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Well, I want to welcome you today.

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Happy New Year. Who's in charge of our happiness?

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Is anybody else in charge of our happiness except for ourselves?

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We're in charge of our happiness, aren't we? That's right.

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We can be happy, we can have joy in our hearts even when we're going through some bad things.

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That's always something to look forward to.

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Well, we've got a interesting little presentation to make, a little talk to make.

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Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

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Render to God the things that are God's.

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What does April 15 mean to you?

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That tax time? That tax time, okay.

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Do we owe Caesar?

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In other words, do we owe the government?

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We do, don't we? We really do.

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Do we owe God?

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We owe Him our loyalty, we owe Him our heart.

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Sometimes those two things come in conflicting situations.

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So let's take a look this morning at some of these.

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And I want to bring your attention to a text.

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Let me get this little button out here so we can do that.

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And it may be hard for you to read that.

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And it says in Matthew 22, starting with 13, it says,

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And the Pharisees went out to plot how they might entangle Him.

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That's Jesus, of course, in His talk.

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And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians.

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That's interesting because the Pharisees did not like paying taxes,

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didn't believe in paying taxes, okay, to the government.

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The Herodians did. That's interesting.

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But they came together. Why did they come together?

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To trap Jesus. That's what they were doing.

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And they said, Teacher, we know that you are true

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and teaching the way that God in truth, nor do you care about anyone.

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For you do not regard person of men.

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Tell us, therefore, what do you think?

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Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

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What a trap. They set a trap.

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But Jesus perceived their wickedness and said,

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Why do you test me, you hypocrites?

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Show me the tax money. So they brought him a denarius.

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And he said to them, Whose image and inscription is this?

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And they said to him, Caesar's.

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And he said to them, Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,

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and to God the things that are God's.

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When they had heard those words, they marveled and left him and went their way.

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A trap. He saw through their trap, of course, didn't he?

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That's right. Have you ever been trapped?

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We get trapped sometimes, don't we?

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We really do. That's interesting.

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Now, what is the denarius?

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Well, that was a tax.

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That was a tax money.

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After Jesus' disciples arrived in Capernaum,

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the collectors of the two drachma temple tax came to Peter and they asked,

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he says, Does your teacher pay the temple tax?

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And Peter said, Yes, yes, he does. Yes, he does.

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When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak.

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And he says, What do you think, Simon? He asks,

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From whom do the kings of earth collect duty and taxes?

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From their own children or from others?

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And Peter said, Well, from others.

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Then the children are exempt. Jesus said to him,

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But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and do what?

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What did you tell him to do? He said, Go fish.

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How many of you like to fish? I know Darren. Darren, you like to fish.

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There you go. Like to fish.

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And what did he say? Take the first fish you catch,

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open its mouth and you will find a four drachma coin.

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Take it and give it to them to pay the taxes for us.

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That's interesting.

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Well, have you ever caught a fish with a coin in his mouth?

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That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

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That indeed was a was a miracle.

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That was a miracle.

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That was a miracle. But Jesus did pay the tax.

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He didn't need to, but he paid the tax.

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That's very interesting.

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Sometimes we don't think we need to pay taxes, but we do.

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We actually do. We have some wonderful examples in the Bible of people

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that rendered to God the things that are God's.

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And these people are our heroes, which is interesting.

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So I'd like to bring out some of these facts to you

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and see if maybe could be an inspiration for us.

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I think we need to be inspired.

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First of all, when we look at Egypt, there's a lot of things about Egypt

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that are interesting.

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We had the Shepra and Porah. Who were they?

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You remember those names in the Bible?

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Who were they?

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Well, they were the midwives.

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Okay, they were the Egyptian midwives.

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Historically, this is probably the earliest known example

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of civil disobedience.

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Interesting. In the face of a specific command

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by a powerful regime to disobey the law of God.

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Even today, it remains as a wonderful example of the power of faith

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in very difficult circumstances.

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The two courageous women did what they could to protect themselves,

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yet their faith in God was ultimately their protection and blessing.

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What were they supposed to do?

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What did the Pharaoh tell them to do?

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Commanded them to kill all the boys.

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Kill all the boys at birth.

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That's interesting. These are midwives.

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So God was good to the midwives.

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They spared the boys.

