Well, many of you are well aware that we are not going to be
doing Bible study tonight. And this is not a a sermon
either, nor is this a political speech.
And I can tell you that upfront because what we experience as a
nation has no political solution.
This is not about left and right.
This is not about policies. This is not about narratives.
This is not about anything other than righteousness versus evil,
lightness and dark. And I'm speaking from my heart
tonight. I'm speaking from my heart.
And hopefully it will touch your heart because my concern with
everything else that is going on is the condition of the people
of God. Because there are a lot of
voices out there. There's a lot of emotion,
there's a lot of theories, there are a lot of clips.
Things are developing even as we are having this time together.
And the thing that really struck me, apart from the shocking
assassination of Charlie Kirk 2 days ago, was how many people
across the board really have vocalized the same sentiment
that they can't really make sense of how they are grieving
so deeply for someone that they never knew.
Now, there is an entire other side to this issue that would
point the finger at anybody who publicly grieves over this man
to say that you're being hypocritical.
There are other tragedies taking place in the world.
Why would you bring so much attention and vocalize so much
concern for an individual? You can't explain everything in
life and there are many tragedies in this world and
every life is precious. And sometimes when an event like
what transpired 2 days ago happens, you can't always put
language to why you feel the way you feel.
But I have been thinking about potential reasons why.
The first is that this man, Charlie Kirk, he was a household
name. Whether you love them or hated
him, agreed with him or disagree with him, most people knew him,
especially millennials and Gen. ZI don't have social media.
I haven't had personal accounts on social media for years, and I
still know who this man is because people send his clips.
Inevitably, you see him on some kind of headline, and so people
are aware of who this man was. Second to that, he was
gruesomely murdered for the world to see.
We're not just heartbroken by the fact that a man in the prime
of his life was killed, leaving behind a wife and two kids.
The world witnessed in an uncensored way, the bullet of a
sniper rifle ripping through the throat of a man mid sentence on
a college campus. That's traumatic.
That is horror, and that is something that most people have
never seen in their lives. So there's that element.
Here's the third one, and this is especially relevant to us.
This man, Charlie Kirk, was a follower of Jesus Christ, a
bold, unashamed, passionate proclaimer of the truth.
I will be honest in saying that I did not follow this man
closely. I obviously knew of his name.
I've seen a couple of things, but because of what had
happened, I decided to just kind of catch up and see his most
known discussions, debate moments, I guess his
presentation of the truth. And refreshingly, unlike many
other pundits and people who have big platforms who kind of
just wear the Christian badge because they're moral or because
they want to just cling to some kind of worldview, I'm convinced
that this young man was a genuine follower of Christ.
There's no denying it. And so we're we're heavy hearted
because a brother in the Lord first and foremost.
Beyond anything, I view this man as a disciple of Jesus Christ,
and he lost his life. And we know there's a hope
attached to our faith even in death.
But we can still feel this weight and we can still be sad,
and we can still come before God and ask questions.
Here's the last thing I'll say before I open up some
scriptures. What happened to this man was
not only a physical attack. I am totally persuaded that it
was an assault on everything that he stood for.
And what he stood for includes the gospel that you and I
believe in and a ferocious, loving commitment to
righteousness. So that's that's potentially why
we feel the way we feel. And it's only been what, 2 days?
And knowing that we weren't going to do Bible study tonight,
I want to just share with you 3 main thoughts that have been
rewinding in my mind. And hopefully these thoughts
based on Scripture will provide some kind of clarity and courage
for you as it did for me. So the first thing that I can't
seem to stop playing in my mind is how what had happened very
much revealed the depths of wickedness in our society.
The murder was brutal. I found out about it while I was
at the gym on Wednesday afternoon, and shortly after I
received the clip, the raw clip of him being killed.
And shortly after that, because I'm not on social media, I
received screenshots of comments of people who celebrated the
assassination. And some of the things that
stood out to me were how people were even.
I'm saying this for a reason. You'll see in a moment people
were even putting gift emojis beside their comments, rejoicing
of this man's public slaughter. Do you know where my mind
immediately went when I saw those comments?
The Book of Revelation, Chapter 11.
I want you to see this with me. It's amazing how this book,
Revelation, is so timely for us as a church and how relevant it
is even for tragedies like what we're experiencing today.
