Dealing with Evil (Judges 19) | 09/14/25

You were watching online this morning.

Welcome to you. If you're joining us live or

sometime in the near future, grateful that you're here.

And we want to invite you to come and be with us in person at

115 E Main Street, right in the old historic part of Gaylord.

Would love to see our services are at 9:00 and 10:30.

Come and find us sometime soon. All right, those of you in the

room and those watching online, if you have your Bibles, please

take them and turn to the Old Testament.

Kind of early on, after the book of Joshua, before the book of

Ruth and First Samuel, there's a book called Judges.

And we're going to start in Judges chapter 17 and Judges

Judges 17 · chapter mention Judges 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19. So Judges 17 and Judges 19.

I'm going to read to you first from Judges chapter 17, and

Judges 17 · chapter mention

we're going to start in verse 6. And then we'll go to chapter 19

and I'll read to you from verse one.

This is verse 6. In those days, there was no king

in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

In those days there was no king, and everybody did what was right

in their own eyes. And to see this refrain

occurring again. This phrase is going to occur

several times in the book of Judges, but even just a chapter

and some later in chapter 19, it says in those days when there

was no king in Israel, a certain Levite was sojourning in the

remote parts of the Hill Country of Ephraim, who took to himself

a concubine from Jerusalem, from Bethlehem and Judah, from

Bethlehem and Judah. This morning, based on this

story that we find in Judges, I want to talk to you about

dealing with evil. Dealing with evil.

Let me pray for us God, thank you that your presence is here

with us. Holy Spirit, we, we, we know it,

we sense that we believe it and now God is an act of worship.

We look to your word and we open our hearts to your truth.

And God, we say speak to us greatly, especially in the midst

of this challenging season with all this going on in the world

around us. Speak to us.

We pray in Jesus name and everyone said Amen.

Again, notes are available, I think are notes available on the

back table. Did we already pass all of them

out or there's some stumble back there.

So this particular let me ask you to do something this time.

Don't read ahead in my notes if you have them.

I mean, if you can, you'll, but you'll kind of ruin it.

It's like Santa Claus. You know, when you're a kid, you

know you can ruin it if you, if you, you know, if you, you read

ahead too quickly or remember your parents, they might maybe

hid gifts in a closet somewhere. And as a kid, you found out

where it was and you when you saw your presents and what

happened on Christmas morning wasn't as great, right?

So the notes are available. And if you read too far ahead,

it'll kind of take away a little bit of the impact of this

message, I think. I think, OK, now this morning,

I'm talking to you about dealing with evil.

And we're going to base it on the story.

We're going to take some this ideas from the story of a Levite

and it's concubine and it's a challenging story.

I must tell you as I look around the room, it's kind of what I

would call like a rated R story. Did you know there are rated R

stories in the Bible? There are there are several and

they're challenging and they're there for purpose.

But what we tend to do is like this is not the kids are talking

about the story in their in their Sunday school class this

morning, right? This is not one for them, it's

one for us. It's there, and it's

particularly valuable in the context of what's going on in

the world. Again, So this story, it's not

one that our children are going to discuss, but it's a

challenging, horrible, horrible, challenging story about evil.

But if you'll stick with me, hopefully we'll be able to walk

away with a lot of truth on how we're going to deal with the

evil that we find and the world in which we Live Today.

Now Tuesday was a long day for me.

I came home, had a wonderful day, but just a lot of meetings

and other things. I had lunch with Bill and Sue.

Sorry, do you guys know Bill and Sue?

Bill and Sue, if you're watching, wonderful part of our

church got to have be with them and Dale and go sit in their

home with them. And Bill is going to turn 85

this month. So proud of him.

And then had rehearsals and other things.

So I got home around like 9:00 after a long day, and Jason

already had dinner. And so I sat down and warmed up

some dinner and she was watching ATV show and I was just eating

in the kitchen. And then she says from like the

the library area where she was watching, she said, hey, did you

see the news about this woman who died on the transit in one

of the Carolinas? And I had, but I'd had such a

busy day and a busy couple days. So I'd seen it, but I

intentionally tried to steer clear of the story because I

knew it was disturbing. And not only that, I knew there

was a video. I just read enough to go, oh,

there's a video that you can watch.

