In 'Losing the Key of Knowledge,' Peter Allison explores the message from Luke Chapter 11, emphasizing the theme of an 'evil generation' that seeks signs while ignoring the evident works of Jesus. He draws parallels between the Pharisees and lawyers of Jesus' time and modern-day believers, highlighting their tendency to focus on external rituals while neglecting the heart of God's message. The sermon criticizes the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and the lawyers for obstructing access to true knowledge, equating this with modern theological errors such as seeking additional signs or revelations beyond Christ. Allison stresses that Christ is sufficient for salvation and spiritual life, and that the Scriptures are complete, urging believers to rely solely on the Bible as the full revelation of God's truth. The sermon warns against losing the key of knowledge through misplaced priorities, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the Word of God, prayer, and true worship. It concludes with a call for courage and faithfulness in proclaiming God's Word, regardless of opposition, underscoring the enduring power and sufficiency of Christ and the Scriptures.

To Luke, Gospel of Luke, Chapter 11, for our Scripture reading. I would like to begin reading at verse 29. Verse 29. And while the crowds were thickly gathered together, he began to say, this is an evil generation, it seeks a sign and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation.

The queen of the south will rise in the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Judah will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. No one when he has lit a lamp puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand that those who come in may see the light.

The lamp of the body is in the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body is also full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore, take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no dark part, the whole body will be full of light as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.

And as he spoke a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and sat down to eat. And when the Pharisee saw it he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner. Then the Lord said to him, Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and the dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness, foolish ones. Did he not, did not he who made the outside make the inside also, but rather give alms of such things as you have, then indeed all things are clean to you.

But woe to you Pharisees, for you tithe mint and rue in all manner of verbs, and pass by justice and the love of God, those you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Woe to you Pharisees, first, for you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplace. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like graves which are not seen, and the men who walk over them are not aware of them." Then one of the lawyers answered and said to him, "'Teacher, by saying these things, you reproach us also.' And he said, "'Woe to you, lawyers, for you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe to you, for you build the tombs of prophets, and your fathers killed them. In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed kill them, and you build their tombs.

Therefore the wisdom of God also said, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and persecute. That the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation. Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.

And as he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail him vehemently and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for Him, and seeking to catch Him in something that He might say that they might accuse Him. Those who seek these, His precepts, will walk at liberty. Heavenly Father, we ask that we might walk at liberty this morning, the liberty that You have purchased for us in Christ. We ask that You would open Your scriptures to us, that you would give us faith, the eyes of faith, to see and to behold the truth of your Word. We ask that you would instruct us and teach us and set before us the way that we should go and grant your power and your grace to walk in it.

And I ask that you would sanctify these sinful lips for the purpose of proclaiming the riches and the glory of your grace in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Well, imagine for a minute, if you will, this morning, that you invited some guests over for dinner. Probably something you all have done at one time or another.

I know I've been in many of your homes and by your invitation. And so being a good host, you went the extra mile to prepare a wonderful meal. You prepared the food with the utmost skill and served it with beauty and charm, even down here, southern charm. Now what would you think Or say if when you served this meal to your your guests they said well could we have some real food please? Can you imagine a more offensive thing to say to somebody who has just gone far out of their way to show kindness, hospitality, to be good to you?

Somebody who has just prepared a banquet for you? Well this is essentially what the Jews said to Jesus. Jesus, The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, to whom rightfully belongs all glory and power and dominion, who has created the heavens and the earth, who has stretched out the heavens. By Him All things were created, and anything that exists, exists because He created it. It's Jesus who took to Himself this human nature so that He might redeem us from bondage to sin and to Satan.

He might deliver us, might break the power of death. This Jesus who came to set the captives free, to bring sight to the blind, to bring healing and walking to the lame, to bring speech to those who are mute. This Jesus was casting out a mute demon. And when He cast out that demon out of the man, the man began to speak. It was a marvelous deliverance.

And this wasn't the first one that Jesus had done. It was a marvelous demonstration of power over Satan and over his kingdom. Because as we saw last week, you can't plunder a strong man's house until you first bind and overpower the strong man. And so this is a clear sign then that the kingdom of God had come upon them. And some marveled at this marvel, at this deliverance.

But others accused him of casting out the demon by Bilzebub, the ruler of the demons. And others, still others, wanted a sign. They wanted another sign. Jesus deals with that first group that accused him of casting out demons by Belzebub. And we looked at that last week.