Revelation 11 is primarily about these two mysterious figures
known as the Two Witnesses. I'm not going to get into an
interpretation or an explanation of who these figures are.
I just want you to see what they will do and how the world will
respond to their ministry. Let's begin in verse 4,
Revelation 11. These are the 2 olive trees and
the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and
consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this
is how he is doomed to be killed.
They have the power to shut the sky that no rain may fall during
the days of their prophesying, and they have the power over the
waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with
every kind of plague as often as they desire.
Now pause. These are unusual messengers of
God. We'll be endowed with a certain
level of authority and ability unlike any other time, unless
you really go back to the Old Testament and we're dealing with
a tribulation period in this chapter.
So this makes sense. This is a unique moment in
history where God will empower these unique servants to
accomplish something before the end of all things.
Look at verse 7. And when they had finished their
testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will
make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their
dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is
symbolically. That symbolically is called
Sodom in Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
For 3 1/2 days, some of the peoples and tribes and languages
and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let
them be placed in a tomb. Pause again.
I wonder how that's going to happen.
How is every peoples of all tribes, languages and nations
going to be able to gaze at 2 bodies in one location at the
same time? I think you know the answer.
Verse 10. And those who dwell on the earth
will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presence,
because these two prophets had been a torment to those who
dwell on the earth. That's immediately where my mind
went when I saw those heinous, despicable comments about the
assassination of a father, a husband, and an innocent man in
the Tribulation period, when these two witnesses will be
killed and will not even receive the honor of having their bodies
respected. Laying there on the streets for
a few days, people will actually be celebrating to the point of
buying presents and giving it to others.
Aren't you happy we got rid of these guys?
Notice here that it says these two prophets at the end of verse
10 had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.
Isn't that remarkable? The preaching and the
prophesying of these two witnesses will be torture to the
inhabitants of the earth during the Tribulation period.
It will literally torment them. For those who love darkness,
truth is torturous. It is unbearable.
It deserves the relief expressed through killing someone in order
to silence them. What we witnessed 2 days ago, in
my opinion, is a very strong reminder of where we're headed
as a people in this world, as a nation.
So that's what stood out to me. As shocking as it is on your
social media platforms, the things that you're seeing in
people's stories and what they're posting.
The Bible already prepared us and telling us very
descriptively how people will respond to truth speakers as we
approach the end of time. So don't be too surprised.
And this also tells me that what we saw two days ago isn't the
last of it. I know it can be defined and
deemed as a historical thing, but it's not the last of it.
Because Revelation tells us that it's going to at least happen to
two other more witnesses. The second thing that has been
swirling in my thoughts, and I know it's very easy to become
sensational after something like what we saw two days ago.
It's very easy to speak from your emotions, to be clouded in
your judgement. And I don't want to do that, but
I will say this because I believe it's true.
This is a wake up call to Christians that we live in a
different America now. We are a people who believe in
truth and we are people who've been commissioned by God to
speak the truth. The means by which somebody is
saved is through the word Roman, Romans highlights through the
preaching of the word. We are not like some religions
that want to just remain to ourselves and are not interested
in other people coming to know what we believe in.
No, we are the opposite. God has kept us on this earth to
go out and to win other people to the saving knowledge of Jesus
Christ. And we're living in a day where
there is a growing movement that says if you don't agree with
what we believe, you deserve to be killed.
And you're thinking to yourself, well, it was 1 gunman.
And I'm here to remind you of the people who celebrated it.
There is an entire culture, there is an entire movement that
is gaining momentum, that is becoming more bold, that is
unafraid, that are willing to even die to silence those who
speak the truth. So here's what I want to remind
you of, not to instill more fear in you, but to be honest with
you. We are living in an America that
is advancing and moving towards a reality in which you will pay
a price for what you believe in. Are you willing to pay that
price? Cultural Christianity in the
West is rapidly evaporating. It's disappearing before our
eyes. What you and I saw again 2 days
ago wasn't the assassination of a young evangelist in a Middle
Eastern country or under a communist regime.
It was on a college campus through an organization that
fostered discourse and dialogue for ideas to be exchanged
freely. Passionately, yes, but freely.
And the leader of that organization was killed.
