Cultural War: Liberalism vs Conservatism | Dr. Ed Young

two cultural warriors are on the highway a female is driving a toyota priebus she has on her sticker a sierra club sticker on her windshield she has on the bumper in the back you know a picture of rodin's the thinker and it says i think therefore i am a liberal and she is moving down the cultural highway in america a road warrior for her philosophy going in the opposite direction there's a dodge ram pickup truck a good old boy a redneck is driving gun rack is there on the back he has an nra sticker there on the windshield and his back bumper says simply that god guns and guts keeps america free now these two cultural road warriors meet on the highway the prius is going back home to her blue state the ram truck is going back home to his red state now if we would pull them both out of their vehicles and ask them a simple question what does god have to do with america what does god have to do with america now the prius with designer sunglasses would say that probably nothing i don't think there's a god and if there is a god it's certainly not the god of the bible and i don't think god is interested in america at all now the redneck in the pickup truck he hadn't spent any time in the bible he spent more time with bud light than he has the word of god but he has a general concept of god and america he's very patriotic he goes to church every christmas and sometimes on easter and his mother took him to vacation bible school two weeks in a row when he was a boy but you ask him what does god have to do with america and he would probably tell you without america god's out of business would you be upset or confused if i told you both of these cultural road warriors are wrong they're both wrong the kingdom of god is not dependent on the united states of america and the kingdom of god is not synonymous with the united states of america oh me heresy but let me tell you something if america is to exist and stand as basically at least a god-fearing country we will make in the next i don't know how many days or months decisions that could lead america in entirely different directions ladies and gentlemen we are in a war we're in a war it is a cultural war but it's even bigger than that and in this war if you're in a battle you have to know who your enemy is and if we took a survey and asked everybody here in this service and in all of our services who do you think our enemies are i would guess that most would name those who are victims of the enemy and not our enemy we make that mistake then we'd have to find out what weapons does the enemy use what is the strategy of the enemy in order to win the war where will this war be fought what will the battlefield look like what enemies do we have as members of god's family if we are what weapons do we have and how can we be confident of victory we're going to be in this cultural battle in this war zone for eight weeks all the way up to and through the election so stay with me it's going to be tough sledding it's going to be a slow process it's going to rattle a lot of folks who are pew sitters for a lot of years it's going to be so difficult and in this climate i will not use a violin though i love violins more than any other instrument i'll have to use a trumpet because in wartime on the battlefield violins don't work but trumpets do but as i trust the trumpet will speak it will speak with a voice of love and redemption and healing and always in the name of grace in 1917 all the priests of russia met in petrograd now leningrad i think the second largest city in russia and they met and had a conference thousands of priests because in 1917 russia was called by many holy russia man they have beautiful edifice churches all over they were a worshipping reverent god-fearing people of the orthodox faith and all the priests met petrograd and they spent two days going over their liturgy to make sure they got all of their theology and their praise exactly right and they all could agree and then they spent the last half day there debating and arguing over what color their surplice would have for different seasons of the year and different types of service and they well we need white for the no we need green and they went through this thousands of priests in russia and they debated it an entire afternoon six blocks down the street there was a small group of bolsheviks who were meeting and they plotted for the overthrow of holy russia and the priests who were tremendously influential thousands and thousands of people were in those services every single week they did not say a word and they awakened one day a coup d'etat that took about eight months and now holy russia suddenly was totally doctrinaire secular and atheistic and the church stayed back behind behind all the stained glass and the architecture and the tradition that they had enjoyed for centuries sometimes it's good to be silent but sometimes by necessity in a sos crisis moment the church needs to speak clearly into the culture in which we live always in one sense but sometimes is that dramatic moment now you have people who say you can't turn back the clock have you ever said that if you have that's probably the dumbest statement that's ever come from your mouth well you can't turn back the clock you can't turn back the clock you really believe that you turn back the clock when it's taken when it's not keeping the right time all the time a clock is invented by man one is not keeping the right time you go and you correct it then you hear those who say well everything is progressing you want to be