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Glad to be with you. If you want to be a part of the program, eight six six thirty four Truth eight six six three four eight seventy eight eighty four. We are getting close to election season here, and it's a little weird right now. Have you been noticing that? And I, I'm watching somebody's things, and I'm like, and a friend of mine called me up, and and she said, she's from Amish and Mennonite background, and she lives in those communities there in Ohio, and and she tells me she's frustrated by the reluctance to vote among some of the people who are in that community.
I mean, she's really frustrated by this, and and when she asked them about voting. She hears a familiar response.
Well, if it's God's will, God's will determines the outcome. Apparently, that takes care of their part.
Now, the reluctance she describes reaches well beyond the Amish and the Mennonite community that she's referring to, that she's involved in. Too many Christians are sitting out elections. While they're maintaining a a pretty vigorous schedule of complaining about the results, but the God will handle it explanation puzzles me, and I've tried to imagine applying that to the the rest of my life. I mean, you know, my wife would have a few questions if I did that. You know, think about that.
I've prayed for her before every operation that I've been through with her, and yet I still drive her to the hospital. And I've never considered that a theological contradiction to pray for and then take her to the hospital. You know, and and after forty years of caregiving, I've I've had plenty of occasions to trust God with things I can't control. But I've also filled prescriptions, and I and I've asked a lot of uncomfortable questions, and I've challenged decisions. But in all of her ninety-eight operations, not one surgeon has ever said, "Well, you prayed for God's will.
Good. I won't need to scrub in." I mean, think through that for just a moment. We understand responsibility quite well when something matters to us, but why does it become so mysterious when the subject is voting? And if you have a biblical conviction against casting a a particular vote, okay, that deserves to be heard. But that God will determine the outcome, quote unquote, explains why we can trust Him.
Yeah, He will, and we can trust Him to do that. But it doesn't explain why we can excuse ourselves. If you look in Matthew twenty two thirty nine, Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And those neighbors of ours have to live under the people we elect.
Okay, the sheriff, the school board, the county commissioners, the judges, legislators—they're all making decisions that reach into the homes and wallets of our neighbors. And a a widow reporting fraud. Needs officials who take her seriously, and and and a family caring for a disabled child needs more than a sympathetic nod.
Okay, we we can argue about which candidate will serve them best, but God's sovereignty doesn't explain why loving our neighbors requires nothing of us. And Jeremiah twenty nine seven gives us even less. Comfortable instruction. God told His people to seek the welfare of the city where He had sent them into exile, and to pray for it. You know what the city's name was?
Babylon. They had been carried away from home, and if anyone had grounds to say, "Well, the government is somebody else's problem," well, they did. But God assigned them work, where they lived, to pray for the city, and to seek its welfare. We live here. Our children are growing up here.
They're going to school here. We're paying taxes here, and we have a voice in choosing our leaders. What exactly is our excuse for sitting it out? Galatians six ten tells us, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to everyone.
Well, voting gives us an opportunity to influence who's going to exercise power over us and our neighbors. And that makes a ballot something to use thoughtfully, rather than something to maybe just dismiss with a religious phrase. Scripture doesn't contain instructions for an American polling place.
Okay, I get that. It does not contain, you know, how to deal with American civil system in that specific sense. But it does contain instructions for people who have neighbors and opportunities. Not one candidate on the ballot, not one candidate on the ballot, is going to usher in the kingdom of God. But I sure would settle for one who understands the job, tells the truth, and remember whose money that he or she is spending.
If we expect perfection, well, that's a that's a convenient way of avoiding making a choice. Think about our brothers and sisters in countries where free elections are restricted or denied. Then imagine explaining to them when we leave our ballots unused because well we're just trusting God with the outcome. They don't get to do this in some of these places around the world. They they would love to be able to have a vote, and yet we've got Christians sitting on the sidelines.
Let me let me tell you something. Passive citizens are ripe to become captive citizens, and officials don't lose their authority because we lose interest. They continue making decisions. They're going to keep spending money. They're going to keep exercising power, and our absence simply leaves the choosing to somebody else.
Look at them. We are free to stay home. You don't have to vote, and nobody's going to be able to put that on you. You can't bind your conscience with scripture to say you have to do this. But I, I, I sense a stewardship responsibility that we have, and I can show you in scripture where that is, just permeated through scripture of a stewardship responsibility in the communities that we are.
