B (12:58)

sought three I don't want us just to think about a God way off in the sky somewhere, but he wants to have a personal, intimate relationship with us. The difference in religion and relationship is what I just said. Religion always looks for God somewhere and tries to get to God through works and effort and some certain kind of behavior.

A (13:22)

So she is correct there that Christianity is about relationship. But I would greatly contend with her definition of religion, which we'll get into in just a second. And then Johnny Chang, he's host of the Unlearned Wisdom podcast, he claims that there is a relationship to be had with Christ but not a religion.

C (13:41)

Stop for if you listen to me, you can figure out what I am. I am a follower of Jesus and that's it. I'm not a Christian, I'm not Catholic, I'm not Coptic, I'm not Church of Assyria, Council of Nicaea Nikea. I'm not none of that. I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Because under Christianity it's ruled repulsive to people. We're not all that. You know who we are. We are followers of Jesus who came to debolish and destroy all religions. She and unite everybody under grace, under righteousness, under love. Jesus is a relationship, not a religion.

A (14:12)

Okay, so abolish all religion. I've heard that before. People who say this say that that's what, that's what followers of Jesus do. It's the abolition of all religion. It's something totally, radically different than religion. So first let me talk about what is true in these statements. On the one hand, the underlying intent behind the phrase has truth to it. What distinguishes Christianity from every other religion is that it does not teach us how to get to God. Judaism says follow this list of rules and regulations and you can be right with God. Islam has their list of rules. Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, they all have things that you must do to climb your way up the mountaintop to God or to the divine. Christianity and Christianity alone stands apart because Christianity says you can't get to God. You actually cannot climb up the mountain. You cannot follow the rules. You are spiritually dead. Dead people cannot clean themselves up. They can't Take a single step in the right direction. You have to be given a gift of faith that revives you, that makes you spiritually alive and right with God. And this is given to you by grace, which by definition is, cannot be earned. All of that is explained perfectly in Ephesians 2:1 through 10. And through this salvation, we are not only followers of Jesus, we are his brothers and sisters. We have a relationship. We are his co heirs. That's Romans 8:17. We are God's children. That's a relationship. First John 3:1. We can approach God's throne with confidence as his children and as co heirs with Christ. That's Hebrews 4:16. A lot of religions hope to have a relationship with God in the afterlife if they've checked all of the boxes here on Earth. But Christianity doesn't say that. Christianity says that you can have a relationship with God right now, no matter what you've done or who you are, by grace, through faith in Jesus. Okay, so yes, Christianity is a relationship, but Christianity is also a religion. If you look at the roots of the word religion, you can go all the way back to the ancient use of the Latin word, which is religere. And I don't not up on my Latin pronunciation, so I apologize. But religere means to go through again, especially in thought or in word. I love this connection because it implies a routine, a habit, a discipline of repetition that turns an isolated belief into a pattern of thought that dictates a person's life. Then there is this other ancient Latin word, and that's religere, very similar, but a little bit different, spelled differently, which means to bind again or to tie back. And I also love this. I love to bind again. So to tie yourself repetitively to the same stake in the ground. You'll notice the shared prefix in these words, which is re, R, E. It's the prefix that we see in repeat, rehearse, rebound, redo, remeans exactly what you probably already know it means. It means to do it again, to repeat. These roots paint a picture. For me at least. This is what comes to mind of fastening a boat to a dock. And this is not a perfect analogy, just this particular word. But like the boat is on choppy waters, it's tied to a secure post every day the knot must be tightened, it must be rebound, tweaked, tied over and over again to the same post. Christianity is the practice. Christian religion is the practice of rebinding ourselves to the things of God. I would not say rebinding ourselves to God because God binds himself to us because God holds us not the other way around, our salvation is entirely dependent upon him and we do not have the power to rest ourselves out of his grasp once we are saved. But rebinding ourselves through grace filled effort, Holy Spirit inspired effort to his wisdom, his ways, the good things of the Christian life. James writes this if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father. Is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:26:27 so James does