WEBVTT

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♪ Elevates them to a presence ♪

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♪ As with this voice they cry ♪

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♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia, Lord most high ♪

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(organ music)
(singing inaudible)

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♪ Praise to the Lord ♪

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♪ Oh, let all that is in me adore him ♪

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♪ All that have life and breath, come now ♪

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♪ With praises before him ♪

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♪ Let the amen ♪

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♪ Sound from his people again ♪

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♪ Gladly forever adore him ♪

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♪ Amen ♪

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<v ->In the year that King Josiah died, I saw the Lord</v>

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sitting upon a throne high and lifted up.

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And the foundations shook and the house was filled

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with smoke, and I said, woe is me.

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For I am lost.

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For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell

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in the midst of a people of unclean lips,

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for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.

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In the presence of God, and in the company of one another,

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let us confess our sin as we pray together.

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Our loving God, who by your love hast made us,

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and through your love has kept us

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and in your love would make us perfect,

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we humbly confess that we have not loved you

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with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.

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And that we have not loved one another as Christ loves us.

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Your life is within our souls, but our selfishness

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has hindered you, we have not lived by faith.

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We have resisted your spirit.

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We have neglected your inspirations.

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Forgive what we have been.

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Help us to amend what we are,

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and in your spirit direct what we shall be,

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that you may come into the full glory of your creation,

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in us and in all people through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

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And the Lord touched Isaiah and said, behold.

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This has touched your lips.

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Your guilt is taken away.

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And your sin forgiven.

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Through Christ our Lord, amen.

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(organ music)

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His works are marvelous ♪

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♪ By his grace ♪

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♪ And his might ♪

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♪ He has exalted us ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His works are marvelous ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His works are marvelous ♪

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♪ By his grace ♪

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♪ And his might ♪

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♪ He hath exalted us ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ By his grace ♪

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♪ And his might ♪

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♪ He hath exalted us ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ His works are marvelous ♪

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♪ By his grace ♪

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♪ And his might ♪

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♪ He hath exalted us ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ By his grace ♪

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♪ And his might ♪

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♪ He hath exalted us ♪

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♪ We shall not die ♪

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♪ But live forever ♪

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♪ And shall praise, shall praise the works ♪

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♪ Of the Lord ♪

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♪ We shall live to praise the works ♪

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♪ Of the Lord ♪

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♪ We shall not die ♪

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♪ We shall not die ♪

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♪ We shall not die ♪

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♪ We shall not die ♪

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♪ But shall live and praise the works ♪

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♪ Of the Lord ♪

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♪ Shall praise the works of the Lord ♪

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♪ We can praise ♪

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♪ Shall praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Praise the Lord ♪

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♪ Works of the Lord ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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♪ Alleluia ♪

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<v ->Would the congregation please rise</v>

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for the reading of the gospel?

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The scripture lesson this morning is from Luke four,

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verses 16 through 21.

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And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up

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and he went to the synagogue as his custom was

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on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read.

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And there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah.

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He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

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the spirit of the Lord is upon me,

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because he has anointed me

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to preach good news to the poor.

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He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

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and recovering of sight to the blind,

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to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim

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the acceptable year of the Lord

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and he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant

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and sat down and the eyes of all in the synagogue

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were fixed on him, and he began to say to them,

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today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

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May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of this word.

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(organ music)

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♪ Glory be to the father ♪

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♪ And to the son and to the Holy Ghost ♪

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♪ As it was in the beginning ♪

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♪ Tis is now and ever shall be ♪

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♪ World without end, amen, amen ♪

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<v ->As with one voice let us affirm our faith.</v>

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We are not alone.

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We live in God's world.

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We believe in God who has created and is creating,

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who has come in the truly human Jesus to reconcile

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and make new, who works in us and others through the spirit.

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We trust God, who calls us to be the church.

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To celebrate life and its fullness, to love and serve others

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To seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus

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crucified and risen, our judge and our hope,

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in life, in death, in life beyond death,

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God is with us.

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We are not alone, thanks be to God.

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Would you be seated please?

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This evening at seven o'clock,

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the chapel concert series is pleased to present

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in concert Mr. Francis Perry, artist in residence

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at the University this year.

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You will find on the back of the bulletin the program

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for the concert tonight, an outstanding musician

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who will be accompanied by, among others,

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the Chiampi quartet.

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You are invited to come and share in this special concert

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tonight at seven.

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Next Sunday morning, we invite you to come prepared

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to make a special offering.

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Last year, some 200 or more families in the Durham

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community were supplied with emergency money

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to help buy fuel to keep their homes warm during

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the wintertime,

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this money was over $22,000 and was supplied

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from the federal budget, it has been cut this year,

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there are no funds available.

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Operation Breakthrough, Women in Action and other groups

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and church groups in the community are trying to raise

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some money to help provide funds, emergency funds

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for families that need fuel to keep warm

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the rest of this winter so I invite you to come

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with some special offerings and some additional offerings

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next Sunday morning.

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This afternoon at four o'clock, we will be privileged again

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to have a service of worship in this place,

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when Dr. Skinner will preach for us again

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and when there will be special music provided

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by the Russel Memorial CME church choir,

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The Damascus Road Experience, and the Reverend

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and Mrs. John Borens and perhaps others.

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It will be a time of real celebration

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and a time when we can share as a community of believers

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the word of God as it comes to us in many ways.

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It's a real privilege this morning.

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To welcome again to the Duke campus Dr. Tom Skinner.

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He was here in January of 1973 and preached.

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We have invited him back again so that many of us

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may hear him again and many who have not heard him

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may hear him for the first and the second times.

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Dr. Skinner was born in Harlem, reared there.

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For over two years was head of the Harlem Warlords

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street gang, a gang of 130 or so young men

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bent on destroying others or at least ruling

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their communities, he was a fighter

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and as he said to my wife and one of our sons last night,

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a dreamer.

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He was indeed a leader and a thinker.

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And then he was converted to the lordship not of himself

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as king of the Warlords but to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

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As some of us learned last night, he is a man

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with a keen mind.

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He is a man who cares.

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He is a man committed to preach and to live

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the whole gospel.

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Among his diverse responsibilities, he is chaplain

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to the Washington Redskins football team.

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A witness that has profound effect not only upon

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a small group of men and their families, but otherwise.

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He is head of Tom Skinner associates.

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But most of all, I think all of us at the end

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of the service today will agree,

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he is a man who has been called by God and claimed by Christ

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to preach the word.

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So after we have the pastoral prayer,

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and the lord's prayer, it will be our privilege again

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to hear Dr. Tom Skinner, and Brother Tom, on behalf

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of all of us and this university committee,

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in the name and in the spirit of Christ, I say welcome

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and we look forward with eager anticipation

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and hopefully with open hearts and minds to the word

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which you will bring to us.

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The Lord be with you.

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<v ->And with your spirit.</v>

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<v ->Let us pray.</v>

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For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,

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for the love which from our birth over and around us lies,

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Lord of all, to thee we raise

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this our hymn of grateful praise.

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Oh, God, we thank you for this day,

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for this place, here of renewal and recommitment,

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for this time of worship, for this hour when we can

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come together in your name and in the name

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and in the spirit of your son Jesus Christ.

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Oh, yes, God, we thank you for life and health and food,

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for minds to think and bodies to work and spirits to feel.

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Help us.

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Help us to realize that all that we have and all that we are

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comes from you.

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It is indeed a time when we stop to realize it,

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a time to be thankful.

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For we can hear your word, we can sing your praise

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and we can receive your love and we can be drawn closer

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to you and closer to one another in Christ.

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It is a time for us to rejoice in the good news

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that Christ cares for each of us and for all of us.

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That Christ loves us and wants us to love one another.

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Hear our prayers, oh God, in your mercy,

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not only for ourselves, but for those whom we are to love

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even as we love ourselves, that is our neighbors.

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God we ask for a special blessing of your Holy Spirit,

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your living spirit to be in the ruins of Guatemala.

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We know not, we understand not the mystery of destruction

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and devastation, when it is caused by nature

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or often, oh God, even when it is caused by human force

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and so we only cry out for mercy or peace of mind,

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for healing, and strength to those who suffer.

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Oh, God, help each of us to be an instrument of peace.

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Where there is bitterness, let us bring love.

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Help us to be instruments of justice so that where

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there is discrimination, we may bring understanding.

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Help us to be instruments of joy

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so that where there is sadness

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we may bring a song of hope.

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And God, may we truly care for those who are lonely

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in prison, those who are sick and suffer,

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those who hunger, are naked, or weary and lost.

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Now oh God, by the power, the mysterious but very real

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power of your spirit, speak to us one by one,

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draw us together in a bond of love and commitment

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which will make of us one mind and one spirit in this hour.

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May we hear your word as your servant speaks to us.

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Hear us now as we pray the prayer which our Lord

266
00:27:24.300 --> 00:27:26.683
has taught us to pray, saying,

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00:27:27.790 --> 00:27:30.653
our father who art in heaven,

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00:27:31.580 --> 00:27:32.993
hallowed be thy name.

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00:27:34.130 --> 00:27:37.194
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done

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00:27:37.194 --> 00:27:39.463
on earth as it is in heaven.

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00:27:40.690 --> 00:27:42.720
Give us this day our daily bread

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00:27:44.049 --> 00:27:46.360
and forgive us our trespasses

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as we forgive those who trespass against us

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and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

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For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory

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forever, amen.

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<v ->May I begin at the outset of our message this morning,</v>

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to say that I am very happy to have the opportunity to

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00:28:28.424 --> 00:28:33.002
share in this worship service with you.

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At the turn of this decade, the late '60s, the early '70s,

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00:28:41.610 --> 00:28:45.210
a great number of people had come to the conclusion

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00:28:45.210 --> 00:28:50.210
that in our society Humpty Dumpty had fallen off of the wall

283
00:28:50.660 --> 00:28:53.970
What most people could not agree on is how we were

284
00:28:53.970 --> 00:28:58.970
to put him back together again.

