| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Blessed Are The Merciful
00:02:16
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|
| Okay, I got to get back to your book. | |
| Tell us about the mystery of mercy. | |
| Well, Jesus said something very interesting. | |
| He said, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. | |
| And there's an interesting thing. | |
| It's just a law of life Jesus is pointing to. | |
| If you want to be treated mercifully, you better act that way to others. | |
| You know, I hear people say, even Christians all the time, I will not forgive. | |
| I will not forgive. | |
| I will not forgive. | |
| You know, somebody said, he who refuses to forgive destroys the bridge over which he must travel one day. | |
| And if we want mercy from God, we want mercy from others, we have to be merciful. | |
| In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said it very clearly in Matthew 6. | |
| He said, if you forgive others, my heavenly Father will forgive you. | |
| But if you do not forgive others, neither will my heavenly Father forgive you. | |
| I hear people all the time try to explain that away. | |
| Well, what Jesus meant was, what Jesus meant is what Jesus said. | |
| That's right. | |
| If you want to be forgiven, you better forgive others. | |
| That is the truth. | |
| Wow. | |
| I love this next part of the book. | |
| I love how you talked about being the salt and the light because you taught us. | |
| That's a big part of the book, I think. | |
| What Jesus taught us right after the Sermon on the Mount, right? | |
| That's right. | |
| You know, ask yourself this question. | |
| Why is it that Jesus didn't rapture us to heaven the moment he saved us? | |
| I mean, if his desire is to have perfect fellowship with us, couldn't God have had better fellowship with us if we were in heaven than stuck here on earth where we stumble around and get caught up in the wrong things and so forth? | |
| He left us here for a reason. | |
| He did. | |
| And Jesus told us our reason. | |
| He said, first of all, I want you to be that salt, that preservative we talked about a minute ago, to slow down the rot of the culture, to slow it down, not prevent it entirely. | |
|
Pushing Back Against Evil
00:01:29
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|
| This world is going to rot away before the new world comes. | |
| But we're to slow down the decay so that we have longer to be the light of the world to point people to faith in Jesus Christ. | |
| That's our mission. | |
| I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. | |
| Jesus never gave us the mission to save America. | |
| Our mission is to save Americans from the coming judgment of God by introducing them to faith in Jesus Christ. | |
| That's why we push back against evil. | |
| We want longer for people to have an opportunity to hear the gospel. | |
| I use this analogy. | |
| Just imagine there's a giant dam that's holding back millions of gallons of water. | |
| And there's a little village right below that dam. | |
| And one day the people look up and they see the dam is starting to spring leaks. | |
| The bricks are beginning to crumble. | |
| And so a group of men go up to that dam and they push back against that dam. | |
| Now they know their work is ultimately futile. | |
| They know no matter what they do, that dam's going to collapse. | |
| But they're pushing back to give the townspeople below a little longer to find a place of safety before the flood of water comes and destroys them. | |
| That's what we as Christians are supposed to do. | |
| We're not going to vote in the kingdom of God. | |
| That's not the purpose of government to bring in the kingdom of God. | |
| What we're trying to do is be restrainers of evil, push back against evil, give this world a little bit longer so that they can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. | |