But then beginning in verse 29, Jesus addresses The people that were asking for a sign, just as He has done, a marvelous sign right in front of them. They want another sign. That's back in the text before we read, in verse 15, or in 16, some of them said he cast out the demon by bells, but others testing him sought a sign from heaven. And so beginning In verse 29, Jesus now answers this crowd of people, this faction. And Jesus calls them an evil generation.

An evil generation. He said, no sign will be given to you except the sign of Jonah. Now if you think a minute, this generation that he's speaking to had received more signs than anyone else. Jesus had turned water into wine, and they saw that. He fed 5, 000 people with food that barely enough to feed one person.

He created it right there in front of them by simply speaking. He raised dead people. People that were in caskets being ready to put into tombs. He even raised somebody that had been in the tomb. He cast out demons.

He ordered the wind and the waves to stop, and they did. They listened to Him. And people rightfully marveled at somebody that could tell the wind to stop blowing or the waves to be quiet and they were. And the list goes on and on. Jesus did many, many signs and wonders of Scripture.

Many that aren't even recorded in the scriptures. And so what can it mean that no sign will be given to them? They weren't satisfied with the signs that were given to them. They wanted a different sign. They wanted something else.

They didn't like this banquet, metaphorical banquet, that was served in front of them. Like our hypothetical houseguests, They had more signs and wonders performed for them, but they weren't satisfied. They wanted a real sign. And Jesus said that the men of Nineveh would rise up in judgment against them. Because, see, the men of Nineveh listened when Jonah the prophet came, and Jonah came with a very simple message, repent, God's going to destroy your city in 30 days.

And they listened, and they repented, And God spared the city. The Queen of Sheba, the Queen of the South as she called her, came from on a fairly arduous journey to seek out the wisdom of Solomon that she had heard about. And she wanted to know if it was true. And when she came and she experienced the actual wisdom of Solomon, she was overwhelmed by it. There was no more heart in her because of all the glory and the wisdom and the splendor of Solomon's kingdom.

And just, it dazzled her, his wisdom that God had given him. And Jesus said she will rise up in judgment because she recognized the wisdom of Solomon. And Jesus said there's a greater than Solomon here. There's a greater prophet in your midst. There's a greater preacher.

The Son of God Himself. There's a greater than Solomon, there's a wiser one than Solomon. There is wisdom. The wisdom of God is in your midst. And they can't be bothered.

They can't be bothered. They have, we will say, dysfunctional eyes. Jesus explains why. They have dysfunctional eyes. The light is there.

It's all around them. But their eyes don't work. So they can't see it. So here they are sitting in the midst of a great light, asking for more light. The problem isn't there isn't light there.

The problem is their eyes can't see it. Now, Jesus, these things are written for our instruction. Jesus isn't just talking about some people that lived a long time ago. We have these kinds of people among us. Atheists and agnostics are one group of people today asking for another sign.

In Dr. Bonson's debate with Dr. Stein, Dr. Greg Bonson, who was a Christian apologist, who was especially gifted at refuting the atheists who contradict. And he debated a man by the name of Gordon Stein, who had a degree from the University of Ohio.

He was a scientist turned philosopher. He had written books about how to debate with theists and when. He was an editor of magazines devoted to these topics as well as a published author in his own field. And he debated Dr. Vonsen before the University of California in Irvine, about 35 years ago.

It's a very, very significant debate. Because in that debate, the Word of God is upheld against an atheist. But in that debate, Dr. Bonson asked, he said, you have said that there has been no adequate evidence put forth for God's existence. What personally for you would constitute adequate evidence for God's existence?

Dr. Stein replied, quote, well, it's very simple. I could give you two examples. If that podium suddenly rose up in the air five feet, stayed there for a minute, and then dropped right down again, I would say that was evidence for a supernatural. He went on to say, any kind of a supernatural being putting in an appearance and doing miracles that could not be stage magic would also be evidence that I would accept.

Unquote. See, He's doing exactly what the Jews of Jesus' day. There are signs all around him. There is evidence all around Dr. Stein.

All he has to do is look up at the heavens. God stretched out the heavens. He has to look at the earth. What is the earth founded upon? God laid the foundation of the earth.