285
00:28:58.970 --> 00:29:01.760
Many voices in our society that spoke to the moral

286
00:29:01.760 --> 00:29:05.580
and spiritual decadence were considered to be prophets

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00:29:05.580 --> 00:29:10.580
of doom, most of the people said speak to us good things,

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things can't possibly be as bad as you say.

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We made the sad mistake in our country of comparing

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ourselves with other people and convincing ourselves

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that we were still numero uno, ahead of most societies.

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We had greater technological advancements,

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we had mightier armies, we had more missiles,

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00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:34.040
more destruction, we had higher standards of living.

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00:29:34.160 --> 00:29:36.180
But there were others who kept saying that a nation

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00:29:36.180 --> 00:29:38.820
cannot be measured by its technology, it cannot

297
00:29:38.820 --> 00:29:41.380
be measured by its defense, it cannot be measured

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00:29:41.380 --> 00:29:43.610
by its affluence, but that it must be measured

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00:29:43.610 --> 00:29:48.330
by its character, its morality, its spiritual maturity.

300
00:29:50.440 --> 00:29:53.610
And suddenly, all of the props that we had traditionally

301
00:29:53.610 --> 00:29:56.310
been dependent upon began to...

302
00:29:56.310 --> 00:29:58.860
Fall beneath us.

303
00:29:58.860 --> 00:30:02.240
One scandal after another rocked our nation.

304
00:30:02.240 --> 00:30:04.430
We soon learned that all the things that we had been taught

305
00:30:04.430 --> 00:30:07.687
in our history books about how the system really functioned

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00:30:07.687 --> 00:30:10.365
wasn't the way it really was.

307
00:30:10.365 --> 00:30:14.203
We soon discovered that we had been consistently lied to,

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00:30:14.203 --> 00:30:17.530
deceived, we soon discovered that the people

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00:30:17.530 --> 00:30:20.350
who had been elected to high offices in our society,

310
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that their moral and spiritual character

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did not meet the demands of those offices.

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And a tremendous amount of insecurity and lack of trust

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has set in our nation and people began to

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00:30:30.900 --> 00:30:35.166
look for alternatives.

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00:30:35.166 --> 00:30:37.610
One group said that the best way to change the world

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00:30:37.610 --> 00:30:39.980
in which we live is to simply destroy it

317
00:30:39.980 --> 00:30:42.635
and start all over again.

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00:30:42.635 --> 00:30:45.370
Their argument was that the society was too decadent

319
00:30:45.370 --> 00:30:49.473
in its present structure to do anything about it

320
00:30:49.473 --> 00:30:52.020
and their argument was that we must bomb the system out

321
00:30:52.020 --> 00:30:55.360
and begin again and you will remember those people.

322
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Some idiot would put a bomb

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underneath a General Motors plant, blow it sky high

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00:30:59.300 --> 00:31:02.517
and feel that he had changed the system.

325
00:31:02.517 --> 00:31:05.090
He soon discovered that that wasn't the case

326
00:31:05.090 --> 00:31:07.130
because the executive committee of General Motors

327
00:31:07.130 --> 00:31:09.920
would meet the following morning, make plans

328
00:31:09.920 --> 00:31:11.820
to build a new plan at a new location,

329
00:31:11.820 --> 00:31:13.520
they would double production facilities

330
00:31:13.520 --> 00:31:15.980
in the existing plants to make up for the loss

331
00:31:15.980 --> 00:31:17.860
of production in the one that was bombed,

332
00:31:17.860 --> 00:31:20.534
the insurance would cover the rebuilding of a new plant

333
00:31:20.534 --> 00:31:22.570
and what the insurance didn't cover would be written

334
00:31:22.570 --> 00:31:25.380
off of next year's income tax, but all they had done

335
00:31:25.380 --> 00:31:27.107
was inconvenience General Motors,

336
00:31:27.107 --> 00:31:30.090
they really didn't change it.

337
00:31:30.090 --> 00:31:32.520
Because the people who were arguing for the destruction

338
00:31:32.520 --> 00:31:35.520
of the system had made the same mistake that the people

339
00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:38.453
who ran the system made, and that was to assume

340
00:31:38.453 --> 00:31:41.560
that the system is made of facilities

341
00:31:41.560 --> 00:31:44.090
and that simply by destroying the facilities

342
00:31:44.090 --> 00:31:48.413
of the system, you could change the system.

343
00:31:48.413 --> 00:31:50.981
Unfortunately, we suffer from the same problem

344
00:31:50.981 --> 00:31:53.640
even within the church, we suffer in American society

345
00:31:53.640 --> 00:31:56.970
from what I call an edifice complex.

346
00:31:56.970 --> 00:31:59.713
We worship our structures and our buildings

347
00:31:59.713 --> 00:32:02.850
and our institutions without really understanding

348
00:32:02.850 --> 00:32:05.390
that that is not where the real problem lies,

349
00:32:05.390 --> 00:32:08.360
it lies with people.

350
00:32:08.360 --> 00:32:10.820
We make the sad mistake even within the church

351
00:32:10.820 --> 00:32:14.830
of talking about attending church, going to church,

352
00:32:14.830 --> 00:32:18.170
but very seldom do we talk about being the church.

353
00:32:18.170 --> 00:32:20.725
The church becomes something that we go to

354
00:32:20.725 --> 00:32:23.880
or that we attend, it becomes wrapped up in our structure

355
00:32:23.880 --> 00:32:26.320
but we do not come to the point where we understand

356
00:32:26.320 --> 00:32:29.815
that spiritual renewal and revival does not lie

357
00:32:29.815 --> 00:32:33.610
in rearranging the furniture, it lies in radical change

358
00:32:33.610 --> 00:32:37.520
within people.

359
00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:41.606
But there was a second alternative.

360
00:32:41.606 --> 00:32:44.320
The second group of people said the answer does not lie

361
00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:49.313
in simply seeking to destroy the structures of the system

362
00:32:49.313 --> 00:32:52.680
but the answer lies by going inside the system

363
00:32:52.680 --> 00:32:54.770
and changing it from within and you will remember

364
00:32:54.770 --> 00:32:58.087
those people, they were the fair haired children

365
00:32:58.087 --> 00:33:01.020
of the late '60s and the early '70s who had become

366
00:33:01.020 --> 00:33:05.463
baffled, fatigued with all of the activism of the '60s.

367
00:33:05.463 --> 00:33:08.970
We were tired, we had marched, demonstrated,

368
00:33:08.970 --> 00:33:11.860
prayed in, sat in, swam in.

369
00:33:11.860 --> 00:33:14.370
We had faced up to all kinds of challenges,

370
00:33:14.370 --> 00:33:17.450
we had lived through the assassinations of John Kennedy,

371
00:33:17.450 --> 00:33:20.420
Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers,

372
00:33:20.420 --> 00:33:23.930
Malcolm X, we had lived through the civil rights movement,

373
00:33:23.930 --> 00:33:26.730
the feminist movement, the ecology movement

374
00:33:26.730 --> 00:33:29.907
and the disaster of the Vietnam war

375
00:33:29.907 --> 00:33:32.090
and by the time we came to the end of the '60s

376
00:33:32.090 --> 00:33:35.146
we were tired and battle fatigued and those of us

377
00:33:35.146 --> 00:33:36.720
who had been the activists of the system

378
00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:39.580
began to become disturbed.

379
00:33:39.580 --> 00:33:41.330
We looked on the other side of the fence

380
00:33:41.330 --> 00:33:44.730
and we saw those young people who had gone to school with us

381
00:33:44.730 --> 00:33:47.280
who had decided not to become involved,

382
00:33:47.280 --> 00:33:48.960
we had noticed that they were succeeding,

383
00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:52.029
they were climbing the business and social ladder,

384
00:33:52.029 --> 00:33:54.320
they were making more money, they had moved into

385
00:33:54.320 --> 00:33:57.050
communities of affluence, they were working

386
00:33:57.050 --> 00:34:00.480
on their second homes, buying their summer cottages.

387
00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:02.440
They had four or five cars in the garage.

388
00:34:02.440 --> 00:34:04.270
They were taking their trips to Europe.

389
00:34:04.270 --> 00:34:07.100
They were saving their money, they were not involved.

390
00:34:07.100 --> 00:34:09.610
They looked at us with sympathy while we struggled

391
00:34:09.610 --> 00:34:13.352
and sacrificed and something within us wanted

392
00:34:13.352 --> 00:34:16.040
at one point to maintain integrity to the movement

393
00:34:16.040 --> 00:34:18.340
to try to change the world, on the other hand,

394
00:34:18.340 --> 00:34:22.080
we noticed how green the grass looked on the other side

395
00:34:22.080 --> 00:34:25.260
of the fence and so we decided that the best way

396
00:34:25.260 --> 00:34:28.140
to enter a compromise was to argue that we wanted

397
00:34:28.140 --> 00:34:33.131
to go in the system in order to change it from within.

398
00:34:33.991 --> 00:34:37.308
The problem was that after several years, we are yet

399
00:34:37.308 --> 00:34:41.010
to meet one who has succeeded because we had discovered

400
00:34:41.010 --> 00:34:43.280
that in order to change the system from within,

401
00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:46.945
that first we had to get within the system.

402
00:34:46.945 --> 00:34:50.430
Then we had to work ourselves up to a position of authority

403
00:34:50.430 --> 00:34:54.670
and power so we could effect change and the question became

404
00:34:54.670 --> 00:34:57.870
what degree did we have to prostitute ourselves

405
00:34:57.870 --> 00:35:00.720
on the way up that when we got to that position,

406
00:35:00.720 --> 00:35:04.393
we forgot what we came there for

407
00:35:04.393 --> 00:35:08.213
and so we continued to look for alternatives.

