Episode 74

Though in use since the 1940s, the term “woke” has become a very popular and common term to describe someone who is ‘awake’ to the systemic injustices perceived in institutional, political, societal, or cultural structures and seeks to actively combat them. In our day, it is describing someone who more often than not aligns with the moral and political ideologies of the left. Jesus, many claim, would be woke if He were walking the earth today. But is this true? Would Jesus affirm the ideologies championed by BLM, GLAAD, DNC, and others like them? Or does woke simply mean that Jesus would not turn a blind eye to the injustice that inevitably exists in an imperfect world by sinful men? On this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we explore these questions and seek to answer: what does it mean to be ‘woke’ and would Jesus be on that bandwagon?

As I sat in Church today, I was thinking that if Jesus were here today, he would be accused of being woke. How about we just say it is human decency to treat all with respect and dignity and that it is constitutional say all men and women are equal.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 74 of the Removing Barriers podcast, and in this episode we will be looking at a recent statement made by a politician that implied that Jesus would be considered woke if he was in the flesh in our society today.

But before we get into all that, Jay, let’s define the term work for the purpose of this discussion. What is the definition of work? I think for the purposes of this discussion, we should be aware of our propensity to make words mean whatever we want them to mean according to what our arguments are. Progressives have taken this word and have extended its meaning to many different facets of life. But when we say woke, we’re basically saying that the word means well, it could mean one of four things. It could mean a person that is woke is aware of the injustices in society, and they’re willing to do something about it via activism. It could also mean people who are part of what they call the hegemony or the majority in this case. And for the purposes of this discussion, white people. And we put white in quotes because we don’t believe there’s such a description in scripture. But white people that are sympathetic to the plight of marginalized minorities would also fall under the umbrella term of woke. It also seems to be used by Christians who define it as the people of God, being aware of the specific injustices and socioeconomic discrepancies or injustices in their society at the current moment, and they are seeking to answer those injustices with the gospel. Many well meaning but misguided Christians, perhaps deceived Christians, are using the term woke to describe that particular position as well. And then there’s the extreme end, where it simply means being proud in your racial and ethnic heritage and asserting yourself in society whatever consequences be ignored or consequences, whatever the consequences are. And so exerting yourself on the basis of your perceived minority or your perceived limitations would also fall under the umbrella term of work.

So when did the definition change from simply being the past cent of week? Let me go back, because the term itself woke, can be traced to the 1940s where it first appeared. I guess that’s when it stopped, meaning the past tense of wake or awake.

Well, according to Marion Webster, who is the authority on definitions, well, maybe not, but maybe not. They say that it’s being aware and actively attentive to important facts and issues. But in parentheses, especially issues of racial and social justice. But as you said, I think it’s way more than that. In my own words, the way I would describe work, I would describe it this way or define it this way. It’s a drastic change in the moral fabric of society that once were loosely based upon biblical customs that were once ingrained in our culture today. So basically what I mean is that here’s a group of people who are moving society drastically away from what we normally know or what was perceived as the norm before. So the norm in the US a time ago was that a man is a man, a woman is a woman. Today the work culture is pushing us away from that and telling us that a woman can claim their man and a man can claim their woman. Time ago in US, marriage is on between a man and a woman. Now we have a Supreme Court ruling and society that is pushing us away from that and say, no, a man and a man can get married. So in my definition, woke is just this big cultural change that is pushing the Western culture away from a loosely based biblical foundation that they had.

Do you think that that is what the movement is trying to accomplish? Because you put under the description of woke all of the aberrant agendas of the left today, do you think that is what that movement is trying to accomplish? I think the definition of woke is broad enough to put all of them under there. I could be wrong, but from what I’m seeing, I think the definition of work and what they’re doing is a broad umbrella that you can say all these things equate to work. You would have pressed to find someone who claimed that their work, who doesn’t hold to the LGBTQIA plus community. That doesn’t mean they’re part of the community, but they support the community, their allies. You have pressed to find someone who say that they do not believe that the US is systemically racist. You had to find someone who is under the definition of war, who believe that marriage between a man and woman only you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who said their work to any of these social, economical, equity, equality kind of things talk all these terms that really don’t have any meaning anymore because they have changed so drastically in the society and they mean whatever folks are taking that we want them to mean. So that’s why I lump all of them in and say, hey, this is a drastic change in our fabric that was once loosely based on biblical principles and biblical customs that once ingrained this culture. We have been pushed far away from that. And today I believe that to me is woke.

