Let's pray together. Our Lord, we believe what we have sung, and we walk by faith and not by sight. We ask that Your peace that passes all understanding will come into the world as it brings, first of all, peace between rebellious human beings and You, the true and living God. And we ask, our Lord, that you would fulfill your promise to be with us. Be with us now by the Holy Spirit. Transform us by your own word as it's taught. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. Andrew, do me a favor. Would you get me a big glass of water? I never had allergies until I moved to New York. And I deal with those up there, and I gotta deal with your pollens down here in Virginia. But we'll get through it, okay. Is there a future for the Church in the United States of America? That's, be honest, that's a question that's being asked by pundits, it's being asked by skeptics, it's being asked by Christians, and it's being asked by the Church. And you want to answer and say rightly. Jesus says in Matthew 16 and verse 18, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And that's true. And one of the very outstanding church history, at least what I've read of it, that's now out in five volumes by Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ's Power. And what I've read is a magnificent statement of how, even in generations in which there was tremendous antagonism to the Church, thank you very much, the Church prevailed and even triumphed. So that's one side of it. The other is this. There is a reality of apostasy. Apostasy is turning away from truth that has been received. Our nation is not a Christian nation. I don't even know how you define that. But it sure was informed by a lot of the Christian faith. But there's been a turning away from that. And you have Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3, where the Lord threatens to take candlesticks out of churches. And we have areas of the world today that at one point were tremendously influenced by Christianity and now are under the dominion of Islam or Buddhism or other religions. So we've got to think that through very carefully. For our purposes, this conference I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Francis Schaeffer, his two volumes that came out in 1970, The Church Before the Watching World and The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, are the works that I'm building on self-consciously for this conference, and hence it's called The Church Before the Modern Watching World. As I mentioned last night, Francis Schaeffer was reflecting on the student revolution of the 1960s and basically said the church, if it's going to reach out to the upcoming generation, is going to have to make some changes. And he wasn't talking about changing doctrine, but he was talking about what we'll call form and freedom in church life to reach out to others. And again, as I mentioned last night, I'm a firm believer, in fact, I would say that I think we are on the cusp of another student revolution in our land. And I'm not a fan of the word revolution here. I believe in Reformation. But for want of a better word, I think we're on the cusp of another student revolution, cultural revolution against the way our culture is turning. And I do believe you will face a time when there will be tremendous opportunities for the Christian faith, but you've got to know how to deal with the issues of our culture, okay? So, the text for the five messages, Romans 12 and verses 1 and 2, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present, and I want you to listen to this, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. holy and acceptable unto God, which is your logical or your spiritual worship. And the topic for this message, don't be conformed to this age. Don't let this age push you into its mold. The word means, basically, don't become what the pressures of your modern culture are pressuring you to do or be, okay? Don't be conformed to this world or this age, but Be transformed in an ongoing way be transformed by the renewing of your minds That you might and and the last phrase is interesting. It's literally that you might approve God's good and pleasing and perfect will okay, so five messages beginning with this one number one not being conformed to this age Number two, tonight, being transformed by the renewing of your minds. Number three, tomorrow in the Sunday school time, a living sacrifice called to community. Number four, the good—which will be for the worship tomorrow—the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. And then tomorrow night, the mercies of God presenting the gospel today. And at the end of each one of the classes, I will give you a key word or a key phrase And then at the end, I'll give you these titles and a few books for suggested bibliography. You know, we're foreign people. We love books. I know you should, because we're people of the Word, and we're people of words. So you'll have a suggested bibliography. But throughout, I'll be referring to different volumes that have been helpful to me. Okay, in our time, now let me see, I've got to gauge my time here. You know, if you want to know what meaninglessness is, a clock to a preacher. But I've got till 11, so I'm going to allow about 15 minutes per segment for each of these. Okay, here we go. the world, the age that would push you into its mold. What is the age that would push you into its mold? And that age is marked by false worship and by false teaching. And here are your texts. Let's look together, and you should have your Bibles, Romans chapter 1 and verses 18 to 32. Romans chapter 1 and verses 18 to 32. Just going through this in the original language this morning again, I was so struck by the power of these words. Some of them I'll give you my own, the authorized Shishko translation of the words to develop how powerful these are. Romans 1, beginning at verse 18 to the end of the chapter. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." And you've got to keep that in mind. You are not dealing with a culture that does not know basic truths about God. You're dealing with a culture that knows those things and actively suppresses them. For what can be known about God is plain to them, not redemption, but about God, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse, which means they are without an apologetic. An apologetic is a defense of what you believe. You learn apologetics, how you defend what the Christian faith is. The world also must make a defense of what it believes. And the text here is they don't have one. The world is unable to define itself correctly. Because for although they knew God, knowing God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became, the word in the original is worthless, they became worthless in their reasoning or their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools, and I don't want to use this word lightly and you shouldn't either Don't go around and telling people around you. You're just a fool, but the word means a moron they became moronic in the way they thought and They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, literally it's the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Which means, let it be so. Now as you listen to this, People say that the Bible is an old book, and it's not relevant to today. Hello, we still study Aristotle, we still study Plato, but all right. You think the Bible's not relevant? Listen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And young folks, You want to know what in themselves is? It's a lot in it. But the modern apostasy says, this is not speaking about something like sexually transmitted diseases. That's not all that's in view, but it is in view. You operate against nature, and there will be consequences. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind. It means a mind that basically has no value to it. To do what ought not to be done, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God. Insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, you want a picture of modern media? but give approval to those who practice them. See how irrelevant the Bible is? It's not that it's irrelevant, it's that people don't want to hear it. Now, one of the things you're going to get throughout the conference, don't gloat in this. These things ought to break our hearts when we realize this is our culture. And then, in 1 Peter, which deals now with false teachers. And I won't read the whole chapter, but if you just start at verse 17, after Peter pretty much excoriates the false teachers, these are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved for speaking loud boasts of, here's the word again, folly, foolishness. They entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness, than that after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. And I want you to notice, it's the holy commandment given to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. Study 1 and 2 Peter. And because Peter was writing, this one who for a while wouldn't even fellowship with Gentiles, Peter is writing to Christians who are dispersed among the pagan nations. And that's why 1 and 2 Peter are especially relevant, I mean all the Bible is, but especially relevant in our day. So those texts will frame this first message in most ways, okay? Now, two things from the text we've read. One is the plant, the other is the root. Here's the plant. This is a culture under God's wrath. And you must say that with tears, but if you don't say it, you're accommodating the world, and you have cut off the very portal by which you're meant to address this culture. This is a culture under God's wrath. It is given up. Years ago, people would say, is AIDS the judgment of God? And the answer is no. Homosexuality is the judgment of God. God gave them up to do what they're not meant to do, and then they receive in themselves the due or just penalty of their error. But young folks, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, We will get nowhere dealing with our culture if you don't start with this, that this is a culture that is under God's wrath. Now, that ought to bring tears. It should break your heart. If you deal with someone, and you will, you already have, people that are messed up by a culture that lives out of Romans 1, being conformed to this age, and you go back to your home and you're not brokenhearted, you really need to pray the Lord change your heart, okay? Because this is, in the right sense of the word, pitiful