408
00:35:08.213 --> 00:35:11.754
It was kind of summed up on the parts of those of us

409
00:35:11.754 --> 00:35:14.520
who while in college preparing for the ministry

410
00:35:14.520 --> 00:35:17.060
used to sit in the student lounge and have those

411
00:35:17.060 --> 00:35:20.760
tremendous rap sessions on how we were going to change

412
00:35:20.760 --> 00:35:24.560
the church when we became leaders in the church.

413
00:35:24.560 --> 00:35:27.110
We argued in those days that when we got into

414
00:35:27.110 --> 00:35:28.590
positions of leadership,

415
00:35:28.590 --> 00:35:32.961
we were going to make the church relevant.

416
00:35:32.961 --> 00:35:35.930
Now as I travel across the country and I run into guys

417
00:35:35.930 --> 00:35:38.170
that I went to school with, who are now pastors

418
00:35:38.170 --> 00:35:43.170
of strategic churches, leaders of their denominations,

419
00:35:43.417 --> 00:35:46.850
heads of church agencies, bishops of various councils

420
00:35:46.850 --> 00:35:50.380
and I ask them how they are doing on the basis

421
00:35:50.380 --> 00:35:53.170
of the conversations we used to have in school,

422
00:35:53.170 --> 00:35:56.360
most of them don't even remember the conversation,

423
00:35:56.360 --> 00:35:59.550
not less are they doing it, because we soon discovered

424
00:35:59.550 --> 00:36:02.367
it was very difficult to change an institution

425
00:36:02.367 --> 00:36:06.336
that was writing out our paycheck.

426
00:36:06.336 --> 00:36:09.793
But there was a third alternative

427
00:36:09.793 --> 00:36:12.400
and the third alternative was based on the fact

428
00:36:12.400 --> 00:36:16.609
that almost everything that one learns how to do

429
00:36:16.609 --> 00:36:19.640
that requires any degree of physical skill,

430
00:36:19.640 --> 00:36:23.156
we learned because someone showed us.

431
00:36:23.156 --> 00:36:25.530
I learned how to play golf because someone showed me

432
00:36:25.530 --> 00:36:28.230
how to keep my head down and my left arm stiff

433
00:36:28.230 --> 00:36:30.760
and to swing in a pendulum form.

434
00:36:30.760 --> 00:36:33.420
I learned how to play tennis because someone showed me

435
00:36:33.420 --> 00:36:36.984
how to serve and how to volley.

436
00:36:36.984 --> 00:36:39.180
I learned how to play baseball because someone

437
00:36:39.180 --> 00:36:42.180
showed me how to throw and how to catch and how to bat

438
00:36:42.180 --> 00:36:45.110
and how to slide, I learned how to play football

439
00:36:45.110 --> 00:36:47.330
because someone showed me how to block

440
00:36:47.330 --> 00:36:50.190
and how to tackle, in other words, I had a model

441
00:36:50.190 --> 00:36:52.790
that I could look at and say that's what I want

442
00:36:52.790 --> 00:36:55.700
to become.

443
00:36:55.700 --> 00:36:59.676
The issue that we face today is simply this.

444
00:36:59.676 --> 00:37:02.820
If we are to be the difference in the world

445
00:37:02.820 --> 00:37:05.830
in a world that's filled with hunger and oppression

446
00:37:05.830 --> 00:37:09.250
and racism and broken relationships,

447
00:37:09.250 --> 00:37:11.840
in a world of injustice, the question is

448
00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:16.840
where is there a model of what the world ought to become?

449
00:37:17.457 --> 00:37:20.460
All of us know that we live in a world of injustice,

450
00:37:20.460 --> 00:37:22.950
but the question is where is there a model

451
00:37:22.950 --> 00:37:25.580
of what justice looks like?

452
00:37:25.580 --> 00:37:28.423
We all know that we live in a world of hate,

453
00:37:28.423 --> 00:37:31.920
but the question is, where do I turn to to find a model

454
00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:36.450
of what love looks like?

455
00:37:36.450 --> 00:37:41.450
It is illustrated in the picture entitled Billy Jack,

456
00:37:41.500 --> 00:37:46.500
story of a young man, part Indian, part Caucasian,

457
00:37:46.710 --> 00:37:51.130
served in the Vietnam conflict, was an expert in karate

458
00:37:51.130 --> 00:37:54.510
and judo, returns to his hometown to find the town

459
00:37:54.510 --> 00:37:57.726
filled with animosity and hate and most of the people

460
00:37:57.726 --> 00:38:01.908
seeking to pick fights with him day after day.

461
00:38:01.908 --> 00:38:04.520
Finally one day, a group of fellas

462
00:38:04.520 --> 00:38:07.840
in town rape his girlfriend.

463
00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:10.640
Livid with anger, he decides that he's going to march

464
00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:14.510
into town and take them all on and tear them to pieces.

465
00:38:14.510 --> 00:38:18.180
His girlfriend seeks to intercede by saying Billy Jack,

466
00:38:18.180 --> 00:38:21.653
you can't do it, we've got to leave here and go someplace

467
00:38:21.653 --> 00:38:24.252
in the world where there is peace and where there

468
00:38:24.252 --> 00:38:29.220
is justice and where there is love and where people care.

469
00:38:29.220 --> 00:38:33.980
Billy Jack's response was, you lead me to one square inch

470
00:38:33.980 --> 00:38:38.980
on the face of this earth where there is such a place.

471
00:38:39.250 --> 00:38:42.410
You see we have done a tremendous job in American society

472
00:38:42.410 --> 00:38:46.070
of reciting the rhetoric about justice and tranquility

473
00:38:46.070 --> 00:38:50.120
and peace and happiness and joy and liberty and fraternity

474
00:38:50.120 --> 00:38:54.640
and all the other beautiful things that we so nobly aspire,

475
00:38:54.640 --> 00:38:57.910
but the question is where is the model of that?

476
00:38:57.910 --> 00:39:02.200
If I wanted to find justice, where people are practicing

477
00:39:02.200 --> 00:39:06.250
justice day by day, what community could I go to,

478
00:39:06.250 --> 00:39:09.974
where could I find on your campus or your neighborhood,

479
00:39:09.974 --> 00:39:12.810
a group of people who have entered into a covenant

480
00:39:12.810 --> 00:39:16.645
relationship to practice justice.

481
00:39:16.645 --> 00:39:20.810
If I wanted to discover love aside from reading it

482
00:39:20.810 --> 00:39:24.790
poetically in books, aside from Shakespeare or Bacon

483
00:39:24.790 --> 00:39:28.160
or any of the other great poets or writers who talked

484
00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:32.880
about love, where could I go where I could see by watching

485
00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:35.777
and observing a group of people in their relationship

486
00:39:35.777 --> 00:39:39.510
with each other, day by day, demonstrating what love

487
00:39:39.510 --> 00:39:42.368
looks like?

488
00:39:42.368 --> 00:39:46.896
In other words, where is the model?

489
00:39:46.896 --> 00:39:50.139
It was this that Jesus had in mind

490
00:39:50.139 --> 00:39:53.399
when he had finished praying in the fourth,

491
00:39:53.399 --> 00:39:55.645
rather in the 11th chapter of Luke.

492
00:39:55.645 --> 00:39:58.810
And his disciples came to him and said, Lord,

493
00:39:58.810 --> 00:40:03.810
why don't you teach us to pray as John taught his disciples?

494
00:40:04.250 --> 00:40:07.460
And someone said that the disciples in observing the way

495
00:40:07.460 --> 00:40:11.690
Jesus prayed discovered that he prayed as naturally

496
00:40:11.690 --> 00:40:16.640
as he breathed, that prayer was not an extracurricular

497
00:40:16.640 --> 00:40:19.870
activity in the life of Jesus.

498
00:40:19.870 --> 00:40:23.240
Jesus didn't wake up in the morning and on the way out

499
00:40:23.240 --> 00:40:28.240
of the door say oh, I forgot my quiet time.

500
00:40:28.470 --> 00:40:32.700
Rather, prayer was a natural process in the life of Jesus.

501
00:40:32.700 --> 00:40:35.830
He prayed as naturally as he breathed.

502
00:40:35.830 --> 00:40:39.310
It was like exhaling and inhaling, and his disciples,

503
00:40:39.310 --> 00:40:43.120
noticing the degree to which he was free to converse

504
00:40:43.120 --> 00:40:48.120
with his father, asked to get in on it, so Jesus said,

505
00:40:48.350 --> 00:40:52.833
when you pray, here is what you will lay on the father.

506
00:40:52.833 --> 00:40:56.870
You will say our father who art in heaven,

507
00:40:56.870 --> 00:41:01.870
hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,

508
00:41:01.870 --> 00:41:06.760
your will be done, on earth the way it is in heaven.

509
00:41:08.270 --> 00:41:12.829
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth

510
00:41:12.829 --> 00:41:16.588
the way it is in heaven.

511
00:41:16.588 --> 00:41:19.730
Which meant that obviously in the mind of Jesus

512
00:41:19.730 --> 00:41:22.700
there was something going on in heaven

513
00:41:22.700 --> 00:41:26.432
that he wanted to happen on earth.

514
00:41:26.432 --> 00:41:29.830
Now if for a moment you could forget the gates of pearl

515
00:41:29.830 --> 00:41:33.100
and the streets of gold and the crystal fountains

516
00:41:33.100 --> 00:41:36.899
flowing forever, heaven would be defined

517
00:41:36.899 --> 00:41:41.616
as that sphere of influence where God is in control.

518
00:41:41.616 --> 00:41:44.760
What makes heaven heaven is that in heaven

519
00:41:44.760 --> 00:41:49.162
Jesus is Lord and heaven is that sphere of influence

520
00:41:49.162 --> 00:41:52.535
where everything is happening precisely the way God

521
00:41:52.535 --> 00:41:55.970
wants it to happen, in heaven, Jesus is Lord.

