Jesus Christ. Good news is about Christ, a physical descendant of David. This is important to key identify that the long-promised Messiah, the coming king, is going to be a descendant of King David, Israel's greatest king. Now Jesus Christ was the son of Mary. He was the adopted son of Joseph because Mary had Jesus by the power of the holy spirit. So Jesus descended from David, according to the flesh, through Mary. Verse four, "And was declared to be the son of God, and power according to the spirit of holiness. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord. He was declared to be the son of God." Was he the son of God before being declared the son of God? Yes. What he's getting at is that there were these two stages or two states of Jesus' ministry. The first one was in humiliation. Jesus Christ did come as a δοῦλος. He came as a slave and he came to serve us by dying for our sins. During his earthly ministry, Jesus served in meekness and loneliness and humility, in many ways hiddenness. When he showed and revealed his power, it was always a surprise to people. There was a hiddenness. Well, after his resurrection, he was declared to be the son of God. Through his resurrection, we see his power and his glory. Jesus didn't begin to be the son of God at his resurrection, but he began his exalted reign on the throne, seated at the right hand of God, the father. Like this right here, this verse and this truth, this is the linchpin of Christianity. Everything hangs on this. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead? If Jesus Christ came back from the dead, there's no excuse for anybody to reject him. None. Did Jesus Christ come back from the dead? Well, of course he did. Of course, he did. How else do you explain Christianity? How do you explain the rise of the Christian church? How do you explain the fact that the church is the greatest human movement in all of world history? How do you explain all the good that came from Christianity? How do you explain all the lives being transformed on a daily basis? Jesus Christ came back from the dead. Paul saw him. The apostles saw him. And they were willing to go to the death for this truth. Point three, God gives grace to bring about the obedience of faith. And that's verse five, "Through whom we have received grace." So God gives grace and apostleship. He gave apostleship to Paul to bring about what's the point? What's the purpose of everything that God gave you, Paul? To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. God gives Paul grace to be a Christian and grace to affect in the world, among the nations, obedience of faith. And basically, this is God's call to every single human being. We are to surrender to Jesus Christ. We're to believe in him and obey. True faith obeys. True faith works. And by the way, to believe in Jesus Christ as lord and savior is actually the first act of obedience because Jesus commands that we are to repent and believe. Jesus commands, "Come to me, all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus commands it. So faith is an act of the will. A lot of people think faith is just in the mind, like when everything makes sense, when I have enough evidence, then I'm going to become a Christian. Or they think faith is a matter of the heart, of affections, when I love God enough. Well, that's not what faith is. Faith is an act of the will. Just like true love. True love isn't a matter of sentiment or affections. True love, at the core, is an act of the will. I choose to love you. I choose to sacrifice for you. God, I choose to believe and submit my life to you. It's an act of the will. So if you are not a Christian, you're living in disobedience. And Jesus Christ is calling you to repent and believe and obey. A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. A lot of people misunderstand the word faith. And I think it's because a lot of people just misunderstand the Bible and Romans. For some reason, I don't know who did this, but for some reason, someone decided to pit the Book of James against the Book of Romans. I think it was Luther early on. This is what Luther does. He was doing a thing. He's reforming the European church. He has a clear agenda. He's doing this. But he said Romans is all about justification by grace through faith. And he said James is all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works. It's all about works. And I wish I could sit down with Luther. I will one day. We'll sit in heaven, we'll drink Wittenburg beer, and we'll talk theology. He'll be there. I will too because I'm predestined. And I will say this, "Hey, Martin Luther, verse five, and then chapter 16, I think it's verse 26." Obedience of faith, that's the whole point. That's the book end of the Book of Romans. It's not just faith that justifies and then you can live any way you want. It's obedience of faith. It's obedience of faith. He's like, "This is the whole purpose. This is the whole purpose of the book. This is my thesis statement." And by the way, I know how radical this is. I've done the research. I haven't seen many people talking like this about Romans. So Mosaic, I guess it's on us to lead the reformation in the American church, to redefine the word faith. Faith isn't just what you think about a thing. It's not about what you think about God. It's not about what you believe about God. I don't care how good your systematic theology is. I don't care about your philosophy. Do you do it? Do you do the thing? Do you follow Jesus Christ? We're not saved by our works. We're saved by grace through faith. We repent when we fall and then Jesus picks us back up and we keep following. But you have to obey. You have to follow true faith. There's obedience of faith. And without this obedience of faith, without this growth, without this progressive godliness, without this holiness, there's no promise that you will see God. If you say, "I prayed a prayer when I was a kid. I walked down the aisle. I got some feelings at some conference. That's why I'm a Christian." I don't want ... Are you a Christian? Did you follow Jesus this week? Are you pursuing holiness this week? Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness, without which no one will see the Lord." Romans 6:16, "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you're slaves of the one to whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness." And then continues in Romans 1:6, "Including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ." Jesus Christ is the one that calls people to salvation. Christians do not choose Jesus Christ, not initially and not ultimately. God initiates our experience salvation process by calling us to Christ. And once drawn to Christ, we belong to him completely forever. Are you called by Jesus Christ? If you're a Christian, this is your answer. "Yeah. I'm called by Jesus called me to himself. I'm his. I belong to ... I'm called to belong to ... I'm not my own." He continues the same theme. I am a slave. I'm not my own. And by the way, this language of calling, like I'm going to sprinkle it here. But as we continue, as we ramp up to chapter 8, chapter 9, 10, 11, 12, as we get into election and predestination, I'm just telling you right now, I'm going to preach the text as it says, feelings aside. I'll let the Lord deal with the feelings. In Romans 1:7, "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and are called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." To all those in Boston, why is he writing to Rome? I'll tell you why he is writing to Rome. He knows that God called him to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations. And he's like, "All right, I'm just a guy. I don't have any resources. I'm not a billionaire. I don't have the connections. I don't have anything. I'm just going to ..." Okay. What would I do if God really called me to this? I'm going to go to the greatest city, Rome. I'm going to write to the greatest city, of the Christians in the greatest city. And I know if I reach the Christians there, and they really get the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then as people come and go from all over the world at this intersection, at these crossroads that are in Rome, all roads lead to Rome. And Saint Paul knew that the greatest impact that he could have was reaching a place like Rome. This is why we're in Boston. For as long as you're here, like we minister here, and a lot of you will leave. New people will come. And I'm just going to be up here. I'm just going to be declaring the word of God. Verse 5 is just what it says, to affect the obedience of faith among all the nations. That's why we're here. This is of strategic importance. He writes to Rome, "Loved by God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Christians are loved by God." He doesn't stop there, "Since God loves us, he wants the best for us, to be saints. And God wants us to be set apart from sin, wholly devoted to him in holiness." How? By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is not cheap grace. And I'm going to close here before communion by reading a few excerpts from the Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, some timely words. "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ's living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his good. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye, which causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him." Costly grace is the gospel, which must be so again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow. And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life. And it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of his son. You were at a price. And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God." So we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. Holy communion is for repented Christians. So if you are not a Christian, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. Instead, meditate on what you've heard. Or if you choose to become a Christian today, as an act of the will, you believe in Jesus Christ, submit your life to him, and repent of your sins, you're welcome to partake. If you are a Christian living in unrepentant sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or better yet, repent of that sin and ask for the Lord's power in overcoming it here on out. I'm going to read first Corinthians 11, 23 through 32. Then I'm going to pray a prayer of repentance and confession. I welcome you to pray with me. As I read. If you haven't received a cup with the bread, please raise your hand, and one of the ushers will give you one. First Christians 11:23, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then. So eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself."" "That's why many of you are weak and ill. Some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. When we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world." Let us pray. Lord God, my father, the first and the last, the giver of life and every good gift, as your child, I want to live and pray in a way that pleases you. And I pray for the help of your spirit in order to learn to pray and to persist in praying until it becomes a duty that I love to perform. I pray that you will give me great joy in the time I spend in communion with you. I dare make requests of you, not because of any good in me, for without your mercy, there is no good in me. I approach you boldly based only on the righteous work of my savior and brother Jesus Christ, your son, to whom you gave me before the foundation of the world, who showed compassion to me, even when I was an enemy, dedicated to pleasing only myself, full of self-righteous pride. I pray that you will search my heart and reveal my sin to me, make me abhor I sin, and make me sincerely repent and turn away from evil, to ask your forgiveness, and return to you. Allow me to see your open arms, always willing, even eager to forgive and forget my transgressions and welcome my return to you. Sanctify me, Lord. According to your word and the timeframe you have appointed for me, allow me to see an increase in my obedience and devotion to you as long as it keeps me from becoming self-satisfied in any way. Make me content with what you give me and encourage me to love people when they are unlovable, as you love me. I pray all these things in the name of my savior, Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who died in my place for all sinners given to him by the father. Bless our time of holy communion as a reminder of what Christ did on the cross on our behalf. Jesus, we thank you. Bless our time of holy communion. I pray this in the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit, amen.

