so our desire for this entire conference. Lord our God, we know the winds of change have swept through this world and are also sweeping through our own country here. And it is important that we learn these things that we're going to learn tonight and this week, but we're going to do so if we learn more about you from your word and in your word. We pray therefore, God, that you will speak through our pastor, Pastor Magashinye, this evening. Our Father, be gracious to him and grant, oh God, that he might have the fire of the Spirit upon him as he preaches. Help him, O God, to remember the things that you put on his heart to speak this evening. Grant that he might do so with eloquence, but grant also that he might do so with the power of the Holy Spirit. Grant that he might do so in simplicity, so that, O Lord, each one of us would understand what it is, O Lord, that you are saying to us through this word this evening. We pray for each one of us gathered in here, our Father, that you would rivet our attention to this word that comes to us this evening. Our Father, we pray and ask of you, speak to us now and let us learn more of you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Good evening everyone who has gathered here. and have traveled especially long distances to come and be part of this wonderful conference. This is the 27th conference that is being held since we commenced these conferences. It's a joy and a delight for me to bring God's word to you at the very onset. I do not in any way deserve to be the one to give the keynote address. But since the Bible says the first shall be the last, then probably you leave the best for the last. And so I do not claim any kind of special knowledge at all to be the one to stand before you this evening. I'd like us to turn in our Bibles to the book of Psalms, and in particular, Psalm 11. Psalm 11, and we are going to read the entire Psalm. It's only seven verses, so that is pretty manageable. The theme, as most of you well know by now, is issues facing the church today. Issues facing the church today. And therefore, I will not be addressing any one particular issue this evening, but just to give you a broad sweep as to where we are as a society that is constantly changing and evolving, where are we presently? And so let me read from Psalm 11 and verses one to seven. I'm using the ESV. The Bible reads, in the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain, for behold the wicked bend the bow. They have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes see his eyelids, test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hurts the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him reign cause on the wicked. Fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteous deeds. The upright shall behold his face. Let us turn to the Lord in prayer once again. O Lord, our God and our Father in heaven, We are gathered here this evening as a people that are expectant to hear your voice. We know, our dear God, that your word is sharper than any double-edged sword. And we ask, O Lord, that the sharpness of your word may prick our hearts and our consciences, and that we might hear the voice of the living God. I pray, O Lord, that as I stand before your people, I'm simply a vessel that you have chosen to use for this moment. And I do not have any abilities of my own to stand before your people and declare your word. The fitness to do so comes from you. And therefore may you hide me behind the cross that I may speak only that which has come from you and that it will speak to your people. that they may receive it as the very word of the living God. And may your spirit take full control of this moment. That your word will come with the demonstration of his power. In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. One of my favorite Christian thinkers And probably one of the most articulate defenders of biblical truth today is Dr. Albert Moller, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Moller combines penetrating theological discernment and insightful cultural analysis with a passion to proclaim the unchanging gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This rare clarity and perception of Dr. Moller is brilliantly on display in his two books that address a subject which is the burden of this conference. The first book is Culture Shift, Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth, published in 2008. The second book is We Cannot Be Silent, and it was published last year. The subtitle is Speaking the Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right and Wrong. Now the very fact that we are gathered here and looking at the theme issues facing the church today is an undeniable fact that our world has gone through a mega shift, that our world has gone through a moral revolution of global proportions that is fast turning the world on its head. what R.S.C. Sproul calls the cosmic treason. And the three motifs that are now transforming culture and challenging the Judeo-Christian worldview and Africa as a continent has not been spared from these, the three motifs are the following. The emergence of post-modernism. That's the first big word which I will clarify in a little while. Number two, the growing tidal wave of religious pluralism. Number three, the shallow syncretistic version of African Christianity that is married to neo-Pentecostalism. And those three are very present with us today on the African continent. Now these are the deep and powerful currents that are flowing through our continent. The first two are not peculiar to Africa. In