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And of course, the girls, that was no problem.

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They didn't have to worry about that.

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But God actually had blessed both of Shepra and Porah

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and gave them their own families, which is interesting.

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Wow. That's interesting to me. Very interesting.

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Then we have another example.

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Moses' parents, did they disobey?

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They actually disobeyed. That's right.

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The parents of Moses, they disobeyed the Egyptian king's Edict,

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and they hid Moses, saving him from death in the bulrushes.

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And then what happened?

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Well, Pharaoh's daughter rescued baby Moses, didn't they?

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She really did. Now that's interesting to me.

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And she was disobeying her father's command, by the way.

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I wonder how she got away with that.

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God must have provided that for sure. Interesting.

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And we have another example.

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In Daniel, we find three Hebrews.

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Okay, we find three Hebrews.

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You know this...oh, and that's...

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Anyways, my picture is a little bit off right here.

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But what were the three Hebrews supposed to do?

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Supposed to bow down to the image, right? The image.

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The image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up, that golden image.

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Did they bow down? No, they didn't.

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If they weren't going to bow down, what was supposed to happen to them?

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What's that?

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They were going to be thrown in the fiery furnace.

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Okay, I'll catch up with these slides here in a minute.

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So, Daniel also had his problem.

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Daniel was one of the officials in the government.

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And the king required him to do his duty.

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He was active in civil affairs, which is interesting.

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And Daniel had some people that he was in charge of

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that really didn't appreciate him very much.

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They wanted to get rid of him.

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So, how did they get rid of Daniel?

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Well, they couldn't find any fault with him.

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Wow, I wonder how many people could find fault with us

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if they were trying to get rid of us.

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Well, they probably could find a lot of fault, okay, in my particular case.

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But the only way that they could find fault with Daniel was, in fact,

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the only thing that he did that wasn't against any kind of law was,

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well, they knew that he prayed, okay, he would pray three times a day,

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which is interesting.

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And so, they convinced the king to set up a law

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that no one was supposed to worship or pray to anyone except for him.

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Well, that probably made him feel pretty good, you know.

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Wouldn't you feel pretty good about that?

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Well, they found him praying.

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He didn't change his activity at all.

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He kept doing what he always did, okay.

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He was rendering to God the things that are his gods, okay.

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And so, they had him thrown into the lion's den.

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I don't know if you've ever been in a lion's den.

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Have you ever been in a lion's den?

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Have you ever been in a cage with a lion?

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Well, I've been in a cage with a cougar before,

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and I thought I was going to get eaten up, okay.

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This was supposed to have been not a very bad cougar,

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but that cougar had gotten me by the neck right here, which is interesting.

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His mouth was right around my neck, his feet were on my shoulders,

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and I was scared to death, okay.

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But he didn't bite me. He didn't eat me.

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My shirt got a little bit torn.

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That's very frightening, very frightening indeed.

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So, the king had to have Daniel thrown into the lion's den, okay.

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And the king didn't sleep all that night.

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Didn't sleep all that night. Why?

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Well, he loved Daniel. He really liked Daniel.

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But he knew that he was trapped, and he had to do this.

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Interesting.

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So, what happened? Daniel was protected.

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Can you imagine that? Can you imagine?

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I wonder if Daniel slept.

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You know, maybe he did. I don't know.

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Maybe he put his head on one of those lioness' mains and just slept.

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But the angel shut the lion's mouth,

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and that early morning the king got up very early,

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and was hoping that Daniel's God would have saved him.

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And did he?

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Oh, yeah.

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And Daniel's God did save him.

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That was an amazing, amazing story.

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But that was a very, very brave situation.

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Let me go into Shadrach.

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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were very familiar, okay,

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with these three worthies, okay.

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And they were supposed to bow down to that image, okay, of gold.

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But they refused.

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Well, the king gave them kind of a second chance.

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They still didn't bow down to that image, okay.

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Said, if you don't bow down, I'm going to go,

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we're going to fire up those furnaces seven times hotter than they should be.

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And they threw them in.

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They threw them in.

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I wonder what those furnaces were.

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They were probably kilns, right, for building, for building bricks

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and things that had to have a tremendous amount of heat.

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And as the king looked in there, looked into that fire,

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he noticed that there was four.