Hallo Beschwörer, es war ein gefühlt wochenlanger Tag gewesen und Ekko möchte seinen Eltern sagen, dass er sich nicht bei den oberen Klans oder einer versnobten Piltie-Schule bewerben wird. Als seine Eltern schließlich von der Arbeit nach Hause kommen, haben sie ein Geschenk für ihn. Links: Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/readoflegends Discord: https://discord.gg/Dv5a6fxEdh YouTube: http://bit.ly/ReadLegends Shorts? https://bit.ly/3EU0e4z Insterra: https://www.instagram.com/read_of_legends/ Runetwitter: https://twitter.com/ReadLegends Deezer: http://bit.ly/roldeezer "Wiegenlied (Ekko)" wurde gemäß Riot Games „Rechtliches Jibber Jabber“ -Richtlinie erstellt und nutzt Gedankengut in Besitz von Riot Games. Dieses Projekt wird weder von Riot Games unterstützt noch gesponsert. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/readoflegends/message

Les Goffs se considèrent comme les plus Orks de tous les Orks, et en tant que plus éminents représentants de la kulture peau verte, ils se sentent investis d'une immense supériorité sur les autres Klans ainsi que sur les autres espèces de la galaxie.

James Lafferty, CEO of Fine Hygienic Holdings spoke from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. A Cincinnati native, previously division CEO for P&G, Coca-Cola, British American Tobacco and many world class companies, now resides in Dubai. Jim, also a feminist, described his voting record from '84 to now, his interpretation of mental disarmament from Nelson Mandela's story, his feelings about white privilege, thought about Klans, perception of minority progressions and how to win their votes and trust, and the importance of unifiers as he claimed "if America gets unified, we'd be unstoppable". "I got 3,500 employees, 3,400+ are muslims and they the best people in the world. And some the finest people I know are muslims. People talk about Nigeria in a very negative sense, and its scams and this and that, honestly, some the greatest people I know are in Nigeria, and the most dynamic, most incredible people. Yes, there can be scams but there are scams everywhere..." - James Lafferty.

Heute sind unsere Abenteurer von ungewöhnlichem Tatdrang ergriffen. Zielstrebig werden da Asseln gefurcht, Ghule gefuchtelt, rivalisierende Klans an den Verhandlungstisch geholt und Fillimirinda fast für acht Kamele verkauft. Zum Glück wusste Vard gerade nicht, was ein Kamel wert ist. Es kommt so weit, dass der Meister uns für die nächste Woche ein abendfüllendes Besäufnis angeordnet hat. Keine Widerrede! Weitere Informationen zu uns und unseren Abenteuern findet ihr auf unserem Blog: https://bloedinaventurien.blogspot.com/ Wenn ihr uns erreichen wollt, schreibt an unsere depressive Mailbox ratdesbloeden@gmail.com  oder hinterlasst eine Nachricht auf  https://anchor.fm/ratdesbloeden Fillins Charakterbogen: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BBOyXhuI33VOHx5s4QI28m4BsQQGn2agWXbVeLDlvHM/edit?usp=sharing Vards Charakterbogen: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12SSoThE845pYmo9UjMMgtcz504rvXsYFGfSCRnSynjA/edit?usp=sharing Tiunarynns Charakterbogen: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HeuBxjXgFFDlEL9XgVREhEgE6FW3Bvd7IEHaVHSVt7w/edit?usp=sharing Musik by Maddin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ratdesbloeden/message

Kate geht den Wurzeln ihrer asiatischen Serienlandschaft auf die Spur. Angefangen hat alles mit chinesischen Serien, die ihr Herz höher schlagen lassen haben. Ihre drei ersten großen Lieben stellt sie euch in der aktuellen Ausgabe im Detail vor. Lasst euch nach Fernost entführen und lauscht den Inhaltsangaben, Charakterbeschreibungen und ihren Eindrücken. Ashes of Love (香蜜沉沉烬如霜, 2018, Start: 00:01:47) beschreibt eine mehrere Leben umspannende Liebesgeschichte zwischen einer Blumengöttin und einem Feuergott, die ihren Anfang 4000 Jahre vor unserer Zeit nimmt. – Netflix Eternal Love (三生三世十里桃花, 2017, Start: 00:11:08) dreht sich um die junge Göttin Bai Qian. Diese wird auf die Erde geschickt, um einen entflohenen Dämonenlord wieder zurückzubringen. In der menschlichen Welt angekommen, verliebt sie sich in einen Sterblichen und das Drama nimmt seinen Lauf. – Netflix Martial Universe Season 1 (武动乾坤 (上), 2018, Start: 00:42:10) ist die Geschichte des Jungen Lin Dong. Nachdem er ein heiliges Artefakt entdeckt, dass von vielen verschiedenen Klans das Ziel ist, wird er immer tiefer in die Martial Arts-Welt hineingezogen. – Viki Besonderen Dank geht an Sarah und Netti für das Verwenden ihrer grandiosen Inhaltsangabe für Eternal Love.