fact, they originate outside of our continent. Europe is well ahead of the rest of the Western world in its experience of post-modernity and pluralism, and this worldview is fast being exported to Africa, and it has knocked persistently on our doors, and sadly, it is being given acceptance in Africa. And at the heart of postmodernism are four aspects, and I would like to apologize for being a little bit technical. I will define the terms that I'll be giving to you, but once we are done with these preliminary issues, then you don't need to get up the loins of your mind in order to make sense of where we are going. Four aspects of postmodernism. there is the language game called deconstruction. This is simply the idea that human language, written or spoken, does not refer to an objective world somewhere out there. That it is instead a system of linguistic signs referring back to itself. And many of you are holding Bibles in your hands. And the words that are in your Bibles, we are told by postmodernists, are words that were written by people, authors, from whom you are far removed in time and space, so many, many years, thousands of years ago. And therefore, what the original authors intended is not something that we can ascertain. And so whatever meaning that you assign to these writings can be the meaning. There is no objective world beyond your own interpretation. Deconstruction. Language is meaningless. Secondly, there is moral relativism. which asserts that there are no absolutes and there are no certainties. Therefore, there are no absolute morals which apply to all people in all generations. Dr. Francis Schaeffer described an absolute as a concept which is not modifiable by factors such as culture, individual psychology or circumstances, but that which is perfect and unchangeable in all places, and at all times. So an absolute is the antithesis, it is the opposite of relativism, and therefore to assert that there are no absolutes is to deny that there are propositional truths that are binding upon all of us. Thirdly, there is pluralism. which simply means that there is a level playing field for all religions. No religion should claim to know and have the absolute truth. No religion, we are told, is a matter of personal choice. And so postmodernism is a philosophy that believes that every person is entitled to a belief system and as long as you are sincere in what you believe, then that is your truth and somehow it will get you to heaven. But nobody is entitled to assert that their faith is superior to another's. The fourth and last one is existentialism. In which feelings rule. It is what you feel. It is not doctrine, it is not empirical truth and facts that count, no. If what you feel is right and intuitions and feelings are right within you, then that is what gives greater validity and becomes the center of life and the meaning to life. It is controlled by your feelings. Now with this kind of revolution in thinking, the church is presented with a challenge. You and me are presented with a challenge. Are we going to remain committed to the authority of scripture and to revealed truths if they run into direct conflict with the central thrust of our modern world? Will we remain faithful? Now the church is not simply facing an isolated set of issues that happen here and there and leave us perplexed and sometimes shocked. And then life goes on and we move on. No, we are facing major, mega cultural shifts. It's a total turning of the world on its own head. And the examples abound. Marriage and the family are being redefined. Homosexuality and respianism are being given legal legitimacy. And those who resist the crusade are either called outdated moralists or religious bigots. Transgenderism is celebrated. Abortion is being championed as a woman's right and a legitimate means of birth control. Religious pluralism is the politically correct language and must be adopted by all. And we must never claim that Christ, Christ is the only way that God has provided for the salvation of sinners. To do so is being narrow. Because everyone has a right to his own belief system. Now this massive revolution is taking place across the entire cultural landscape. The world we are told is a global village. And so we can never continue to think that no, those are Western concepts. It doesn't apply to us. Those of you that live in Zambia, you remember what happened two years ago when the UN Secretary General visited the country? There is a deliberate agenda that the whole world should conform to the cultural norms that are being championed by the minority, and soon enough it will be used as a benchmark for every country, for every society, and you are going to be ostracized, you are going to be treated as outsiders if you stand your ground and say this should not happen, this is uncultural, this is not part of our norms and our values. And so it's a global village that we live in. And this massive revolution is affecting every dimension of life. and demanding total acceptance of its claims and affirmations of its aims, and as Christians who are committed to the faithfulness of scripture and the Bible as the word of God, we must face this unavoidable challenge today. We must deal with this challenge today. Someone as well said that if men have learned anything from history, it is that men never learn anything from history. And so history adamantly repeats itself. The cynicism of the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes is somewhat justified when he says there is nothing new under the sun. History becomes for him an endless cycle of