522
00:41:55.970 --> 00:42:00.970
He is owner, he is ruler, he is having his way.

523
00:42:01.448 --> 00:42:05.843
So that in heaven, there is no poverty, no hunger,

524
00:42:05.843 --> 00:42:10.784
no racism, no broken relationships, no prejudice,

525
00:42:10.784 --> 00:42:15.784
no oppression, no war and no violence.

526
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:18.899
Because all the things that I just listed to you

527
00:42:18.899 --> 00:42:21.930
are the works of the devil and the Bible tells us

528
00:42:21.930 --> 00:42:26.271
that the devil has no influence in heaven.

529
00:42:26.271 --> 00:42:30.290
But that is obviously not true about earth.

530
00:42:30.290 --> 00:42:33.400
Because on earth there is violence and there is war

531
00:42:33.400 --> 00:42:37.418
and there is oppression and there is conflict

532
00:42:37.418 --> 00:42:41.977
and broken relationships, because on earth,

533
00:42:41.977 --> 00:42:44.350
Jesus is not Lord.

534
00:42:44.350 --> 00:42:46.760
Jesus is not owner.

535
00:42:46.760 --> 00:42:50.556
Jesus is not ruler.

536
00:42:50.556 --> 00:42:54.180
Now for most of us in American society who live under

537
00:42:54.180 --> 00:42:58.110
a form of civil religion, it is very difficult

538
00:42:58.110 --> 00:43:00.520
for us to accept that.

539
00:43:00.520 --> 00:43:04.280
Because we have created a certain kind of Americanism,

540
00:43:04.280 --> 00:43:07.779
in the name of religion and God, which sanctifies

541
00:43:07.779 --> 00:43:10.800
our system in God's name.

542
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:13.480
You see, we have very cleverly stuck God's name

543
00:43:13.480 --> 00:43:18.420
in the salute to the flag, which says one nation under God.

544
00:43:18.420 --> 00:43:21.280
We have even put his name on our money.

545
00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:24.610
It reads, in God we trust.

546
00:43:24.610 --> 00:43:28.670
We all know that deep down within that that is not true,

547
00:43:28.670 --> 00:43:31.540
it may be what we want, it may be what we like,

548
00:43:31.540 --> 00:43:35.210
it may be what some of us aspire to,

549
00:43:35.210 --> 00:43:38.090
but we are not one nation under God.

550
00:43:38.090 --> 00:43:42.918
God does not run our society, he does not run the Senate

551
00:43:42.918 --> 00:43:46.960
or the Congress or the state legislature or the city council

552
00:43:46.960 --> 00:43:50.870
He does not run the boards of education of our cities,

553
00:43:50.870 --> 00:43:54.111
he does not run most of the major businesses

554
00:43:54.111 --> 00:43:58.260
in American society, we are not one nation under God.

555
00:43:58.260 --> 00:44:01.660
If it were true, it would mean that God is an awful

556
00:44:01.660 --> 00:44:04.810
administrator, he's fouled up his own system,

557
00:44:04.810 --> 00:44:08.020
polluted his own air, polluted his own water,

558
00:44:08.020 --> 00:44:11.610
massacred all of those Indians, instituted slavery

559
00:44:11.610 --> 00:44:14.450
and is in the process of creating a society

560
00:44:14.450 --> 00:44:18.262
where one percent of the population has 45%

561
00:44:18.262 --> 00:44:23.040
of all the dollars, 1% of the population has 43%

562
00:44:23.040 --> 00:44:26.740
of all the common stock invested in the major corporations

563
00:44:26.740 --> 00:44:31.740
and that 1% of all businesses make 75% of all profit.

564
00:44:33.912 --> 00:44:35.930
Not only is he a horrible administrator

565
00:44:35.930 --> 00:44:40.658
he cannot even balance a budget.

566
00:44:41.804 --> 00:44:45.110
The fact of the matter is that God doesn't run our society.

567
00:44:45.110 --> 00:44:49.174
It is not one nation under God.

568
00:44:49.174 --> 00:44:52.630
The inscription on our coin may be a noble aspiration,

569
00:44:52.630 --> 00:44:55.310
in God we trust, the fact of the matter is,

570
00:44:55.310 --> 00:44:58.430
we do not trust God, it is the money we trust.

571
00:44:58.430 --> 00:45:02.120
We trust our missiles and our bombs and our defense.

572
00:45:02.120 --> 00:45:04.900
We trust our national security council.

573
00:45:04.900 --> 00:45:09.030
We do not trust in the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

574
00:45:09.030 --> 00:45:11.770
We do not have the faith of the scripture which says

575
00:45:11.770 --> 00:45:15.000
that the angel of the Lord encampeth around those

576
00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:18.860
who trust him, rather our trust lies in our radar systems

577
00:45:18.860 --> 00:45:21.710
and our abilities and our anti ballistic missiles

578
00:45:21.710 --> 00:45:24.560
and our bombs, it lies in our defense budget

579
00:45:24.560 --> 00:45:27.880
but not in the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac

580
00:45:27.880 --> 00:45:31.134
and the God of our Lord Jesus Christ who promises

581
00:45:31.134 --> 00:45:36.126
to be with those who trust him.

582
00:45:37.234 --> 00:45:41.640
And so the prayer of Jesus, Lord, your kingdom come,

583
00:45:41.640 --> 00:45:44.970
your will be done on earth the way it is in heaven,

584
00:45:44.970 --> 00:45:48.210
is because obviously God does not have the option

585
00:45:48.210 --> 00:45:51.170
to do on earth what he is doing in heaven

586
00:45:51.170 --> 00:45:53.880
because there are not the vehicles available to him

587
00:45:53.880 --> 00:45:58.458
to do so.

588
00:45:58.458 --> 00:46:01.680
Which means when he prays, Lord, your kingdom come,

589
00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:04.740
your will be done on earth the way it is in heaven,

590
00:46:04.740 --> 00:46:08.630
is that it is the will of God to put together

591
00:46:08.630 --> 00:46:13.566
a community of people on earth, called the church,

592
00:46:13.566 --> 00:46:17.780
who are to be the live models on earth of what is

593
00:46:17.780 --> 00:46:22.647
happening in heaven so that any time anybody wants to know

594
00:46:22.647 --> 00:46:25.924
what is happening in heaven, all they have to do

595
00:46:25.924 --> 00:46:29.665
is watch us, it is the function of the church,

596
00:46:29.665 --> 00:46:34.100
then, to become the fifth columnist of the kingdom of God,

597
00:46:34.100 --> 00:46:37.761
the saboteurs in Satan's world for the purpose

598
00:46:37.761 --> 00:46:42.100
of producing on alien territory what it looks like

599
00:46:42.100 --> 00:46:46.569
in heaven, to model on earth, on enemy turf,

600
00:46:46.569 --> 00:46:50.745
what is going on in heaven.

601
00:46:50.745 --> 00:46:53.980
It's perhaps illustrated by a study of certain

602
00:46:53.980 --> 00:46:58.085
colonial powers in contemporary history.

603
00:46:58.085 --> 00:47:00.621
The British were such a power.

604
00:47:00.621 --> 00:47:04.140
It is safe to say that when the British arrived in Africa,

605
00:47:04.140 --> 00:47:08.105
the average African had never been to England.

606
00:47:08.105 --> 00:47:11.760
But by watching the lifestyle of the British in Africa,

607
00:47:11.760 --> 00:47:16.110
the Africanssoon learned what was going on in England.

608
00:47:16.110 --> 00:47:19.240
He watched the recreational habits of the British

609
00:47:19.240 --> 00:47:21.640
and he noticed that they would take this ball,

610
00:47:21.640 --> 00:47:24.050
go out on a field and kick it up and down the field

611
00:47:24.050 --> 00:47:25.965
trying to knock it through these

612
00:47:25.965 --> 00:47:29.100
two uprights with a crossbar

613
00:47:29.100 --> 00:47:31.050
and they called the game soccer

614
00:47:31.050 --> 00:47:33.530
and the Africans soon learned that in England,

615
00:47:33.530 --> 00:47:36.660
they played soccer, he watched them at another

616
00:47:36.660 --> 00:47:40.260
recreational activity where they took to the field

617
00:47:40.260 --> 00:47:43.840
with a flat bat and an individual would stand near

618
00:47:43.840 --> 00:47:46.440
a thing with three sticks coming up out of the ground

619
00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:50.210
with a pug sitting on the top, 75 feet away

620
00:47:50.210 --> 00:47:53.240
would be a gentleman with a ball who would pace

621
00:47:53.240 --> 00:47:56.731
about 15 feet towards this wicket and he would

622
00:47:56.731 --> 00:48:00.170
throw the ball and try to knock the pug off of the wicket

623
00:48:00.170 --> 00:48:02.010
and the batsman would try to hit the ball

624
00:48:02.010 --> 00:48:05.320
before it hit the wicket and they called the game cricket

625
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:06.870
and the Africans soon learned

626
00:48:06.870 --> 00:48:09.662
in England, they played cricket.

627
00:48:09.662 --> 00:48:12.617
He watched the social habits of the British

628
00:48:12.617 --> 00:48:15.140
and he noticed that every afternoon at four PM,

629
00:48:15.140 --> 00:48:18.000
the British stopped to have a spot of tea

630
00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:21.530
and so he soon learned that by watching the habits

631
00:48:21.530 --> 00:48:25.600
of the British he could learn what was going on in Africa.

632
00:48:25.600 --> 00:48:29.460
In a real sense that is God's mission for the church.

