Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program designed
to give you some insights
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and
encouragement and information
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on the importance and value
of religious liberty in the US
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and around the world.
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I'm your host, Lincoln Steed,
have been for 20 some years.
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And I'd like to
share some things with you
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on this program.
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Of course, religious
liberty without religion
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doesn't make much sense.
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And as a
Seventh-day Adventist Christian,
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I'm quite convinced
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that there's a spiritual
basis for religious liberty.
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In fact, I've often
pointed out to audiences
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that all of our efforts to
"protect religious liberty"
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are really not quite
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that we are protecting
it is true against the norms
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of a secular state.
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But as far as
religious liberty goes,
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it's inherent
in what Christ did,
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as explained in
the New Testament,
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in freeing all human beings
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from the final penalty for sin,
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and giving the ability
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to become as it
says, the sons of God,
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and to by repentance
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and following Him as
His disciples did escape
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the penalty of
sinfulness and the degradation
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that comes with earthly norms,
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and live with Him forever
in an eternity made for us.
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And so I pointed out to
those that listen to my talks,
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that you have
religious liberty now.
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And as the Bible says,
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I've said before you
in the words of Jesus
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an open door,
which no man can shut.
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That's an incredible offer,
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an incredible dynamic
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when you see
religious liberty that way,
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it's a, you know,
inviolable principle,
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it's there, it's given.
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And whether you
live in North Korea,
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or the United States,
or Australia, or Canada,
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some other antithetical
system to that, doesn't matter.
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In North Korea,
you may lose your life,
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practicing that
liberty which you have.
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And in North America,
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you may be
encouraged by the state.
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Even worse, it may
pay you your church money
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to practice and, of course,
money is the root of all evil.
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So it might subvert
your faith another way.
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But the fact is, you have
religious liberty inherently,
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it cannot be taken away.
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So on a certain level,
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when we talk
about religious liberty,
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we're proclaiming an
inviolable principle.
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It's a proclamation,
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it's informing people
of what they already have.
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And when they
understand what they have,
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they can put it into practice,
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both in a society writ large,
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where it can be
an accepted norm,
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a legal norm in that society.
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And in your
community it can be something
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that you communicate to people
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and encourage them to
share in this liberty reality.
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But it's a little
bit more than that
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and I've come to
believe that religion,
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while it's intimately
tied up with religious liberty,
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by definition,
that religion by itself
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or have what we
understand of religion,
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the structure
of religious faith,
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the elements of organization
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that goes into a
church of necessity.
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The founder of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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or co-founder, Ellen White,
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made some very interesting
statements on occasion
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that she was not
comfortable with organization,
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but that it was necessary
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to carry things
forward in good order.
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But any structure
can become bureaucratic,
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it can, in the case of faith,
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religious faith and
even a political faith
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it can sort of slow things
down and become so ingrown
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that you can
lose track of the idea
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that lies behind the door.
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And I really
have come to believe
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that on religious liberty,
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if you're not
careful, religion itself,
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the structure of religion,
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the particulars
that different people
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are pushing can be in some ways,
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if not directly
oppose then inhibiting
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of the great dynamic of
religious liberty itself.
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And one way to come at
that is a statement that I made
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at in International Religious
Liberty Conference once.
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Admittedly, I
wanted to shock them a bit,
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but I had an idea
behind what I said and I got up
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and these were
mostly people of faith.
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Some people
perhaps were secularists,
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but believed in
the civil liberty,
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idea of religious liberty,
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but I'm sure 99% of them
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were people of
one faith or another.
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And I got up and I said,
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"There is way too much
religion in the world today,
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way too much religion,
and not enough spirituality."
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And I believe that fervently,
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religion without spirituality
without as the Bible says,
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charity, if I have no
charity, I have nothing.
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And you can
substitute love for that.
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But it's the dynamic
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that gives life
to religious faith.
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It's not just, you
know, a doctrinal list,
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or hierarchical
structure, or priesthood,
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you can get that idea now.
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And then even from
looking at some groups like
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the Roman Catholic Church,
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you know, there's the
pope and the cardinals,
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very problematic to me once,
to read the Lateran Treaty,
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whereby Mussolini gave
power back to that church,
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and it said that the cardinals
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would be treated as
princes of the blood.
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Sad statement,
because spiritual leaders
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are not to be
equated with secular princes
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and elected officials and so on,
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you're dealing with
the spiritual reality.
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And so the
structure doesn't define it,
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the dynamic, the faith
that lies beneath it does.
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And the best way to express
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that in a Christian
context is the new birth,
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a change of heart
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from a secular
mindset to a mind,
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an inner compulsion
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that's dedicated toward
the principles of your faith,
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and the person of
your faith, Jesus Christ.
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Many Christians,
Protestant Christians,
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particularly,
are inclined to think
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that it was only
in the New Testament
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that we would
have such a concept,
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but it really isn't true.
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I remember years ago as
a young man first noticing,
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in the reading the story
of the children of Israel,
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who ended up with a
capital of Jerusalem, of course,
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but the children of Israel,
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for many years were
led directly by God,
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it's called a theocracy.
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And ironically, in
the United States today,
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there are many hungering
and thirsting for theocracy.
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But you know, it
can't happen now,
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God is not visibly present,
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He lives within the heart,
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which again brings us back
to the new birth experience.
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And we can't well judge
the heart of other people.
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So if you try to
establish a theocracy,
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and even a benign
place like the United States,
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what you're
quickly going to have
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is some
self-anointed spiritual leaders
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that are forcing their view
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of what religious
practices on other people,
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so we reject the theocracy.