This week on Look Forward, Jay and Andy return to discuss the illogical response to more COVID-19 cases around the country, the Left wins NASCAR???, SCOTUS delivers some landmark decisions, Q coming to Congress, Trump vs. Ramp, and much more. SHOW NOTES Trump on the rising COVID-19 numbers Statues and Army bases going anti-Confederate SCOTUS delivers a verdict on transgender discrimination case SCOTUS turns down case brought by the DOJ Another Black man killed by police, this time in Atlanta Q is coming to Congress! Trump vs. Ramp: Ramp Wins! Trump announces “Return to Bigotry” tour on Juneteenth in Tulsa, OK! Makes suckers supporters sign waiver for COVID-19 Biden gives his thoughts on worst case scenario if he wins

On Episode 1 of Back in my room, I give my take on Doja Cat and her recent controversy. Then on the second half of the podcast I discuss Amy Cooper, the murder of George Floyd and I touch on the subject of police brutality in Kenya.

Ohne Kenji Mizoguchis UGETSU MONOGATARI kein Siegeszug des japanischen Kinos im Westen: neben Akira Kurosawa steht kaum ein anderer Filmemacher so sehr für das sogenannte goldene Zeitalter des japanischen Filmschaffens. Anfang der 50er Jahre ist Mizoguchi auch einer der ersten, die sich mit Japans Rolle im Zweiten Weltkrieg auseinander setzen. Vordergründig geht es in UGETSU um das Leid der Landbevölkerung während eines Kriegs zwischen Klans im 16. Jahrhundert. Tatsächlich aber gestaltet Mizoguchi seinen Film maximal anschlussfähig für eine Welt, der die Grauen des Krieges noch ganz unmittelbar sind. In UGETSU MONOGATARI werden Frauen entführt und zur Prostitution gezwungen – ein ganz bewusstes Echo des Umgangs japanischer Soldaten mit den sogenannten „comfort women“ während des Weltkriegs. Und brave Bauern verlieren den Verstand, weil sie glauben, Kriegsgewinnler werden zu können. Wir setzen uns kritisch damit auseinander, wie ernst man Mizoguchis ersten Versuch einer verantwortungsbewussten Erinnerungskultur heute noch nehmen kann. Und arbeiten uns an seinem betont japanischen Stil ab: Kamerafahrten wie Bildrollen, die sich vor unseren Augen entfalten.

"All Orks is equal, but some Orks are more equal dan uvvas." - Goff Warboss Bugrat Skumdreg Today we talk about the distinct personalities among Orks! What sets a Goff apart from a Bad Moon, or even an Evil Sunz! Get ready for some fun quotes and even weirder conversation. It's been a while since we recorded, so it took us a minute to get back into the swing of things. Joining us today, for the first time, is a massive Ork fan all the way from Australia, Dylan! If you want to know more about Erik offloading his poor choices (the Space Marine game key) check out our facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/lorehammerpodcast/  

Everyone's here, for the most part. Tom shows up for a brief window to discuss e-sports, we have special guest John Murphy join us later in the episode, and Top 5's are gone and the games are back, let's do this.Cast: Christian Humes, Alex Marinello, Dan Weine, Tom Caswell & Special Guest John MurphyPokémon: 130 - GyaradosGames: Fortnite, Overcooked 2, Madden, Dead Cells, Into The Breach, Mario Tennis Aces, GTA, Watch Dogs, Cyberpunk 2077, E-Sports, Rocket League, Pokémon, VREtcetera: Alex Marinello, Dodgeball, Flaking, Faking, Wine, Sucking It, Porn, Clans (and Klans), Emergency RoomsPodcast Game: Game or No Game!Questions, Comments, Complaints, Corrections!?Call: 805-738-8692Twitter: @UnrankedPodcastEmail@UnrankedPodcast.comTwitter@Christian_Humes, @TunaTargaryen, @BigDan815, @GreatBritom, @JohnnyBGoodInLAGamertagsHenry GaIe, Tuna Targaryen, BigDanW815, GreatBriTomNintendo Friend CodesCH: SW-4405-3172-5821,PSN:TunaTaygaryen, BigDan815, TimeBombTom See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