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There was four people and not three.

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And the fourth one was what?

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Had the, had the, like the son of God, it looked like the son of God.

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How interesting is that?

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Wow.

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That is extremely interesting.

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And then what do we have?

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What do we have here?

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I can almost see my pictures.

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We have a picture of a young lady, okay.

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This young lady was called Rahab.

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You remember the story of Rahab?

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What's interesting?

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That is very interesting.

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Rahab lived where?

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Where did Rahab live?

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Jericho.

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She lived in Jericho.

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And Jericho was going to what?

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Jericho was going to fall.

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Jericho was going to fall.

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And why was it going to fall?

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Because God was going to ask the people to make it fall down, okay.

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And they marched around the walls of Jericho.

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And so Joshua was the person in charge at that particular time.

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And he was the son of Nun.

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And secretly he sent two spies from Shittim.

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And he says, I want you to go over to the land and I especially want you to check out Jericho.

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So they went and they entered the house of a prostitute.

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That's interesting.

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That's interesting.

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What do we know?

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What do we know about her?

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She's actually in the line of Jesus, right?

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In David's line as king.

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That's interesting to me.

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Wow.

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Now God can use anyone.

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And he used Rahab.

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So what did Rahab do actually?

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She hid the spies.

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So that was against the law, okay.

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And the people had seen those.

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I got to figure out what this is right here.

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Oh, there we go.

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All right.

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So the soldiers, okay, the officers came to her place and they said that people had said that,

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you know, that the spies came into your house.

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And she said, well, they're gone.

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She lied, okay.

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Is it ever okay to lie?

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Well, we're not going to talk about that today.

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But is it okay to lie to save somebody's life?

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It's very interesting concept to think about, isn't it?

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But she told them that they had gone.

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They had gone just before they had shut the gates of the city and said, but you had better hurry up

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because you might catch up with them.

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And then she actually hid.

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She hid the three spies or the two spies.

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She hid them underneath some straw.

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And then when the coast was clear, she let them down.

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She let them down and a cord, okay, because she lived on the wall.

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She absolutely lived on the wall.

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It's interesting to me.

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Wow. And so they escaped.

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She said, you better go over here to the mountains, whatever, and stay three days before you actually go back.

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And she, they, the spies had some very interesting information because they found out through Rahab

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that the people were frightened of the Israelites.

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They were frightened.

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They had heard about how God had led them through the through the waters, how they had led them all of this time.

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And they were afraid.

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They were really, really afraid.

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So that was a very good encouragement.

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Okay.

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For those people as well.

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Well, how many of you are you?

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This is kind of neat when we when we look at the stories of these heroes in the Bible.

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But if you and I had been any one of these people that we just mentioned,

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would we have done what they did?

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Would we have done what they did?

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Well, we know the end of the story.

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Okay.

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We know that it all turned out good.

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All right.

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But sometimes it doesn't turn out good.

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But just like the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they told the king, he says,

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even if our God doesn't save us, we will not bow down and worship you.

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That was interesting.

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That was very, very interesting.

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Now, I believe I don't know how many of you are active with civil things like our

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government, our local government, okay, maybe even our national government.

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I don't know how many of us have actually voted, okay, voted on local, local voting.

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Because we vote for different, you know, people that have different positions in our

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in our local government.

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And then we also vote and national voting as well.

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But I've talked to several people and I found out that some people have never voted.

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Okay.

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00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:24,000
Now that's interesting.

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You know, not voting is a vote.

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Think about it.

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If we don't vote, that is a vote.

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That's a decision.

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Okay.

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That's a vote.

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But I believe that if we look at the render to Caesar, the things that are Caesar's,

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we need to render to Caesar our taxes, okay, our loyalty, okay?

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Because we have benefit, don't we?

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Benefit by roads.

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We have benefit by government, okay, that keeps us safe, okay, and that protects us

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in the court system.

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Okay, we are a part of the government.

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But if we don't vote, okay, on different matters, then who's going to vote?

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And when we vote, we should vote our what?

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Our conscience, shouldn't we?

321
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We shouldn't vote, we should vote our conscience.

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We should vote in the lines of what the Bible gives us as well.

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And if we don't vote, then that is a vote.

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00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:26,100
Now what about local things that we have in our community?