And we could stay home, but let's let's be honest. Why we're staying home? We just say we don't want to do it. If we're we're indifferent, let's call it indifferent. If we're tired of politics, let's say so.
But if we invoke God's sovereignty to excuse our own passivity, it drags the decision drags His name into a decision that that we're making.
Well, it's just God's will. Whatever God's will is going to be, it's going to be. I don't really have a part play that fatalistic thing. We're we're we're putting that on God, but we're really just being indifferent. We just don't want to do it, and and and you know what?
Let's be honest about it. I I pray for Gracie before every operation. I still drive her to the hospital, and I ask you. Do you pray for this country? If so, pray for this country.
Pray for it. Pray for your community. Pray for your city. And then do your part. Be a part of it.
Otherwise, I tell you what, there's going to be people that're going to be voting in stuff, and you're going to have to deal with it. You're going to have to be under it. You say, well, look at them all. They're all corrupt.
Well, maybe they are. I haven't yet met anyone who isn't corrupted by sin. But that doesn't mean that we sit on the sidelines when we have the power to go and make our voices heard. And you say, "Well, Peter, it's just one vote. It's not going to really matter." Yeah, it does, and it matters if every Christian shows up.
If just the the Christian community, the people who identify as Christians in this country, evangelical Christians, voted, it would change this country dramatically. The the stats are out there, the polls are out there to show this, but too many sit on the sidelines, and they advocate it to somebody else. And and I I again I look at these people that are brothers and sisters of ours in Christ in other countries where they don't get this kind of freedom to do this, and and how can we look them in the eye, and say, well, we just didn't want to do it. When they would, what they would give to be able to have a society like ours, where we're free to do these things. Would you think about that?
What are your thoughts on that? Eight six six, thirty four truth. Eight six six, three four eight seventy eight eighty four. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is Truth Talk Live.
We'll get to your calls. We come back, and also I had a Proverbs challenge I did for this month, and we'll talk about that when we come back. Today's the seventh of October. We'll talk about Proverbs seven. This is Truth Talk Live.
We will be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. Glad to be with you.
eight six six thirty four Truth eight six six three four eight seventy eight eighty four. Last week I gave a thought that maybe for the month of October we can. One proverb. Read one proverb a day. There's thirty-one of them.
I mean, if you want to get God's MBA, if you're looking for wisdom, you ever, you ever just not known what to do in your business or in relationships or whatever?
Well, there's there's wisdom there. It's right there, and the first. Seven chapters of of Proverbs. These first seven Proverbs talk about grabbing hold of wisdom with just ferocity. I mean, to the exclusion of everything else.
And there's also an enormous amount in there of staying away from the adulterers, the harlots, the sexual immorality, all those things. And and it. There, there.
Solomon's not pulling any punches on this, even though you kind of wonder did he read his own stuff sometimes. But that's a different conversation to have. But let's go to the phones here. Buckman in Ohio wants to talk about this. And Buckman, by the way, are you finding that in your area of Ohio that people want to just sit out the election and not vote?
You know what? Brother Peter, I need you to, and I want to say this on the air. Everybody, research a man by the name of Bob McEwen. Bob McEwen, very Christian-based congressman. He served in our Congress.
I know Bob. Awesome man! I got to meet him personally, Peter, at a local church here in the Dayton area, and he gave out the statistics, Peter, that were jaw dropping about the Christians, like you said, staying on the bench, not going into the polls. Another one I've heard Bill, Stu Epperson, have on the show really research him, and that's the incomparable Bill Federer. And Bob and Bill apparently are colleagues and friends, which was awesome.
Because I I walked up to Bob McEwen, Peter, and I says, "Hey, are you a Bill Federer fan?" He goes, "Bossman, not only am I a Bill Federer fan, I'm I'm a friend of Bill's." So he's another one, Bill Federer and Bob McEwen.