material. Okay, that's the plan. Here's the root. The issue is idolatry. It's not first immorality, it's idolatry, as it was in the Old Testament, as you read in the Old Testament. Now, this is kind of a framework, and I don't want to go too deeply into this, but it's really important you understand this. In the 1700s, which is even before Ken Barnes and I were born, there was a movement called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was summed up by man is the measure of all things. That was the concept. Philosophically, under a man named Rene Descartes, that Enlightenment mentality began this way, I think, therefore I am. And all you have to do is listen to that and realize that man has become the setter rather than God, which was the case in the so-called Middle Ages. And they'll call them the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. Until then, theology was the queen of sciences. But that began to change in the 1700s. And incidentally, it influenced the founding of America in many ways, too. But that's not our topic. The Enlightenment. progressed, if you want, developed or regressed to what you have today. You went from an emphasis on I to more of an emphasis on what was called the subjective. Subjective was a romanticism in literature, more of an emphasis on feeling, and it also showed itself in art. And there's nothing wrong in that. But that became the drive. The emphasis on human feeling was called subjectivism. That has morphed into our day in which everything focuses on the I, and reality has turned away from what is out there to what I think or I feel is in here. Now that's kind of a simple overview, but it's pretty much the history of the last 250 years or so, or 300 years. Anyway, so the issue is idolatry, and you see that in Romans 1 and verses 21 to 23, and verses 24 and 25, man worships and serves the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever, therefore God gave them up, too, okay? So it's pretty clear in there, and that's what leads to the immorality of homosexual relations, and a huge catalog of other things. And if you want to point your finger at the homosexual relations, hello, what about gossip that's referred to? So later Paul will go on and say nobody is without excuse. That's part of the purpose of this. But the issue is idolatry. John Calvin's point, man's heart is an idol factory, is what we're getting at. And the second part, this is again dealing with the root. So the issue is idolatry. So you've got the culture of God's wrath. Why? Because of idolatry. Let's just take a few minutes and let me look at some of the contemporary idols that you face. And what's an idol? You've got to define what an idol is. An idol is from where or what, from where or what do I get my sense of meaning? All right? What's my GPS? From where or from what? Or you could say from who, if you want. Do I get my sense of meaning? But when you say who, every who has a where or a what. So probably better that way. An idol is from where or what do I get my sense of meaning and, not just meaning, and what is valuable in life. From where do I get my sense of meaning and what is valuable in life? That's an idol. And you can already think of modern idols. Or, the second part connected with idolatry, who or what do I believe will bring me blessing? Who or what do I believe will bring me blessing or happiness? And those are your main characters of idols, okay? So let me give you just some of the major idols, okay, of our culture. One is scientism versus science. Now I know we have Ashley here. Clearly your field is science. And I'm not going to pontificate on it, but I think that you will even agree with this. I know because one of our elders in Franklin Square, who was brilliant, we talked a lot about this. And you're free to argue with me later. You'll be wrong, but you'll be arguing. Science, young folks, is the best theory that you can come up with that fits the data that you have. So it doesn't mean it's wrong, but it can be changed. Is that basically true? Yeah, that's right. And any scientist who wants to be honest with his or her field will tell you that. We don't know this is absolute truth, but with the data that we have, this makes the most sense for it, okay? Scientism is basically a religion. We take what we believe science teaches, and you really need to believe it as gospel. You need to believe that as your faith commitment. And I'll just—I'll give you one example, and I've got reams of things that I've come across, and I won't give them all to you, but this was fascinating to me. This was from an article on April 20th of this year. Scott Turner, with the National Association of Scholars, So he must be a scholar, right? National Association of Scholars told the Center Square publication that politics have completely corrupted the sciences. Quote, as a result, science is no longer the trustworthy source of objective knowledge and advice that the public has long believed. A friend of mine that works for the Centers of Disease Control, a very committed Christian, has said exactly the same thing. In most cases, what we're telling you is very much driven by politics. Now, that doesn't mean you don't believe it, but you've got to listen. But there's a