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Are there things that we can do in our local community to get involved with local things?

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And one of those things that was brought to my attention is Religious Liberty,

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the Religious Liberty Magazine.

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And I got a little report from the Southern Union about religious liberty,

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and they said that they don't have any record of anyone from this church getting the

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Religious Liberty Magazine so that it could be sent out to our thought leaders, okay,

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in our community.

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And I thought, you know, that's pretty sad.

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That's really sad.

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Religious Liberty Magazine comes out in May-June, okay, the first issue is going to be May-June.

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And we do have an obligation, I think, to make sure that our leaders, our local leaders,

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okay, in our communities, get the Religious Liberty Magazine.

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Now you might say, well, why?

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Why should we do that?

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Well, what does it do?

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Well, here's some items that are mentioned here.

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It defends religious liberty in the courts, advocate directly with lawmakers in Congress

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and state capitals, support church members who face religious discrimination in the workplace,

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send religious magazines to judges and elected officials across the nation.

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Now that's a good thing, isn't it?

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It is.

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Now the campaign rate is $7 for a subscription to one of our thought leaders.

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00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:05,200
That's interesting.

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That's really not a lot of money when you think about subscriptions to other magazines

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that you may get.

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The regular rate is like $10.

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Now on January 14 is Religious Liberty Sabbath.

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That's Religious Liberty Sabbath.

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And we'll have something on the back in the foyer where you can actually sign up and you

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can actually, if you know a thought leader, you can put their name and address down and

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you can sponsor that for them.

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That would be interesting, wouldn't it?

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I think so.

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00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:52,100
I think we ought to be active in our local affairs here in Gordon County.

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Let's try Catoosa County.

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We ought to be active.

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How can we help?

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How can we help in our local government?

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How can we do that?

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00:20:05,700 --> 00:20:09,400
Should we be active in our local government?

365
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:10,800
Should we?

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I think we should.

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I think we should.

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Now if we pay taxes, and I'm assuming most of us pay taxes, that means that we should

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have some idea about what's going on locally.

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What goes on in our school system?

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You might say, I don't have any children in the school.

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I have grandchildren in the school system.

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But even if you don't have children in the school system, we pay taxes.

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Part of those taxes go to support our school system.

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But what are they teaching in our schools?

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What are we doing?

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Do we have any problems?

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Do we have any obligation to make our will known?

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And those are just some of the things that we can do.

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What about if there's a Planned Parenthood?

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If there's some places where we've been trying to be active with, what's that one over here?

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00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:01,800
What is it?

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00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:03,200
Yes, Christ Chapel.

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And that's getting involved in our local affairs as well.

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But if we're not active, then there is an obligation that we have.

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Our obligation is to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to render to

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00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:21,400
God the things that are God's.

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Sometimes those two come in conflict.

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If the only time that we stand up because of the conflict, well, I would rather that

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00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:40,000
our local leaders know us because we are helping in local affairs.

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00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:41,100
We are active.

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00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:44,560
We are actively trying to help what is going on.

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00:21:44,560 --> 00:21:45,960
It's interesting to me.

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00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:51,200
And of course, during the time of the pandemic, there were some clashes, weren't there?

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00:21:51,200 --> 00:21:52,400
Clashes with some churches.

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00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:55,160
Some churches were closed.

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00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:59,760
In fact, some of them started out with, well, you could attend church, but you could only

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00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:02,480
have 250 members.

399
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:04,660
You couldn't have anybody else.

400
00:22:04,660 --> 00:22:10,200
And then in just a few days, the mandate came down to you could only have 150.

401
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:13,120
Then it was 100.

402
00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:16,680
Then it got down to about 25.

403
00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:18,400
And it just fell apart from there.

404
00:22:18,400 --> 00:22:28,160
And of course, where they banned church meetings, they actually put in prison some pastors.

405
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:35,680
One that I can think about was actually in Canada, put him in prison because they decided

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00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:40,200
that they still had to have church.

407
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:45,880
In some areas, even in the United States, some areas the churches were closed, but yet

408
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:48,760
the liquor stores were open, the bars were open.

409
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:52,840
It's kind of like, you know, I mean, this is rendered to Caesar the things that are

410
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:53,840
Caesar's.