Now I I'm so glad that you kept the the the the October Proverbs challenge, Peter, because I took you up on your challenge, brother, and boy, you are dead on. These last couple of chapters have really been drilling down on sexual immorality, focused mainly towards the man and the young man to stay away from that, that idolatrous and adulterous woman. I like how my RSB calls her an adventuress. I thought that was interesting writing from the RSB, but I've been following your your lead on that, brother, on our October Proverbs challenge, and I highly recommend it because it's just. I read them out loud, Peter, and when my voice feeds my head, it just helps my heart understand it better.
I read it slow. I like the RSB because of the punctuation. I raise up my voice when I see an exclamation point coming, and it's like, "Wow, Bustman!" Everybody needs to know this material, especially the young men in this time frame in our local churches and in our youth ministries. Hey, youth pastors! You want a good curriculum?
Go to the Proverbs. These first couple of chapters that Peter's talked about of the Proverbs with with your young man, and let the young women hear it too, so that they're not swayed into becoming the loose woman, as one of my versions calls it. Back to the political thing again, too. Peter, I I actually witnessed at that same meeting that I met Bob McInnes, sir. I met Vivek Ramaswamy.
That's right. The presidential candidate, the man who's running for Ohio's governor at this moment, sir. And I was I was amazed by how the pastor of the church in Kettering raised the gospel issue with Vivek right in the hearing. But there wasn't a real intense motivation to preach him the gospel.
Well, guess what Busman did, Peter. When I got my opportunity to shake Vivek's hand personally, I gave him the gospel straight up to his face, looking at him in his eyes, and I said, "Do you reject Vivek, the Son of God, Jesus Christ?" This is what he said. He gave me a political answer. I hate to say this. I know everybody is watching the Republican-Democrat side between Amy Acton and Ramaswamy here in Ohio.
But this is what he said. He said, "First off, on the stage, Peter, he says, 'I am admitting to you that I am not a Christian.' Neither is Amy Acton.
So let's get that straight right now." That bugged me. I'm sure it did the other brothers inside the church, especially the pastor and the ones that was facilitating the event. But when I was talking to him personally, I looked him in his eyes and I said, "Do you reject Jesus Christ?" Vivek, he says, I do not reject Jesus. I love God. That's not biblical.
That's not biblical. In Hinduism, folks, Jesus is just another god. In Vivek's economy of religion, so I need Ohio, especially, to understand that and put that in their calculus before they go to the polls. Because the way I see it, Peter, is if he's willing to say those words, he can tell us anything as Ohioans on the campaign trail. Then once he get gets into the governor's mansion, it just all goes to to slop, and he doesn't have to keep a single word he said.
So I just want to make that clear to Ohioans that that is what we're looking at. I have not.
Well, I think that, and I want to. I think that we're not going to. I'm not going to. Excuse me. We're not going to evangelize and proselytize some of these candidates.
But what we can do is make enough of our voices heard, so that they're not able to just run roughshod over the things that we treasure as believers. And they, like you said, they will if if I go back to what I said in the last block. Passive citizens are ripe to become captive citizens. And if we don't make our voices heard and start doing these things, we got a long ways to go to. Reestablish some of the values that made this country, because we've been sitting on the sidelines.
We've been too caught up in our own things, and we've allowed this watered down Christianity to permeate into everything. We, it, I, I'm going to say something is probably going to offend a lot of people, and I'm sorry for that, but it is. But when we started getting, and this, you can go back to with with what happened with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, and all these kinds of things. But when when Christians started realizing. And they could rub shoulders with power.
A lot of things changed. A lot of things changed. the The church is supposed to speak the prophetic voice to the state of the prophetic voice of Scripture, regardless if the state accepts it or not. We are not absolved from this. Did and and so when we start trying to fit into the state, then we got a problem.
We got a real problem because that's not our job as the body of Christ. Our job is to speak truth and light and the salt to this world. And if if we if we compromise that because we get to rub shoulders with these people, well, who wins? Who wins when when when when truth, and light and salt compromise? Who wins?
And and that's where I I sense that we've come, and so we've got we've got our work cut out to do. And it goes back to what we talked about last week. If we don't know our scripture, how in the world are we going to be able to talk talk about it? Amen. We're going to be led down, you know.
We're going to be led down the path of universalism. We're going to be led down the path of God loves you just the way you are. You don't have to change. You don't do anything, and we're going to be led down those kinds of doctrinal statements. And people say, "Well, well, you know, doctrine divides." But yeah, it does.