on the right side of history boy how i love that phrase you're not on the right side of history when you're going downhill that is not progress that is rigorous and therefore you have to go back up the hill and the right side of history ladies and gentlemen is always on god's side of history [Applause] in all of these trying days corona riots in the streets cries of racism some feeling that justice is not all the different agendas that we could all contribute to and have an opinion about you know we i just praying and i said lord so many times and you've done the same god speak to me god give me some evidence god i want a word from you as to how i should live as a christian we should live as a church god tell us i'm open available humble just just give us your word and i thought about the old silly little song that i don't even like i want to have a little talk with jesus you know i just i just want a word to instruct us to tell us how we are to move how we are to live give us insight oh lord speak and then something that i knew but how easily we forget god said in my hearts of heart i've already spoken i've already given you my word how have we received the word the word of god first of all we've received it in flesh that's bethlehem god came in flesh jesus was the word of god the lagos he said i spoke to you in bethlehem did you get it i wonder what god is like look at jesus that's a quick answer also he spoke to us his word on wood that's the cross god almighty came down from heaven and died on that wooden cross for you and for me perfection took on all of our trash so that we might be forgiven we might be as we were singing about saved and be looked upon by god almighty as righteous that's hard for me to take you think god looks at you and me boy there is perfection there is righteousness there is purity that's provided for us in that cross so he god spoke to us in flesh bethlehem god spoke to us on wood and god also has spoken to us on paper bible pirates paper he's spoken to us in paper this also is his living word so i want us to go back as we are in all of these questionable trying tough situations in america and around the world and the moral law that is the moral revolution that is before us we want a word from god and he says here it is in the book so as we go through these eight weeks don't come up to me and say i don't agree with you about that you say well who do you think you are i think this is exactly who i am you're going to have to argue with the bible you can't debate with me i i surrender you win i lose but we come to the bible and that's where i am going to base in the teaching and preaching we're going to have the trumpet in the next eight weeks it's going to be based on biblical truth so your argument is not with me it's going to be with almighty god okay as best i can i'm going to rightly divide this word of truth ii timothy 3 16 speaks truth now let's ask a question go back to the basics what is the bible the bible first of all is a library it's it's made up of 66 books 39 39-0 27 you 66 books the old testament just get a big general view you have the law first five books you have history you have poetry then you have the major prophets they're major not because they're more important they're just longer books and you have the minor prophets bang 39 39 books in the library old testament coming to new testament you've got 27 books you've got biography matthew mark luke and john and then you have acts the story of the early church then you have the letters of paul then you have the general epistles then you have revelation which a book of prophecy there you have a library the bible is a library theonus inspired god breathed it's a human book but it's a divine book okay not too fast am i it's a library also the bible is literature it was written by forty authors a period of what sixteen hundred years written on three continents the bible has in it all types of forms of speech written in hebrew greek a little bit of aramaic thrown in and it was written by a fisherman it's written by a scholar written by a king written by a pulper it's all kinds of authors among those 40 authors and they gave us the holy book the human book god speaking through human instrumentality human limitations in a sense his word his truth about life now you run into a lot of pseudo-intellectuals who'll tell you well the bible is contradictory and you can make the bible say whatever you want it to say that just tells you that person doesn't know anything about the bible and has never studied the bible and never examined the bible they come across as a scholar but really they're violating all the basic principles of understanding any text you read the bible you have to understand exegesis don't let a word fool you exo-jesus you look at the words you look at their meaning you look at the context in which they were written and you discovered that scripture what it meant then and there follow me very important you read the bible what did that mean what was the author saying inspired by god at that time then and there that's simple exegesis scripture you have to do that to rightly divide the word then there's the science of interpretation which is hermeneutics don't get lost in the words hermeneutics is simply the science of interpretation in hermeneutics you go another step you look at that scripture actually jesus what it meant then and there hermeneutics in that discipline also tells us what it means now what it means here and now so i've got what it meant there and then and what it means here and now and by the way just as a footnote if