difference, then, between science as things you can prove in a laboratory as the best theory for material and believing something just because a certain group of scholars has claimed it. Connected with that is the idol of the environment. We've gone from a legitimate Christian view, and it is, stewardship of what's here. You don't want to make a mess of what's here. Pick up the trash. Keep things clean. And where you don't have to send out pollutants, don't do it. So there is a legitimate stewardship of the environment that we should accept. But there is a deification of the environment, making it God, worshiping and serving the creature more than the creator, that goes beyond the bounds. This grass isn't God. But see, for many today, it's treated like that. And isn't it ironic, isn't it an ugly irony, that people will plead for the protection of trees at the same time that they will not resist the killing of the unborn. Because one of the things that's true of all unbelief, there's a certain rationality, there's a certain declaration of something that's true. But there's also an irrationality connected with it. There's a contradiction. Now, we have something similar. We can't explain God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. All right? And people will say, well, it's irrational. Well, it's not really irrational, but it doesn't fit with the human mind. But then there are other things that are understandable to us. For example, the fact that God speaks, because we're made in God's name. But that's going too far afield. But there's another idol. Race. Race can become an idol for anybody. White supremacy, that's not taught in the scriptures. But neither is black supremacy taught, or Asian supremacy. Why? Because all races are fallen. And there should be a holy honesty about that. What are my favorite texts about cultural sin? Because, see, in New York, I don't know about down in Virginia, but in New York, if you raise cultural sin, people will say, well, you're just a racist. I say, oh, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Come on. I'm not a racist. I don't buy that. We'll come to that a little bit later. But I say, look, my family background on my mother's side is from Crete, Greece. Shishko is Ukrainian, on us the Sikh is obviously Greek. But I would say, look, Paul says, the Cretans are all liars and slow bellies. They're liars and lazy. And then he says, this testimony is true. Then he doesn't say, just accept them for what they are. He says, rebuke them sharply that they might be strong in the faith. All right? So be careful. Whenever it comes to things about race and nationality, yes, there are beautiful things God puts in all races. We'll come to that a little bit later. But there's also things to be done. So you don't deify race. Deification of the nation. And I'm a tremendous appreciator of America. I thank God for this nation. I thank God for our Constitution. But I don't believe that America is supreme. There's sins in it, and there are benefits, and there are non-benefits. But see how easy it is to make an idol of a nation. Now we're getting a little bit closer to things. I'm glad I've got Sam here. He can correct me on this if I'm wrong. We've made an idol out of technology. If you don't believe it, ask people who work in Silicon Valley. And they will be very honest with you. They are working for a technological utopia. And they're right up front with it. Especially with artificial intelligence. Now, that ought to make you uncomfortable, not only when you read about what it can do. Artificial intelligence. You see, the deification, again, of the machine, of the computer. Now, you use technology wisely and carefully, but it's not a path to utopia, by any means. The idol of entertainment, in which we've gone from a break from things for being recreated, recreation, right, which is what that means, to being amused. The book, in my opinion, that really scores where our culture has come with media was written in the 1980s by a Jew, Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. And people thought he was a crackpot when he came out with this. He was professor of communications at New York University. And he was talking about Sesame Street. Everybody watched Sesame Street. They loved Elmo and they could quote Elmo and all the other characters in Sesame Street. This was going to bring a revolution in American education. And Postman said, no it's not. It's going to raise a generation of children who want to be entertained instead of educated. And guess what? Neil Postman was regarded as stating the case too conservatively. So making an idol out of entertainment. And incidentally, this now has morphed into something that is called, what do they call it? It's the wedding of pornography with the entertainment world. What do they call it? Deep something or other. I forget whatever. But where a whole market comes. when you take the images, the faces of famous people or your next door neighbor and you import them onto pornographic images and market them. And the reason it has such an appeal is people think of thinking celebrities that way. But anyway, you see, again, you see the way these things morph. Youth. has become an idol in our culture. And I don't say this