It's supposed to. And and if we don't know what we believe and why we believe it, and more importantly, what Scripture says about it, that's why I put the Proverbs challenge out there. And Proverbs, the first seven chapters, there, boy, it is just really going after the heart of men, covetousness, and avoiding this stuff that pulls you out of wisdom. Go after wisdom with everything. We've got intelligence.
I mean, I look at Vivek for example. The man is brilliant. There's no question that this guy is a smart man, and we've got a lot of smart people out there who have enormous IQs and enormous capacities for knowledge. But do we have wisdom? Do we have wisdom?
Amen, Peter. And that is the difference.
So, Buckman, you're on target. Keep reading them. We'll talk about them next next week on number fourteen, I believe, next week. And we'll talk to you next week. All right, my man.
Eight six six thirty four Truth. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg.
Glad to be with you. Eight six six thirty four Truth. Eight six six three four eight seventy eight eighty four thirty four Truth.
So we got our marching orders. We're spending time in the Word. We're going to make sure we're going to vote. We're going to show up to vote. And if you don't know what to vote, then you know who to vote for.
If you're you're conflicted, you know you feel like you're voting for the lesser of two evils, then go with the one who's going to be the least oppressive to the people of this country, who's going to stem the the tide, even if it's a small road bump. I mean, speed bump. You know. I feel like sometimes we're we're just slowing down the ramp to our destruction. But you know what?
We still have a responsibility to do so, in as much as it is up to us to live peacefully with one another. And part of that, I think, we can make the case of the stewardship of voting in this country. We have freedoms that other people around the world envy. We are we are truly the envy of the world, and yet, do we take them seriously? And so, knowing your scripture is going to be the first and foremost thing, Christians.
If we don't start educating ourselves, we have access to all kinds of information. You could study on a level of of of doctorate degree just with your phone or with your tablet. Things that. You know, fifty years ago, people couldn't even imagine having access to. You were you were limited to a seminary room, and we could do this right now.
And I want to switch gears a little bit, but in that same vein, I got a friend of mine who was having a conversation with her father recently, and he was a very well-known celebrity. You you would know him if I told you who it was. And he, at one point, he's elderly now, but at one point, he had worldwide fame. And he still has an audience that takes him seriously, and you know, for years she has struggled with their relationship, and she has hoped he might become more interested in in her life than and less captivated by his own thoughts. But sadly, that was not the case, and still isn't.
But recently, he he offered her a theological update. And his statement was, he only reads the red letter words of Jesus. He doesn't particularly care for the apostles' teaching, and he doesn't like the God of the Old Testament. That's where he's landed. You ever heard anybody say that?
After all of that, he pointed to his good works, and with considerable satisfaction announced, "You know, I think I'm becoming more like Christ." What's your first thought when you hear that? He had dismissed the prophets, discounted the apostles, and given himself high marks. Apparently, becoming like Christ goes a lot more smoothly once you've removed all the people who might question the resemblance. When you when you are not looking at anything else but your own mirror, I guess that's maybe that makes it easier. And and aside from the obvious theological potholes that he had slammed into, his daughter had also just hoped for something.
Considerably less grand. She just wanted him to ask about her, her thoughts, or how she was doing. And instead, she got another favorable review of him by him. And you know, it's kind of you—you've heard this with people with the red letter words. I really don't like the the red letter word edition Bibles because every every word in Scripture is a red letter word, every one of them.
Breathe by the Holy Spirit, and you know they they affirmed the scriptures, and every but but every word that Jesus spoke. If you're going to go with the red letter words, they all affirmed all the scriptures, which was the what we call the Old Testament, and he commissioned the apostles.
So it makes this guy's declaration a little bit difficult to to reconcile with the with his reading list. But I got to tell you before I in first off, what what do you think about that? Eight six six thirty four truth eight six six three four eight seventy eight eighty four. I gotta I have to admit though before I spend too much time with this fellow's absurdity, I have to acknowledge something. Worldwide fame, which he has, and nonstop caregiving, which I have, apparently have something in common.
Both of those things give what's in a man's heart ample opportunity to come out. Maybe I just stop right there. I don't need worldwide fame or an adoring audience to self-justify. I do that. Sadly, all by myself, and I do it very well.