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00:22:53,840 --> 00:23:00,280
But when they come in conflict with the things that are God's and worship, then maybe we

412
00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:01,760
should take a stand.

413
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:06,280
Maybe like some of those people that we talked about, that we that were reflected with some

414
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:14,680
of these pictures on here, like Daniel and Rebecca and the three Worthys, okay, and the

415
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:16,320
Midwives.

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00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,640
And you can probably think of some others as well.

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00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:26,960
But I do believe that God will bless us, okay, as we don't neglect to render the things that

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00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:28,680
are God's.

419
00:23:28,680 --> 00:23:32,960
And the government has sometimes they overreach.

420
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:33,960
Sometimes they overreach.

421
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:45,040
I wanted to share with you in the closing thoughts here, if I can find my notes.

422
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:54,480
There was an interview that I caught, and I wanted to read you some of this interview.

423
00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:57,800
Here it is.

424
00:23:57,800 --> 00:23:58,800
Okay.

425
00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:07,720
There was an interview with Kirk Cameron, some of you may recognize that name, with

426
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:08,960
Dr. Ben Carson.

427
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:12,840
I think all of us know who Dr. Ben Carson is.

428
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:14,520
And Dr. Ben Carson said this.

429
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:15,520
This is interesting.

430
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:20,420
He says, there are a lot of policies in our government that keep people dependent rather

431
00:24:20,420 --> 00:24:25,760
than try to boost them and to help them become self-sufficient.

432
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:32,200
And I thought that a lot of programs that I designed to get people out of poverty would

433
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:35,800
be very popular, but not so much on the Hill.

434
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:40,760
There are a lot of people there who want to keep people in poverty, who want to keep people

435
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:42,040
dependent.

436
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,900
And it was a struggle, and it continues to be a struggle now.

437
00:24:45,900 --> 00:24:50,580
And we have to keep working on it, because resources in this country are adequate to

438
00:24:50,580 --> 00:24:53,560
give everybody a reasonable lifestyle.

439
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:59,240
So you have these forces that want to control people, to control their vote, and to control

440
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:00,240
their psyche.

441
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,760
And it's a difficult thing.

442
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:03,760
And he goes on.

443
00:25:03,760 --> 00:25:10,000
I also learned that the vast majority of people in this country actually think the right way,

444
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:15,840
and are quite reasonable people and logical people, but there is a certain lack of courage.

445
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:20,300
A lot of people will stand in the corner with their head down and just hope that no one

446
00:25:20,300 --> 00:25:28,080
calls them a nasty name, and they're not willing to rally, to really stand up, to really stand

447
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:31,080
up strongly for what they believe in.

448
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:36,960
On the other hand, there are factions that don't like our country, and that want to fundamentally

449
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:42,280
change it into something else instead of a country that's by the people and for the people,

450
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:45,520
something that's up by and for the government.

451
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:50,240
And they seem to be much more forceful and willing to stand up for what they believe.

452
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:56,920
And it's going to take people of courage if we are going to be one nation under God, indivisible,

453
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,460
with liberty and justice for all.

454
00:25:59,460 --> 00:26:05,920
You have to be willing to stand up for that, and if you don't, you will lose it.

455
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:06,920
So we do have an obligation.

456
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:11,940
I do have an obligation to stand up for what we believe.

457
00:26:11,940 --> 00:26:17,120
And if we believe in God and if we believe in the things that the Bible teaches us, I

458
00:26:17,120 --> 00:26:19,120
think we have an obligation.

459
00:26:19,120 --> 00:26:23,480
We have an obligation to vote.

460
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:24,660
That is our right.

461
00:26:24,660 --> 00:26:25,660
We have a vote.

462
00:26:25,660 --> 00:26:26,660
We should use that vote.

463
00:26:26,660 --> 00:26:31,440
We should get active in local things, local government.

464
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:32,680
And I'm pointing to myself.

465
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:34,440
I'm not active in local government.

466
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:35,600
I vote, okay?

467
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:41,000
I vote local and I vote national and have for years, but I'm not involved in local things.

468
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:45,440
I want to get involved in some local things this year, this new year.

469
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:51,120
Maybe that would be a challenge for some of us, which would be probably a very interesting

470
00:26:51,120 --> 00:27:16,320
thing for us to think about.