not use religion as a pejorative term. And this makes it clear that scripture does not preach that our Christian faith is not a religion, rather it's the one true religion. Religion and relationship in Christianity are not pitted against each other. It is the one faith where our religion is actually fueled by our relationship. And I've got more on this in just a second. Let me pause and tell you about our next sponsor and that is seven Weeks Coffee. If you've been listening for a while, you know that seven Weeks Coffee is one of my favorite sponsors. I just love their product. I love their mission. It's great tasting, super clean, sustainably sourced coffee. But it also serves a higher purpose because 10 of sale of 7 weeks coffee go straight to a pro Life pregnancy center. As you know, these pregnancy centers are saving lives every day. They're providing free sonograms, free prenatals, free adoption services or information about adoption services, free parenting classes, all kinds of material resources that these women need to make a life for a life affirming choice. And these pregnancy centers are making sure these women know that they are not alone and they are saving these baby lives. They are preaching the gospel and seven Weeks Coffee partners with them to save lives. The reason they're called seven Weeks is because at seven weeks gestation, that baby inside the womb is the size of a coffee bean. Yet he or she is fully worthy of life made in God's image. So drink seven Weeks Coffee. We do in our home. It's so good and it serves a higher purpose that echoes in eternity. Go to 7weekscoffee.com use code ALLI save 10% off your first order. That's 7weekscoffee.com code ALLI. Other faiths will say that a relationship with the divine is dependent upon our religious success. But Christianity says that your religious success is dependent upon a relationship with Christ. Which you can't take any credit for. And there's another point that I think is missed with this whole. It's a relationship, not religion mentality. And that is that everyone in the whole world already has a relationship with God, the one true God, through Jesus. We are not just being offered a relationship with God. We are being offered a friendly relationship with God, a loving one. Previously, our relationship with God was hostile. We were his enemies. Romans 5:10 says, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. How incredible is that? So the problem was not that we did not have a relationship with God, it's that we had a hostile relationship with God. And Jesus came to change that. Reconcile. That word that we just read in that Romans passage means to restore a union. There's that prefix re again. And you notice that a lot in Christianity. Reconcile, renew, reborn, resurrect, redeem. And you might ask, if you want to notice that pattern, like, what is with that and how does it make sense? How can we do these things again if spiritually we've never done them before or we've never had them? How can a person restore a reunion to God that they've never had? Well, at one point, mankind was united with God. One day, very long time ago, man walked with God in the garden in the cool of the day, naked and unashamed, under only one condition. That they would not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then deceit from the snake, temptation, sin, compromise, mistrust of the Creator and the desire for power and glory. Then shame, uncovering the curse, pain, death. So God sent Jesus to restore that relationship so we could once again walk in fellowship with him, so we could once again no longer be shackled by the burden of sin. That we could once again be free, that we could once again enjoy relationship, reconciliation, confidence in our friendship with God. And so that's the reason that you see that language of renew and redeem, because at one point, all things were right between God and man. And God loves us so much that he wants to bring us back there, that we get a taste of that in this life. But one day we're going to experience it fully. Yes, when we die and go to heaven, but also when Jesus comes back, there's gonna be a new heaven and there's gonna be a new earth, and nothing will be touched or harmed by sin ever again. So we are renewed. We are reborn in Christ. And that is the good news. That is not only what the relationship with Christ offers, that is the religion of Christianity and that is what the religion of Christianity is tied to. Not a desire to earn our way to God or to reach up to God or climb up to the mountaintop, but a repetition of devotion to God, rebinding to the things of God because of that relationship that was given to us through Christ with God that we have now been reconciled to. You know, theologians throughout history have been talking about this. This is not a new discussion. There was a Scottish theolog theologian, he lived in the 17th century and his name was Andrew Gray. And I loved this quote by him. A true believer looks on religion not as a burden which he must be forced to endure, but a privilege which is his happiness to enjoy. Jonathan Edwards, he was an 18th century key figure in the Great Awakening, the