You might be on to something because remember how on the Black Lives Matter website typically, if you think of woke, you think of Black Lives Matter, perhaps, or at least that’s a major part of it. There were certain things on their website that they were pushing for that had nothing to do with black lives. And they were very clear and very explicit in expressing their desire to dismantle the nuclear family and to take down what they call the patriarchy, which, again, has nothing to do with black lives. And yet, of course, they took all of that down from their website when folks caught on and they caught a lot of heat for that. But they will put that under the umbrella of woke. When we think of woke, we think of BLM. Actually, that’s not a stretch. I don’t think your definition is at all. There’s also something that we should probably point out that there are people who are genuinely working to improve some of the residual practices or attitudes that are still in our society as a result of our history with slavery and racism and all that sort of thing. There are people who are actually working to address these particular issues that are genuine in their efforts, that have no ulterior motive to subvert the family or to destroy patriarchy or to do any of these things that have been co opted or deceived or manipulated by larger organizations like Black Lives Matter or any of these other so called activist organizations that are really seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of people who are actually doing the grassroots work to address these real issues. Yeah, I would agree on that.

But you asked as well, what do I think that the work movement is trying to accomplish, right? Quite honestly, I think that they’re trying to accomplish what Christ has already accomplished on the cross. And that’s where I think that there’s a drastic difference between Bible believing Christians and what we push and what we preach compared to movements like Black Lives Matter and people that who hold part of the political view or political agenda of changing the custom, the norm that we’re loosely based on biblical principles in the US and in the west. I think they’re trying to accomplish what Christ already accomplished on the cross. Let’s say they’re trying to accomplish racial equality that is done in Christ. Christ accomplished that on the cross because when he died, he didn’t die for the white man. He didn’t die for the black men. He didn’t die for the Hispanic. He didn’t die for the Chinese. He died for all men, no matter your ethnicity, no matter where you are born, where you live, whether you’re rich or poor. He died for all so done in Christ. They want to elevate woman, a woman’s. Right. That again, was accomplished in Christ. And this will take a home on the podcast to talk about women’s rights and stuff like that. But how was that done in Christ? Well, when Christ rose from the dead, the first person or persons to see him were women. Why is that important? Because if you go back to Jewish custom, back in that time, a woman could not be a witness. So the fact that Christ allowed woman to be the witness of his resurrection, to convince their disciples that he was risen, showed that he elevated woman way above even what today’s culture tried to elevate women too. The fact that God chose a woman to be Christ into the world is another elevation of women. The fact that God command to husband is to love their wives, husband to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. If you let that sink in for a little bit, that’s impossible outside of Christ to love someone as Christ, love the Church, but also be willing to lay our life down for a wife. The Bible never give that command to wives, to their husbands. So that again, show elevation of women in scripture. And again, to get all of this, we take a whole podcast. But woman issues done in Christ, gender dysphoria done in Christ. He empowered you to love yourself the way God made you. And we can go on, we can talk about marriage, divorce, all these different issues that are in society today. We’re accomplishing Christ. If you want to look at Romans chapter one, where the Bible talks about a whole host of these things, and if that’s read Romans chapter one, verse 21 to 25, because that when they knew God, they glorifying him not as God. Neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and the foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools and change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible men, unto birds and forfeited beasts and creeping things Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, to the loss of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who change the truth of God into a lie and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator who is blessed for ever more. So in a nutshell here, the Bible is showing, hey, why do we have these problems in society today? The gender issues and the gender disposal and woman’s right or feminism, all these things, because when they knew God, they glowed from that of God and they became vain in the imagination. They were not thankful and God gave them up. That’s my honest belief, I think Romans chapter to one, tell us exactly why. And all these things and all these things were done and accomplishing Christ on the cross.