Because, again, we're seeing the rise of an ideology that says,
unless you remain silent or agree with us, you don't deserve
to speak. You don't deserve to live.
You've heard it many times from this pulpit that America is not
exempt from persecution, that America is changing.
And personally, I'm concerned that even Christians that we may
know of are still asleep. They're not getting it.
They're not seeing it. They're they're still caught up
in this life. Let me remind you of 2 verses
that you know very well. In John 15, Jesus told us
something that relates to this thought.
Verse 18 If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before
it hated you. To us, it seems inconceivable,
unthinkable that we could be hated, that we have evolved.
Surely we have evolved with all the massacres and all the civil
wars and all the craziness. We we've surely learned our
lesson and we can accommodate and we can respectfully
disagree. No, Jesus prepares his people
for all time to be hated. And one of the ways in which you
can console yourself according to this verse is that if you are
hated, remember that they hated Jesus, the perfect one, the
sinless 1, the most loving and gracious one.
They hated Him and if you live for him, what makes you think
they're not going to hate you and me?
Now, another thing that really irked me with a little
information that I received, because again, I'm not on these
platforms are the comments of supposed Christians professing
Christians who are biblically illiterate.
And I have no idea how to interpret life and events and
tragedies the way the Bible calls us to, who don't even have
the basic grasp of what it means to be a follower of Christ.
What I mean by that there are so many people who have verses in
their profiles and claim to be followers of Christ who think
that Christians should never call out sin.
Who think that Christians should never go out to the public
square and confront unbelievers in the rebellion in their
darkness. Who think that the most loving
thing to do is to keep your faith to yourself and just
preach the gospel. Don't, don't discuss issues.
Don't, don't, don't highlight any kind of movement or
ideology. Just keep your mouth shut, sing
your songs, listen to your sermons, live in sin and just do
your thing. Can I ask you a question?
Why did they hate Jesus? Why?
Come on, why did they hate him? Can I tell you why?
John 77 That's why. The Lord Jesus tells us why the
world hated Him. The world cannot hate you, but
it hates me because I testify about it that its works are
evil. I don't know what your version
of Jesus is, but the one in the Bible shows me that the Lord
Jesus testified to the world that its works were evil.
He confronted sin. He pointed out iniquity.
He charged people to repent, even the woman who was caught in
adultery, which nominal Christians love to quote in
defense of their unbiblical understanding of what it means
to preach the gospel. Yes, Jesus did say he was
without sin. Let him cast the first stone.
Yes, if there was anybody who was worthy to cast a stone, it
was Christ himself because he was without sin.
But the same Jesus who said that also looked at this woman and
says now go and sin no more. So many Christians out there are
preaching half a gospel, not the true gospel.
And believers, I want to look at you in the eye from my heart and
remind you that we are advancing in a nation, in a culture that
will try to do what it can to keep you from speaking the
truth, even if it means to lose your life.
Think about it. I never thought in my short life
the church at large will be having discussions of having
armed security for their services.
We're in America. What is this?
Where are we? People fled their nations to
come to this country so that they can enjoy the right of
being able to speak out. Oh, how that is quickly
changing. So we have just been reminded
that you can even be somebody who encourages dialogue and
there are people who don't even want that.
Be prepared. Christians.
Here's the last thing that I want to say.
Tomorrow's not promise for any of us.
And I was sharing with Pastor Bennett before the service.
How I I briefly looked at the final clip of Charlie Kirk on
his channel before he was murdered.
And it was so interesting to hear him to, to speak about the
event in Utah as you and I would any ordinary weekend.
So we're going to be going to Utah and this is the the start
of our tour and just talking about it.
I'm sure thinking that he was going to have a successful
event, go home to his children, to his wife, maybe talk to him
on the phone if he was away, go to sleep and wake up to see
another day. And instead, mid sentence, he
was shot in the throat. Tomorrow is not promised.
This was a man who again, in the prime of his life, had so much
to live, had so much ahead of him, was promised such a bright
future, was commended and celebrated by so many, and the
Lord Jesus took him home. The sovereignty of God is a
strange thing, really is. It was only some months ago
where somebody tried to assassinate the president and he
grazed his ear. And then you have this young 31
year old man who was shot in a place that, humanly speaking, is
impossible to recover from. Why did God allow one and not
the other? I don't have answers.