He's standing right on all the evidence he could want. He has no explanation for who laid the foundation of the earth. He has no explanation for how there are so many stars that we've been counting them for thousands of years and still haven't even begun to reach the end of the number as far as we know. The farther we see, the more stars we find. Their evidence was all around Him.

He didn't need another sign. If that podium had risen up, that would not have made any difference. And that's why Jesus says, you evil generation. Because it wasn't another sign that they needed. There were plenty of signs.

Their eyes were evil. And their eyes could not see the light that was all around them. Just like Dr. Stein could not see the evidence for God that was all around him, that was hitting him in the face. He was breathing.

It's evidence of a God who created life, His life. If your eye, but if your eye is dysfunctional, Jesus said, your body, your body will be full of darkness. That even coming closer to home, Jesus is addressing the church when he made these comments. He's addressing The people of God. This is the church that he's talking to.

These were the officers of the church of God. And so as In Jesus' day, so that is seeking another sign. So Charismatic Theology essentially falls into the same snare. Charismatic Theology teaches that Christ is not enough for the full Christian life and experience. Christ is not enough.

One must have the second blessing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. You see, that's sort of a roundabout, indirect denial of the sufficiency of Christ in our salvation. Paul told the Colossians, beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. For in Him, that's in Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him." There's no, when we are in Christ, there is no need for anything else. We have every, in Christ, we have every spiritual blessing.

We've been buried with him, we've been crucified with him, buried with him, raised with him, ascended with him, seated in the heavenlies with him. And there is available to us in Christ every need, spiritual resources for every need. We are promised that if we ask anything of the Father in His name, that He will give it to us. So we have no more need of anything else. If we have Christ, we have all that we need.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not another sign or addition to receive in salvation. We have no further need of signs from heaven. This isn't to say that people who believe in this theology are not Christians, just that their theology has a very significant error at this point. And this same error is made by those who look for additional revelation. The Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation and to thoroughly equip the Christian for every good work.

We have no need of additional revelation in the form of tongues or prophecies to be thoroughly furnished to every good work, to have everything that we need, to do all that God calls us to do. The Word of God is complete. The Word of God is complete. Now before the scriptures were complete, there were prophets and apostles who testified to the message that Christ spoke. They testified to the things that Christ said and they were necessary for that day.

But now we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. And we don't need any further testimony, any further revelation, any sign from heaven. As Paul told the Corinthians, when that which is perfect is come, that which is incomplete and in part is no longer needed. And so to be seeking for further revelation is to ask for different food when we've been served a banquet. It's to ask for more light when we are standing under the brightest light that any people on the earth have ever enjoyed.

Because we brothers and sisters have the complete Word of God. So that we are thoroughly furnished to every good work. This word of God is complete. It endures forever. It abides forever.

And so again, I'm not saying that everybody who believes in a continuationism is not saved, not at all. There are many brothers and sisters. But I think oftentimes the language can be confusing and what they are meaning by prophecies and revelations are really not revelatory, but rather simply the providential leading and moving of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit does apply the word. The Holy Spirit does lead us and bring things to our mind and teach us and so on.

But these things are not new revelation. They're not new prophecies. But rather they're God's providential work to lead us. So those are a couple of examples of people today that are looking for another sign. But how does this happen?

How do people's eyes become dysfunctional so they can't see the light? Jesus gives the answer in verse 52. He talks, woe to the lawyers, the lawyers, who have taken away the key of knowledge. This is the root of the problem. The key of knowledge has been taken away from the people.

The lawyers were the experts in the Mosaic Law. These are the people who studied the law and they were to know it in its greatest detail. They were the experts, just like lawyers in our day are supposed to be the experts in the law. They're supposed to know the law. You can talk to them and they can advise you about what the law requires.

That's who these people were. They were experts in the law of Moses. Now the keys of the kingdom are given to the officers of the Church. They are to bind and loose. They are to lock and unlock the kingdom.

What is bound in heaven is bound on earth and what is loosed in earth is loosed in heaven, Jesus said. And this power or this authority of the keys is primarily exercised through the preaching of the Word of God and the administration of the signs and seals. John Cotton, a Puritan pastor writes, and indeed by opening and applying the law, and the spirit of bondage accompanying the same, they bind sinners under their curse, and their consciences under the guilt of sin and fear of wrath, and shut the kingdom against them. And by opening and applying the gospel, that's the spirit of adoption accompanying the gospel, they remit sin and lose the consciences of believing, repenting souls from the guilt of sin and open to them the doors of heaven." See Paul describes the house of God, which is the church of the living God, as the pillar and the ground of truth. That doesn't mean that the church establishes the truth or is the final arbiter or determiner of the truth.