And and I chose not to watch it. I'm like, I don't want to watch.

So we're talking, you know, she's in the library, I'm in the

kitchen area eating and so back. So in that moment I said, I

don't I, I'm not, I'm not ready, I'm tired.

I don't want to kind of have to deal with the story right now.

OK. And she wasn't an argument or

anything like that. It was just like a brief

conversation. So then, and I'd had my, my

message for this morning planned really months ago of what I

wanted to kind of do right after Labor Day.

So I've got my message ready to go and everything's good to go,

but I wake up at like 4:00 in the morning and it was, I don't

want to over spiritualize this, but it seemed like the Holy

Spirit was saying, you've got to look at this, you've got to

notice this. You can't just go, I don't have

energy for this. And then particularly I thought

our church needs to be aware of of this story and the the

atrocity of it and many others. There's so many other horrible

stories of violence and murder and rape and assassinations.

There's so many things going on in the world.

So Wednesday morning before the events of Wednesday, like 4:00

in the morning, I woke up and feverishly started working

several hours to redraft, to pivot on my message for this

morning. And it was because of her name

was Irena Zarutzka. Because of that, then it readied

me for what was going to happen on Wednesday around lunchtime

when I got the news that Charlie Kirk had been shot.

So we're going to wrestle through this difficult story.

And my point is not to just bring you a heavy depressing

story for the sake of it, but I want to, I want to show you

something that is so important and so powerful in the way we as

believers, we as Christians respond to the evil that is in

our world. And, and I want you to know that

this is not a right or left issue.

It's not about the left or the right.

There is just evil in the heart of man.

And without God, we are, we are given to depravity.

And This is why things that happened this week, in the last

several days and, and wars and even in the last 50 years.

I mean, you had World War 2 and you thought, oh man, now that

type of horrible treatment of people will be gone, will write

the world. No, the world is still in midst

of depravity and evil. So what did we do as Christians?

Well, we don't think that that politics and the government is

going to fix it. The left is not going to fix it.

The right is not going to fix it.

It's the right president is not going to fix it.

We'll navigate through it and we can change the moral compass of

our nation. I believe that we should.

I believe we should be involved in politics.

I believe that we should speak. And I'll get more to it than the

end of the message, but I'm not encouraging people to step back

into retreat. No, when the midst of evil, what

do we as Christians do? How do we respond?

How do we respond to assassinations in Minnesota

several months ago and this past week with Charlie Kirk, Human

evil is real. It's horrible and it's close.

And there's a song by an artist like his name's David Wilcox, an

obscure song. And the verse of the song says,

it says, you say you see no hope.

You say you see no reason we should dream that the world will

ever change. You're saying love is foolish to

believe because they'll always be so crazy with an army or a

knife to wake you from your Daydream and put the fear back

in your life. And then from there he goes on

to this idea that God created everything and he's there to

show us the way. The name of the song is Show the

Way, and the idea is that God can show us the way even in the

midst of a crazy with a knife or a gun or etcetera.

What do we do as Christians? How do we respond?

Well, I want to go to the story about the Levite in this

concubine. I'm going to navigate through

it. How many of you?

I did a survey this morning. Very few people know of the

story. How many of you are familiar

with the story of the Levite in this concubine?

A couple of you, OK, very good. A couple of you, great.

I love bringing you things that are in the Bible that you may

have read and forgotten about or have never read.

So here we go, the story of the Levite in this concubine, and

we're going to get how we as Christians deal with evil.

Now, a Levite in the Old Testament was a priest.

He's a spiritual leader appointed by the Law of Moses.

They're from the tribe of Levi, and they were to lead and serve

the Israelites in their worship of God.

OK, Now the story starts in those days when there was no

king in Israel, so there's no king.

And you must remember when we think about the issue of a king

in the Old Testament, God wanted to be the king of his people and

the nations around the Israelites, they all had kings

and God said, I want to be your king.

So until the book of First Samuel, when the people bug God

enough, they get a king. His name is Saul.

It's going to be in the future. And things quickly go awry with

Saul. And then David and Solomon, the

kings of Israel had just a horrible track record.