repetition. And Isaiah in chapter five and verse 20 says to us that there was a time when moral perversion was so rampant and that time has even come upon us today when people who'd call evil good, and good evil who substituted darkness for light and light for darkness. And this is sin that overturns everything. It's sin that subverts the truth. It is sin that celebrates homosexuality and says it is good. It is sin that says lesbianism is It is sin that says divorce is good. It is sin that says believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation is bad because it's unloving and it's narrow, it's bigotry, the reversal of everything, manipulating the truth or even setting the truth aside, mocking faithfulness, mocking purity. mocking marriage and trying to establish a whole new morality. That is where we are. That is the world we are living in. Well, David went through such an upheaval in his life. He went through a time that can be described in similar words with our own time, nothing new under the sun. We are not given the circumstances in David's life that best fit this psalm. It simply comes to us with the superscription to the choir master of David. Some of the psalms would give you a brief heading as to when what is contained in that psalm, the events could have taken place, but this is one of those psalms where that is silent. And so, whatever the case might be, Whenever this happened, that David pens down here, it must be quite clear that this was a time of great distress for David. It was also a time of great distress for the nation. And David, communicates to us the desperateness of the situation as he seemingly responds to those who rose up and began to give advice to him on what needed to be done. And that is why in most of the translations, you will notice that the words that begin with verse 1b, taking us right through to the end of verse three are in quotation marks. So this is not David who is speaking. These are either the friends or the enemies of David that are talking. And David responds to their counsel. David rejects their counsel. Look at what he says in verse one. In the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to my soul? Now he's addressing those others. How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain for behold the wicked bend the bow. They have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. How can you say these things to my soul? And then the crowning moment. of all that they had to say to David is the question that they put across to him in verse 3. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? And if for a moment we think that this is happening during the time of King Saul, if the foundations are destroyed, if Saul, who is the earthly representative of God, has cast aside his fear for God and now regards neither truth nor justice and does all that is pleasing only to him, he does not follow the rules of God, the precepts of God, what can a righteous man do? Is there any security for the righteous? If truth and equity have been utterly destroyed, what hope is there for the righteous? What must the righteous do? And observe there that the word foundation is in the plural. It is foundations. if the foundations are destroyed. And it's a figure of speech that is referring to those things on which society rests. referring to those things that bring about social order, that sustain societies, the rule of law, the great principles of truth and righteousness that uphold society, the pillars of public order, peace and prosperity, those things which are like the foundation upon which a building like this one rests. If that is destroyed, What can the righteous do? When justice is no longer practiced, when fraud and violence have taken the place of honesty and honor, when error prevails, what can the righteous do? What source of safety or confidence do the righteous have? Well, David gives us the answer to all those questions from verses four to the end of the psalm. There are three things that I would like to bring to your attention from this passage. As they say, a good Baptist sermon should have three points. Although I've heard very bad sermons with three points. First thing that I would like us to observe is the changing world's philosophy and clarion call. The changing world's philosophy and clarion call. By the way, I didn't give you the title of my message. The title of my message is The Unchanging God and His Unchanging Truth. in an ever-changing world. The unchanging God and His unchanging truth in an ever-changing world. And the first thing that I would like us to see is the changing world's philosophy and clarion call. A clarion call is simply a strong statement that is being made by the world to us It's not just an appeal, but it's something that they're shoving down our throat. You must embrace this. You must do this. What is that changing worlds philosophy and clarion call? Well, the Psalmist here pictures himself as one who was in danger from the wicked. The wicked who were bending their bows and shooting at him, and he hears the voices either of his well-meaning friends or his enemies that are offering him advice or counsel. And similarly, we have been besieged by the wicked. We have been surrounded by all kinds of voices, but voices that are not coming from God, voices that are giving us free advice. No, they are actually making strong demands for action from us or else. And there are three things that we observe there. Firstly, there's an agent appeal to flee to the mountains. In the Lord I take refuge, David confesses. How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain? The