633
00:48:29.460 --> 00:48:33.360
It is the function of the church to colonize earth,

634
00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:36.536
to become the colony of heaven on earth,

635
00:48:36.536 --> 00:48:39.800
on Satan's territory, on enemy turf

636
00:48:39.800 --> 00:48:43.290
where there is injustice and hate and oppression

637
00:48:43.290 --> 00:48:46.760
and violence and war and poverty and hunger.

638
00:48:46.760 --> 00:48:49.360
It is God's purpose that the church

639
00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:52.040
be the colony of heaven on earth

640
00:48:52.040 --> 00:48:56.190
so that any time anybody wants to know what God is doing

641
00:48:56.190 --> 00:48:59.620
and what God is about and what is going on in heaven,

642
00:48:59.620 --> 00:49:04.620
all they have to do is check with us.

643
00:49:05.732 --> 00:49:10.541
Who are these people who are the alternative communities?

644
00:49:10.541 --> 00:49:14.360
Who are these people called the church who are to model

645
00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:17.675
what the kingdom of God looks like?

646
00:49:17.675 --> 00:49:20.870
And it is obvious that it is a tragedy that the average

647
00:49:20.870 --> 00:49:24.870
churchman doesn't realize that their function is to model

648
00:49:24.870 --> 00:49:27.874
on earth what is happening in heaven.

649
00:49:27.874 --> 00:49:30.815
Most of us see our responsibility as churchmen

650
00:49:30.815 --> 00:49:33.650
to put in our one hour on Sunday morning,

651
00:49:33.650 --> 00:49:37.160
to give a few dollars to some good noble causes.

652
00:49:37.160 --> 00:49:39.720
We might memorize a few verses of scripture

653
00:49:39.720 --> 00:49:42.550
and some of the hymns and maybe some sections

654
00:49:42.550 --> 00:49:45.712
of the catechism, but for most of us,

655
00:49:45.712 --> 00:49:47.330
we do not see ourselves

656
00:49:47.330 --> 00:49:49.440
as the fifth columnist of God.

657
00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:52.670
We do not see ourselves placed in the world

658
00:49:52.670 --> 00:49:57.536
to be salt and light, to model what God is about.

659
00:50:00.450 --> 00:50:02.450
Let me suggest to you in the first place

660
00:50:02.450 --> 00:50:07.450
that this new order, this new community called the church

661
00:50:07.450 --> 00:50:11.186
has to be made up of new people.

662
00:50:11.186 --> 00:50:14.460
You cannot have a new order without new folks.

663
00:50:14.460 --> 00:50:17.260
We continue in the world in which we live

664
00:50:17.260 --> 00:50:21.080
to try to change the world simply by rearranging

665
00:50:21.080 --> 00:50:24.840
the furniture, we call people to reform.

666
00:50:24.840 --> 00:50:28.760
We call people to social change without understanding

667
00:50:28.760 --> 00:50:32.908
that change cannot occur until first changes occur

668
00:50:32.908 --> 00:50:36.653
in the deep recesses of man's being.

669
00:50:36.653 --> 00:50:40.548
It was this that Jesus had in mind in his dialog

670
00:50:40.548 --> 00:50:42.910
with a certain gentleman in the third chapter

671
00:50:42.910 --> 00:50:46.943
of John by the name of Nicodemus.

672
00:50:46.943 --> 00:50:49.460
Nicodemus was one of the rulers of the Jews,

673
00:50:49.460 --> 00:50:53.042
a ruler of the Sanhedrin council, the most powerful

674
00:50:53.042 --> 00:50:57.723
religious and political council among Jews.

675
00:50:57.723 --> 00:51:02.469
Nicodemus was a very religious man, fasted twice a week,

676
00:51:02.469 --> 00:51:07.080
prayed three times a day, gave 10% of all of his earnings

677
00:51:07.080 --> 00:51:12.080
to the synagogue, and never missed a sabbath go to meeting.

678
00:51:12.120 --> 00:51:15.690
He comes to Jesus by night and begins his dialog

679
00:51:15.690 --> 00:51:20.000
by saying, master we know that you are a teacher

680
00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:23.520
come from God because no one can pull off the things

681
00:51:23.520 --> 00:51:26.762
that you're pulling off except God be with him.

682
00:51:26.762 --> 00:51:30.510
And noticed he said we, which meant that back

683
00:51:30.510 --> 00:51:33.420
at the Sanhedrin, we have discussed you.

684
00:51:33.420 --> 00:51:36.230
Your name has been on the agenda at numbers

685
00:51:36.230 --> 00:51:39.110
of our meetings and all of us have come

686
00:51:39.110 --> 00:51:43.921
to the conclusion that you are a teacher come from God.

687
00:51:43.921 --> 00:51:46.240
And the logical question is if they agreed

688
00:51:46.240 --> 00:51:48.440
that he was a teacher come from God,

689
00:51:48.440 --> 00:51:51.330
why then were they giving him so much flack?

690
00:51:51.330 --> 00:51:54.384
Why were they fighting him, why were they resisting

691
00:51:54.384 --> 00:51:57.570
this new order that he was building, this new teaching

692
00:51:57.570 --> 00:52:00.470
he had come which was radicalizing the hearts

693
00:52:00.470 --> 00:52:02.995
of so many people?

694
00:52:02.995 --> 00:52:05.322
Well, it was very simple.

695
00:52:05.322 --> 00:52:08.530
What Nicodemus was saying is that Jesus, we have no argument

696
00:52:08.530 --> 00:52:11.700
or fight with you, we think that the things

697
00:52:11.700 --> 00:52:14.793
that you are doing are really groovy.

698
00:52:14.793 --> 00:52:19.270
Blind people seeing, dead people coming alive,

699
00:52:19.270 --> 00:52:21.478
lame people walking.

700
00:52:21.478 --> 00:52:24.360
We have no argument with that, we think that's heavy stuff.

701
00:52:24.360 --> 00:52:25.700
We think that's groovy stuff.

702
00:52:25.700 --> 00:52:28.640
There is no argument with the miracles you are performing.

703
00:52:28.640 --> 00:52:32.050
We even like your welfare program, thousands of folks

704
00:52:32.050 --> 00:52:34.777
eating off of a couple of loaves and fishes, I mean,

705
00:52:34.777 --> 00:52:38.322
we have no problem, Jesus, with what you are about.

706
00:52:38.322 --> 00:52:41.700
The problem, Jesus, is that you are not one of us.

707
00:52:41.700 --> 00:52:44.624
You are not a member of a council, you don't come out of

708
00:52:44.624 --> 00:52:47.810
our social group and all we're asking you

709
00:52:47.810 --> 00:52:51.580
is that you come and join us, become one of us.

710
00:52:51.580 --> 00:52:55.151
After all, we have a lot in a common.

711
00:52:55.151 --> 00:52:58.560
You're a Jew, we're Jews.

712
00:52:58.560 --> 00:53:01.520
You can trace your family heritage back to Abraham

713
00:53:01.520 --> 00:53:03.210
and so can we.

714
00:53:03.210 --> 00:53:07.870
You come from one of the 12 tribes of Israel and so do we.

715
00:53:07.870 --> 00:53:12.870
I mean, man, we are brothers, we need to get together.

716
00:53:13.120 --> 00:53:16.240
We want to change the world, you want to change the world.

717
00:53:16.240 --> 00:53:18.940
Now we have different words for it.

718
00:53:18.940 --> 00:53:23.940
We call it social reform, political change,

719
00:53:23.965 --> 00:53:27.210
economic evolution, you call it something

720
00:53:27.210 --> 00:53:29.390
called the kingdom of God,

721
00:53:29.390 --> 00:53:32.460
but what's a few words among friends?

722
00:53:32.460 --> 00:53:35.720
I mean, what's semantics among people who are about

723
00:53:35.720 --> 00:53:38.220
the same task, you want to change the world,

724
00:53:38.220 --> 00:53:39.860
we want to change the world.

725
00:53:39.860 --> 00:53:41.398
You want a better place to live and we want

726
00:53:41.398 --> 00:53:44.250
a better place to live, we call it social reform

727
00:53:44.250 --> 00:53:46.160
and you call it the kingdom of God,

728
00:53:46.160 --> 00:53:49.815
but it's the same difference.

729
00:53:49.815 --> 00:53:52.177
It's at this point that Jesus understands

730
00:53:52.177 --> 00:53:56.890
that Nicodemus doesn't understand, so Jesus says

731
00:53:56.890 --> 00:54:00.720
to Nicodemus, Nic, I don't want you to climb a wall

732
00:54:00.720 --> 00:54:04.300
when I lay this on you and don't get uptight

733
00:54:04.300 --> 00:54:08.813
when you tell you this, but except a man be born again,

734
00:54:08.813 --> 00:54:13.589
he cannot see the kingdom of heaven.

735
00:54:13.589 --> 00:54:18.589
Now Jesus didn't mean that Nicodemus would never see

736
00:54:18.730 --> 00:54:21.813
heaven, the gates of pearl and the streets of gold

737
00:54:21.813 --> 00:54:25.508
and the crystal fountains flowing forever,

738
00:54:25.508 --> 00:54:28.040
but what Jesus was saying is that Nicodemus,

739
00:54:28.040 --> 00:54:32.740
except a man is reborn in his spirit, he will never be able

740
00:54:32.740 --> 00:54:37.610
to see, to comprehend, to understand that in the middle

741
00:54:37.610 --> 00:54:40.997
of all of the violence and war and poverty

742
00:54:40.997 --> 00:54:44.158
and greed and hunger and self interest

743
00:54:44.158 --> 00:54:48.210
that exists in our world, that amidst all of the headlines

744
00:54:48.210 --> 00:54:51.694
that speak of despair and disillusionment,

745
00:54:51.694 --> 00:54:56.694
that God has his own agenda, that God is doing his own thing

746
00:54:56.840 --> 00:54:59.950
That God is building his own kingdom.

747
00:54:59.950 --> 00:55:04.950
Except a man be born again, he will never see that.