The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. To be a pillar or a ground of something is to hold something up. The ground is the foundation on which something rests. A pillar is something that supports. And so if the church is the pillar and the ground of truth, it's not the originator of that truth.

It doesn't decide what is truth. It's simply there holding it up. It's holding it out for the people of God. It's the support. For Christ to say that the lawyers had taken away the key of knowledge is to say that these who were to be leaders of God's people, bringing and teaching the Word of God and opening it to the people, we're no longer doing that.

And not only were they not teaching the true Scriptures, they weren't entering into the Kingdom themselves, and even more, they were blocking other people from entering the kingdom by their mishandling and perverting of the scriptures. Now what does it mean to lose the key of knowledge? How are they doing that? Jesus talks about that in all these woes. The first thing we see is These are people who focused on externals and forgot the heart.

They focused on externals and forgot the heart, the internal matters. See, these people who were to be the pillar and the faithful keeper of God's truth in order that it might not perish from the earth, they had lost the message of that truth. And they became consumed with the outward things. When church becomes more about choreography and performance of the worship event, and less about the opening of the word in the preaching ministry and in public prayer, that's taking away the key of knowledge. The worship event becomes an event, a performance.

It has to be choreographed. It has to be moving. It has to bring people in. And the focus on the preaching of the word is lost. The preaching of the word becomes an adjunct to the performance.

If the church life becomes more about getting together to have fun and play games, and it is about coming together to pray and to open the Word, the key of knowledge is being taken away. Look at the life of the church. Are the people coming together to pray? Or all they do is come together for fellowship and have fun. I mean, having fun, rest, rejuvenation, to eat together, these are good things.

But if that's all the church ever does, if that's the focus even of the activities of the church, then the key of knowledge has been taken away. We've begun to focus on that which is external and forgotten what is inside. Is the church more concerned with the outward matters of the faith than it is with the heart of people? Than it is to see people growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. To see sin being put to death and mortified within that body.

If so, then the key of knowledge is being taken away. And it is those to whom those keys have been given that must bear that first responsibility when that begins to happen. Second thing that Jesus talks about is that there is focus on less important things to the exclusion of the more important things. They were focused on tithing their herbs. And they forgot the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy.

Now Jesus said it's right to tithe on those things. So we can't use this as an excuse to say, oh well, tithing is irrelevant because it's not. Jesus recognizes that they are doing the right thing in tithing on those things. But he says, you've forgotten the more important things. The answer isn't to do the more important things and forget the less important things.

The answer is that both need to be done in the right order and with the right priority. And so churches and pastors that spend their days in meetings and administrations, or spend their days in building campaigns, and in other public meetings and programs, instead of prayer and the ministry of the Word and teaching from house to house. Paul said that good elders are those who not only stand here and proclaim the Word when God's people are corporately gathered together in His name where He is present, but also who teach from house to house. We might call that counseling today. But it's Bringing the Word of God to bear in our lives.

Because elders are sheep too. They need shepherded, they need counsel. Just as much as anybody else. And it's that ministry. They take away the key of knowledge if that is not being done.

If all the time is simply spent on having a beautiful building and wonderful programs and attractions to bring people in, that's to take away the key of knowledge. Third thing Jesus talks about is glorifying humans at the expense of Christ. Talks about the Pharisees that loved the best seats and the greetings. In many national ministries, the message has become more about the messenger and pointing to the people to the messenger, then it is about pointing people to the one who sent the messenger. Today theology is sometimes dominated by academics.

People who write all sorts of learned treatises about the Bible with very little application of the Bible to us, to our lives. That's one of the things that I think you'll, as you study church history, as you look at the Reformation, and you look at the Puritans and their writings, they were very gifted and learned men. People like Usher, like John Knox, or Biza, or Calvin, or many of the Puritans, They were very learned men. They had great learning. They were first pastors.

They were first pastors. The things that they wrote, they wrote for the ministry of the Word to their congregations. They were not first academics. They were pastors who opened the scriptures to their people. And the writings that we have from their pens were the work of feeding their congregations.