you hear a sermon and someone takes a passage you're familiar with and it's strange and new to you and say boy i never did see all that in that passage in all probability all of that is not in that passage just take that as a word of advice this is so you know sometimes but usually they've gone off into some kind of squirrelism and they've forgotten the basic principles of exegesis and hermeneutics not always but usually so we know the bible is a library it is literature and therefore when you look at it somebody says well it has poetry in it do you read poetry like you do biography no it has hyperbole it has comparisons it has parables in it it has narrative in it it has all different styles and therefore we have to understand that to interpret it it is apocalyptic literature it is different kind of teaching that is didactic etc etc so all that goes and understands the bible i'm not making it complex but i'm saying that those would say boy here's a contradiction here and boy do we know this happened here not a single historical event recorded in the bible has ever been disproved by using honest historical methodology not a single word or single phrase archaeologist and i was with a prominent one yesterday in fact they have never earned unearthed anything that disproved anything about the bible never a thing and they have dug up large hunks of the earth i can assure you of that so you examine the bible as literature you examine it through bibliographical methods you examine it through manuscripts and it stands taller and taller every time genuine scholars look at it and most are amazed in the process the bible is literature also the bible is law now our day and age we dislike a lot of things but thou shalt not and thou shalt we dislike those two little phrases almost more than anything else thou shalt not but the bible is law and we get confused sometime in the bible we forget there is ceremonial law and there is civil law and there is moral law the ceremonial law has been fulfilled basically in jesus the civil law is the way they did government which was a theocracy and the moral law in the old testament still stands and then there are some people who say boy i don't like that mean jehovah in the old testament oh jehovah's so mean i like that sweet jesus the new testament i don't like the law the legalism of the old testament boy i love the love and graces in the new testament let me tell you something folks they try to say well there's one god and the old one god in you you can't that that dog won't hunt as we said in mississippi that dog won't hurt take the moral law the ten commandments the ten commandments give us the very basic principles of love love does not worship a lot of gods love worships the one and true god love does not steal love does not bear false witness does not lie love does not commit adultery loves honors the marriage vow you see love is part and parcel of the law in the old testament it is the very foundation of it and they totally work together so there are thou shalt nots but the thou shalt not are there from god to instruct his children as this is how we can live an abundant successful life of peace and grace and wholeness w-h-o-l-e-n-e-s-ness wholeness yeah and therefore if you're a christian you can handle those thou shalt nots that come up in your life when you are doing some thou shall not right for this in your mind as jesus elevated the commandments or whether it's an actual action thou shalt not and therefore if you're a non-christian you can't live up the christian life it's just as simple as that you can't for a while but you can't make it in christ the holy spirit gives us the ability to live it out to live it out and tells us that which is not pleasing to god interestingly for thousands of years thousands of years everybody has known that weeds in a garden or in a field weeds sap water and nutrients from the plants from the major crops everybody's known that but did you know a recent large-scale study in africa discovered that the crops in africa the poorest farmers just do not read weed or they weed just a little bit and because they do not weed it's estimated that 26 of their crops fail they 26 percent short of what they would produce because they don't weed weed doesn't take any machinery it just takes three or four days of doing a tedious thing but they lose 20 26 28 in africa in asia in their rice farms they lose upward to 50 percent of what they would yield this is all the poorest of farmers in africa and asia let's just say those figures are too high let's just say the failure to weed they lose 10 in africa 10 of their yield in asia if they just would lose only 10 percent and they would weed they would have profits of 30 to 40 percent and they would all probably no longer be poor what about your life the holy spirit comes and weeds stop that attitude move away from that lust counter that with this reach out to that person forgive forget move don't stay there we need to do some weeding and it comes as we look at the law and the way god intends for his sons and daughters to live we weed so the bible also tells us that which we need to weed cut out now my problem was when man my uh i'd have to weed in in the yard and weed in the flower beds and boy i'd pull up weeds pull up weeds old saturday afternoon i'd pull up weeds put up weeds then the next day they looked like they all came back and i said what happened they said that's nut grass oh you got you know anything about nut grass i won't talk about cut zoo that'll come later nut grass you got to get down in there and get that nut out of