Ep. 040 Don’t Leave your Brain at the Door

Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located

in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship

Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,

discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church

and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be your

host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing

to you and bring you closer to God.

Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. My name is David Bickford

and I am the pastor here in Salmon Arm. Today I have put together a message entitled, Don't

Leave Your Brain at the Door. A subheading would be, Standing in the Gap. What we are

going to do today is look at Romans 1 verses 18-25. If you are following along, that is

Romans 1:18–25

the verse of scripture that we are going to be using as our jumping off point today. You

can go ahead and turn there if you have your Bibles or you are following along with us.

When I was putting this message together a while back, I was reading the news and I came

across this article that says, If you can't read them, swear on them. This article is

really important for the day and age that we are living with today because when you

take yourself off the foundation of God, then you lose any semblance of morality in society.

You can argue that morality can be found in other cultures, but then that is fine. You

are going to have to explain how that morality came to be. What we see in many other cultures

is that their morality is very, very different from what we would consider to be right or

just. A perfect example of this is that we actually have more slavery today than we have

ever had in any other time in history. When you look to that, it becomes very dicey for

many people in society to really dig into that kind of a topic because it takes away

the narrative that we have heard in the Western world about how slavery is a Western European

and North American problem, specifically an American problem.

I was listening to something earlier today that really honed in on that idea that when

you really look at it, Western society is the first society in history that ever ended

up having on its own a moral dilemma with slavery in and of itself. That rationality

to the moral dilemma came from the great enlightenment that happened within Protestantism and the

explosion of the printing press and the Word of God coming through into society, specifically

in Western Europe and the colonies in the United States.

That is really just a high-level thing that I found very interesting. Putting this message

together is going to touch on some of those similar notes. This was from several months

back when I preached it here in Samanar. Either way, I think that there is a lot of stuff

happening in society today that is extremely relevant for us to understand as Christians

and how we are supposed to deal with society as it continually moves away from God. Yet,

we are still supposed to be heralds for the Word of God in the areas, towns, and places

we live in because we are really trying to bring people into the boat of salvation and

get them on board with the God's view of morality rather than just being blown to the wind of

all the different other morality choices that people will pull onto in society.

This article is called If You Can't Read Them, Swear on Them. This is an excerpt from that

article.

Karen Smith, re-elected school board president of Pennsylvania School District, was sworn

in this week on a stack of banned books. Instead of the traditional choice, the Bible, Smith's

husband carried a stack of various banned books for her to take her oath on, including

several with sexually explicit material. When asked to explain her choice of books, Smith

said, I'm not particularly religious. The Bible doesn't hold significant meaning for

me and given everything that has occurred in the last couple years, the banned books

they do mean something to me at this point. Smith has long opposed the efforts to ban

access to certain books and when they asked about the remaining books under review by

the school board, she said, they're definitely not going to be reviewed at this point.

So as we look at this as our jumping off point, as an illustration for this entire message,

you have to really just be amazed by the denouncement of the moral guide to Western society and

even prior way back to Judaism and as long as humanity has been around, there's been

this morality that comes from God. That means nothing but this pornography being kept in

elementary schools and middle schools and high schools, that's worthy and that has more

of a point or that tugs at her heartstrings more than thou shall not kill and thou shall

not commit adultery and thou shall not steal. So you've got these normal ideas of what is

moral and what is right and wrong, but none of that matters anymore because now we're

told that we are an enlightened people and that we are more educated and evolved than

people who were back in ancient times.

And so it's okay now to instead of taking your oath on the word of God, to take it on

the word of the explicit or the pornographer. A lot of these books that get banned right

now are currently only being banned in school because they are not appropriate for children.