word that is translated flee there in the original language simply means to shirk. to waver, to wander about, to move to and fro, and the changing world is telling us, you are no longer relevant in this dispensation. We no longer need you. The church is unnecessary. Your message is not needed. The gospel is outdated. It's either you change your message to fit modern times or simply become recluses who live in caves and keep their mouths shut. That's where we are going. And that's where some of the nations have already gone. And it's no longer something that you can do sharing the gospel and going about preaching the good news of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ and calling out certain lifestyles as sinful without facing litigation. That's where we are. And so they make an appeal to him, flee to the mountains. Go there, wonder about who will hear you, who wants to hear you. In much of Europe, especially in the Scandinavian countries, the gospel has become so irrelevant that church is not anything in anyone's vocabulary. The Lord Jesus Christ, is not a name that the younger generation have even heard of. Jesus? Ah, who is that one? Is it one of those footballers of 20 years ago? But what rationale, secondly, do they give for this appeal to David? Well, they said to him, you are in extreme danger. Look at verse two. Flee like a bird to your mountain, for, or because, behold, the wicked bend the bow. They have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. Your enemies have you in their sight. You are exposed, church. You are vulnerable, church. Keep quiet, or else you will be shot at. And you will not even know where the arrows will be coming from. They'll shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. They'll vex you with their statements. They would want to weaken you with their civil suits. They would want to mock you and take all the courage from you. They will not keep quiet. They will attack you. You are vulnerable. You are in extreme danger and they will not sleep until they slay you. And then thirdly, notice their despairing question. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? In other words, they are saying to David, there is no hope for you. If all these things that should have brought stability to you and hope to you, if now they are all destroyed, they are no longer there, what hope do you have? Do you have any hope? No, you don't have any hope. We may say to ourselves, what shall we do when the Bible is undermined? What shall we do if its teachings are disregarded, when even churchmen seem to support the rising tide of secularism? What shall we do when family values are crumbling, when the tide of immorality sweeps forward with increasing damage to society? What hope does the church have? What can we do when everything around us seems to be giving way. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? That is the clarion call. That is the persistent worldview of postmodernism. And this clarion call suggests a number of things. Number one, it suggests that the wicked have strength which guarantees success of their agenda. And that's what they want to convince us of. The wicked have outnumbered you. They have strength. They have the media on their side. They have politicians on their side. And success is certain. Is there anything that you can do about that? Why don't you flee to the mountains? Well, it suggests secondly, the subtle message where the absence of God is deafening. And that absence of God, we are told, is best for society. Do you notice that this advice that comes from the worldly minded to David does not make a single mention of God? It's society today saying to us, until we leave this God thing out of life, the world will be better. It's religion, it's God, it's your Christianity, it's your insistence on this Jesus thing that has brought all this trouble upon this world. What about a life which can be lived without any God at all? That's the world that we want. And that's the world that they want to insist on. But thirdly, it suggests that the undercurrent of despair and hopelessness should be something which should overwhelm us. The undercurrent of despair and hopelessness must overwhelm us. Everything is lost. The righteous are powerless to change anything and there's nothing left for you to do except to cave in. And denominations have already started to cave in. Apostate denominations in the Western world have caved in. And ministers are standing in front of God's people. I don't know if they are God's people who even sit on the pews to listen to these men and women who are living in same-sex partnerships and they are being ordained. I had the privilege to visit New England a few years ago, taken there on a tour by one of our brothers who has been coming to Zambia several times, Pastor Ron Benz. And I stood in the pulpit where Jonathan Edwards preached from. And the minister there is a female who is married to a fellow female. What apostasy! What apostasy! That's an undercurrent of despair that is being communicated here. If the foundations are destroyed, what can you do? Do you have answers to that? Do you have a solution to that? No! Kevin! You can't fight us! You can't fight the modern world! Kevin! Well, if that is the clarion call and that is what it suggests, the second point, very, very quickly, the righteous man's confidence in the unchanging God and his unchanging truth. The righteous man's confidence in the unchanging God and his unchanging truth. What can the righteous do? And David does not remain mute. David