Yeah. When you decide that you are going to make your own way outside of the Kingdom of God, you have to set up the infrastructure, as it were, because everything that was accomplished that you just mentioned, MCG, has been accomplished in Christ. If you want any of that apart from Christ, you’re going to have to set up your own system, your own infrastructure, your own definitions, your own ideologies, your own reward and justice systems. You’re going to have to set all of that up, and it’s always going to look antithetical to what Christ has accomplished on the cross. And when we talk about people who either believe in this movement hook, line, and sinker, we must also acknowledge that there are people who are deceived by this movement hook, line, and sinker. Ephesians. 612 says, for re wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. And it tells us in verses 13 and following to take on the whole armor of God. And that’s very difficult to do when the people that you’re talking to, you find detestable because of the things that they are exposing, the promotion of homosexuality, the tearing down of the nuclear family, the attack of the so called patriarchy, and all of these things that we would find detestable as Christians, perhaps we should all remember that there are people who believe this, who are willfully ignorant, and then there are people who are deceived as well. And perhaps our speech should reflect that. And I think it’s interesting that you mentioned those things, MCG, because these people are building all of this infrastructure outside of Christ. So they’re obviously rejecting the provision that Christ has come to this Earth to make for us, has benevolently come to this Earth to make those provisions and that sacrifice for us.

Who are these people that are making these claims? You mentioned that it was the politician that I think he’s currently running for Lieutenant governor in Texas or something like that. I think he has recently pulled up, but his name is Matthew Dow, a former Bush campaign adviser. And just to read what he said, as I sat in Church today, I was thinking that if Jesus were here today, he would be accused of being woke. How about we just say it is human decency to treat all with respect and dignity, and that it is constitutional to say all men and women are equal and of code. Here’s the problem with what he said. Woke doesn’t address basic human dignity, basic human decency. Woke is talking about a complete upheaval of all of the spiritual underpinnings and all of the teachings that make equality as not equality like the people would define it, but genuine equality and genuine righteousness and genuine justice. It uproots all of those things. And so it’s almost what do you call that, a false equivalency? It’s a straw man argument that he’s making in the sense that it’s not even addressing the real issue. And if he’s sitting in Church thinking that Jesus would be woke, I really wonder what Church does he go to? Because clearly there’s a lack of teaching there, but it could just be him. There’s a problem I have with this. Firstly, he didn’t define woke, which is as we discussed earlier is a very broad term. What does he mean by Jesus? Would it be woke if we take woke? As simple as meaning, maybe going against societal norm, broadly speaking, maybe he might have a point. Yeah, but that’s not woke. That’s just being separate, that’s being set apart is what I should say. That’s being converted. But he didn’t really define woke because the second part of his argument, why don’t we say that human decency is to treat all with respect to dignity, and it says Constitution to say men and women are equal. It is constitutionally right to say man and woman are equal. Men and women are not unequal. So I don’t know where he’s coming from from that. But the focus of this episode of this podcast is to adjust the fact that I don’t even want the second half. The problem I have is when he said that Jesus would be woke. Because if you say that, you’re saying that Jesus would, in my mind agree with what we know as the work agenda today, even though the definition is not necessarily clear of work. We know that to say a man can marry the man is woke. We know it is work to say that a man can declare that he’s a woman. And somehow we must agree that this biological man is not a woman. And that’s okay. And that’s moral and that’s saying and that’s okay to do. And that’s the problem I have with it because it didn’t define work. And if we just take the word for what it means in society today, then what can we do Besides go to scripture and say, hey, are there any evidences in scripture to show that Jesus was woke or to show that he wasn’t woke? And when I look at scripture and looking for evidence, I see evidence in scripture to show that Jesus was not woke. I would not agree with the norms that we asked to accept in society today.