God wanted to be their king, but they wanted to be like the

nations around them. So they there was no king and

God wanted to be their king. And when the scripture saying

there was no king, it's telling us that they were not following

their king. Who is God?

So watch this. In those days there was a Levite

with a concubine. Now immediately when you get

this, you go, OK, wait a minute. There is a spiritual leader and

he has a concubine. You might not know what a

concubine is. In the ancient world, a

concubine was kind of like a live in girlfriend, kind of a

wife almost, but not really. He's a Levite, he knows the law

of God, and yet he has a concubine which immediately says

there's compromise in his life. He's not.

It's, it's sadly it's, it's, it's like today, in the day and

age which we live now, a lot of God's plan is one man, one

woman, marriage for a lifetime. And yet we find that our culture

has rewritten the standard. And so now you have situations

where where people, they don't marry, they live together for

long, long, long periods of time, and it's just not God's

best. God's plan is one man, one

woman, marriage covenant forever.

That's God's plan. But here you have a Levite who

has a concubine. It's not legally his wife.

It's unfair to her because she doesn't have the rights of a

wife. She only has the rights of a

concubine. So immediately when the red flag

immediately is like, OK, wait a minute, A Levite with a

concubine. Well, right out of the gate,

this is wrong. It's morally wrong and he is the

spiritual leader of his people. It says compromise.

Now watch this. I'll tell you the story in

brief. I'll read you several verses.

But so this concubine, she leaves the Levite for four

months. They separate and she goes back

to her father. Then the Levite goes to redeem

like he wants to bring her back. So he goes to be with the

father-in-law for some days. The curious thing is that the

writer of the book of Judges in this occasion calls the calls

the girl's dad, the Levites, father-in-law.

But it's really not that because they're not legally married.

OK, it's hard to say how big of a problem this is, but it's a

big problem because the moral compass of the Israelites has

gone awry, and even the Levite is not following God's will and

God's plan. So there's a repeated refrain

that happened several times in the story.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

They had their own truth. They were their own moral.

And this led to moral chaos. There was great evil at even a

national level. The day and age in which we live

now, it's still the same. People tend to go, you know, I,

I see what's right in my own eyes.

I have my own truth. This is my truth over here.

It implies it's not necessarily the truth for everyone, but I

have my truth. Well, I see what's right in my

own eyes, and the Levite and the people are going to do some

terrible, terrible things that they think are right in their

own eyes. So 19 verse 2 And his concubine

was unfaithful to him, and she went away from him to her

father's house at Bethlehem and Judah and was there for four

months. And the Levite starts his

journey back after he visits. So he goes into the Levite goes

and he visits and he convinces the concubine to go back with

him. But the father-in-law holds on

to them longer and longer and delays their departure.

So they leave late in the day. And after leaving late in the

day, on their journey back, they stop in a town called Gibeah.

And this is a, it's like a Sodom and Gomorrah type of story.

It's very horrible. So they get to the city, they

find a place to stay. You can read it in detail, but

in brief, they find a place to stay in a home.

And the men of the city come and bang on the door of the home and

say, we want the Levite to come out so that we could be with

him. And this is in 1922.

As they were making their hearts merry, behold the men of the

city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on

the door. And they said to the old man,

the master of the house, bring out the man who came into your

house, that we may know him. And they mean much evil in what

they're saying. I won't say it in detail, but

you understand what the the Bible is saying here.

They want to abuse this Levite and watch what happens.

But the men would not listen to him when they said, leave us.

So be that. So the man sees.

Watch this. The man seizes his concubine,

and he made her go out to them. And they knew her, and they

abused her all night long until the morning.

And as the dawn began to break, they let her go.

And this morning appeared the woman came and fell down at the

door of the man's house, where her Master was, until it was

light. So in the story, they abused

this woman throughout the night, and when the sun is starting to

appear, she's still alive. She crawls to the house and then

watch as morning appears, she's still alive.

But watch, this is terrible. Verse 27.

And her Master rose up in the morning, and when he opened the

doors of the house, he went out to go on his way.

And behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of

the house with their hands on the thresholds.

And he said to her, get up, let us be going.

But there was no answer. And then he put her on the

donkey and the man rose up and he went away to his home.