Today, all too often in theology, there are many academic journals that people with academic degrees can publish in, but there's very little often of biblical application of the word, very little instruction, very little opening of the word. If they write something and it's not really edifying for the average Christian to read, then it's of little value. It's of little value. The great leaders and elders of God's people wrote so that God's people could understand what they wrote. And what they wrote was relevant and applicable and edifying to every Christian.

Paul was a man of great learning. And he wrote letters to the churches that he preached to, but he didn't write academic treatises. And the same is true when, if you read these Puritans, and many of them, they were first pastors. Academics loved degrees and academic honors, and publications in peer-reviewed journals. But to the extent that they're not opening and applying the Word of God to Christians, they're removing the key of knowledge.

Fourth thing Jesus mentions is leaders leading people astray. To walk on a tomb would make somebody unclean, and defile them. And if a tomb is not marked, it would be easy for someone to walk over it without realizing that they were walking on a tomb, and thus unknowingly become defiled before they realized they were on top of a tomb. And Jesus is saying that these leaders are like unmarked tombs. They defile people.

See, this focus on academics has led many of elders in God's church to go to unbelievers who have great academic qualifications to be trained. And so too many academic, too much of a focus on academics has resulted in in being in too many people being trained by unbelievers instead of the believers, who may not have had all the accolades. And so the result is that unbelieving ideas have infiltrated the church. Gressom Machen, who was one of the pillars in the church in the fight against liberalism in the early part of the 20th century, went over to Germany to study. And over there he almost apostatized, because he was confronted with all these unbelieving ideas of these great academics.

And he later, by the schools of heretics, And he later would say that if hell had a sign, it would say made in Germany. And he was speaking from his personal experience of heretics undermining the Gospel. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the translation of the Word of God itself, in what's called today textual criticism. These ideas have infiltrated almost every part of evangelical Christianity. According to the scriptures, God alone determines what is in his written word and what is not.

God does. No human person. But the prevailing belief today is that the church somehow has to determine what is in the Bible. And This has resulted in scholars setting out to determine what the text of the Scripture is and creating these Greek texts that are, here's the Word of God, the problem is they change every year. They're on their 30th edition.

But more than that, these compilations from manuscripts called texts were put together by unbelieving presuppositions, by people who were operating on presuppositions contrary to what the scriptures teach. Pastor Kaiser says that they presuppose that godly devout scribes would be motivated to change the text. That's one of the presuppositions these people operate on. That the text is likely to be changed. Gordon Fee says, an evangelical scholar, for the early Christians it was precisely because the meaning was so important that they exercised a certain amount of freedom in making that meaning clear by changing the words in the text.

Now these are evangelical scholars talking about their ideas about the Bible. And their assumption is that people change the word of God. Brothers and sisters, God, every jot and tittle of the word of God is breathed out by God. And not one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass away. Those who were faithful scribes took utmost care to record every jot and tittle.

They didn't change a faithful scribe wouldn't change anything, wouldn't dare to change any jot or tittle in the Word of God. And yet, we have people now who are instrumental in constructing the Greek text from which the Bible is translated who believe just the opposite. They believe that they allowed guessing. They have to amend the text to make the meaning clear or to make it fit proper grammar. And where the manuscript has awkward grammar, they say, oh, that's a sign of authenticity.

Because all these ignorant apostles, they weren't trained in Greek, and they couldn't write good Greek. And so scribes later on were embarrassed by that, and they have amended, modified the Greek in these manuscripts to make it more stylistically correct. That's their assumption. Brothers and sisters, what these people wrote, they wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Lord used their own personalities and their own gifts and abilities, but what they wrote is the very Word of God as they wrote it.

It doesn't need anybody else to make it the Word of God. God alone makes His Word the Word of God. Word, the Word of God. So here we have people changing the Word of God. People with exact wrong, and that's not the only unbiblical presuppositions there, they operate on many more.

And so we have today a situation where most of the American Translations are translated from texts that were constructed by these unbooked by these heretics let's call them what they are their heretics who have tampered with the word of God and Such that the text today is that we have is formed largely, I say the text that we have, the text that they are using and that modern translations are using, it has been formed from a couple of ancient manuscripts that are very unreliable. Were probably written by heretics. In fact, in one of these manuscripts, which is one of maybe five key manuscripts, one of a couple key manuscripts, there's a section in Mark that's been erased. It's not there. You can see it in the manuscript where there's a space for it, but it's been erased.