So what are some of those things? Well, I mentioned some of them gender, and I think about Matthew chapter 19, verse three to four, and I’m going to come back to Matthew chapter 19 over and over again. But the Bible says here the Pharisees came unto him, tempting him and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answers unto them, had he not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, Jesus here is not only attesting to Genesis where God says he created male and female created them. He’s also affirming the Genesis account, but he’s also saying here there are two genders and there’s no way in scripture if you’re wrong. You can contact us, removingbarriers.Net/contact and show me the scripture with Jesus affirm anything outside of two genders, because I don’t see it in scripture. So is Jesus woke when it comes to gender issues. Is Jesus woke when it comes to separating gender and sex? No. Jesus is a male and female. Even look in Genesis 127, I alluded to so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him male and female created he damn. God created male and female. Genesis 127 make it clear that he made male and female. Genesis five, verse one and two. This is a book of the generation of Adam in the day that God created man in the likeness of God, created he him male and female, created he them and blessed them and called the name Adam in the day when they were created. So we see here that God created again, male and female. Over and over in scripture we see that this is a firm not only that, over and over in scripture we see pronouns being used as he she. We don’t see 112 different genders. In scripture, we see two genders, we see male and we see female. Also Mark, chapter ten six. Jesus said, but from the beginning of creation, God created them male and female. I can’t emphasize it anymore, but Jesus would not have been wokeed. When it comes to gender issues, how about in marriage? Well, according to scripture, marriage is a Covenant. Malachi two, verse 14. Yet said he Wherefore because the Lord had been a witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou has dealt treacherously, yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy Covenant? So what is marriage? Marriage is a Covenant that you made before God, between a man and a woman. There’s no evidence in scripture that God ever approved marriage between a man and a man, a woman and a woman. It’s always between a man and a woman. And because marriage is an institution from God, the government, the Supreme Court, does not have a right to tell us what marriage is because they didn’t Institute it. God is the one who’s instituted married. And he said that it must be between a male and a female. So whatever you have when a man and a man stand before witnesses and extreme vows is not marriage. When a woman, a woman stand before someone an exchange vowel. It’s not marriage. Not according to scripture. You basically went into a legal contract. But it’s not marriage because marriage is a Covenant that you will make to God, to your spouse. And if you’re not following the guidelines that scripture layout. It’s not marriage.

How about divorce? All these things could be their own podcast. I get that. But just on a surface level, the Bible says in Matthew, chapter 19, verse eight, he said unto them, Moses, because of a hardness of your heart suffered you to put away your wife. But from the beginning it was not so. God is not in support of divorce, I believe, based upon Genesis, based upon the account of Jesus that when you get married, it is until death do you part. The Bible says that, Moses, because of the happiness of your heart, suffer you put away your wife. But from the beginning it was not so. That wasn’t God intention. I believe from scripture, God intention was one man for one woman for one lifetime. But because of the hardness of our heart, God may have suffered it to be so, but from the beginning it was not so. How about homosexuality? Well, we have a full episode of homosexuality, episode eight where we had passed the title on, we took a full episode about homosexuality. So just to go back to Matthew 19, verse three to six, because I believe if you look at Matthew 19, Christ destroy the entire woke agenda in those few verses, the entire work agenda. When it comes to gender issues, marriage, divorce, all these things cry, destroy the entire work agenda in those verses. The Bible says there the Pharisees also came on to him, tempting him, saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, have you not read that he which made them in the beginning made them male and female, destroy one? And for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, another one destroyed, and the twin shall be one flesh Wherefore they are no more Twain but one flesh. What day for God has joined together? Let no man put asunder all the issues you can think about. There that I mentioned those verses destroyed, I’m showing that Jesus would not be for them. So for this Matthew doubt to say that Jesus would be woke. Well, Matthew Dao, show me the scripture, because when I look at scripture, Jesus destroyed the entire work agenda.