Tragically, and forty years of being a caregiver through this relentless medical crisis that we've been on in my family has exposed plenty of gunk in my soul. If you do a short stretch of helping somebody, it might leave you feeling like you're a hero or a rescuer. But when you get decades into it, there's a lot more evidence to examine of what you really are. I've seen my work enough failure. I mean, serious failures remain right up in my face that I sometimes just hang my head and muttered, "I just want to be less like me." This guy's over there saying, "You know, I'm becoming more like Christ," and I'm like, "I just want to be less like me." And and I'm I'm grateful that God keeps chipping away even when it hurts, and and seems agonizingly slow.
But those failures bring me back to something I landed on years ago, and here it is: sin's a bigger problem than we think it is, and the cross is far greater than I could ever imagine. You know, my mother once told me when things went awry, my father, who was wonderful minister, wonderful man, but when things went awry, he was never suspicious of God, but he was constantly suspicious of himself. I stand just in astonishment at that. What she said about him, and he he remained confident in God's mercy. And his goodness and his grace, while recognizing his own capacity to lean into something until it bent to his will, you know, trouble to him didn't mean that God had disappeared.
My father knew that his own heart warranted intense examination. And I got to admit, sadly, I have ample experience with the opposite. I become suspicious of God while preparing an excellent defense of myself, and and given enough time, I can explain my resentment or justify my anger or present my impatience as reasonable for a man carrying what I carry. And that sounds really good, particularly when I'm the only one in the room. But you and I both know that the result of all that is misery.
And I remain weary and heavy laden as long as I go down that path. John Calvin described the human heart as a factory of idols. Isn't that a great term for that? I mean, that—that's an accurate description. We're a factory of idols, and and my factory of idols doesn't seem to have a supply chain problem.
I am prone. At a moment's notice, to fashion a God who finds my reasoning persuasive. And and and what I want, but Scripture keeps interrupting that factory of idols. You know, I go back to Acts seventeen. Luke records the Bereans.
I don't know if you remember this passage, but Luke records the Bereans. Paul went and preached these people, and they eagerly received Paul's message while examining the scriptures to see whether what he was saying was true. I want you to think about this for a moment. Paul went to preach these people. Paul's an apostle.
Met Jesus. Face to face on the road to Damascus. All the the apostles there in Jerusalem confirmed and affirmed him in his apostleship, and he went to speak to them, and they tested everything he said to see what is true. They tested the teaching of an apostle, but what did they test it against? They tested against the scriptures, which they had, which we call the Old Testament.
Paul hadn't written Romans, Ephesians, and Galatians, and First and Second Timothy, and Philippians, and finally even in Colossians, he hadn't written those things yet. I don't even know at that time if there was even a written record of the gospel. Maybe Marks had been written, but I don't know that the Bereans would have had it.
So they tested against the Scriptures, which my friend's father preferred to set aside. He said, "Well, I don't like the God of the Old Testament." That's the Old Testament. We don't need that. You ever heard anybody say that? You ever heard anybody have that conversation with you?
Well, that's just the Old Testament. I don't like the God of the Old Testament. He was mean. I've I've actually heard people say these words, and and I thought, well, if you know, if Paul's teaching could undergo that kind of examination, well, I certainly don't have any any grounds for exempting my own. And that gives me a standard for examining myself, worship leaders at a church, a televangelist claiming a word from God, a celebrity.
But I keep coming back to that persuasive voice inside my own head that has to be examined. Put it against Scripture. You know, even the red letter words contain inconvenient material. People don't want to hear it. I had a friend today, just this morning, call me, and he was looking at this thing with with going over in Israel, and today's October seventh, and all these things.
He said, "Do you think the Jewish people are going to hell?" And I said, "Well, let's go back and say, I don't know what's in a man's heart." There's no way, but here's what the text says: the red letter words, if you will, if that helps you. But here's what the text says: no man comes to the Father except by the Son, through the Son. It's there. It is right there. It's Jesus says this.
Now, what am I supposed to do with this?
Well, he didn't mean it. Is that what I'm supposed to say? And and you go back and look at all the scripture, but then. We could we could unpack this for days. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him as righteousness.