I can speculate, but if there's anything that I do know, it's
this. Tomorrow's not promised.
So should that cause us to live anxiously and obsessively in a
negative way, where you do all that you can to try to protect
your life? Yeah, There are natural means
and there are common sense methods to enjoy life and to
protect ourselves from danger and harm.
But. But I don't think that's what
we're supposed to take from this.
If anything, we should be reminded that though death is
very much possible at any point, we have no reason to fear it.
Not one. Let me remind you of a verse
that I brought up, I believe last Sunday or the Sunday before
from Revelation yet again in chapter 14, in verse 13.
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, write this, Blessed are
the dead who die in the Lord from now on.
Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their
laborers, for their deeds follow them.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.
There's a lot of fear and I decided to venture out and
listen to other high profile names trying to make sense of
what happened, trying to give some kind of hope or answers for
how this nation can move forward to no avail, No success, no, no
tangible, helpful, concrete solutions.
But let me say this, the safest place for you in this crazy
world is to be in Jesus. That's the safest to be in the
Lord, to be close to the Lord. Death is coming for all of us,
and for some of us it might be earlier than what's commonly
experienced. So be it.
Here's my charge to you. Live a meaningful life.
Live for the gospel cause. Live for the glory of God.
Don't waste your life. Don't go out.
Don't exit with no deeds following you, with no
testimony, with no ministry, with no witness.
What a shame that would be. I'm not saying that means you
have to have this big organization or you have to be
in full time ministry. What I am saying, though, is one
of my prayers, and it was our prayer many ways on Wednesday
night when we came together as a church, which was so moving.
Is that one of the redeemable elements of what happened in
this horrible tragedy is that it would wake up lukewarm
Christians because we have too many of them distracted,
vacillating, carnal, worldly Christians?
Let me tell you something. If we keep going in this
direction as a nation, you won't survive what's coming.
Your little faith, whatever it is, will shrivel up.
But it doesn't have to. It can thrive.
It can be strong. It can be bold.
It can be filled with the fragrance of Christ if what
happened doesn't bring you to your knees and make you think
about your mortality and make you think about how am I really
invested in this gospel? Am I really invested in serving
Christ? Or is he some peripheral thing?
Is he just something that I attach to my weekend?
I really hope that this tragedy will not produce what many
tragedies do. A burst of concern, a sobriety,
only for it to dissipate and for people to just go back to their
mundane, ineffective Christianity.
There's much more I can say. There's much more that can be
explained, at least attempted to be explained.
But let me say two things before we pray.
One, if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus
Christ, I'm here to tell you without shame that He is the
truth. That He alone alone has the
answers for all the confusion and the chaos around us.
That you don't know life unless you know Him.
That you won't have eternal life unless you believe on Him.
To reject Him is to be rebellious.
To know of His gospel truth and to be indifferent towards it is
damning. I hope that you have been
awakened to the reality that no one in this world has an answer
to how to change the human heart.
God does, and it's in this word. You may have not been convinced
of the reality of God, but hopefully you are aware and you
can't deny the pervasive evil, the demonic work that is
manifesting right before our eyes.
You know, it's amazing. You have unbelievers who are
willing to call out and say what is really going on while so many
others are spineless in the church.
You have people who don't even believe in this gospel saying
that this is a spiritual war. You have unbelievers out there
saying that this is demonic. You have people who are standing
on a foundation that is weak, that is like sand, that offers
no true hope, and they are grabbing megaphones and they are
projecting their ideas and their solutions.
And yet we have Christians who are still scared to give the
only message that can save this generation.
I hope you're more bold than ever.
I hope you're more bold on your social media.
I hope you use what is taking place in our nation as an
opportunity to approach people who are hurting, who are
desperate for answers, though they may not admit it, and to
step into their lives to give them the hope of Jesus Christ.
If you don't give them a solution, Satan will give them a
false one, and it'll just bring them into deeper deception.
If I am not willing to do that, then what are we really here
for? And so if you're an unbeliever
here, I adjure you to truly repent, to bend your knee, to
surrender to the One who is sovereign over all these things.
And believer, I exhort you from a place of love to really take
your faith seriously and to ask God to use you every day and to
stay close to the Lord every day, to live with an eternal
perspective because tomorrow's not promised.