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He’s not the only one that makes the ridiculous claim that if the Lord were wokeing the Earth today in 2022 that he would be woke. There are many compromised preachers who are teaching, many gullible and easily swayed or misinformed Christians, deceiving Christians into believing that as well. These are the people that would believe that Jesus would be woke. If you were wokeing the Earth today, I remember watching a video of a solid Biblical preacher debating what I would perceive to be a compromised preacher. And the compromised preacher said something along the lines of, oh, why don’t you believe in the Black Lives Matter agenda, the progressive or the woke agenda? Because Jesus would have. And the biblically solid pastor said, well, how would he and the other pastor went on to say, well, didn’t Jesus talk about the parable of the sheep? And if one falls down in the ditch, you would leave the 99 and go after the one. Well, that is woke right there. The fact that you are emphasizing the plight and the hardship of one over the 99 that are okay is the definition of woke. It’s the definition of all of this progressive stuff that we’re addressing here. And the biblically sound pastor said to him, first of all, you are grossly taking this text out of context. The point of that particular scripture was Jesus going after the Pharisees and denouncing them because they were unhappy and they would not rejoice when one sinner came to repentance. The whole idea that he was addressing in that passage was the idea of someone who is coming to genuine repentance and faith in the Lord. It’s not about being woke, and it’s not about leaving the 19 and nine in order to empathize and identify with the plight of the one in order to be woke. That’s something that I think Christians have been duped into believing that somehow because the Lord made it a point to Minister to and hang out with and preach to and seek to save marginalized groups of people in his day, that that somehow equates with being woke. Being woke today literally means subverting the gospel, subverting the truth of scripture in order to help someone up or help them feel good or help them feel accepted or help them not feel so marginalized. So those two are not the same thing you were talking about.

What evidence is there to show that Jesus is not woke when it comes to homosexuality? And I’m talking about these compromised so called preachers and these so called Christian leaders. There’s one by the name of Jay Mickelson, who wrote a book called God Versus Gay. And his whole argument is that because Jesus never once addressed homosexuality during his earthly Ministry, during a time in the Roman occupation when homosexuality was rampant, as it was in the Roman Empire, that must mean that the situation or the issue of homosexuality was not important to Christ. And so it’s not important to God. And so it should not be important to the Church. And we should not make a big deal out of it. We should welcome homosexuality and homosexuals into our midst and not think anything of it. And to make that assertion, you would have to first deny the deity of Christ. You would have to deny the deity of Christ. And you would have to deny the fact that John One, one says that Jesus is literally the word of God incarnate. Jesus is the word, and he is God in the flesh. Jesus would have never subverted or supplanted or denied all of the revealed truth in Scripture that came before him chronologically speaking. I say chronologically speaking because he was bound by time and by flesh when he was wokeing the Earth. So John One says that he’s the word incarnate. And he, even during his earthly Ministry, repeatedly affirmed the Old Testament. He affirmed the Genesis account. He affirmed Moses, he affirmed Noah, he affirmed Isaiah, he affirmed Jeremiah, quoted from all of these Old Testament prophets and teachers and leaders, all of whom have addressed homosexuality in a way that is clear to understand that God condemns the practice. God condemns it. It is a sin. If he regarded homosexuality as harmless or inconsequential, he would be denying himself. And we know he can’t do that. John 1030 says, he says very clearly, I and my father are one. He would not deny himself, and he did not deny himself.