So I can't go into this place and try to come up with the doctrine of Peter here, not Peter the Apostle. I'm talking about this Peter. I just go with the text says, and we struggle with these things. We but here's what it says. We may not like it, but there's what it says right there.
Now what are we going to do with it? We going to believe this or not? Jesus speaks of denying himself, and for me to do the same, take up my cross, follow him. But he also invites the weary and heavy laden to come to him. I can certainly identify with the weary and heavy laden part, but it's the denying myself that gives me trouble.
Paul cried out, "O wretched man that I am!" That's familiar to me.
So does this Thanksgiving to God through Jesus Christ. That apostle, my friend's father, he didn't like him. Helps me understand both my condition and my hope. We'll talk more about that. This is Truth Talk Live.
We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg. Glad to be with you.
eight six six thirty four Truth eight six six three four eight Seventy-eight, eighty-four. We're talking about a friend of mine's father. Who, it was just kind of one of those moments, and she kind of sighed when he said, "You know, I think I'm becoming more like Christ." You know, and that's after he said, "I don't really listen to the apostles. Don't like Paul. I don't like the Old Testament.
I don't like the God of the Old Testament. I just read the Red Letter Words, and I'm becoming more like Christ." He gave himself a real at a boy and a slap on the back, and and I thought, you know. Bless his heart. But we, but how many people have you encountered who are kind of like that? That they are measuring themselves by what they want to see in themselves, by their own standards, by their own desires.
I'll never forget. There was a pastor who lost a his wife and a child in a terrible wreck. Terrible wreck, and he ended up having a nervous breakdown, and he was in a mental institution for a while, and he was meeting with the psychiatrist there. He was a wonderful man, a godly man, and this guy was sitting there just in this room, and the psychiatrist looked at him and said, "What? What do you think is keeping you here?
What's happened to you is horrific, but what's keeping you in this place?" And this pastor said, "I I don't believe in God anymore." And he put his head in his hands. He said, "I've lost my faith. I don't believe in God anymore." And the psychiatrist let that hang for just a bit. Then he said very gently, "He said, 'I don't think you've stopped believing in God. I think you've stopped believing in a God that you manufactured.'" How many of us have done this?
Have somehow got in our mind of the way God is supposed to be, some type of cosmic bellhop who does what we want him to do, and we get angry with him when he doesn't. And sometimes that anger is passive aggressive. If he doesn't do we want to do, then you know if we're praying for somebody for healing, they don't get healed.
Well, then it's got to be their fault. It's got to be. There's no way a good and loving God is going to allow a woman to go through 98 surgeries and both of her legs amputated, and so it's got to be her fault, and we project that on her. I've had the people do that to my wife. There's no, you know, we we we we have these manufactured ideas of what God is and is not, and it comes because of what we talked about last week: biblical illiteracy.
We have no idea who He is. But we can know. That's what theology is. Is the study of God. We we we are we are able to know God.
They used to call theology the queen of sciences. And her handmaiden, philosophy. That's that's what it called. It was a science. The theology was a science.
The queen of sciences. People say, well, you know, you can't study God. Yes, you can. And we've changed. Theology now to religion, and we've equated the two, but they're not the same.
Religion is man's attempt to explain how man approaches God as he sees it, as he sees God, whether it's one God or two gods, three gods. You heard the caller in the last half hour who talked about connecting up with Vivek Ramaswamy, who said he believes in God. Which God? And this is this is why biblical literacy is so critical to our country. And we have Bibles almost in every home.
We a lot of people have a dozen Bibles in their homes, but they have dust all over them. And we've got to read. We've got to study. God has made Himself available to be known by us. I went to a wonderful school down in South Carolina for several years, and there it's Columbia International University, right there in the chapel, right at the front.
Huge double side, two two sides of the globe. You got you know two globes, two big circles up there, and through it it says the motto of the school, which is to know him and make him known. To know him and make him known. To be able to know Him, and the question is, do we? And we find that out a lot of times through suffering, and that's not a very uplifting, fun thing to talk about on the radio on a drive time home on a live call-in show, but that's the reality.
We find out what we know about God and what we believe about God when we're going through painful things, and God uses those painful things to purge that stuff out. Asking me how I know this. I had a horrific view of God, a very distorted view of God, and very little reverence. God was just—I was supposed to pray, and and and and God would do what I asked. I'm ashamed of this.