does not run away in despair and defeat. No, what does he do? He responds. And from verse four to the end of the chapter, we have the answer as to what the church must do. in the midst of such a moral, cultural revolution. What can the righteous do? Of course, the first thing that we must do as God's children is to go on being righteous and never to compromise. We must stand on the truth that we believe, and that truth that we believe must shape our lifestyle, and we will not cave in just because we are in the minority. No, we need to stand against the evil of our society, and the one thing that we must never do is to flee to the mountains. We refuse to do so. Go on being righteous. Go on being sanctified. Go on being changed from one degree of glory to another as you attend to the likeness of your savior. Go on being righteous. Secondly, we must find refuge in the reality of the presence of Yahweh. We must find refuge in the reality of the presence of Yahweh. Look at verse 1, in the Lord I take refuge. And David uses the covenant name of God, Yahweh, in Him I take refuge, is the pillar and the buttress under whose canopy and refuge I will hide my soul. Everything may crumble around me as long as God is my refuge, I will have confidence in Him. That's the reality that must never be lost on anyone of us. The church throughout history has never been in the majority, never. We are aliens, we are pilgrims, we are on our way to the promised land. and we'll meet with obstacles on that way. They'll fight us viciously. They will oppose us. They will even take our lives away. But God will remain our refuge and they cannot do anything to us except that which God alone permits. Thirdly, we should refresh our theological greed. We must refresh our theological greed. Notice the God-centeredness of David's faith. The God-centeredness of David's confidence. Where does he look up? And where is the God to whom he looks up? He gives us the answer in verse four. The Lord, Yahweh, who is my refuge, is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. That's where he looks up. God who is in his holy temple, God who is on his heavenly throne. One commentator says, and I quote, whenever we see the word temple in the Old Testament, we tend to think of Solomon's great gilded temple or the temple of Herod that was in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus Christ. But that is not what David is thinking of here. For one thing, the temple had not been built in David's time. And although it is true that the word temple is sometimes used of the wilderness tabernacle, usually in retrospect by those who witnessed the latter temples and saw the tabernacle as their forerunner, the context of Psalm 11 makes clear that David is thinking of the temple of God in heaven from which the Almighty looks down upon children of man to test them or examine them, end of quote. So the temple was associated with the holiness of God. The earthly temple contained the holy place and the most holy place. So when David looks to the Lord in his holy temple, he is looking to the Lord as the moral standard by which the thoughts and the intents and the words and the actions of all men and women are going to be judged. That is the one is looking to, the source of absolute truth. The truth that should never be relativized. God, who does not change. And this leads to the second directional statement that David makes, that the Lord is on his heavenly throne. The throne is the place from which God, the judge of the earth, renders judgment. And when David looks to the Lord on his throne, he's looking to him to render just judgment, righteous judgment. And this important upward look convinces David of three things. And all of them having to do with God, the God-centeredness. of David's faith and confidence. The first thing we observe is that God sees all the things that people do. He observes all that people do. Look at verse 4b. His eyes see, his eyelids taste the children of man. So when David speaks of God observing people, He's reminding himself of God's omniscience. He's reminding himself of God's omniscience and the truth that God knows all things because he sees all things. And this is particularly very, very important in this particular psalm that began with a warning to David that those who shoot in the dark at the upright in heart will get him. And they plan and they scheme in the dark, very sure that no one is going to see them. They hide so that they might not be seen or might not be known. But although the righteous may not see them, they're all seeing God sees them. Their deeds are as clear and apparent to Him as if they were being performed in broad daylight. to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. But oh, David says, God sees. He observes. But the second thing that David says about God is that he examines the upright. He examines the upright. In verse five, the Lord tests the righteous. Other versions say he examines the upright. The word test in verse five is the same word as the one in the preceding verse that reads his eyelids test the children of man. Same word. And the testing here, though it might involve great hardship on the part of God's children, would culminate in purity. and the removal of dross as He perfects us, as He refines us. And on the other hand, the word can mean try in the sense of inspecting and approving. The Lord finds them to be what they claim to be or aim to be. He does that. So his divine approval rests upon them and the verse teaches us that God not only sees people and their deeds and their words, which is what