Reformed tradition, you've probably heard Sinner in the hands of an angry God. That was a famous, very famous sermon that he preached at the time. But he also talked about this. He said the religion of heaven, the religion of heaven consists very much in affection. There is doubtless true religion in heaven and true religion in its utmost purity and perfection. True religion lies very much in the affections. Without holy affection there is no true religion. So religion, he's saying, is not really just about what you do, it is about whom you love. True faith involves both the relational knowledge of God and also obedient religious devoted practice that flows from that relationship. The New Testament describes religion or obedience to God positively when describing what God pleasing expressions of faith and love look like. If you look at first John 2, 3, 6 and by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His Word in Him. Truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked, which, gosh, we can only do that with the power of the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus is perfect and none of us is perfect, all of us are going to fall and fail in sin. And that is why we need the grace of God to keep us going. But that love of God and relationship that we have with him is what, what motivates us to do that. Knowing God relationally we read in Scripture is actually evidenced by our religion by keeping commandments, by binding ourselves to him through grace filled effort, claiming A relationship with God without obedience actually makes one a liar. That's not. That's not my word. That's God's word. Um, I also just want to note here as we close out this first one, that obedience does not equal legalism. Okay? Holiness does not equal legalism. So often Christians who emphasize the importance of repentance or routine devotions to God or church attendance are accused of legalism. That's not legalism. Legalism is being a stickler about following the letter of the law, but not understanding or following the spirit of the law. And that's what the Pharisees did. They were legal scholars. They obeyed the law and then some. That's what Saul, before he came became, Paul did, added all kinds of stipulations to the law that the average Hebrew called couldn't follow so that they could elevate themselves as especially righteous seeming. And they ignored the spirit of the law, which was to love God, honor him, and care for his people. Matthew 12, 9, 11 is a good example of this. Jesus went on from there and entered their synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him? He said to them, which one of you who has sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath with will not take hold of it and lift it out? And then in Mark 2, Jesus explains the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Sabbath to the Pharisees had just become about following another rule, not about rest and devotion to God and compassion for other people. So religion and Christianity in conclusion is good. It's about love fueled obedience to God. It is necessary and importantly and distinctly. It is built upon the relationship that we have have in Christ. All right, let's go to number two, which is God answers all of our prayers. The answer might just be no. But first, let me pause. Let me tell you about our next sponsor first. And that is Legacy Box. Okay, if you're going through spring cleaning right now, maybe you're finding all of these old pictures, finding these DVDs, VHS tapes, maybe you're helping your mother clean out her attic or her basement, and you're like, oh, my goodness, what are we gonna do with all of this? I don't even know how to organize this stuff. How do I make sure that it's preserved for future generations? You don't have to worry about that. You can leave that up to Legacy Box. All you do is get in touch with Legacy Box. They send you a big cardboard box, however many you need. And you put all of the pictures, the DVDs, the videos into these boxes, you ship it off to them and then they digitize all of them. They put it on a file, they send you back the hard copies, they send you this digital file and then you have everything organized and preserved. What an incredible service. A gift to yourself, a gift to your mom, to your grandmother, to someone in your life. This is a great Mother's Day gift. I mean it's so precious and really a gift that lasts forever for generations to come. Go to legacybox.com ally right now they are doing a spring cleaning sale. You can digitize your family's entire memory collection for only $9 per tape. Legacybox.com ally. God answers all of our prayers. The answer just might be no. We're told this a lot that you know, I actually posted something the other day about God not answering a particular prayer and I got a lot of well meaning messages from people saying God answers every prayer. It's just that he might not always be saying yes, he might be saying no or wait, but there is always an answer from God. Rick Warren is or was, I can't remember if he retired, but a pastor of Saddleback Church. He was purpose driven life, so very prominent person. And he said this.