This is a heartless story. The the concubine is given by

her Levite pseudo husband to be abused and murdered.

And he walks out and just says, get up, let's be going.

The moral chaos in the nation is terrible by the men of Gibeah

and by the Levite who should be a spiritual leader.

He's heartless. But then watch what happens.

He goes home and when he entered his house, he took a knife, and

taking hold of his concubine, he divided her limb by limb into 12

pieces, and he sent her throughout all the territory of

Israel. This is in the Bible.

He takes her, he cuts her into 12 pieces, and then he sends the

pieces of her body throughout the Kingdom.

And Israel was divided into 12 tribes.

So he sends parts of her body to 12 tribes and in doing so, what

he's doing, watch this, he's broadcasting the news of what

injustice was done to her, but he's disrespected her in the

process. She should have been buried

properly, but instead he does this brutal thing and watch

this. This is the way that he

broadcasts and spreads the news of what has happened.

So then what happens is now the Israelites, they gather

together. They gather together and they're

figuring out what what they're going to do.

And in verse six and seven of Judges 20.

So I took he's telling this to like a council of people.

So I took hold of my count cocky mind and I cut her in pieces and

I sent her throughout the country of the inheritance of

Israel. For they have committed

abomination and an outrage in Israel.

Behold, your people of Israel, all of you, give your advice and

your counsel here. And the tribes of Israel, in

verse 12 and 13, it says they sent them through all the tribes

of Benjamin, saying what evil is it that has been taking place

among you? Watch what happens here.

The tribe of Benjamin is where the town of Gibbey was from.

So those men who murdered and abused this woman, they're from

the tribe of Benjamin. So the other tribes get together

and they say you need to do something about this.

And verse 13 Now therefore give up the men, the worthless

fellows, and give you that. We may put them to death and

purge evil from Israel. But the Benjamites would not

listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel.

The tribe of Benjamin defends its criminals and protects the

perpetrators from punishment and justice.

Do you see anything that is like the world in which we live now?

So the tribe of Benjamin, instead of bringing these

horrible men from Gibeah, who did this terrible, awful thing,

they just protect them. They put there's no punishment

and they protect them and they buffer them from being found.

And then 1930 says, and all who saw it said such a thing has

never happened or been seen from the day that the people of

Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day.

And then watch this. This is the big part right here.

This is a rare moment in the Old Testament style of writing the

historical books. It's the narrator is just

telling the story, but he takes a wave a moment from just

telling a story and he gives like a commandment here and he

says this, consider it. Take counsel and speak.

Consider it take counsel and speak in response to what

happened to the Levite and his concubine.

It's a unique command. Now let me give you the rest of

the story. What happens is the the tribe of

Benjamin, they don't, they don't hand over these horrible

criminals and said they protect them.

And So what happens is watch, there comes a civil war in

Israel and almost all of the Benjamites are wiped out, I

think all but like 400. So there's a terrible civil war

in the nation of Israel as a result, not only of this

horrible crime that has happened, but also because of

the way that the Levite broadcast the news of what

happened to her. Civil war rises up and great,

great, great, great devastation comes across Israel.

And that's the way that the Book of Judges ends.

The Book of Judges ends this way.

Judges 2125 says in those days, there was no king in Israel, and

everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And this is like the world in which we exist now.

People are without the king, God.

See, if they don't have Christ, if they don't have God in their

lives, then their moral compass just goes awry.

And before you know what they're doing, it's right in their own

eyes. And you have horrible, horrible,

evil things happening, like what happened to the concubines,

similar to what happened to, sadly, Irena, the woman on the

transit train in Carolina. And we're not careful.

We protect the criminals. And the moral compass is just

out of whack. So before you know it, we can we

can end up in, I don't want to prophecy this, but I'm just

saying in this story, what happens is terrible civil war

and arises up as a result of this crime.

And the way that the Levite broadcasted the news of what had

happened to her, He did it in a way to incite war and to incite

violence and to incite disunity. That's why he did what he did.

And interesting, you know, scholars think that the Book of

Ruth and the Book of Judges used to be one book and then it got

divided up. You understand why it got

divided up when you look and go, OK, the end, This is how the

Book of Judges ends with this terrible, horrible story.