You referenced Matthew 19 several times that’s in the context of discussing divorce, Jesus refers to and affirms the founding of marriage as male and female. Lee father and mother joined to his wife. The issue of gender and the issue of men and women together, not men and men and woman and woman, is deeply woven through the fabric of Scripture. There’s no way that you can affirm that Jesus would be woke about any of these things. Anyone that has a cursory reading or cursory understanding of the Gospels would see that. But as I said, you have many false teachers, but also compromised teachers that are deceiving people into believing that somehow Jesus would be woke. We talked about marriage and divorce and homosexuality, how Jesus just kind of knocked all three of those out with Matthew 19. But this also applies to the realm of victimhood in all of the different ways that victimhood is assigned in our culture today. Whether it’s because you’re a particular race or you’re a particular gender or you’re a particular physical limitation or you’re of a certain so called sexual orientation. They apply almost exempt status to these particular descriptors as well. But in very much the same way, Jesus is clearly not woke when it comes to these things. Let’s take the victimhood of racism, for example. We did an episode on one heretic and false teacher who has a Tik Tok and made the claim that Jesus used a racial slur when he was talking to the Samaritan woman that was begging for him to heal her daughter. First of all, the fact that he even made that claim blows me away even to this day. But what was the so called woke Jesus do the Jesus that these people have made in their minds, which is not the true biblical Jesus. It’s a figment of their imagination. It is an idol in their hearts and in their minds, and they have not, as the scripture said, cast on all of these imaginations, the thoughts of these imaginations of their hearts before the truth of the gospel, they’ve made up their own God and their own mind for them to say that Jesus would be woke.

What would this so called woke Jesus say about racism? He would say, oh, well, because you are of a marginalized group and because you have experienced so much hardship in your heritage and in your history and in your ancestry, well, then it’s okay for you to feel so marginalized and the gospel doesn’t really apply to you, because I’m going to accept you the way that you are. And I’m not going to demand that you change. And I’m not going to demand that you’re being held to a particular standard. I’m just going to welcome you as you are. That’s what the woke Jesus would do. And again, I stress it’s not the biblical Jesus, it’s an idol. It’s a false God that they’ve made in their minds. But in the scriptures. In Luke 13, when people were asking him questions about particular groups of people, he hit everybody with the same bat. For example, in Luke chapter 13, it says in verse one, there were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose Ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things. I tell you, nay, but accept Ye repent, Ye shall all likewise perish, or those 18 upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think Ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem. I tell you, nay, but accept Ye repent, Ye shall all likewise perish. This flies in the face of wokeism today where people would make excuses for their sin because of some historical fact in this nation’s history, the idea that somehow it’s okay for you to be lawless and to continue in your sin because your ancestors were slaves and this country owes it to you or you were marginalized. So it’s okay for you to stand up and assert yourself. The Lord would say, except you will perish too. Whether your ancestor was a slave owner and plantation owner or whether your ancestor was a slave, it doesn’t matter. You are still held to that same standard that God requires of all men. God requires that all men everywhere repent. At times this wickedness he winked at, but now he calls all men everywhere to repent. Jesus would not be woke about the issue of racism or this victimhood mentality that people seem to have. That somehow because I’m a victim, the laws of God do not apply to me. You just would say nay unless you would likewise perish.

The big problem here is a balance between Grace and truth. A lot of the work agenda, they want a lot of Grace, or they want a lot of term. They want a lot of love. Give them all love. Give them the understanding. Oh, this is the problem. My forefathers were enslaved. My forefathers had to go to segregation. My forefathers had to endure the racial injustices of this country. And they want to give them all Grace to excuse my behavior because of it. But they don’t want any truth. They want the Grace or the love, but they don’t want any truth. And of course, you know, as if a truth without Grace is cruel and Grace without truth is enabling. And what we’re seeing here is a lot of young folks being enabled by politicians, by their parents, by a lot of things going on in society because they give them a lot of Grace and no truth. No truth. And that’s the problem here. Why they believe Jesus is woke when it comes to victimhood is because they believe that Jesus would give all Grace and no truth. If you look at the woman who was caught in adultery, what did Jesus say to her? Where are they in accusers? There’s none that condemned this. She said, no, Lord, none. And he said, no need. Do I condemn you? That’s Grace. But what did he say to her afterwards? Go and say no more. Go and say no more truth. That’s truth. Jesus is the bodily and dwelling of Grace and truth. He perfectly had a balance of Grace and truth. And if you go in to say, oh, Jesus would have done this, well, he would have also given truth to what is that truth? While the outlining scriptures, as you put down.