D (29:59)

God never leaves a prayer unanswered. Every prayer is answered. It's not every prayer God says yes to and there are many, many reasons for that. Now there are a lot of examples in the Bible where God says no to great men and women of faith. Prayers that were prayed by Abraham, God says no Moses, no Daniel, no Job, Jonah, no Elijah, no Peter, Paul. God said no to Jesus. Yes, even God's son. There are prayers that were, quote unanswered, meaning they weren't answered the way Jesus asked.

A (30:38)

It is true that God says no. It is not true that God answers every prayer. The late pastor John MacArthur talked about this a lot. He addressed this at length in his sermon. This is from grace to you. This is has all of his past sermons and a lot of resources in connection with John MacArthur. But he noted that there are many biblical reasons why God may not answer a prayer. The Bible says that God does not answer the prayers of a few kinds of people. One, those who have personal and selfish motives. Uh, we read this in James 4. Three, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. Number two, he says those who remain in sin and will not heed God's law. This is John 9:31 we know that God does not listen to sinners. But if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Also Proverbs 28:9. If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. There's also those who suffer or sorry, those who offer unworthy service to God. This is Malachi 18 through 9. Very interesting. When you offer blind animals and sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil present? Present that to your governor. Will he accept you or show you favor? Says the Lord of Hosts. And now entreat the favor of God that he may be gracious to us. With such a gift from your hand, will he show favor to any of you? Says the Lord of Hosts. And so obviously we're not ancient Israel. We're not offering animal sacrifices to try to please God. This is just another example of God saying, no, I don't even hear the prayers of certain kinds of people. Another category, those who reject God's call or have no faith. This is James 1:6:7. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. Those who are violent. Isaiah 1:15. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Those who are self righteous, the Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus. This is according to Luke 18:11 14. God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, Jesus says, this man went down to his house, justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. So John MacArthur says, this is an example of an acceptable prayer to God versus an unacceptable one. And then the last category, he says, says, is those who mistreat God's people. Micah 3, 2 and 4. You who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, they will cry to the Lord, but he will not Answer them. He will hide his face from them at that time because they have made their deeds evil. Um, there are several other passages that we could go through that indicate that God sometimes does not hear or does not respond at all to certain prayers due to a person's heart condition, motives or relationship with him. There's Isaiah 59:1 2, Isaiah 1:15, Psalm 66:18. Psalm 66:18 says, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. So it's not only that the Lord doesn't always answer, it's that sometimes he does not listen to prayers. Now, the believer has been sanctified, the believer has been justified. The believer has been made perfect. We are coming to the Lord in total confidence because of our relationship with Christ. Are there prayers that are not heard by God, by the Christian? I think that's a really good theological question. Um, I simply don't know for sure that the answer is always that God is responding to every single prayer that a Christian has. Um, I'm not sure about that. But we do know for sure that for the non believer, it is not true that God hears and answers every prayer. God can hear and answer the prayers of non believers, but he doesn't have to. And there are various categories in Scripture where God clearly is not going to hear a certain kind of prayer. Uh, John Calvin talks about this. He's a 16th century Reformed theologian. Uh, he says this. One of the requisites of legitimate prayer is repentance. Hence the common death declaration of Scripture that God does not listen to the wicked, that their prayers as well as their sacrifices are an abomination to Him. In Isaiah, he thus threatens, when you make many prayers, I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. And so he is saying, you gotta repent. You gotta be right with the Lord before the Lord hears you. Charles Spurgeon, 19th century theologian, in his sermon True and Not True, he's talking about John 9:31. Um, he says it is true that God heareth not sinners. That is to say, he will hear none of us, no sinner among us. And who among us is not a sinner if we come to him in a wrong way or with a wrong spirit? God does not hear the prayers of those who love their sins that are unwilling to give them up. Okay, so you could argue here that he's actually talking about Christians. Christians who are not in a state of perpetual unrepentant sin, but in that moment are storing up sins and idolatry in their heart. And, and have not repented of those sins that are holding on to them. He is saying that it is possible that God is not even listening to those prayers of those who call themselves believers. I think we can generally just say though that it is obvious from scripture that God is not answering every single prayer. And so it's just not true. I think the better answer for people is that God is sovereign. God chooses to answer how and when he wants to. And God is good, good whatever he chooses. It's not that he cannot hear all prayers, but he decides which prayers to listen to and which prayers to answer to through very clear principles that we see in the Bible. All right, let's get to number three. Share the gospel. When necessary, use words. Let me pause. Tell you about our next sponsor first, and that is Preborn. All right, they have a goal and we're almost through the end of the month. And so I'll have to get an update on how close we got to our goal to save 6,800 babies in the United States. Just this month, at Preborn Network clinics, a woman receives what the abortion industry will not offer her. Material resources, love, care, follow up support, information about parenting and adoption. And most importantly, I think just the truth. The truth about who she is as an image bearer of God, someone who Jesus died to save as well. And then also just the truth of the reality of the baby inside her womb because, you know, Planned Parenthood lies to her and tells her, oh, it's just a clump of cells. It's just pregnancy tissue. Oh, you're only eight weeks. That's nothing. You're not even really pregnant. And they try to make it as easy as possible to obscure the truth and abort her baby for money. But we believe in the truth. We believe in the sanctity of life. And that's why Preborn Network clinics exist. So partner with them. Save these thousands of babies. Every donation helps. $28 covers the cost of a life saving ultrasound. Go to preborn.com ally. Make your donation today. That's preborn.com ally. Share the gospel. When necessary, use ors. I've heard this, I've heard this on my very show of people saying, you know, we preach the gospel by just how we treat people. And really preaching at people and trying to push religion down their throats is not something that's going to be convincing. And here's an example of a podcast host. It's life coach Martha back on the podcast called Bewildered Sat 6. The way you continue to live may turn out to inspire other people. Inspiration is something we do by living, not by talking.

E (39:17)

There's a quote I have to look up who said it. I feel like it was like St. Francis or someone like that who said, everywhere you go, preach the gospel only if absolutely necessary, use words.