And then comes the story of Ruth.

And that's a lovely, beautiful story of Ruth and Boaz.

If you know the story of Ruth and Boaz, it's a love story.

It's feel good. It's kind of Hallmark ish,

right, Right. So you have that, you have the

story of Ruth, but they, they, they, they eventually, we think,

separated the books so that the story right before Ruth is not

the story of Levite and his concubine, because there's great

contrast there. So when dealing with evil, what

are we supposed to do from this story?

Well, the writer of judges says we are to consider it, take

counsel and speak. So consider it evil and moral

chaos, evil from even spiritual leaders.

Often in our country right now. The people are heartless and

even heartless. I mean, again, the whole story

is terrible in that it's terribly unjust what the Levite

did by sending his concubine out to be abused and murdered.

And it's terrible what the men of Gibeah did.

And it's terrible how the Levite took her body and sent it to

these 12 places. It's several that the Civil War

happened, that there was death endlessly and the tribe almost

wiped out. This is the state of God's

people at the end of the book of Judges.

Now, if I quit here, you'd just go home and be bummed out.

So let me keep going. The unnamed Levite.

What's interesting is often the Bible people get names, but this

Levite's not given a name. Interesting enough, and he sent

the news of this, of this evil by breaking her body into pieces

and sending it to the 12 tribes to incite and enrage war.

So we're to consider this. But watch, here's what happens.

There are these moments where scripture connects in these

magnificent ways and you don't see it coming.

So this is an Old Testament story, but watch what happens in

the New Testament. So the news is going to be

broadcast, but there's going to be new news.

What do we get in the New Testament?

We get good news and watch how Jesus broadcast the message of

his love and his forgiveness. Matthew 2626.

It says now as they were eating, this is at the Last Supper,

Jesus took bread and after blessing it, he broke it and

gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat.

This is my body, and he gave it to how many people?

12. There are 12 disciples.

And this is like, this is a way like Jesus is broadcasting the

news of what he's going to do for us at the cross and he takes

his body, he breaks it into 12 pieces and he gives it to the

disciples. 12 It's in contrast to the story of the Levite and

the concubine where he broke her body into 12 pieces, but sent it

out for evil purpose. Jesus is going to take and break

his body for us. The big idea is that Jesus, the

name above all names, that Levites not even given a name,

but Jesus, the name above all names, sent the news of his

broken body to unite us to God eternally and to bring peace and

healing. And so the issue becomes what

type of news senders are we going to be and how will you

send it and what will be your motivation?

Because watch, what can happen is we can watch endless,

endless, endless hours of news and get on social media, or get

on e-mail, or get go with a sign in the streets of Gaylord, or we

could go any. If our intent is to broadcast

the evil that's been done for horrible purposes, then we will

lead to greater civil unrest. And a lot of Christians get

swept up into this. They become obsessed with just

like spreading the news, like the Levite in the Old Testament.

It's like they just cut it up. They take the news, they cut it

up into pieces, and they viciously send it out to create

unrest. And it's heartless and it

creates more and more disunity. And when that becomes your

obsession and your focus, then you miss out on the news that

Jesus wants to be broadcast and sent out for the motivation of

bringing unity back to us. The news that his body is broken

into 12 pieces and given to his disciples on the night of the

Last Supper. Can you say Amen?

Are you with me? OK, now every time we receive

communion and remember the body of Jesus, we are spreading the

news of God's love and redemption.

But the Levite, though evil himself, sends news of such

great evil in a shocking way just to incite people.

So we're to consider, first thing we're to do is we're to

consider, OK, think about this story.

That's an interesting instruction at the end in Judges

where he tells a story and he's like, consider it, don't ignore

it. I didn't want to pay attention

on Tuesday night when Jay said, have you seen the news?

I'm like, I don't have the energy for it right now.

And so this is a heavy story to get from Judges, but the Bible

saying, consider it, think about it, it's worth thinking about.

But then we're to take counsel. What?

Where do we look for counsel? We look first to God's word.