  Greetings 9MIND Sacred Sisterhood Clan. Peace, protection, prosperity and most of all wisdom be upon we all and of course those we love. Let’s discuss what the world looked like before these false labels of race were invented. How did people identify themselves? Was there such a thing as a individual or an orphan? The answer is no. Individuals or orphans were immediately absorbed into existing tribes. The concept of living alone and by oneself was literally absurd in hunter gatherer cultures as well as agricultural, husbandry villages where the need for everyone to play a role in the overall survival of the Tribe or Clan was a must. So how were the names of Klans or Tribes developedone may ask? Klans took their name from who ever was the Chief, Czar, King, Prince and later from those who conquered them or invaded them. As tribes or Clans united then the combining of the names of the chiefs was what the tribe was called and identified by. Now this had nothing to do with race back. Early man had no concept of race and since all where of a brown hue then the differences would have been more based off phenotype, hair texture, language and geographical location which accounted for whatever culture or life style they adopted. For example, a tribe living by water on the coast created a culture making them co dependent on that water source and the food derived from it where as another tribe located in a dry desert region would more likely have to raise cattle for a food source, clothing and to assist with domesticated work. The creating of FALSE races based of geographical species relocation programs and forced language indoctrination has been ingenuise in creating a permanent feeling of separation and complete division amongst the conquered, kidnapped and colonized. Another way Tribes and Klans were created was based off a shared profession, skill or a sacred religious Priest or Priestesshood. 

Greetings 9Mind Sacred Sisters and others. Peace protection, prosperity and most of all wisdom be upon we all and those we love. Many are unaware that terms or labels like black, white or not names of RACES or TRIBES or KLANS. They are science terms that denote which GROUP you are from based off your GENETICS. White simply means you come from the RECESSIVE geneti group type and BLACK means you come from the DOMINATE genetic group type or class. Now this information is onlyprivy to certain Doctors and Scientist while the vast majority of the BLACK CLASS or type have no idea [ why] we are called Black. I have come to realize that the main WAR that melanin dominate people ie... BLACK PPL have yet to mastr is the WAR of WORDS & DEFINITIONS. As an indigenous people who where forced to learn the language of our conquerors we also where forced to accept the meaning and definitions they taught us in school and gave to us in the dictionary books all written or controlled by them. We must now embar on a reEducation campaign to define their WORDS for OURSELVES. Now what sparked this revelaton was avideo I was listening to by a youtuber named Chrissie and a video she made titled, Colorism:Perception or Reaity and a follow up titled, Are Women Just as Colorist As Men? Left a comment under Chrissie's video agreeing with much she pointed out but DOMINATE (meaning black) GENETIC SURVIVAL is why I created this show and what I dedicate my social media pages toward. Anytime we use these labels black and white we all must began to point out unashamedly what these labels really mean. OUR black, brown and luna children need to hear us teach them the TRUTH about these coded scientific terms which (only) in the US have erroneously been turned into RACES when we know their is NO SUCH thing as a white race or a black race as far as genetics are concerned so these terms must mean something else.

Nach einem Raubzug trifft sich die Hogan-Bande auf einer Ranch, um auf die Beute zu warten, die Hogans Freundin Daisy vorbeibringen soll. Plötzlich taucht auch noch ein mysteriöser Fremder namens John Webb auf, der ebenfalls einen Anteil haben möchte. Es kommt zu einer großen Auseinandersetzung bei der es fast keine Überlebenden gibt. In diesem unterhaltsamen Psychowestern mit sehr guten Ideen von Giuseppe Vari spielt Paradebösewicht Klaus Kinski eine tragende Rolle. Nachdem seine Familie vom Ku Klux Klan umgebracht wurde, sinnt ein Abenteurer auf Rache. Doch zuvor wird er von einem Bankräuber in seine Gewalt gebracht, der ihn zwingt, ihn zur mexikanischen Grenze zu bringen. DVD/Blu Ray-Release: 18.08.2016 (Koch Media GmbH - DVD) Prega il morto e ammazza il vivo Western Land: Italien 1971 Laufzeit: ca. 94 min. FSK: ab 16 Regie: Giuseppe Vari Drehbuch: Adriano Bolzoni Musik: Mario Migliardi Darsteller: Klaus Kinski, Victoria Zinny, Paolo Casella, Dino Strano, Patrizia Adiutori, John Ely, ... https://youtu.be/z6pvSZVPtQs

