<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Village SDA Church

Confidence in Crisis

Ron Kelly

Confidence in Crisis - Part 1: When Nature Dies: The Almost Last Supper

Confidence in Crisis - Part 2: Survival in a Surveillance State

Confidence in Crisis - Part 3: Political Intrigue and Power

Confidence in Crisis - Part 4: The End or the Beginning?

Confidence in Crisis - Part 5: Prophetic Lockdown

Confidence in Crisis - Part 6: Faith Without Cloud or Pillar

Confidence in Crisis - Part 7: Covid-19 in a Post-Truth World

Confidence in Crisis - Part 8: Who Moved the Cheese?

Father, thank You for the privilege of studying Your Word.

The opportunity, Lord, to gather not in presence, but in Your presence online.

I'm asking, Lord, that this technology would be multiplied to carry Your message forward and to move Your people to higher ground.

This afternoon, I'm going to attempt to put my arms around some challenging subject matter, entitled, My Message COVID-19 in a Post-Truth World.

Now, I want to start by asking you if you know how to be heard.

We're living in an age where truth is very difficult to find because it's hidden behind what we call perspective and partisanship.

I can immediately discount what you're about to say if I'm not a seeker after truth, by figuring out from what angle you're launching yourself.

And as soon as I know where you're coming from, I know where you're going, and I can tune you out, I can decide if you're worth reinforcing my preconceived ideas, or if I wanna be troubled by the potential that something you say might rattle my security.

So this morning, this topic is challenging because many that are listening are from free democratic societies where the play and counterplay of ideas is not only expected, but some would have a philosophy that a right role of citizenship would inquire you to engage politically.

Of course, politics and religion are the 2 things we're not supposed to talk about in public places, much less mix them.

And it is not my goal to mix them here today, except to say that if you're looking for truth or if you want to be truth in a post-truth world, there's some things you're going to have to do.

I want to start by reminding you that God's people have often found themselves under the persecuting power of a political system, a religious system.

But I have a hard time imagining Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, sitting around in their Babylonian flat, ragging on Nebuchadnezzar.

Instead, as they found themselves headed to the crucible of potential persecution, I'm certain they were praying for a breakthrough, not only for themselves, but for all the myriad other Jewish men and women in that empire that had decided ahead of time that loyalty to God was going to come before everything else.

It's never recorded in the New Testament Scripture, to my knowledge, especially in the 4 synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, That Jesus takes a moment to tell his disciples how he really feels on a personal level, a personal grievance against a political leader.

He has some very direct words for those political leaders, but they are typically that, they are typically direct.

They are to the person that needs to hear them or to a courier that will take them to that person.

What I really wanna say to you at the beginning of a sermon where I'm gonna talk about truth and fear, Fear to live the truth, fear to speak the truth, a greater fear that the truth spoken might not be heard because the instrumentality of our life might deflect the worthiness of what we're saying.

It's imperative that our lives have bound up in them a divine nobility, something that takes us to a higher level of credibility.

The very transformation that we're hoping will come into the lives of others must be in our own, or else we will not be heard.

We will easily pigeonhole or categorize and slid off to the side.

So this morning, Truth amidst the coronavirus in a post-truth world.

A dialogue, a debate, a contest between truth and fear.

I'm holding in my hands here an article out of JSTOR, the danger of public shaming in the internet.

The subtitle says, the ritual of public shaming is nothing new, but today's brand of mass humiliation is more public, more widespread, and more scarring, and more potentially dangerous.

It used to be that if you wandered outside the mores or the value system of your tribe, your group, that there would be somebody that would confront you and communicate their displeasure.

Nowadays, everyone's supposed to have their own truth and the freedom to live their own life.

But if you violate the new social mores, the new social values, you can immediately be crucified in the public opinion and held up on the worldwide web as 1 who ought not to do that by myriads of people who have no interest in you and no desire to see you restored or respected.

So we find ourselves fearful of where we might speak truth, cautious about how we might live truth, hesitant to get outside the bounds that would bring some kind of duress upon us, something less than affirmation.

Years ago in a public forum, Khrushchev was commenting on Stalin.

It was a censuring of his predecessor in a public meeting, and he was interrupted by someone from the audience who cried out, you were 1 of Stalin's colleagues.

Khrushchev was probably a bit taken back at that moment.

It was agonizing silence in the room, nobody dared to move a muscle.

And then he changed his demeanor and his tone of voice.

Our fears make us traitors, Shakespeare writes, and Emerson would go on to say, he has not learned the lesson of life who does not daily surmount a fear.