So how do we respond in moments like the evils that we watched

this last week? Romans 12 starting in verse 14,

it says bless those who persecute you and bless and do

not curse them. Last week in our first service,

if you were here, it was a woman who came in like most of the way

towards the end of the message, and she walked down the center

aisle and she walked through the aisle.

She walked right, right, right here.

And I could tell something was awkward if you were in that

service. She was kind of walking in and

eventually I, I actually pointed Tim was sitting right here and

like Tim, you know, and then I said, can I, are you looking for

somebody? And it was an odd moment, right?

And then our, we have security, unless you didn't know, we have

security at our church and they are on top of things for such

type of situations and anything else.

And so our security team quickly jumped, you know, in and just

basically brought her out. And if you were here, what was

the first thing I did? I prayed and I'm like, God bless

her. I pray blessing over her.

God, whatever this, whatever she's going to, whatever the

situation is. So the first, our first instinct

should become those who persecute you.

She said some crazy things about me and the church in the moment.

It's kind of crazy if you had to be here.

But but in the moment, my instinct was just to say, God

bless her, bless those who watch this.

How do we deal with evil? The first thing you do is bless

those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them.

And when you bless someone, it's like you're hoping for their

good. And then it says rejoice with

those who rejoice and weep with those who weep and then watch.

Paul says in Romans, live in harmony with one another and do

not be haughty, but associate with the lowly and never be wise

in your own sight. In our culture right now,

there's such a rampant problem of people being proud about how

right they are. And it's become this thing where

it's like it's haughty wise. In my own eyes, I've got it all

figured out and it can lead to just again, the vision.

So there's one thing to know the truth and humility and bring it

in humility, but being right, the need to be right.

And so again, man, we have now we have cable and 24 hours on

Internet and YouTube. It's like it's just endless

people arguing about who's right in their way of broadcasting the

news. Even of horrific things causes

division. And verse 17 says repay no one

for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight

of all. Repay no one evil for evil.

We are not to return evil for evil and we can, you know,

eventually start stacking and going well, this side, and this

is what I see in this side, this we have these many evils that

have been done wrong to us. So now it's time for us to do

evil. Now, that doesn't mean that we

don't fight for justice and we don't fight for for laws,

etcetera. But it's this idea of like, I'm

going to give evil back. They were evil and the I'm going

to be evil back to them. If Christians succumb to that,

then we become worse than the world.

The Levite returns evil for evil.

Verse 18 it says if possible, if possible, so far as it depends

on you, live peaceably with all. The fact that Paul is saying if

it's possible, live peaceably implies that sometimes it's

impossible. But if it is possible, do

everything you can to live peaceably.

Church. I just think that Christians

often fail miserably at this, but we don't want to.

We want to stand for justice and stand for righteousness and

stand for what is right and proclaim truth.

Yes, we want to do that, but we want to do it in humility in

order to hopefully lead to living peaceably with others.

And then verse 19, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but

leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written vengeance.

Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

So we're never to avenge and we're to trust the wrath of God.

That's a curious statement. The wrath of God.

It's like God, I trust your wrath.

That's a bold prayer. Verse 20 To the contrary, if

your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him

something to drink for by so doing you will heap burning

coals on his head. So we're to feed our enemies,

bless those who curse us. This is how do we deal with

evil. This is how we deal with it.

And then probably the most important thing in this passage

that Paul is writing here, this is what he says.

Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do not overcome by evil. Don't, I'm sorry, do not be

overcome. Do not be overcome by evil, but

overcome evil with good church. Don't be overcome by the sad,

tragic things that have happened recently.

Don't be overcome by it. God will give us strength.

The Holy Spirit gives us strength.

We can overcome evil. We're we're not overcome by it,

but we are going to overcome evil with good.

So in the response to this last week, it's like, OK, we want to

God show us how can we're not going to be overcome by it.

We're going to continue to have faith and you God, and in your

sovereignty and your righteousness and your love and

the sacrifice that Jesus gave for us, we live under the light

of the resurrection. We live this way God.

That's why we sang songs this morning about the joy of the

Lord. And this is the day that the

Lord is made because even in the midst of great tragedy and

sorrow, we still have a joy that we find in Christ.

So we're to consider, we're to take counsel.

There's counsel from Romans. And then what did the end of

Judges say in the context of the story of the Levite and the

concubine? He said this speak.