because I'm an old guy. The concept of adolescence, you don't find that in the scriptures. You find people going from being, even in the Hebrew words, from being a child to being a man or a woman. There's something called puberty that marks that. even among Judaism today, you have the Bar Mitzvah and the Bas Mitzvah, for the males and the females, that marks a person going to young adulthood. And even in most Judaism today, if it's at all conservative, that's the way people are treated. No wonder their young people thrive. But the concept of adolescence really began in the 1920s, the roaring 20s, as a marketing category. Young people would drink. Young people would dance. Young people would do all these things. And you made a lot of money by marketing yourself to young people. It's still the case. Whereas the scriptures venerate the aged. Nothing against you young folks. But you know, sometimes we older ones have learned a few things. Sometimes. Mark Twain famously said, my father became wiser with every 10 years that I added to my life. Okay, so you see the point, all right, youth. Now we're getting really close, rights. And I am a believer in rights. I love your don't tread on me. Rights assume responsibility. And the founding fathers of the United States of America realized that if you don't have what they called virtue, you're not going to have a constitutional republic. So rights, we've gone from freedom to license. You know what license leads to? Anarchy. And what anarchy leads to is tyranny by another idol, the idol of the state. In New York, now we have the drug crisis. We have the migrant crisis. As I've told some of you, it was wonderful coming from New York. 26% of people in New York want to move out of the state within five years. Isn't that great? What a wonderful place to minister. You look and you say, oh, 25% of Suffolk County will be gone. What would you administer? You're there. All the solutions are somehow by the state and by money. That again is the idol of the state, which comes when you have such an emphasis, not so much an emphasis on rights, but license, that you have anarchy. And this brings us to really what is the generator of idolatry. It's the idolatry of the self, epitomized by the icon of that idol, the selfie, right? My health, my image, my success, social media. Years ago, people criticized, Pastor Shishko, you're too negative. And it sounds negative. I'm going to give a caveat at the end. I said, uh, it's not social media. It's anti-social media. What do you mean? People watch their friends, but they don't know how to communicate with one another. And now you're finding even secular sociologists are saying social media is not promoting a social life. sexual expression, these are the idols of self, sexual expression, gender, and how I self-identify. Again, do you see? You've gone from I think, therefore I am. Well, frankly, what's the difference? Think I'm a Female even though I'm a male, right? I'm waiting for this in New York because now I've heard Doctors must this is New York. It's why you don't want to move to New York doctors must ask how you self-identify I'm waiting for this and I will tell dr. Malik Who knows? I'm a Christian If he asks me that, I'm going to say, Dr. Malek, today, I self-identify as a hamster. I'm not sure what I'm going to identify as tomorrow, but that's... Folks, and you say this with a broken heart, that's insanity. I couldn't believe it. Something I heard on, I don't know, YouTube, dealing with a presidential candidate, don't you believe that gender can be on a spectrum? Hello? How do you put XX chromosomes for women and XY chromosomes for men on a spectrum? And I was talking with someone who's in the archaeological field the other day, and I said, when we look up bones, you look up bones of people, you don't say, well, this is a male, this is a female, this is someone somewhere in the middle on the spectrum. She said, oh no, that's being changed now. We're going to be required to identify bones looking at gender on a spectrum. Folks, this is insane. All right, OK, so that's enough of that. Now, if you want to study If you want to study the development of this, the book by Carl Truman, Strange New World, or the larger one, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which built on Philip Reeve's book in the 50s on the triumph of the therapeutic, it really exposes all of this well. Now, quickly, what's the heart idol in all of this? It's pride. It's pride. That's why I hear black pride, white pride, gay pride. And please, this is, this is, you can make the case, this was the reason for the fall of Lucifer. It's pride. Pride goes before destruction. But you want an interesting study. In the Old Testament, judgment comes this way on the nations. Number one, pride. Number two, that brings opposition to God and His people, which Satan does, right? You can see this in Ezekiel, incidentally, about 15 chapters, about judgment on Tyre and Sidon and so on. Pride, opposition to God and His people. What I said last night, then they will know that I am the Lord. See? Revival. Now, before we get to your response, please don't become Luddites. Luddites were those who in the 1800s, early 1800s, they opposed all equipment that came in. They