I would argue they're not appropriate for anybody, but the reality is that federal educators

should not be putting pornographic material at school and I don't think anybody really

can argue that unless you have certain proclivities for it. So anyway, let's jump into our text

in Romans 18 through 25. So this portion of scripture is called God's wrath on the unrighteous

and in verse 18, it jumps off and says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against

all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the

truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for

his invisible attributes, namely his internal power and divine nature have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they

are without excuse for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give

thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened

claiming to be wise. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for

images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. And therefore God gave

them up into the lusts of their own, of their hearts to have purity to the dishonoring of

their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped

and serve the creatures rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. So let's just

pray dear Lord God, I pray that this message will go out and convict hearts. The whole

point of every message is that it brings people closer to God and lets them know that you

love them. You love them enough that you sent your son Jesus to die for their sins and that

there is always redemption found in Christ. If people will only turn and repent of their

sins and accept you as their Lord and father. So Lord help them to come to that conclusion,

Lord God by the Holy Spirit in Jesus name, amen. So today's society is becoming less

tied to rationality and more tied to an overt overly complex and irrational dogma beliefs.

This set of beliefs goes by several different names. Several of these you've probably heard

some of these you haven't. You know, D E and I, diversity, equity, inclusion, social

justice, critical race theory, et cetera. Most of these ideas come out of the same root

of secular humanism, which can masquerade off the times of socialist, communist or Marxism.

The ideas are a tool that is used to divide up the groups of people by the way of victim

classes, race, creed, sex, or sexual orientation, you name it. The goal is to penalize certain

groups in favor of other groups. This kind of philosophy is very dangerous and has had

horrifying results all throughout human history. The filifying of one group over another is

something that governments and politicians have done for eons. In the book of Esther,

we see Hammond's hate for the Jews take hold of him. His mission in life became one of

vengeance and wrath against a certain group of people. We can take a look at the American

and Canadian history and we see the wickedness perpetrated against those of African Irish

and First Nation descent. The desire to categorize groups so that they can be put at odds with

each other in a useful tool for those who desire to consolidate power under themselves.

A lot of people don't realize this, and I put in there specifically the Irish along

with African and First Nations because a lot of people don't understand that at one point

in the colonies, there were more Irish slaves. They would call them indentured servants,

but they would be indentured servants with no escape. They would never be able to escape

from their indentured nature. But there are some that speculate that the Irish slaves

or indentured servants could have outnumbered the African slaves in the colonies in certain

parts in history. So again, this becomes a tool to put people into camps and put people

at odds with themselves. And they do this with a goal of consolidating power for themselves.

So this has become front page news since the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas. This

event has caused much of the West to boil over with old hatreds coming to the surface,

the worst of human nature rushing out on the streets of Australia, England, Canada, the

United States, the glorification of murder, rape, and even calls for genocide. We've all

seen the flags being flown, but worse than that is the pontification from our leaders

and politically, our leaders politically and from the so-called academic elite.

So this brings me to my first point, which is mankind's ungodliness. When we look at

our text specifically verses 21 through 23, we see an inference to our calling. Honoring

God as God has given him thanks is our primary duty to God in view of who he is. In verse

21, it says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to

him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming

to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling

mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So when the people reject the truth,

it becomes increasingly difficult for them to recognize and receive the truth.

So here's an excerpt from a recent article written by Andrew Sullivan about the recent

congressional hearings. And this is regarding the spike of antisemitism that we're still

seeing on our elite college campuses. So the day the Empress's clothes fell off, did the

congressional hearing finally expose the scandal of the Ivy League? It may be too much to expect

that congressional hearings this week starring the three presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn

will wake people up to the toxic collapse of America's once great Ivy League. But I can

hope, can't I? In the immortal words of Hitch, peace be unto him, as you listen to these

people, you see how far termites have spread and how long and well they have dined.

The mediocrities smirked, finessed and condescended in stone walls. Take a good look at them.

These are the people who now select our elites and they select them as they select every

single member of the faculty and every student by actively discriminating against members

of certain privileged groups and privileges and quotes and aggressively favoring other

again air quotes marginalized ones. These were themselves appointed in exactly the same

way from DEI approved pools of candidates as a Harvard Dean, Claudine Gay, that Gay's top priority was making more progress on diversity, intensifying the already systemic race, sex, gender discrimination that defines the place.