A (39:32)

Okay. Bewildered indeed. It is true that your life serves it as an inspiration. It is true that what we do is absolutely matters. And how we live our life is a testimony to what we believe 100%. And having a misalignment, a lack of integration that means a lack of integrity between what we say and what we do, how we are in private and how we are in public, that can absolutely ruin your testimony. By the way, this woman is correct. It is. Well, it's attributed. I shouldn't say that she's correct. It's misattributed to St. Francis of Assisi. She's correct that this is what people say or this is how they got this quote, but it's actually not from Francis. The closest thing that he said to this was from his rule of 1221, chapter 12 on how the Franciscans should practice their preaching. No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church, nor unless he has been permitted by his minister. All the friars should preach by their deeds. Okay, well, I. That is not really similar to what people say that he said. So we don't really know where this quote comes from. But I really understand why people like it. Because it lets us off the hook. Because talking about the gospel and sharing things verbally is awkward. In an in person conversation with someone who disagrees with you, smiling at the grocery store clerk is not awkward. Asking about someone's day. Helping someone out is hard. Like, don't get me wrong, the sacrifice of your time and your energy, your convenience to help someone in need. Like, it is difficult. However, anyone can do that. We are called to preach the gospel with our words. If anyone could have preached the gospel only using deeds, it would have been Jesus. Because Jesus perfectly lived out the gospel in his actions. And yet he didn't just do the deeds he did, but he constantly preached the gospel using his word words. Scripture repeatedly stresses the importance of speaking the gospel. It is a word based faith. Christ tells his disciples, go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Mark 16:15. In his letter to the Romans, Paul emphasizes the need for speaking the gospel, asking, how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? That's Romans 10 and he explains, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17. Paul also writes to Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort all things you do with your words, with complete patience in teaching. Second Timothy 4:1:2 to the Bible obviously strongly affirms that our actions, our love, our holy living must back up our message. And that hypocrisy undermines it. And it also repeatedly emphasizes the Gospel itself must be verbally proclaimed, it must be preached, it must be taught, it must be declared with words. Saving faith comes through hearing the message about Christ, not through silent example alone. And this is actually what distinguishes Christianity, distinguishes Christianity from other faiths. I mean, Buddhism puts a high premium on silence. There is transcendental meditation that urges you to empty your mind. But Christians aren't called to that kind of meditation. We are called to the meditation that fills your mind with God's word. We are to meditate on God's law. We meditate on Christ's character, on who God is. We fill our mind with good things, actually knowing that idleness and emptying of our mind makes us vulnerable to temptation. It makes us vulnerable to lies. And so that's one problem, one of the few problems that I have with practices like yoga and New Age meditation. Like in the west, we have this sense of Western guilt that everything Western is bad, all Western medicine is bad, all Western ways of doing things, a Western ways of reading the Bible. And, and we for some reason have this like sacred view of the east, as if all Eastern things are good and right and better. And I think that has also melded with the self help industry in the United States to create this self help, new age, weird therapy culture thing. I mean, that's what my first book was about. You're not enough. And that's okay because of how this message, I think, targets Christianity, women. And part of that is this idea that if we live this pacifist friendly life, this humanitarian life, then that is good enough to show people who Jesus is. But Jesus, right before he ascends to heaven, says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And how, how are we to do that? We are to do that. Preaching the gospel, teaching them, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. I always love this aspect of Jesus and I love to remind people of the logos. The logos, the Greek word for logic, rationale word. That is how Jesus is referred to in John 1. And that logos, that word that indicates reason and the ability to have a reasoning capacity, was almost sacred in the ancient pagan world. And then Christianity came and turned it completely on its head, offering something deeper and better. Let me pause. I'll tell you more about that in just a second as we end the episode. But let me tell you about our last sponsor for the day first, and that is Good ranchers. For over 250 years, ranchers have worked tirelessly to feed America through every kind of storm. Through droughts, wars, recessions, pandemics, changing markets, changing politics. I just saw this incredible news report on X of a farm owner in Kentucky who has owned this farm for generations. She is being offered $26 million for this farm and she's saying no. No, because she feeds her community, she has fed her state, she has fed people across the country because she takes good care of her animals and she makes sure that her meat is high quality. I mean, she is just one of many of these farmers who are struggling to stay afloat because they are being offered large sums of money. And what does that