didn't want it to do away with the arts and crafts and the home and so on. And so they would destroy equipment. Please don't. Please don't be Luddites with all these things, especially technology. But please be very, very discerning. with the use of, as you study the environment, as you study science, as you study race, as you study nations, technologies, be discerning. There's something we call a transcendental critique, where, from the perspective of the Word of God, the triumphant, you look at all systems of human thought, liberal, conservative, communist, libertarian, whatever it is, and you give an assessment of these things from the perspective of what God says, alright? So please don't, please don't become Luddites, alright? And I would just add this, in 2 Peter 2, in verses 18 and 19, that language of slavery, how idols bring slavery, you can ponder that, the idol of distraction, I always have to have something to occupy my mind which will keep people away from the Word of God. You see what happens on the Lord's Day that is now eviscerated in most places. Okay, now, good, I have 12 minutes and I should be on schedule. Pushing back against the pressure, pushing back against the pressure. Romans 12 and verse 2, the first part, don't be conformed, don't adopt, don't allow yourself to be pressured by receiving the world's mode of conduct, like a jello mold. Don't be jello, folks. Jello takes the form wherever you put it and it quivers with everything. Don't be like that. And one of the things you face, a man named Charles Taylor, who is a Roman Catholic philosopher from Canada, and he wrote a book called, a massive thing, The Secular, I think it's Our Secular Age is the title, or The Secular Age, I forget. But Taylor talks about cross-currents. They're in a culture that has lost its moorings, and what we're going to cover in the next section on orthodoxy, there's winds. culture that blow things in different directions and that's that's where you get these pressures of cross currents of ideas that change and it's one of the things that makes it difficult for the younger generation to make decisions about what to do because the culture changes now not Not not even every year or so. It's it's every day. There's change, but that's neither here nor there Okay, pushing back against the pressure two words One is antithesis, A-N-T-I-T-H-E-S-I-S, antithesis, which means what? Thesis is what is, the age, the world. Antithesis is the opposite. I'm addressing you, I trust you're all believers in Christ. I'm going to address you as those, I hope, if you haven't trusted in Christ as your Savior and Lord, please let's have a talk. But I'm addressing you as those who profess faith in Christ. There is an absolute contrast between truth and error, the real and the counterfeit, the good and pleasing and the unhelpful and the ugly, there's an absolute contrast between God and idols. And we'll see this more in the fourth message, on the good and pleasing and perfect will of God. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't learn from an unbelieving world. Even unbelievers have got to live in God's world. They suppress the truth and unrighteousness, but every so often some steam comes up from the pressure cooker, okay? And that's not what it means, but in terms of principles, your standards, your motives, your goals, there's an absolute antithesis between, again, truth and its opposite. But here's the word connected with it, and it's your word for this meeting. Iconoclasm. Iconoclasm which means an icon was a was a two to basically a two-dimensional image and a class when you when you have Something that's cataclysmic It destroys things and I'm not talking about you going out literally destroying idols like carry nation, you know knocking down pubs with a hammer I don't mean that kind of thing What I mean is 1 John 5.21. Young people, little children, keep yourselves from idols. That's iconoclasm. Keep yourselves from idols. Why? There is a self-destructive force in all idolatry. And I want that to sink in. People give themselves to whatever idol is there, and there's many others, but I gave you the main ones. Idolatry always ends up being self-destructive in one way or the other. Those who make idols, Psalm 115, will become like them. It's no coincidence that artificial intelligence and technology in many ways, follows artificial intelligence and education. But, again, I digress. There's a self-destructive force in all idolatry, and I'm not throwing a lot of books at you, but just to show I'm not just giving you this as my own idea. C.S. Lewis spoke about this in the late 1940s in his book, The Abolition of Man. He speaks at Oxford University. And basically he says, as only Lewis could do, you keep this view of education that you have here and develop it and you're going to destroy the humanity you're trying to elevate. the abolition of man. And interestingly, at this time, at that time, there was a book written in the United States, and Richard Weaver and C.S. Lewis didn't even know one another, but Richard Weaver does a book called Ideas Have Consequences, where he says the same thing. But anyway, so there's a self-destructive force in all idolatry, and the closer idolatry gets to a specific attack on