748
00:55:05.369 --> 00:55:08.775
But Nicodemus was an intellectual.

749
00:55:08.775 --> 00:55:12.890
He was a member of the academic community,

750
00:55:12.890 --> 00:55:15.880
a man well schooled and versed in the philosophies

751
00:55:15.880 --> 00:55:20.880
and religions of his time and Nicodemus, this great scholar,

752
00:55:21.775 --> 00:55:26.775
turns to Jesus and says, born again?

753
00:55:27.220 --> 00:55:30.703
You mean that I am to go back into my mother's ovule

754
00:55:30.703 --> 00:55:34.385
and start all over again?

755
00:55:34.385 --> 00:55:37.540
You see, the amazing part about an intellectual

756
00:55:37.540 --> 00:55:41.840
is that no matter how intellectually sophisticated he is,

757
00:55:41.840 --> 00:55:46.120
how academically and scholastically inclined he may be,

758
00:55:46.120 --> 00:55:49.878
if he starts on the wrong premise, he can be awful dumb.

759
00:55:49.878 --> 00:55:52.480
(audience laughs)

760
00:55:52.480 --> 00:55:55.600
Of course, the tragedy with most so called intellectuals

761
00:55:55.600 --> 00:55:58.257
today that it is not really important that they think

762
00:55:58.257 --> 00:56:01.880
through the basic issues, it is only necessary

763
00:56:01.880 --> 00:56:04.750
that one sounds sophisticated.

764
00:56:04.750 --> 00:56:07.610
It reminds me of my days at school.

765
00:56:07.610 --> 00:56:11.040
In those days it was necessary to put on

766
00:56:11.040 --> 00:56:13.868
a certain academic attire.

767
00:56:13.868 --> 00:56:17.393
In those days it was a kind of a tweed sports jacket

768
00:56:17.393 --> 00:56:21.800
with padding on the elbows and we wore a certain kind

769
00:56:21.800 --> 00:56:25.550
of Ivy League type tie, button down shirt

770
00:56:25.550 --> 00:56:28.134
and we had a pipe, the pipe of course being

771
00:56:28.134 --> 00:56:33.134
the epitome and highest symbol of intellectualism.

772
00:56:33.390 --> 00:56:36.472
We walked around with our pipes, pontificating

773
00:56:36.472 --> 00:56:40.420
on our navals, never really speaking to the real issues

774
00:56:40.420 --> 00:56:44.980
and so when we spoke, we said, hithertofore it has been said

775
00:56:44.980 --> 00:56:48.720
existentially speaking, that when one considers

776
00:56:48.720 --> 00:56:52.480
the rationalistic approach of Jean Poissot

777
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:57.092
or even Socrates or Plato, one comes to recognize

778
00:56:57.092 --> 00:57:00.700
the all encompassing philosophy then of Kierkegaard

779
00:57:00.700 --> 00:57:03.450
when he spoke of the need of man to face

780
00:57:03.450 --> 00:57:06.820
existential reality, and as you see,

781
00:57:06.820 --> 00:57:08.561
that was a very profound statement.

782
00:57:08.561 --> 00:57:09.870
(audience laughs)

783
00:57:09.870 --> 00:57:13.730
Now Nicodemus was such an intellectual

784
00:57:13.730 --> 00:57:17.210
who could not grasp was Jesus was talking about

785
00:57:17.210 --> 00:57:20.580
when he said a man has to be reborn.

786
00:57:20.580 --> 00:57:23.590
And what Jesus was saying is that just as you were born,

787
00:57:23.590 --> 00:57:26.607
years ago, physically of your mother's ovule

788
00:57:26.607 --> 00:57:30.906
and you came alive biologically and mentally and emotionally

789
00:57:30.906 --> 00:57:35.380
your spirit was dead, your spirit can only come alive

790
00:57:35.380 --> 00:57:39.700
when it is infused by the life and the power of God.

791
00:57:39.700 --> 00:57:44.126
And to be reborn, Nicodemus, is to take all that you are

792
00:57:44.126 --> 00:57:47.540
and all that you have and make it totally available

793
00:57:47.540 --> 00:57:49.410
to all that I am.

794
00:57:49.410 --> 00:57:53.840
So that my spirit is able to saturate the common clay

795
00:57:53.840 --> 00:57:58.295
of your humanity and that your humanity becomes the vehicle

796
00:57:58.295 --> 00:58:03.295
through which I express myself.

797
00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:08.814
The urgent message of today is that in spite of all kinds

798
00:58:08.814 --> 00:58:13.252
of very good attempts at changing the world legislatively,

799
00:58:13.252 --> 00:58:16.480
politically and economically, with all of the great

800
00:58:16.480 --> 00:58:19.440
sociological dissertations being written

801
00:58:19.440 --> 00:58:23.090
on the tremendous problems and crises of our time,

802
00:58:23.090 --> 00:58:27.499
our society must understand that there can be no change

803
00:58:27.499 --> 00:58:31.920
in an oppressive social structure until we radically change

804
00:58:31.920 --> 00:58:35.340
human nature, until we bring dead men

805
00:58:35.340 --> 00:58:37.440
into live confrontation

806
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:40.660
with the resurrected Christ, until a man is prepared

807
00:58:40.660 --> 00:58:44.042
to come and to say to Jesus, I hereby renounce

808
00:58:44.042 --> 00:58:48.540
all rights to myself and I give to Jesus Christ the right

809
00:58:48.540 --> 00:58:53.473
to own me, there will never be significant social change.

810
00:58:55.660 --> 00:58:59.080
There was some other ingredient about this new order.

811
00:58:59.080 --> 00:59:01.640
That this new order is then not just made up of people

812
00:59:01.640 --> 00:59:05.400
who decide to join church, to become Methodists

813
00:59:05.400 --> 00:59:07.990
or Baptists or Episcopalians.

814
00:59:07.990 --> 00:59:10.948
They're not simply people who recite catechisms

815
00:59:10.948 --> 00:59:14.380
or creeds or who sing hymns, but they are a people

816
00:59:14.380 --> 00:59:17.948
whose loves will become saturated by the life of Jesus,

817
00:59:17.948 --> 00:59:20.500
who have renounced all rights to themselves,

818
00:59:20.500 --> 00:59:24.140
who have turned their backs on all personal ambition

819
00:59:24.140 --> 00:59:28.410
and personal goals to adopt the goals of Jesus Christ,

820
00:59:28.410 --> 00:59:33.401
to allow him to become the Lord and owner of their lives.

821
00:59:34.818 --> 00:59:39.809
But then this changed people, this reborn people

822
00:59:41.325 --> 00:59:44.010
come together to create what the scripture calls

823
00:59:44.010 --> 00:59:47.325
a fellowship or the church

824
00:59:47.325 --> 00:59:49.550
and the word fellowship means exactly what

825
00:59:49.550 --> 00:59:53.700
the word says, it's fellows in the same ship,

826
00:59:53.700 --> 00:59:55.880
it's a group of people who have entered into

827
00:59:55.880 --> 00:59:59.310
a covenant to hurt together, bleed together,

828
00:59:59.310 --> 01:00:04.310
celebrate together, rejoice together, overcome together.

829
01:00:05.010 --> 01:00:08.900
Jesus set the pace by saying a new commandment I give you

830
01:00:08.900 --> 01:00:13.130
in the new order, that you love one another.

831
01:00:13.130 --> 01:00:15.970
Now if he would have stopped there, that would have been

832
01:00:15.970 --> 01:00:17.403
great because I would have been

833
01:00:17.403 --> 01:00:21.550
left to my own interpretation of what love is.

834
01:00:21.550 --> 01:00:24.710
But Jesus closes the door and says a new commandment

835
01:00:24.710 --> 01:00:29.010
I give you, that you love one another the way I love you.

836
01:00:29.010 --> 01:00:33.230
Now I have a problem because I have to then discover

837
01:00:33.230 --> 01:00:36.635
how God loves Tom Skinner.

838
01:00:36.635 --> 01:00:40.880
And I soon discover that God loves me the way I am,

839
01:00:40.880 --> 01:00:43.440
that God does not require that Tom Skinner go through

840
01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:46.420
any changes in order for him to love me,

841
01:00:46.420 --> 01:00:49.580
that he loves me the way I am and he calls upon me

842
01:00:49.580 --> 01:00:52.710
to enter into a covenant relationship with other people

843
01:00:52.710 --> 01:00:55.720
where I am committed to them on the same basis

844
01:00:55.720 --> 01:00:58.965
that God is committed to me.

845
01:00:58.965 --> 01:01:02.952
Now I must confess to you that I tried to talk God out of it

846
01:01:02.952 --> 01:01:06.200
I thought it was utter nonsense for him to demand of me

847
01:01:06.200 --> 01:01:08.430
that I love people the way he loves me

848
01:01:08.430 --> 01:01:11.730
because after all, he didn't have to live with them.

849
01:01:11.730 --> 01:01:14.410
I tried to explain to him that sitting in all of his

850
01:01:14.410 --> 01:01:17.050
pomp and glory in heaven, he didn't understand

851
01:01:17.050 --> 01:01:19.890
what it meant to live with a lot of those folks.

852
01:01:19.890 --> 01:01:23.810
I tried to explain to him that I really had nothing personal

853
01:01:23.810 --> 01:01:26.490
against that Indian moving into the neighborhood

854
01:01:26.490 --> 01:01:29.980
except I couldn't deal with him pitching a teepee

855
01:01:29.980 --> 01:01:33.170
next to my $50,000 split level, and God didn't seem

856
01:01:33.170 --> 01:01:36.601
to understand that, I tried to argue with him

857
01:01:36.601 --> 01:01:38.800
that I had no problem but that some of those people

858
01:01:38.800 --> 01:01:41.473
were wild and boisterous, that when they moved

859
01:01:41.473 --> 01:01:43.830
into the neighborhood, they had the tendency to

860
01:01:43.830 --> 01:01:47.130
run the property values down and he wasn't going to work

861
01:01:47.130 --> 01:01:50.180
every day like I was and that God didn't save that money

862
01:01:50.180 --> 01:01:52.620
like I did and that was my hard earned money

863
01:01:52.620 --> 01:01:56.190
and my hard earned property and how dare he require me

864
01:01:56.190 --> 01:02:00.060
that I love all men the way they were?