This is about Harvard. Thanks to the recent Supreme Court case, the energetic discrimination

against Asian American candidates for admissions at Harvard is no longer in doubt, but countless

other candidates for admission have little to no chance, regardless of their grades,

their extracurriculars, because they belong to the wrong race, sex, sexual orientation

and gender identity. As soon as students are admitted under this identity framework, they

are taught its core precepts that the truth, air quotes, or in Harvard's now ironic motto

veritas, which is supposed to be truth, is a function not of logic or reason or of open,

free, robust debate and dialogue, let alone of the Western civilization, but of an inimical

and evil power structure rooted in identity that needs to be dismantled first. Identity

first, truth second, because the truth is rooted in identity and cannot exist out of

it. So this article can be a little like wordy at times, but what I want you to pull from

this is that there is this breaking down into groups so that then that way they can say

that each group has their own truth and only certain groups have the truth that is more

powerful than other truths. So in hearings, president gay actually said with a straight

face that we embrace a commitment to free expression, even of the views that are objectionable,

offensive and hateful. This is the president whose university mandates all students attend

title nine training sessions where they are told that fat phobia and cis heterosexism

are forms of violence and that using the wrong pronouns constitutes abuse. This is the same

president who engineered the ouster of law professor Ronald Sullivan, simply because

he represented a client of whom gay and students rightfully but irrelevant, irrelevantly disapproved

Harvey Weinstein. This is the same president who watched a brilliant and popular professor

Carol Hoeven be effectively handed out of her position after a public shaming campaign

by one of her department's DENI enforcers and a mob of teaching fellows because Hoeven

dared to state on television that biological sex is binary. This is the president of the

university where a ground total of 1.46% of the faculty call themselves conservatives

and 82% call themselves liberals or very liberal. This is the president of the university, which

ranked 248th out of 248 colleges this year on free speech and Penn was 247th according

to the foundation for individual rights expression. Harvard is a place where free expression goes

to die. So here we have the university at Harvard and we see a dramatic decline from

what it used to be because whenever human wisdom sets itself above God, the result is

soon seen in human foolishness. And we're when at the time of this recording, we're

in the month that is just full, full of people putting themselves above God. They celebrate

it in Christianity, we're called to live humbly in service to our Lord and into our fellow

man. But this month is told we're told to elevate our proclivities above everything

else. It means even more than what God says. So mythology and ideology have resulted from

man's need to identify some power greater than himself and his refusal to acknowledge

God as that power. Men and women have elevated themselves to the position of God. We see

this similarly played out in Daniel 2 38 and three one and 523. In our day, humanism has

replaced the worship of individual human leaders in most developed countries. This tragic purpose

of human god making continues and is very alive in our own day. And Paul's words have

as much relevance for people who have made money or sex or fame their gods as for those

who carved idols out of wood and stone. So the tragedy of Harvard, Yale and Princeton

is that they were originally meant to lift up and edify the things of God. They were

meant to be institutions for training ministers and leaders that held reverence for God. But

now they and many others are nothing but a shadow of what they were. They hold power,

yes, but is not power in the sense of heavenly power, but rather the power to destroy. This

brings us to the next point, which is social justice dogma. What is happening in our society?

How can the wise become so foolish? Or is this the whole point? When we look back at

the illustration I used in the beginning, we see a problem in our society. When a person

freely declares that the Bible holds no significant meaning for them, it is fair to ask them what

exactly does. So in this case, we don't need to wonder, as Mrs. Smith made clear where

her affections lie. When men reject God, they don't embrace nothing. They always replace

the veneration and worship of the Lord with the worship of something else. And that something

else can best be described as weak and worthless elemental things, which enslave us, inevitably

damaging those under their leadership and leading to great judgment. In Galatians 4

9 it says, but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can

you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves

you want to be once more? In Jeremiah 23 1 through 2 it says, woe to the shepherds who

destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord. Therefore, thus says the

