Here’s a final excerpt from last week’s sermon. You can check out the entire message here.
The anti-Christian discrimination that is happening right now at Vanderbilt University is symptomatic of societal trends. I can foresee a day when my civil and legal authority to officiate weddings will be withdrawn if I don’t agree to perform same-sex marriages, which is something I will never do.
I can foresee the day in the United States when you might be able to have a ceremonial wedding at church, but you’ll have to go to the courthouse for a legal wedding because the government of the United States will withdraw the authority vested in me and in others as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Who knows what other pressures are coming. And if you don’t believe it, just look at the pressure being exerted on military chaplains right now who are trying to minister in Jesus’s Name to our men and women in the Armed Forces of the United States.
There is a militant, aggressive, fundamentalist secularism that’s determined to strip Christians of their right of free speech in the United States, and is succeeding step by step with the help of a liberal media, an anti-Christian academic community, and a set of misguided politicians and judges.
That may sound very discouraging. But Jesus predicted it all 2000 years ago. For 2000 years the world has been waging war against the Gospel, and the Gospel is stronger now than it has ever been. There are more Christians populating this planet than at any prior moment in history. And there’s a new generation of Christian young people raising up to face the challenges of these days. We will not be silenced, never.
Let’s remember that this world nailed Jesus to the cross and sealed Him in the tomb, but they couldn’t keep His body in the ground. They hunted down the apostles, but they couldn’t stop the apostolic faith. They imprisoned Peter and Paul, but they couldn’t chain the Word of God. They killed the saints, but the saints being dead still speak and their works do follow them.
Our society may oppose us, but we’re more than conquerors. It may wage war against the Gospel, but God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. It may aggravate us but it can’t eradicate us. It may seek to annihilate us, but the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
And though this world with devils filled
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear for God has willed
His truth to triumph through us.