865
01:02:00.060 --> 01:02:02.908
After all, one day one of them might come over

866
01:02:02.908 --> 01:02:05.740
and want to marry my daughter, and he didn't have to deal

867
01:02:05.740 --> 01:02:07.856
with that, I did.

868
01:02:07.856 --> 01:02:10.240
And the more I argued with him and the more I fought

869
01:02:10.240 --> 01:02:13.250
with him, the more he resisted my fight, calling me

870
01:02:13.250 --> 01:02:18.228
to take on his nature and his attitude towards all men.

871
01:02:20.330 --> 01:02:23.850
He goes further and says, by this all men will know

872
01:02:23.850 --> 01:02:28.850
you are my disciples, by the way you love one another.

873
01:02:28.982 --> 01:02:31.520
In other words the only way that the world will ever know

874
01:02:31.520 --> 01:02:34.380
that you and I are the disciples of Jesus Christ

875
01:02:34.380 --> 01:02:37.309
is not that they see us enter these walls

876
01:02:37.309 --> 01:02:39.517
or that they see us going to church

877
01:02:39.517 --> 01:02:41.940
or that they hear us recite the creed.

878
01:02:41.940 --> 01:02:45.270
They will only be able to know that we are disciples

879
01:02:45.270 --> 01:02:50.267
by virtue of the way we commit ourselves to one another

880
01:02:51.290 --> 01:02:55.275
and then he puts the cream on the cake by saying,

881
01:02:55.275 --> 01:02:58.130
there is no greater love than one person laying down

882
01:02:58.130 --> 01:03:02.189
his life for another, that what the church is about

883
01:03:02.189 --> 01:03:05.320
is that the church is made of people who have been reborn

884
01:03:05.320 --> 01:03:08.640
by the spirit of God who enter into a covenant

885
01:03:08.640 --> 01:03:11.000
with one another, to belong to each other,

886
01:03:11.000 --> 01:03:14.320
to be committed to each other, to lay their lives down

887
01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:19.320
for one another, may I ask you a question this morning?

888
01:03:19.490 --> 01:03:22.830
Outside of your immediate family, your mother,

889
01:03:22.830 --> 01:03:25.510
your father, your sister, your brother, your husband,

890
01:03:25.510 --> 01:03:30.510
your wife, who in the church, what group of people

891
01:03:30.630 --> 01:03:33.003
in the church fellowship are you in covenant with

892
01:03:33.003 --> 01:03:36.143
that you are prepared to die for?

893
01:03:36.143 --> 01:03:39.730
That is what the church is about.

894
01:03:39.730 --> 01:03:42.990
We discovered at my home church we had no fellowship,

895
01:03:42.990 --> 01:03:45.591
no relationship with each other.

896
01:03:45.591 --> 01:03:47.300
We entered the church on Sunday morning

897
01:03:47.300 --> 01:03:49.830
and we handed the people a program which told them

898
01:03:49.830 --> 01:03:52.830
what God was going to do in the next 59 minutes

899
01:03:52.830 --> 01:03:54.840
with one minute for chimes.

900
01:03:54.840 --> 01:03:56.070
When the service was over,

901
01:03:56.070 --> 01:03:57.887
we would shake the preacher's hand and tell him

902
01:03:57.887 --> 01:04:01.110
what a marvelous message and we would wave at each other

903
01:04:01.110 --> 01:04:03.990
in the parking lot as we got in our cars to drive away,

904
01:04:03.990 --> 01:04:07.500
but we had no fellowship, no relationship with each other.

905
01:04:07.500 --> 01:04:09.310
Occasionally there would be an announcement

906
01:04:09.310 --> 01:04:11.672
at the close of the service which would say

907
01:04:11.672 --> 01:04:13.450
immediately after this evening's service

908
01:04:13.450 --> 01:04:15.690
we will retire to the basement of the church

909
01:04:15.690 --> 01:04:18.720
or to fellowship hall where we will have a time

910
01:04:18.720 --> 01:04:20.990
of fellowship, namely Christian booze,

911
01:04:20.990 --> 01:04:24.380
tea, coffee and cookies and we called that fellowship.

912
01:04:24.380 --> 01:04:27.270
Once a year there would be a fellowship supper

913
01:04:27.270 --> 01:04:30.383
at our church where we would all bring potluck dinners

914
01:04:30.383 --> 01:04:32.790
and we called that fellowship but none of us

915
01:04:32.790 --> 01:04:34.665
knew each other, none of us hurt together

916
01:04:34.665 --> 01:04:36.910
or bleeded together, none of us celebrated together,

917
01:04:36.910 --> 01:04:41.898
none of us were involved day by day in each other's lives.

918
01:04:42.870 --> 01:04:45.320
But the church as God intends it to be

919
01:04:45.320 --> 01:04:47.820
is a community of people who are prepared

920
01:04:47.820 --> 01:04:52.573
to lay their lives down for one another.

921
01:04:52.573 --> 01:04:54.870
And then this church fellowship does something

922
01:04:54.870 --> 01:04:58.550
very significant, it is not only a reborn community,

923
01:04:58.550 --> 01:05:01.040
it's not only a fellowship of people who are prepared

924
01:05:01.040 --> 01:05:03.300
to die for each other, but then this community

925
01:05:03.300 --> 01:05:07.820
called the church breaks huddle and goes out into the world

926
01:05:07.820 --> 01:05:12.370
to commit sabotage on that world in the name of Jesus.

927
01:05:12.370 --> 01:05:14.600
Now I realize that some of you this morning

928
01:05:14.600 --> 01:05:18.170
are more politically inclined than you are kingdom inclined

929
01:05:18.170 --> 01:05:21.552
and the use of my words such as infiltration,

930
01:05:21.552 --> 01:05:24.323
saboteur, and fifth columnist

931
01:05:24.323 --> 01:05:27.190
conjures up political connotations

932
01:05:27.190 --> 01:05:28.930
in your own mind.

933
01:05:28.930 --> 01:05:30.670
That is not my intent.

934
01:05:30.670 --> 01:05:33.130
I am talking about the kingdom of God,

935
01:05:33.130 --> 01:05:35.750
I am not talking about capitalism or communism

936
01:05:35.750 --> 01:05:38.790
or socialism, I'm not talking about being democrat

937
01:05:38.790 --> 01:05:42.230
or Republican, I'm not talking about being left, right,

938
01:05:42.230 --> 01:05:45.890
I'm not talking about being conservative or liberal.

939
01:05:45.890 --> 01:05:49.403
I'm talking about the fact that the function of the church

940
01:05:49.403 --> 01:05:52.840
is to be the colony of God in the world, to commit

941
01:05:52.840 --> 01:05:56.350
sabotage on Satan's world for the purpose of the building

942
01:05:56.350 --> 01:05:59.883
up of the kingdom of God

943
01:05:59.883 --> 01:06:03.670
so that the reason you are a student at Duke University

944
01:06:03.670 --> 01:06:06.940
is not simply to get an education, that's part of it,

945
01:06:06.940 --> 01:06:09.930
but you are here to destroy the works of the devil

946
01:06:09.930 --> 01:06:13.580
on this campus, you are here to model the kingdom of God

947
01:06:13.580 --> 01:06:14.890
on this campus.

948
01:06:14.890 --> 01:06:18.611
The reason you work in the business you do and the reason

949
01:06:18.611 --> 01:06:22.385
you are to go into business is not simply to make money

950
01:06:22.385 --> 01:06:24.990
because if money were the problem, God could dose that out

951
01:06:24.990 --> 01:06:27.820
with no sweat, but the reason you're in business

952
01:06:27.820 --> 01:06:30.960
is for the purpose of destroying the works of the devil

953
01:06:30.960 --> 01:06:34.498
in business, the reason that you go into education

954
01:06:34.498 --> 01:06:37.380
is to destroy the works of the devil in education.

955
01:06:37.380 --> 01:06:39.970
The reason that you go into law is to bring

956
01:06:39.970 --> 01:06:43.305
the kingdom of God to bear on the legal system

957
01:06:43.305 --> 01:06:48.071
in our society, your job is not the place to make a living.

958
01:06:48.071 --> 01:06:51.690
Your job is not in existence so you can pay your bills.

959
01:06:51.690 --> 01:06:54.820
Your job does not exist for you to pay your mortgage

960
01:06:54.820 --> 01:06:58.090
or your car or your education or whatever else there is.

961
01:06:58.090 --> 01:07:00.280
Those are only the side effects.

962
01:07:00.280 --> 01:07:04.049
The job you have or will have is the place that God

963
01:07:04.049 --> 01:07:07.390
has put you to model the kingdom of God, to be God's

964
01:07:07.390 --> 01:07:11.320
representative in Satan's world, to be the salt

965
01:07:11.320 --> 01:07:14.480
that goes and penetrates the world and salts it

966
01:07:14.480 --> 01:07:19.220
and lights it in the name of Jesus.

967
01:07:20.620 --> 01:07:24.742
Finally, it is the function of the church

968
01:07:24.742 --> 01:07:28.290
to take those people who respond to its witness

969
01:07:29.150 --> 01:07:32.520
because if we truly become the colony of heaven on earth,

970
01:07:32.520 --> 01:07:35.020
if we truly become salt in the middle

971
01:07:35.020 --> 01:07:38.280
of a decadent society, if we truly go into the world

972
01:07:38.280 --> 01:07:41.300
to destroy the works of the devil for the building up

973
01:07:41.300 --> 01:07:44.510
of the kingdom of God, there are people who will respond

974
01:07:44.510 --> 01:07:48.353
to our witness and our lifestyle and like the Christians

975
01:07:48.353 --> 01:07:50.930
of old, they will come running to us saying brothers,

976
01:07:50.930 --> 01:07:55.725
sisters, what do we have to do to be saved?