Lord the God of Israel concerning the shepherds who care for my people. You have scattered

my flock and have driven them away and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will

attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. In Matthew 18 6 it says, but whoever

causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to

have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the

sea. This verse in particular, it sticks out to me today because not too long ago there

was a YouTuber and I can't remember the name, so I'll just leave it alone. But like they

produce children's content on YouTube, very popular. And it came out in support of the

of some alternative lifestyles. And the rationale for wanting to support these other lifestyles

was that it was all about love and how Jesus teaches love. And this person proclaims some

faith in the Bible and Christianity. And it's remarkable to me that they didn't think of

this verse that says that here you have an unblemished lamb, a young child. And when

you bring in sinful beliefs and sinful natures and you present it as as equal to the things

of God, now you are leading these children into sin. And this is what most of society

is doing these days when they confuse God's love to the emotion of love that we think

of it as today. Because love is an action. So if you really love someone, you would love

them enough to lead them to the Lord. You would love them enough to prompt them or to

try to bring the gospel to them so they'd be convicted to turn from their sin and to

turn to life in Christ. But anyway, let's get back on track here. So we see similar

situations with the events that happened at the congressional hearing. This the presidents

of Harvard, UPenn and MIT testified on Capitol Hill about increasing anti-Semitism on their

campuses, a problem affecting higher education institutions nationwide. During the hearings,

the university leaders acknowledged the rise of Islamophobia and other forms of hate and

pledged to address them. The Republican-led House committee grilled the administrators

on topics such as ideological diversity and foreign university funding. The hearing shed

light on the challenges universities face in balancing free speech and student safety

with university leaders defending their policies and actions since the October 7 attacks on

Israel. The hearing also highlighted broader issues such as the difficulties faced by universities

in navigating the balance between free speech and student safety. The inability of these

three college presidents to answer any simple questions without qualifications illustrates

that it wasn't just during Isaiah's day that the Lord brought judgment to the land by making

the wisdom of wise men perish and the discernment of their discerning men to be concealed. The

foolishness in responses given by these three university presidents to Representative Stefanik

is so impossibly inept and wrong, and the outcry against it has been so dismissive and

ignorant that it's seemingly impossible to believe. As Representative Stefanik said to

them, this is the easiest question to answer yes to that they will ever be asked in a congressional

hearing. When watching those who profess to be wise become fools, Romans 1, 22, it is

good to remember that the foolishness of fools is deceit or folly, Proverbs 14, 8. And not

simply ignorance. The wicked have no rules. They make a mockery of justice and the mouth

of the wicked spreads iniquity. So what is being said on these college campuses was the

direct call for genocide of the Jewish people by pro-Palestinian Hamas protesters. The college

presidents refused to state that the statement of genocide was a breach of the school's code

of conduct. The same schools that will penalize, expel, and destroy others when they disagree

with their agenda are now saying free speech is free speech. When it is the annihilation

and genocide and killing of Jews, it's okay. When you are making someone feel bad when

you say, you know, losing weight is better for your health. Well, that's fat phobia and

we need to punish you for it. You see how crazy this is because if you love someone,

you want them to be healthy and you want to espouse ways to live a healthy life. That's

not hate. That's love. That's love and action as long as you do it in a kind, empathetic

way. But the call for genocide or the murder of an entire race, that's not free speech.

That's a direct threat. And you're not allowed to do direct threats like that under the veil

of free speech. And what love are you showing to your Jewish brothers and sisters if you're

willfully allowing actual terroristic threats to come against them? Your action of love

is to allow them to be truly victimized. It's a very interesting conundrum, but again, the

whys become foolish. This brings me to my final point, my close, our response. Well,

the congresswoman from New York herself, a graduate of Harvard University was excellent

in her questioning. It would have been great to see her pivot her questioning using the

words all women, all blacks, all homosexuals, all whites, all faculty, faculty, and all

college presidents instead of all Jews to see if their it depends on context answer

would have remained. Because that's the way the college professors answered back. It was

is calling for genocide. Okay, well, it depends on the context. Just calling for the lynching

of a black person, the stoning of a transgender student constitute harassment, because that's

what they were doing to the Jewish students. That the answer would have been a sharp, clear

and fast. Yes, this is what it should have been. Context does not excuse evil, but evil