Didn't know who He was, and now I understand a little bit more than I used to. And now I understand when Isaiah said when he saw the Lord, and he and he basically was just like, "Oh, I shouldn't even be here. I'm undone. Woe unto me!" You know, it just and and when when Peter saw Jesus at the shore of Galilee, and when when when when the cat the castanet brought the fish, and he said, "Depart from me. I'm a sinful man.
I shouldn't even be here. I can't be around you." We don't think of those terms. We think of of God as our our our buddy and our pal, a kindly old grandfather. Jesus is our our friend. Is going to do whatever we want him to do.
Is just going to love us no matter what we do. But he's a holy God. Who demands a holy people. That's what the text says. And we could choose to be like my friend's father and say, you know what?
I just don't care for the apostles' teaching. I don't really care for the the prophets' teaching and the Old Testament. I that that's too mean and too too harsh for me. I'm just going to read the red letter words. Does it work that way?
Does it? I I I do want to become more like Christ, and. I will tell you this, as I mentioned the last block about the Bereans. When Paul preached to the Bereans and they examined him, I've got a long list of Bereans in my life. That if I ever announce my progress with any kind of satisfaction, you remember that.
Seen in that movie, airplane, when that lady was getting hysterical, they all lined up to slap her back into sense. And there's some people sitting there with big wrenches and lead pipes and everything else. That's that's I got people in my life like that, and a lot of them would would get back in line. I mean, they would beat me like a ridden mule because they've seen my work. I've seen my work.
I need a better Savior than me, and I need to not ever look at me. Becoming more like Christ involves a cross and dying to ourselves. That's what the text says. That's what He did. Take up your cross and follow Him.
Now, we don't have to like this. You're not under obligation to agree with this at this point in your life, but you are going to have to deal with it, and you're going to have to come to grips with this. And you can reject this Christ and try to stand in front of God on your own merits, or you can stand covered in His righteousness. That He gave through Christ. We are called to die to ourselves.
We are called to take up our cross, not to ask for a round of applause. You don't ask for a standing ovation and a round of applause for a man who's supposed to be dying. I've seen my work. My hope rests in His, not mine. There's nothing that I bring, nothing in my hand I bring.
Foul I to the fountain flies, the hymn writer says. Wash me, Saviour, lest I die. You know, simply nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. I have no other place to go.
And that is the gospel of knowing that He knows this, and He provided a way. And so we've got a lot of politicians out there who are going to want to nuance this, and they they don't want to offend this voting block, they don't want to offend that voting block. You know what? I they're going to have to deal with that. I cannot.
Not my circus, not my monkeys is for all these people. I can't. I can't go. I don't have access to them. I have access to the voting booth, and I'm going to vote my conscience.
I'm going to vote the one who I think will treat my neighbors the best. Without living undue burdens, I look at go back. If you want to see what that looks like, go back and look at Book of First Kings and Second Kings, and you can see the decline where where we had Solomon with all his riches, and then when he died, his son Rehoboam, and the older guys came to him and say, "Hey, look, the people are taxed pretty heavy. Your father's pretty hard on these people. Let's back it off a little bit." And then his young friends came.
No, tax them even more. I mean, beat them, you know. And then he he listened to his young friends, tax them more. And then the kingdom split. And the northern kingdom, the ten tribes that went there, they never got away from the idolatrous wickedness.
They had wicked king after wicked king after wicked king. Started with Jeroboam and just went all the way down. The Southern Kingdom had a couple of speed bumps on their way to decline, but they all ended in captivity. They all went into idolatry. They all went into immorality of the worst ilk.
And the question is, what are we going to do about this? Our country is filled with this, and we have a responsibility. We have a responsibility. Take it seriously. We're about out of time, so I've got to run.
Thank you so much for spending the time with me today. By the way, there's more at my Substack caregiver dot substack dot com. I encourage you to go out there, sign up. I put stuff out there free. Got one out there today that you can read.
They're just short things. There's audio, there's video, there's all kinds of things. Caregiver.substack.com. If you download the app, it'll send it right to you, and you just read it right on your phone. And I think it'll be encouraging to you, and it'll strengthen you.
And I look forward to every time with you. This is Peter Rosenberg. We'll see you next time.