there or you just sort of cut the surface off god comes and gives us ability to take those unpleasant things out of our life our personality our attitudes our ingrown that's when we weed therefore we need the law to help us to know what do we the bible is a book of law but primarily as our scripture said the bible is a book of light the light comes on when we read this book the light comes on and we can see darkness is the absence of light and when light come darkness go it is totally gone and so we look at the bible and we see when we read it and when we study it you have to take chapters just take a few verses and let god speak to you through those verses and then all of a sudden lights begin to come on in your life and in my life because the bible's a library it's literature properly read and understood it is law it helps us to to weed and gives us the power to do the weeding also it is light but we ask the question how do we know that this is really the word of god i get bethlehem the word was in flesh i get the word was on the cross but how do you know so much of this is not myth legend happenstance man i was in the basement of the hebrew university debating with a group of christians with rabbis who talked there we stayed until one or two o'clock in the morning talking about the messiah and the jews said the messiah has yet to come and we said the messiah has already come and we had a good time and they had trouble with a lot of things but i can tell you what mystifies more jewish scholars than any other single thing that's the fulfillment of prophecy about jesus christ now i've gone over part of this before but i want to repeat it so we open the bible we don't say well maybe this is the word of god let me tell you what gives me assurance in a lot of areas but particularly in the area of prophecy a doctrine that dr peter stoner a professor of mathematics and astronomy at three or four major universities one in san diego et cetera he gave a project to his students he had over 600 at that time graduate students and the project was let's look at all the prophecies in the old testament that predict what the messiah would be when he came in the new testament and so they did it like they were in las vegas they did it on the area of what are the odds this is what they came up with and it's been questioned and criticized and looked at for many years and i've not seen anybody's refuted it they said what are the odds that eight prophecies written six 800 or a thousand years before jesus was born what are the odds that eight prophecies would be fulfilled in one man you got it just eight and these eight would be things that that person could not try to duplicate like where they were born how they died so many details they could not possibly eight prophecies what are the odds that they'd be fulfilled in one man the odds and there is one one in 10 to the 17th power oh what is that i hadn't been to scoot a long time that is one with 17 zeros after it the odds are 1 to the 17th power that eight prophecies would be fulfilled in one person long odds right well let's just ratchet it up let's say what are the odds that 48 prophecies in the old testament would be fulfilled in one person so they looked at that and the odds are 10 to the 157th power my 48 prophecies all right let's take 332 prophecies in the old testament what are the odds that 332 prophecies would be fulfilled in one man 800 a thousand years after they were written what are the odds follow me if you picked out one atom just one atom out of a trillion trillion trillion atoms on a billion universes the size of our universe and you would happen to stumble on that one atom that's the odds that 332 prophecies would be fulfilled in one person now just come right up and let's debate about whether or not the bible is literally true you get it the bible is true truth it is the word of god instructing us properly interpreted and understood led by the holy spirit so therefore we look for what's going on now we look into god's word and everybody agrees the prius agrees with the dodge truck that america is in a big mess we we're in big big trouble ladies and gentlemen i don't know anybody who argues with that liberal conservative whatever everybody says oh we're in a mess and then some ignorant people said we need to get together let me tell you something if you're living your life without god and you're living your life with god there's not many things you can get together on i hate to tell you that you've got a totally different view of god a totally different view of life from those who are on the other side and we are divided today how serious is it how serious is it many things are coming to the surface say that we could be i'm not a prophet on the verge of a revolution an america the united states would change in such a radical way that we couldn't even imagine it a genuine revolution quickly that's a diagnosis i bumped into a scripture in isaiah chapter 56 verse 10. i had it put on the screen i want you to look at it god's watchmen are blind all of them know nothing all of them are mute dogs unable to bark dreamers lying down who love to slumber we're in a war you and i are god's watchdogs and we're not barking we're not barking ladies and gentlemen if we're to have genuine turning to god in jesus christ at this moment in our history god's people had better begin to

Channel: Second Baptist Church, Houston

Views: 15,318

Rating: 4.7468352 out of 5

Keywords: second baptist church houston

Id: 848bDbEwy2c

Length: 36min 0sec (2160 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020