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But the truth
theocracy, in the Old Testament,
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had God directly
speaking with Moses initially,
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it had the Shekinah Glory,
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the visible presence of God,
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dwelling out front of the camp,
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and then hovering
over the sanctuary.
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I mean, there was a link,
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a visible practical link
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between God's
presence and His will
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and the actions of those people.
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At the end of that period,
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when people
started to look around them
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and see the false
gods and the false systems,
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and in particular,
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they see their
neighbors ruled by kings
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and political leaders
of one type or another,
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they started to
hunger after having a king.
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And it's a rather sad story
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as it's told in
the Old Testament,
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where the people
went to the prophet.
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And again, in
the theocratic model
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back then God was
speaking very directly
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to a number of prophets.
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And one at the time was Samuel.
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Remember, Samuel as a young boy
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heard the voice of
God calling to him,
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"Samuel, where are you?
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"And he said, "Here am I."
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And He led Samuel
through his long life.
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And so the people went to Samuel
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and they said we want a king,
like the rest of the nations.
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And I sometimes
think facetiously,
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that even in the United States,
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there is royal envy.
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And many people still hark back
to the Kennedy era as Camelot,
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the time of kings.
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But we don't have a
king in a democratic system,
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but people sort of hunger
for this authority figure.
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And I didn't intend to
say this, but as an aside,
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in the Western
world and in England,
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getting rid of the kings,
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they had to deal with
the idea that the king felt
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that he was authorized by God,
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it was called the
Divine Right of Kings.
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Didn't really exist
in England or in France,
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or anywhere in Europe,
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and only briefly
existed in God's people
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after the period of God's rule.
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But God gave into
them through Samuel
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and chose a king for them.
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Saul, a goodly young
man, as Samuel said to him,
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you were a goodly young man,
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head and
shoulders above the others,
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he had the presence
that you would expect
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of a dominant king.
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And he was
selected first by God.
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But then, interestingly enough,
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God allowed the
people to draw lots
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and have a selection
process and in the end,
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they chose the
one God wanted, Saul.
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And it's very interesting.
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In the Old Testament, it says,
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specifically there that
God gave Saul a new heart.
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And he was counted
as one of the prophets.
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He went around
prophesying which could mean,
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nowadays we think,
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you know, telling deep
things under direct inspiration,
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but it meant then
speaking spiritually,
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and preaching and holding
forth on spiritual things.
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So he was marked as a
person of deep religiosity,
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with a new heart.
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And we tend to think of that
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as the model in
the New Testament,
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but it clearly
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was what God
always was always wanted.
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In the New Testament,
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there's no better illustration
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of the
importance of this new heart
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than the story in
the Gospel of John,
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where a ruler in
Israel, not a king,
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but one of the ruling Sanhedrin
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came in the
evening to talk with Jesus.
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And you know, I've
heard many preachers
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and read many
articles commenting on this,
00:12:04.75\00:12:07.32
and they tend to
portray Nicodemus,
00:12:07.36\00:12:10.46
as rather fainthearted,
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not game to come
talk to him in the day.
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That may be so
the later story of him
00:12:15.13\00:12:20.44
doesn't bear
that out, in my view,
00:12:20.47\00:12:22.07
because he very
publicly went to the authorities
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and asked for the body of Jesus.
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He very publicly stood up
for Jesus in the Sanhedrin.
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I tend to think
00:12:32.48\00:12:33.95
it was because the
business of the day was over.
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He was a ruler in Israel,
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as Jesus called
him a ruler in Israel.
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He was ruling during the day,
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he was part of
official business.
00:12:42.12\00:12:45.29
And without air conditioning,
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and a harsh climate
that still to this day
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is when people would socialize
in the cool of the evening,
00:12:52.33\00:12:55.84
in fact that even hits
me that in Genesis it says
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God came walking in the garden
in the cool of the evening.
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It's a natural time to come talk
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together and
Nicodemus sought out Jesus
00:13:05.55\00:13:08.12
in that Mediterranean coolness.
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And he says, "You know, Teacher,
00:13:11.59\00:13:13.42
we know You're from God."
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Well, he was being a bit cute.
00:13:15.42\00:13:17.09
Jesus called him on it.
00:13:17.13\00:13:18.46
And He says,
"Unless you're born again,
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you cannot see
the kingdom of God."
00:13:21.30\00:13:25.60
And again, I've heard
many people preach on that,
00:13:25.63\00:13:27.90
and I'm sure many of
their lessons were correct,
00:13:27.94\00:13:30.91
but I'm not sure they
were all correctly explicating
00:13:30.94\00:13:35.11
the meaning that Jesus
gave in the conversation.
00:13:35.14\00:13:38.85
I believe what Jesus was saying,
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and it's borne
out by what we know
00:13:41.72\00:13:44.85
of a Christian commitment,
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unless you are born again,
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unless you have had
a deep change of heart.
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And Jesus characterized
that as mentally being reborn,
00:13:52.63\00:13:56.56
throwing off your old life
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and thinking on
spiritual things.
00:13:58.70\00:14:00.67
Unless you have
had that experience,
00:14:00.70\00:14:03.94
you cannot comprehend,
00:14:03.97\00:14:06.78
understand or identify correctly
00:14:06.81\00:14:09.61
with what the kingdom of God is.
00:14:09.64\00:14:12.85
We'll take a bit of a break now
00:14:12.88\00:14:14.32
and I'll
continue this exposition
00:14:14.35\00:14:16.75
after the break.
00:14:16.79\00:14:18.12
Stay with us.
00:14:18.15\00:14:19.49