character will hide behind context. And Ezekiel 2230, it says, and I sought for a man among

them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that

I should not destroy it, but I found none. Now is the time to stand in the gap and speak

out against foolishness being propagated by elitist progressives. In Ephesians 511, take

no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Silence amid foolishness

is the support of foolishness and support of foolishness is sin. As Edmund Burke said,

all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The last time

good men were silent when the call for genocide of Jews was unaddressed, it wasn't long before

the world was at war. So we need to remember to speak now before millions and millions

of others have to suffer because of our silence. And this is not a political call. This is

a call to Christ. In Jeremiah 117, it says, but you dress yourself for work, arise and

say to them, everything that I command you, do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay

you for them. D and I and all of these critical theories run up against so much of what the

Bible instructs for life. Like forsaking sin instead of excusing it, our primary identity

being in Christ and denouncing partiality. Beware of the world which excesses over power

without paying any mind to the all-powerful God. We will find peace with each other when

we speak the peace given God, or when we seek the peace given God, not when we seek to put

others in their place because of past injustices inflicted on us. God will hold men accountable

and we need to leave room for his wrath, rather than responding to our oppressors with oppression

of our own. Good men make good policies and eradicate systems that promote injustice

rather than invent new ones. Martin Luther King once observed there are some instances

where a law is just on its face, but unjust in its application. D and I laws may sound

good on their face, but they fall flat on their face when they are confronted with the

better way revealed in God's word. We have to remain vigilant as watchmen in our society,

holding on to the truth that is the word of God that is why it is so important to read

your Bible regularly and to be active with your faith both in church, your body, and

society. We are called to stand in the gap. You can think of it in a different way. We

must be alert like a lifeguard. We have to be able to point out unsafe behavior and also

be ready to jump into action in order to bring life saving therapy. Our world is a fallen

one, but we need to be the light. We are called to be the light. In Matthew 5, 14-16 says,

you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people

light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the

house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good

works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

So as I finish, mankind is ungodly, but that is why Christ died for us. Social justice

is not just if it is not godly. We are called to live according to God's justice. Our response

is one born out of love to our God. We desire to see people brought to salvation in Christ

and unity in the body of Christ. We do not make excuses for sin, but rather we seek redemption

and salvation through the repentance of sin. The acknowledgement of Jesus Christ is our

Messiah. This world will pass away, but until Jesus comes, we have a calling and obligation

to keep our eyes focused on God, to be wise, to be discerning, and to not check our brains

at the door. So if I could have every head bowed, every

eye closed real quickly as I finish this up, I want to give an invitation. If this message

has impacted you and you know you are not right with God, you have an opportunity right

now to get your heart right. And you can simply do that. If you signify that with an uplifted

hand, God sees that. He sees your hand. I can't see it. It's a podcast. But if you

rose your hand and you meant it, I want you to repeat after me, Dear Lord God, I know

that I'm a sinner, but I know that you sent your Son Jesus Christ and that He died for

my sins. I repent of my sins and I accept Him as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name,

amen. That simple prayer brings you from death into life. It's just like what the thief on

the cross said. He recognized who he was and he recognized who Jesus was. That's all it

is. Now moving forward past that, get a Bible,

start reading it. The book of John is a great place to start. Find a Bible believing church

and lock in to serve. Go in humbly with the desire to serve. If you're in Samanar, please

come out and meet with us. We're just above the BMO now downtown. If you're not, we have

3,500 churches globally. The contact information is in the show notes. Reach out. Let me know

you prayed this prayer and that you're going to find a church and I'll help you do so.

The whole purpose of this podcast is just to get the gospel message out more and more

and more. It's just one little part of what we're doing here in Samanar and what we do

as a fellowship as a whole. I just want to thank everybody who's listening. If these

messages mean something to you, I'd really appreciate it if you liked, subscribed, and

shared the podcast. It really does help us grow and help us get this out to more people.

With that, I just want to again thank you for listening. I can't wait for you to come

back next time. God bless.

Thank you for listening to the PHSA.

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