Nach einem Raubzug trifft sich die Hogan-Bande auf einer Ranch, um auf die Beute zu warten, die Hogans Freundin Daisy vorbeibringen soll. Plötzlich taucht auch noch ein mysteriöser Fremder namens John Webb auf, der ebenfalls einen Anteil haben möchte. Es kommt zu einer großen Auseinandersetzung bei der es fast keine Überlebenden gibt. In diesem unterhaltsamen Psychowestern mit sehr guten Ideen von Giuseppe Vari spielt Paradebösewicht Klaus Kinski eine tragende Rolle. Nachdem seine Familie vom Ku Klux Klan umgebracht wurde, sinnt ein Abenteurer auf Rache. Doch zuvor wird er von einem Bankräuber in seine Gewalt gebracht, der ihn zwingt, ihn zur mexikanischen Grenze zu bringen. DVD/Blu Ray-Release: 18.08.2016 (Koch Media GmbH - DVD) Prega il morto e ammazza il vivo Western Land: Italien 1971 Laufzeit: ca. 94 min. FSK: ab 16 Regie: Giuseppe Vari Drehbuch: Adriano Bolzoni Musik: Mario Migliardi Darsteller: Klaus Kinski, Victoria Zinny, Paolo Casella, Dino Strano, Patrizia Adiutori, John Ely, ... https://youtu.be/z6pvSZVPtQs

Greetings 9Mind Sacred Sisterhood Family. Peace, Protection, Prosperity and most of all Wisdom be upon we and those we love. This evening I want to address the platform of BWGTOW which stands for Black Women Going There Own Way. To a degree I know this is needed for the healing of both BF & BM who are (both) very much broken vessels b/c of colonization, poverty & social engeneering programs neither had any hand in or control over but we now hate & blame one another b/c of pathologies and deviant behaviors we adopted & normalized as a result of our socially engineered habitates. B/c this is what happened I know what to Blame BM for and what not to blame them for. The same with BW & BM. Especially the single household ran ones to which I was one myself. I know what Family related dysfunctions that cane be blamed directly on myself, BM or the SYSTEM we no as the Matrix. Being that I'm a natural analysis which is a key Virgo trait. I know how to divide up the blame for our horrid state evenly and fairly and not say BM or all to blame for our problems or that BW had no hand or consent in accepting their abherent, unatural, unfamily like, un-KLAN like conduct/behavior. Remember I have told you that WOMEN are THE LAW of our KLANS which we today call HOUSEHOLDS & what we ACCEPT as normal or routine becomes LAW whichis why BM say BW or to blame for everything. They are aware of this rule of NATURE LAW that applies to all FEMALE born species. Have we not said that a child will only do what he or she is allowed 2 getaway with? So like all animals human animals require regular instruction, reward, training, discipline and punishment to adjust bad behavior in oder to prevent it from becoming normal or acceptable. We were the Human Experiment.

Peace, luv and blessed protection be upon all of the 9Mind Sacred Sisters and those that we luv. 2night is news and my best FB post. We will begin and end this evening show with a song by Jonny Rebel called; If I Could Be a N For a Day. Some may find night show offensive so will be rated R. I 4/1am in full agreement of the ngr word being put back on the table and openly used by whoever want's 2. Why? There are way to many ppl of color, Blk an other now residing in USA who seem 2B clueless about whts true feelings toward their native Blk populace. It's as if some have conveniantly chosen 2 4GET critical patches of American history dealing with race problems that resulted in mucho lost of life and bloodshed and yet both Blks an whts pretend such horrors of history against the Negros never even occurred. The words of this song should cause us  to seriously ponder how Blks are truthfully viewed globally by Albion-Aryan-orion EuroPEAN w/Klans but other ethnic groups who do not view themselves 2B what BA's are although sharing similar complexion an even features. These groups once in the USA are secretly encouraged to not intergrate with us. More an likely for economic reasons. BA's seem to walk around truly clueless that no other Black or Coloured races ie... ethnic groups want to be us geneticaly but do want to come to AMERICA and usurp we socially and economically. BA's under the spell of dejavu refuse to even consider that we are seen globally as inferior ngr stock by every ethnic group allowed to immigrate here, yet it is conveniently kept on the hush so as to not awaken the sleeping BG's... enslaved in AMERICA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8EwzisBEHc