Now that's an unreliable manuscript. And yet that is, that's looked to as one of the more reliable manuscripts. And it's those kinds of things that are driving what gets included in this Greek text and what doesn't. And so when you hear people talk about problems with modern translations, that's what the problem is. These translations are made from texts that have been put together by heretics.

Now, God has preserved His Word. Every letter, every jot and tittle, we have it today. It's just not in that text. They've ignored the vast majority of manuscripts out there in favor of a few bad manuscripts. And Brothers and sisters, these are people who are removing the key of knowledge from the church.

God has preserved this word and He's preserved it in thousands of copies. The vast majority of copies of the manuscripts of the New Testament preserved the word of God. But lastly, the key of Jesus says the key of knowledge is removed by hypocritical leaders who lay heavy burdens on others that they don't keep. And rampant today are elders in the church falling into all manner of immorality. They lay low a while until the scandal is subsided, then they go right on teaching people not to do the very things that they've been doing.

Now there's forgiveness. There is forgiveness in Christ for every sin except the unpardonable one. There is forgiveness. There is healing when sinners repent and confess their sins. But for those who would lead God's people, there is no second chance.

Jesus says Those shepherds who eat the people they were supposed to be feeding, God says He removed them. He removed them. And so this sad fact of the church today has soured many people on the whole concept of church membership. You mean I'm supposed to listen to that hypocrite? No.

No. But the fact that all too many of these situations exist today is one more step, one more example of the key of knowledge being removed from the people. But Christ, brothers and sisters, Christ is the great shepherd of his sheep. Christ preserves his word. Christ ministers to us.

He does raise up faithful elders. We in our denomination are privileged to serve with them and to be blessed through them. Jesus said an example here. He went to eat with people who hated him. They asked him to come eat and he did.

These are people that were seeking to trap him, cross-examine him, catch him in light. He went and ate with them. He also didn't hesitate to speak the truth to them. Here he is a guest in this house and he begins pronouncing woes to them. Now that's courage to speak in that situation.

To be willing to go into their house and yet to not shy, to not draw back from speaking the truth to them. Because ultimately that was an act of love. That was an act of love. He had a, he was demonstrating compassion for their souls. If he doesn't tell them the truth, who will?

So, brother, we have to remember that when we give the people the truth, yes, we need to do it in gracious ways. But when we bring the truth to people who have these horribly wrong ideas on all manner of things and they abound today. We need to remember to speak just like Jesus did. As a guest In the house of these scribes and Pharisees, He told them, woe on you, for you removed the key of knowledge. And when we come across all of the lies and the misconceptions and the perversions of the truth that are all around us, we shouldn't be cowed into silence.

We have the word of God, it's true. It never, it endures forever, it's unchangeable. And we can stake our life upon it, upon every letter, every letter. And we ought to do so. The word for martyr is a witness.

It's a witness. And when we speak the truth to people who are lost in ignorance, we're a witness. The reason it became associated with losing your life, it's because they were witnesses who were faithful to testify to the truth of God's Word, even if it cost them their life. Even if it cost them their life. Even if it cost them their life.

Sometimes we think, well I'd be willing to give my life, but go to jail that would be more difficult. But even going to jail, We ought to be those who follow Christ's example and testify to the truth wherever God gives us that opportunity. May it be so, brothers and sisters. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your example. You have given to us a new commandment.

You have given to us an example in how to keep it and the power in your Holy Spirit to keep it. And you have given to us the truth because we have you, the way, the truth, and the life. And you have made us your witnesses. Lord, We want to be faithful to you. We want to fear you and not men.

To fear you more than anything else. For it is in the fear of you that is the beginning of wisdom. And you have taught us that we ought not to fear men who can only destroy our body, but cannot touch our soul. And rather to fear you who has power over both body and soul. Lord we ask that you would give us courage today, in this day in which we live.

We ask that we might be filled with your spirit, that we might be mighty in the Word, that we might be a congregation of prayer, dedicated and devoted to prayer, congregation that delights in your precepts and your ways. Oh Lord, we thank you for the grace of Jesus Christ to us. We thank you for your love of us, for your promise that you'll never leave us nor forsake us, but that you are with us wherever we go. Or may your presence be real to us in our lives. May you give us eyes of faith to see, to see your work, to see your hand of providence, and eyes of faith to believe and rest in all that you tell us in your word.

Lord, calm our doubts and drive away our fears. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.