Father, we ask, oh Lord, how we need you.
In these times. It's very difficult for us to
just turn off our cell phones and to not hear what's
happening, to not look for updates.
But Laura, we understand that that can also be a trap where we
can get sucked into an endless cycle of commentary and
conspiracy theories and criticism and a culture war that
can take us away from our true purpose.
So we pray that you would use this brief service to reorient
us and to put weight on our ankles so that we can stay firm
where we're supposed to be. So Lord, give us divine wisdom,
divine courage. Help us not operate out of
feelings or in a reactionary way.
The Lord to be harnessed by the truth, to be filled with the
Spirit, to be encouraging to one another.
Lord, we pray for an avalanche of courage to crash into your
church. We pray that there wouldn't be a
drop of fear, but fearlessness, that there would be a unity in
the church, that there would be a passion for evangelism, that
there would be, Lord, a prophetic power behind every
pulpit. Lord, help us to preach the Word
in season and out of season, even in these times, as tempting
as it may be to not exegete the culture, But we're also aware
that there are headlines and there are events that intersect
with the church and are impossible to ignore.
And this is one of those times. And so we pray that you help us
navigate through these troubling waters successfully in a way
that honors you and blesses you. So, Lord, hear our prayers, hear
our prayers, oh God, this evening as your church, and we
pray that you would answer us in a way that would produce fruit
and testimonies. We pray for Charlie Kirk's
family. We pray for his wife, his
babies, his parents, his loved ones, That you would flood them
with peace, Oh Lord, that they would understand that his death
was not in vain. That they would know that the
dying the Lord is a blessing indeed, and that they will be
reunited with Him again, and that He is indeed in your
presence. And that Lord, in your great
wisdom, you did not want him to do anything else beyond that
day. He has fulfilled His purpose.
Help us fulfill ours. We pray for this nation, so
polarized, so divided. Lord, at a boiling point,
anything can happen. But we pray, O God, that your
spirit would hover over this place and that what would come
about is a genuine spiritual revival.
Somehow, some way, Lord, though this nation deserves great
judgment, we pray that you would extend mercy.
We asked, Lord, instead, that there would be churches filled,
the people who want to be saved, that you would speak boldly as
we heard about John the Baptist at the opening of the service, a
nation at that time that was in great turmoil and great
corruption politically and even religiously.
We ask, Oh God, that you would raise up prophetic voices that
would just preach. Thus says the Lord, the word of
God, Lord. Finally, we ask that though we
are surrounded by a divided nation, the church will not be
divided at this time. Make it airtight in its unity.
Make it airtight in its love. May our eyes be set on the true
purpose of our presence and our existence here, to proclaim the
truth, to herald righteousness even though we are persecuted
for it. So Lord, my prayer with my
brothers and sisters is that there would be an innumerable
amount of divine appointments in each of our worlds where we will
have conversations and opportunities to proclaim the
truth. That we would be unafraid to
even ask people how they're doing with the tragedy and the
chaos around us, and then to bring the truth to them.
Because if we don't, who else will?
We love you Lord, hear our cries tonight for the many things that
need your touch. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Here's how we proceed in the service.
We have to do war on our knees. This is a turning point.
Really it is. And I know that's the name of
this man's organization, but I can't think of a better phrase.
It really is a turning point and it could head into a direction
that is better or worse. And so just come before God.
I want to make it very open. We're not praying out loud like
we do on Wednesday. You can pray with a pocket of
people, whoever you came with. You can get on your knees on the
carpet if you'd like, as long as you don't distract anyone.
If you want to remain solo, you can pray solo.
But let's just pray. Let's pray for, for Charlie
Kirk's family, for the church at large, for this nation, for the
world really who has been seized by this assassination.
And, and let's ask God to use us really to make an impact for his
name's sake. I know much more could be said
from the pulpit. I know much more can can be
touched on. My purpose here tonight is to
simply exhort us. And my prayer is that you would
leave here lighter, clear, and with more courage.
So let's just do that. Let's take the next few moments
to pray here. We'll we're going to continue to
sing in a moment and close, but now let's just really pray.
So find someone to pray with. You want to pray in a group?
You can do that. If you want to pray on your own
again, you are permitted to do so as well.
Music will be playing softly. And let's just seek the Lord
together.