977
01:07:55.725 --> 01:07:59.950
It is then the function of the church to take those people

978
01:07:59.950 --> 01:08:03.970
who respond to its witness and disciple those people

979
01:08:03.970 --> 01:08:07.440
and build those people up in the faith.

980
01:08:07.440 --> 01:08:11.885
So that they become mature followers of Jesus Christ.

981
01:08:11.885 --> 01:08:14.860
There is no area in the church in which the church

982
01:08:14.860 --> 01:08:19.393
is most sick and more immature

983
01:08:19.393 --> 01:08:22.934
than in the area of making disciples.

984
01:08:22.934 --> 01:08:26.410
Most of us have not grown any further in our relationship

985
01:08:26.410 --> 01:08:30.540
with Jesus Christ than the day we first acknowledged him.

986
01:08:30.540 --> 01:08:33.950
A great number of us have never entered into the experience

987
01:08:33.950 --> 01:08:37.310
of daily growth and development where Jesus becomes

988
01:08:37.310 --> 01:08:42.304
more of a reality in us today than he was yesterday.

989
01:08:42.304 --> 01:08:45.870
It is like bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital.

990
01:08:45.870 --> 01:08:49.100
He's five days old, we place him in the bassinet

991
01:08:49.100 --> 01:08:52.120
on the kitchen table and we say welcome home, Junior,

992
01:08:52.120 --> 01:08:56.370
glad you could make it. Now Junior, the refridge is right

993
01:08:56.370 --> 01:08:59.220
behind you, and we keep lots of goodies there,

994
01:08:59.220 --> 01:09:03.582
chicken and meat, vegetables and fruit and dairy products,

995
01:09:03.582 --> 01:09:05.760
and Junior, when you get hungry, the need arises,

996
01:09:05.760 --> 01:09:08.600
just open up the refridge and help yourself.

997
01:09:08.600 --> 01:09:10.520
Oh, by the way, Junior, you're gonna be needing

998
01:09:10.520 --> 01:09:13.440
a lot of change of clothing these days and we keep

999
01:09:13.440 --> 01:09:15.790
all of your clothes in the linen closet down the hall

1000
01:09:15.790 --> 01:09:18.510
in the right, as the need arises, just crawl on down

1001
01:09:18.510 --> 01:09:20.270
and help yourself.

1002
01:09:20.270 --> 01:09:22.746
Oh, yes, Junior, you will be doing a lot of sleeping

1003
01:09:22.746 --> 01:09:25.550
these days, we knew you'd be a boy, we've got your room

1004
01:09:25.550 --> 01:09:28.020
all decked out in blue, when the need arises,

1005
01:09:28.020 --> 01:09:29.870
and you feel sleep coming on, just make your way

1006
01:09:29.870 --> 01:09:31.950
into your room and climb in.

1007
01:09:31.950 --> 01:09:34.311
Now we know that that's ridiculous because at five days

1008
01:09:34.311 --> 01:09:37.332
of age, Junior cannot feed himself, clothe himself

1009
01:09:37.332 --> 01:09:40.730
and teach himself and help himself to grow.

1010
01:09:40.730 --> 01:09:43.970
That's the reason he has to have parents who feed him,

1011
01:09:43.970 --> 01:09:45.970
give him love and affection and discipline him

1012
01:09:45.970 --> 01:09:48.320
and correct him and feed him and give him love and attention

1013
01:09:48.320 --> 01:09:51.317
and discipline and correction until the day comes

1014
01:09:51.317 --> 01:09:54.500
when Junior is presented to the world as a man.

1015
01:09:54.500 --> 01:09:57.400
The function of the church is to take people as they

1016
01:09:57.400 --> 01:10:00.000
commit themselves to Jesus and take them through

1017
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.412
those steps, the tragedy is that most of us assume

1018
01:10:04.412 --> 01:10:07.729
that because people are sophisticated in their vocational

1019
01:10:07.729 --> 01:10:10.130
lives that they will bring to the kingdom of God

1020
01:10:10.130 --> 01:10:12.990
the same degree of sophistication.

1021
01:10:12.990 --> 01:10:16.170
It doesn't occur to us that a man in our fellowship

1022
01:10:16.170 --> 01:10:19.790
who's a brilliant surgeon knows little about what it means

1023
01:10:19.790 --> 01:10:22.530
to walk with God, he's brilliant in medicine

1024
01:10:22.530 --> 01:10:25.910
but he doesn't bring to his understanding of the word of God

1025
01:10:25.910 --> 01:10:27.600
and his understanding of the scriptures

1026
01:10:27.600 --> 01:10:29.400
and his understanding of the kingdom of God

1027
01:10:29.400 --> 01:10:32.930
the same sophistication that he brings to medicine.

1028
01:10:32.930 --> 01:10:35.620
We look at the businessman, the multimillion dollar

1029
01:10:35.620 --> 01:10:38.530
businessman in our church fellowship and we assume

1030
01:10:38.530 --> 01:10:41.470
that he is as sophisticated about the kingdom of God

1031
01:10:41.470 --> 01:10:44.550
as he is about management and how to run a business

1032
01:10:44.550 --> 01:10:46.970
and we fail to recognize that in management

1033
01:10:46.970 --> 01:10:49.770
he's sophisticated and mature but when it comes to

1034
01:10:49.770 --> 01:10:52.645
the scriptures and his understanding of the operation

1035
01:10:52.645 --> 01:10:57.311
of the spirit of God in his life, he's like a newborn baby.

1036
01:10:57.311 --> 01:11:00.297
But the tragedy is that when we must elect trustees

1037
01:11:00.297 --> 01:11:03.863
and deacons and elders in our churches, we go pick

1038
01:11:03.863 --> 01:11:07.500
the sophisticated businessman, the sophisticated surgeon,

1039
01:11:07.500 --> 01:11:10.640
the sophisticated astrophysicist, the people who have

1040
01:11:10.640 --> 01:11:13.930
succeeded in the vocations because we assume that because

1041
01:11:13.930 --> 01:11:16.880
they are sophisticated and successful in their business

1042
01:11:16.880 --> 01:11:21.215
that they will know how to sophisticatedly run the church.

1043
01:11:21.215 --> 01:11:22.970
And we never check out which side of the argument

1044
01:11:22.970 --> 01:11:25.490
they're on, which is why the church has been on

1045
01:11:25.490 --> 01:11:28.740
the wrong side of every major social argument

1046
01:11:28.740 --> 01:11:31.250
in recent times because the leaders of the church

1047
01:11:31.250 --> 01:11:33.970
vote on the side of their business interests

1048
01:11:33.970 --> 01:11:37.170
and not on the side of the kingdom of God.

1049
01:11:37.170 --> 01:11:39.898
Simply because we have not developed them and matured them

1050
01:11:39.898 --> 01:11:43.540
to be disciples of Jesus, to make them as mature

1051
01:11:43.540 --> 01:11:45.800
and sophisticated in their walk with God

1052
01:11:45.800 --> 01:11:49.455
as they are in their vocations

1053
01:11:49.455 --> 01:11:51.926
and so there you have it.

1054
01:11:51.926 --> 01:11:54.510
It is the function of the church then to be

1055
01:11:54.510 --> 01:11:57.650
a group of people who have been reborn by the spirit of God

1056
01:11:57.650 --> 01:12:00.884
where Jesus becomes the priority in their lives,

1057
01:12:00.884 --> 01:12:02.730
to enter into relationships with each other

1058
01:12:02.730 --> 01:12:04.640
where they're prepared to lay their lives down

1059
01:12:04.640 --> 01:12:08.170
for one another, to break the huddle and go into the world

1060
01:12:08.170 --> 01:12:11.130
to become salt and to commit sabotage on Satan's world

1061
01:12:11.130 --> 01:12:14.395
for the building up of the kingdom of God

1062
01:12:14.395 --> 01:12:17.240
and then to take those people who respond to Jesus Christ

1063
01:12:17.240 --> 01:12:19.310
and build them up in the faith so that they become

1064
01:12:19.310 --> 01:12:24.310
sophisticated, mature disciples of our Lord Jesus

1065
01:12:24.460 --> 01:12:28.170
and then we set loose in Satan's world, a world of violence

1066
01:12:28.170 --> 01:12:31.320
and injustice and poverty and hunger

1067
01:12:31.320 --> 01:12:34.840
and a world of decadence and spiritual immaturity.

1068
01:12:34.840 --> 01:12:36.940
We turn loose in that world men and women

1069
01:12:36.940 --> 01:12:41.429
who walk with God and who turn the world upside down

1070
01:12:41.429 --> 01:12:44.495
so that the prayer of Jesus may come to reality

1071
01:12:44.495 --> 01:12:47.340
in our lives and in our time.

1072
01:12:47.340 --> 01:12:52.248
May it happen in our hearts beginning today, shall we pray.

1073
01:12:56.810 --> 01:13:01.809
Father, it is our prayer that your kingdom will come

1074
01:13:01.809 --> 01:13:04.323
on this campus.

1075
01:13:04.323 --> 01:13:09.238
And that your will be done in this neighborhood.

1076
01:13:11.419 --> 01:13:14.830
That it will be on our campus in our places of business

1077
01:13:14.830 --> 01:13:19.804
the way it is in heaven, we ask it in Jesus' name,

1078
01:13:20.746 --> 01:13:23.537
amen.

1079
01:13:24.814 --> 01:13:29.814
(organ music)
(singing unintelligible)