Christians are to be speaking up.

We are. This is one of the instructions.

Consider, take counsel and speak.

We should respond to evil by speaking about it.

I'm not like this morning. I, I just felt like this week

pivoting my message. This is like this morning.

I wanted to speak about the evil that's going on in the world.

The, the, the assassination of Charlie Kirk was terrible.

It's a terrible, horrific tragedy and people celebrating

it is shameful. And we should speak about it.

We should talk about it in the right spirit and the right

motivation not to, not to, not to cause unity, but I'm speaking

about it to rally together people to say, right, we should

stand for what is right. We're encouraged to speak.

And I, you know, I forget this. I've never been to a Turning

Point rally. I've never, I've never watched a

podcast of Charlie Kirk. Never.

But I'd seen clips of his and I knew who he was.

OK, But just know this. I'm not here promoting his

organization necessarily. I'm just saying that I know that

he was a believer who spoke very boldly about his faith in Jesus

and he was speaking. We're encouraged to do that from

the story judges he's speaking out and when he's when he does

what happened to him is an atrocity for him and his family,

his wife and his kids. And so this week I was in tears

about it and again, I'm not I don't even I'd have not a lot of

investment in who he was as a person.

I just knew who he was from the news and other things.

Some of you are were probably far more familiar with him and

maybe rattled you even the worst.

So I believe that we need to speak about it, but we need to

do it with an awareness that in the end, government and

politicians will never be our savior.

Jesus is our savior, God is our king.

We're not about we're not about a political ideology.

We're not going to the nature of the moral chaos and the evil

that we see in the world. It's not going to be conquered

by a political party. It's only going to be conquered

when when Jesus is able to transform the hearts of man.

Otherwise we will succumb to depravity like you have no idea

when hearts have not been redeemed by the broken body of

Jesus and we are to speak about it.

Our eternal hope is not found on the left or the right, but

instead in Christ. Now this is man.

This was heavy. But I don't want to send you out

heavy. I want to send you out like,

yes, let's go make a difference in the world.

Let's go, let's, let's go. Let's, let's consider it.

Let's take counsel. Let's go speak about it.

I encourage you. Speak about it.

Speak about what's right. Don't be afraid to speak up in

the right, in the right motivation and the right spirit

of humility. Speak about what is right.

Don't be afraid or ashamed to do so.

Let me give you some application.

How are you with the moral chaos that's going on around us?

Are you being overcome by it? Don't be overcome by the evil of

this world, but overcome evil with good.

Don't let this. Don't let this put you in bed

for days at a time. Don't let this have you in a

place of depression or anxiety. Instead, focus on the sacrifice

that Jesus made for us and the redeeming work that He's doing

in our lives. Then I ask you this, are you

willing to consider the state of what is happening?

Consider. We are to consider.

Don't bury your head. Consider and then be eager for

biblical truth. Take counsel and then be willing

to speak up and confront evil. This is how we deal with evil.

Let me pray for us. God, thank you for this day.

This is a day that you've made. And God, we pray that you would

strengthen us, our resolve, our joy and the state of much evil

going on in our world. Holy Spirit, we lean into you.

Help us to consider, to take counsel and to speak.

We pray And Jesus name and everyone together said, hey man,

let's all stand together. Thank you this morning for

coming and sticking with me. Notes are on the back table.

If we need to make more of them. Brent are there if there, if

there are more that need to be done, please, I would encourage

you take the notes with you and and wrestle through this idea in

the next week. If you, if you would like, you

can even e-mail me and I'll send them to you also if you want to

get them that way. Before you go, let me say a

blessing over you if you'll prepare your heart to receive

this blessing. And now may the Lord bless you

and keep you, and may He make his face shine upon you.

And may the joy of the Lord that is unspeakable and full of glory

made a bound to you. And may the peace of God that

passes all understanding, may it surprise you in the midst of all

the challenges that life brings. And then may the mercies of the

Lord, and in other words, the forgiveness of God that is new

every morning. May it be especially new to you

and your mornings to come. And now may the Lord Jesus

Christ guard your heart and your mind.

You are salt and your light. Go now and be salt and light

into the world. You are blessed.