verse four affirms, but that he also pronounces a verdict on them, approves their actions. The third thing is that God prepares his judgments for the wicked. He prepares his judgments for the wicked. They may be preparing to shoot at the righteous in the dark, but the Lord will protect the righteous because the Lord is seeing them as that arrow As the bow is being pulled backwards and the arrow leaves the bow and is aimed at the righteous, God knows because he sees everything and he will protect the righteous and in the end, the wicked will themselves be shot at and destroyed. Those are the theological greeds that are keeping the heart of David confident and that should keep the hearts of God's people confident that God is the all-knowing supreme God. For when he refers to God in verse six, As raining coals on the wicked, fire and sulfur and the scorching wind is speaking of the judgment of God which in a sense has already commenced on the wicked but it shall be concluded on that final day as He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, God shall destroy the wicked. In all their earthly and worldly philosophies that have thrown away the authoritative word of God and have rejected it and they want to live by their own feelings, there will come a day of reckoning and God is preparing his judgment for the wicked. And Sodom. and Gomorrah are great biblical examples of the judgment of God that is to come upon them. And so we see the righteous man's confidence in the unchanging God and his unchanging truth. It's a confidence that says to us we must go on being righteous We must find refuge in the reality of the presence of God. We must refresh our theological greeds. And fourthly, that we should look to the future with hope. We should look to the future with hope. And that is what we find in verse seven. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteous deeds. the upright shall behold his face. David had looked around at the wicked. He had looked up to God, and now he looks ahead to the future, concerned at this point not with the destiny of his enemies, but with the the hope and the glorious future that awaits him in the presence of God. And so the last verse brings crystal clear. What must be the hope of each one of us, God's children? Yes, living in a world that is hostile to us, in a world that is wicked, in a world that is sinful, and yet we do not cave in. So the Lord who is righteous and the Lord who loves righteous deeds is going to reward those who are righteous. is going to reward those who are upright. The very ones that are being shorted by the wicked, they shall behold his face. They shall behold his glorious face. Blessed are the pure in heart, the Lord Jesus Christ says in Matthew 5 and verse 8, for they shall see God. We will see God. That's a glorious truth. That's something that we are all waiting for with eager expectation, the revelation of the sons of God in the presence of God. We shall see his face. My question to you, dear friend, is will you be among those that shall see the face of God? Can you say in all honesty from the bottom of your heart that yes, I have this confidence, I have this faith that on that day when he comes to judge and separate the wicked from the righteous, I will be numbered among the upright ones who will see his face? And where does that confidence lie, if I may ask? Where does your confidence lie? Oh, your confidence, if it does not lie in the finished work of the Son of God, if it does not lie in what the Son of God, Jesus Christ, has accomplished, has done for you on the cross when he absorbed the wrath of God in his body that you and me dead in our sins and in our trespasses, estranged from the goodness of God, from the love of God, from the favor of God, can be drawn nigh to this God whom we did not want to have anything to do, the God against whom we had committed treason, and that God will accept us only in his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the absence of that, there is no hope for you. There is no hope for you and there can never be any hope for you because you have eliminated the foundations and destroyed the foundations. The objective truth that can bring you into fellowship with God, you have rejected and you have followed what post-modernism wants to teach you. There'll be no hope. Well, the third point very quickly, and I'll do no more than state these things for us to be able to take with us home, the practical suggestions on engaging our wicked culture. Practical suggestions on engaging our wicked culture, I've got five of them. Number one, it is no part of a Christian's duty to flee either in terror or disgust from the morally decaying world. It's not our duty. Flee to the mountains, and David says, no, in the Lord I take refuge. I will stay here. And so in the face of controversy and opposition, it's always very tempting to simply withdraw into friendlier territory and confines. And you begin to use politically correct language for the sake of saving your skin. Let us not flee to the mountain. We are to be counter cultural as the people of God with the gospel which is part of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. We do not want God to rain calls on them. They must repent and so we preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unashamedly. That's what we must do. We must resist the impulse to stay quiet out of a sense of fear that we will invalidate our witness or we are going to offend them. The gospel is a stumbling block. It's an offense. And if we preach anything other than that which is a stumbling block