Cicero would add to it, no power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.

So I have a very peculiar objective in this message.

I'm here to challenge all listening to me as to the degree of prior cost counting that's gone into their journey with Christ and what their life will look like as circumstances compel them to follow their own convictions based on the word of God versus the trajectory and the trends of modern society, even inside the church.

Yes, truth is now about perspective and partisanship, both of which deny the fact that there is a day of accountability coming.

We will be held accountable for every thought, every word, every action, every failure to act when we should have.

And this is a sobering, sobering thought.

So I want to remind you that Christianity was birthed in a crisis.

On 1 side were the Sadducees, who had hunted up with the Romans.

On the other side were the Pharisees, who had sided up with orthodoxy and traditional Judaism in the law.

And along comes Jesus, who's not afraid to offend either or both, all at the same time, and who will also speak power to truth when necessary.

The emotional fabric of the followers of Jesus was woven with the confidence of His love, the security it created, and a commitment to truth.

But I'm here to tell you Christianity was born in a crisis and it will be reborn in a crisis.

And some will be shaken away and shaken out because their fears will make them traitors.

These are descriptions of the experience of those who followed Jesus.

When he was in Simon's house, Simon thought if he only knew.

When he raised Jairus' daughter, they laughed at him.

In Nazareth, they wanted to throw him off a cliff.

They said he cast out demons by the Prince of Demons.

There was a conspiracy to kill him for healing a man with a withered hand, and they picked up stones more than once to snuff out the life of Jesus." Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Matthew, chapter 10.

What an appropriate place to lay out what the calling might envision.

It's important for us to remember in the 21st century before the outpouring of the latter rain, in anticipation of this great global religious showdown over God's word, over God's law, over items and aspects of worship, It's important for us to understand what Jesus laid out and lined out as a proper expectation for following him.

Now I'd like for you as you go through these things I'd like for you to ask yourself, just put a little check by the ones you've experienced.

The emotional fabric of the followers of Jesus, fair warning be given, count the cost before you come.

Don't start building this spiritual household of faith without understanding what it's going to entail.

Behold, Verse 16, Matthew 10, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves clothing.

So be shrewd as serpents and innocent or harmless as doves.

It's hardly a posturing or a launch of security.

It's going to take some divine presence for protection and sustenance.

Verse 17, but beware of men for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues.

Folks, there's probably no 1 listening to me here today unless they've come from the 1060 window or from an eastern former Soviet bloc country who can put a check by verse 17.

Verse 18, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them, to the Gentiles." Probably no check there either.

But when they hand you over, do not worry about what you are to say, for it will be given you in that hour what it is you are to say.

For it will not be you who is speaking, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks to you." Don't be afraid, it's Jesus' message.

These are the things that are going to happen, but greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

If we put the pause there, you might be able to check it.

And a father, his child, hard to imagine.

Children will rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death, and you'll be hated by all because of my name.

No check, but it is the 1 who is enduring to the end who will be saved.

And when they persecute you in 1 city, flee to the next." I know of 1 person, I can remember Dr.

Samuel Bacchiocchi telling me stories of selling books in Italy as a boy, young man, riding his scooter, the constables and their thugs coming up to him and grabbing him and pounding on him.

He made an active decision, I'm leaving this place.

He followed the biblical directive, but I know a very few of personally I have known of 1 Some of you listening might have experienced some of this When they persecute you in 1 city fleet in the next I tell you will not finish going through all the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.

The work will continue to need to be done, and this is the price you'll have to pay to do it.

Friends, if you've grown up in a Western democracy, especially in America, you've grown up with no persecution or very little persecution for your belief system.

Consequently, it is not a precious jewel that you've protected and has redefined and reshaped who you are.

Series

Confidence in Crisis

Confidence in Crisis - Part 7: Covid-19 in a Post-Truth World

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Jesus on Prophecy

12 Which Church Will Jesus Join?

1h 18m

Survivors of the Great Controversy

01 Survivors of the Great Controversy

1h 17m

Plenary

Truth Only

51m

GYC SE 2012 Plenary Sessions

Why Is There Evil?

1h

Plenary

The One Thing Jesus Can’t Give You

55m

Endurance of the Saints

28m

Surety in the Last Days

1h 11m

The Oil Crisis

1h 28m

Risk and Redemption

Risk and Redemption: Stand and Deliver

49m

Education Reformation

Education Reformation: The Prophet and the Professor

34m

Babylon, America, and Bible Prophecy

19 Mark of the Beast

1h 13m

A Moment of Destiny

56m

Sound Doctrine