God, the worse the destruction. Do you know the fallout that is already coming from people who at age 10 or 12 or earlier were told that because they had gender confusion, gender dysphoria, they should consider getting surgery so they could change their being a male to a female or a female to a male? This has been going on for some years now. Now what's coming out is people realizing, what we knew as Christians all along, you can change your reproductive organs, but you can't change the heart. And if there's a dissatisfaction in the heart, there's confusion in the heart, there's dysphoria in the heart, no medical treatment in the world is going to correct that. And guess who's the recipient? of these, not problems, but opportunities, pastors and churches. I don't even know who I am right now. See the opportunity that comes. If you don't look down and say, he's a tranny. Weep, folks. Don't point your finger. The closer idolatry gets to a specific attack on God, what are we made in the image of God, the worse the destruction. Now, what does this mean for your personal iconoclasm? And then I'll wrap this up. I suggest you begin by not allowing yourself to use euphemisms. Euphemism is like euphoric, a good feeling, okay? A euphemism is a good expression. It's a good expression that masks something bad. I'll give you some examples. Reproductive freedom. Reproductive rights. Well, if you're wanting to talk about your freedom to abstain from those things, if you're a female, it will get you pregnant, it will make a woman pregnant. I get it. I'll let you know that's not what they mean. Reproductive freedom, reproductive rights, is I have a right to terminate the life that's in my womb. Don't use that expression. It doesn't even make sense. What about the rights of the one being terminated? This is one we've gotten. We had a family that had, the wife had triplets. Was pregnant with triplets. And they went to the doctor, and the doctor said, well, the first two may be healthy. The third one's probably going to have difficulties, which he did, incidentally. He's still alive. He saw her the other day. It's beautiful. You may want to consider a selective reduction. Now, these were members of our church in Queens, where our son was pastor at the time. Husband, pretty sharp. He said, no, no. You're talking about killing the life that's in my wife's womb, we won't do that. Just remember, you probably won't be able to get insurance. You've factored in how much it's going to cost you to have that child. Our God will provide for us. Okay? P.S. Christiana, I know we've got a Christiana here, is alive and well. and their medical bills have been paid in various ways. Okay? Selective reduction. This is a big one. I have a constitutional right to an abortion. Since when did you become the Supreme Court? In fact, for that matter, so what? There was a statement by the Supreme Court at one point that black people were only, what, three-fifths human or something like that. But a constant... Who says? The Supreme Court didn't say that. But remember, I think, therefore I am. See where it's brought us? Even the language abortion. I speak of the killing of the unborn. I say graciously. You have a woman that killed her unborn child, and she has nightmares at night. And she wants to commit suicide. And she needs help. It's very painful to say, I can understand why you feel guilty, because that killed an unborn child. But then you see you can present the gospel to people and what it is. And I could go on and on and on. So many others. This is one I heard the other day on the radio. This is the kind of thing, I'm glad I'm not shaving when I hear it, or I'd slit my throat. I have a God-given right to use my body as I want. Okay. So you got the point. So don't use euphemisms. Number two, you constantly battle with your own pride of heart. And next message, but because we all battle with idols, folks. Calvin, our hearts are all idol factories. Constant battle with pride of heart. Number three, live out of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Why do you do that? Because our Lord did? That's good enough for me. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Now, why you have straight teaching is you better be sure that is what the Word of God teaches. But live out of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And then number four, your own personal commitment to and communion with Christ. It's interesting when John says, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Listen to the way, listen to the verse before it. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. And we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Are you so captivated with God and with God in Christ that idols hold no sway over you? You'll never battle with idolatry by just saying no to idolatry. You have to really say yes to the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope you do, and cultivate the tie with him. So here's your word for the class. You can write this down. We've already mentioned it. Iconoclasm. I want you to be a holy iconoclast, beginning with the idols of your own heart. Do it graciously, do it with tears, do it with a broken heart. Please, keep yourselves from the idols of our culture, okay?