mean for our food supply, for our meat supply? If we don't support these farmers and ranchers, we will not have have local meats and we're going to have to import all of our meat from abroad. We don't know the quality. We don't want to support these Chinese meat markets. We need to help our farmers and ranchers. The easiest way to do that is to subscribe to Good Ranchers. That's what we do. We love Good Ranchers. It makes our life so easy. You get a box of all American meat, chicken, seafood steak, ground beef, bacon, right to your front door every month. So easy. This is America's 250th anniversary. Y' all make this the year you commit to American farms and ranches. Go to good ranchers.com use code ALI. Save 25 on your first order, go to ranchers.com code ALI. Before we head back to the rest of the episode, I just want to remind you to subscribe to BlazeTV. Blaze TV keeps these conversations alive. When you subscribe, subscribe to Blaze tv. You don't have to worry about Big Tech censoring me. Censoring your favorite conservative host. On Blaze tv, you can make sure that you have access to us, both our podcast and all of the other great stuff that we offer for Just Blaze TV subscribers. When you go to blazetv.com ally, you can save $20. That's blazetv.com all. Right, y' all probably heard me talk about this before, but if you read the book When Children Became People by Owen Backy, he talks about the ancient Greeks and Romans having this idea of the Logos really signifying a person's full worth. And only the adult free male had the Logos, had the ability to rationalize. And everyone else was seen on a lower level because they didn't have have the fullness of the Logos. And so all kinds of exploitation of different kinds of people was justified, including the sexualization, the objectification of children, including abortion, infanticide, all because children were not seen as having the fullness of the Logos. Obviously that changed over time. Western civilization was forged. And within Western civilization was this idea that every single person had rights. Every single person had rights just because they were human beings. And actually women and children and elderly, these categories that had been had been denigrated previously were seen as even more special and worthy of our protection. And so you had orphanages, you had homeless shelters, you had entities that were dedicated to caring for those groups of people that previously were seen as less than because they didn't have the Logos. All of this is because of Christians, because Christians came on the scene to 2000 years ago following this man that they called God, called Jesus of Nazareth, who called himself the Way, the truth and the life, and bizarrely so, unlike the Greek and Roman gods at the time, he came to earth not as a warrior, but as a baby, actually as an embryo, and was heralded by the kicks of a newborn. John the Baptist was worshiped by the angels as a newborn against the protestation of his disciples said, let the little children come to me, for such a such as these belong the kingdom of heaven. This Jesus who came to earth just as a fertilized egg, who grew into a newborn baby that was birthed by the Virgin Mary. This Jesus changed how the world saw children, changed how the world saw people and his followers, everywhere they went, they preached the gospel with their words. And they also said, the child sacrifice will end here. The exploitation of people, the oppression of the poor will end here. And we are going to step up and do something about it. They were killed for it and they were persecuted for it, they were tortured for it, they were fed to lions for it. But over time, with the power of the Holy Spirit, because the gates of hell will never prevail against the church. Christians who followed this Jesus changed how the world saw children. And the beautiful thing about this, that just turned the scholarly justification for oppression and objectification on its head head, this justification of, well, they don't have the Logos. Who came to earth to dispel that myth? The Logos, the capital L. Logos. John 1 in the beginning was the word. Christianity is based on the word. It is not based on our silence and hoping that people pick up on the fact that we're polite and so we must know Jesus. Guess what? There are a lot of people who do not know Jesus, who are polite, light, who smile at the grocery store clerk. There are not people who will preach this crazy sounding message to the world that this guy who is fully God, lived a perfect life and died a crucifixion a death on our behalf and rose again three days later and is one day coming back not as a baby, but as a warrior and he's going to make all things right. I mean, that's a crazy message to the world to tell the world who believes that they are good inside, that they are perfect the way they are, that they are enough, that you are actually dead in your sin and you need a savior. If you don't preach that without shame, then there is a question about what we really believe. Yes, actions matter, but actions are not the same thing as preaching the Gospel. Martin Luther, he is the central figure of the Protestant Reformation. Of course, most of you know that he stressed that the Gospel must be actively proclaimed with the mouth as the means God uses to create faith and save sinners. He said, where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Spirit to create. Call and gather the Christian church. That's from his Large Catechism 1529. And we read that again in Scripture, that in order to be believed, it must be heard. That's Romans 10. And in order to be heard, it must be preached. So we use our words. All right, that covers it. The most, most misused phrases. We will have lots more to come and we'll be back here on Wednesday.