I’m glad that you had in mind to start this podcast and effort to get the truth out to using the medium of social media and all of the technology we have today. I brought this up recently, and I still do strongly believe this. A lot of this I want to lay at the foot of the Church because I think we need to do a better job of taking that truth into these people’s bubbles. These people are encased in a bubble where it’s an Echo Chamber and all they hear is Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace, Grace. But they don’t hear the truth. And who’s to say that they wouldn’t reject it if they heard it? But boy, the Church has really got to do better in terms of really taking the truth to them because as we’ve described when we were asking who’s making the claim that Jesus would be woke if he were here, there is no shortage of false teachers, of liars, of compromised preachers, preachers looking to tell you what you want to hear so that you could fill their coffers with your money. There’s no shortage of these people who will take advantage and tell you what you want to hear, give you all the Grace in the world, all the lies in the world, and no truth. I mentioned that these people have no idea who the true Jesus is. If they did, they would never even begin to wander or begin to assert that Jesus would somehow be woke if you were wokeing the Earth in 2022.

What about poverty? We talk about victimhood, we talk about divorce, marriage. We talk about homosexuality and gender and all these different things. Poverty is also another limitation under the victim of an umbrella that the woke would seek to exploit in the sense that okay if you’re poor, then you are and have been grossly disadvantaged and marginalized by the majority of society. And so it’s okay for you to rise up and say riot or loot in the streets. It’s okay for you to do that because you’re raging against the 1% or you’re raging against the system or whatever they say. What would Jesus say about that, do you think? Well, I don’t have the verse before me, but Jesus did say that the poor you will always have with you. Yeah, Matthew 26. I think I have that one as well. So if that’s true, no matter what the politicians try, there are always going to be poor people. The big issue here is that even if you make everyone equal, what have we seen in society for those countries and nations who have tried to make everyone equal, there’s still inequality. And where does the inequality lie between the powers that be and the ones that don’t have any power? If you don’t believe me, go to Cuba. I’m from the Caribbean. I’m not from Cuba, but I’m from the Caribbean. Go to Cuba. You want to know who have money and food and don’t have to worry where the next meal is going to come from in Cuba? Well, go visit the Castros. They’re living much better life than many of us in the US. Go visit the average Cuban. You want to know who has power in North Korea? Well, go visit the Kim family. The guy is overweight. The guy is trying to lose weight to prevent having a heart attack. And literally everyone else in the country is emaciated and experiencing stunted growth because they don’t even have access to the stuff that he does. And the list goes on and on. And I know we’re getting into the area of communism or socialism here as well, but what we see politicians trying to do to come back poverty is to say, let’s make everyone the same. Let’s give them money and whatever they need. But what’s the end result of what we have seen when this is done is that we just have a growth in balance. So you basically remove the middle class and you have poor people and you have rich people, and that will be the politicians and the powers that be and the rest of the population. And Jesus made it clear that, hey, the poor you always have with you. So as Christians, what do we do? Well, I think quite honestly, if I don’t have a meal or for whatever reason, I don’t have money to buy food, who are the ones I should go to? That’s my Church. That’s the responsibility of my Church. And I’m saying this outside of the fact that I’m honestly trying to find work, I’m honestly working or looking for work or whatever the case may be provided for my family, because the Bible does make it clear he that doesn’t work, should not eat. So I read the caveat that I’m doing my best to find work. I’m doing my best to provide for my family. But if I come up short, my Church is the first safety net I should have. Not the government. But today we have been so reliant upon the government that when we lose our jobs, the first place we go to is not to the Lord and to his people, but to the government for that check. And I think that’s where the imbalance lies when it comes to the issue of poverty in society today.

Yeah. And another tenant of the woke ideology is to tear down existing societal structures that they feel promotes inequality or promotes poverty. And that would fly in the face of what Christ came to do as well. Jesus Christ did not come to this world to address socioeconomic issues because of all of us. He knows. At the fundamental issue, at the root of all of our suffering, at the root of all of the injustice, at the root of all of what we see is wrong in this world is the issue of the human heart. It is sin. It is our human condition. And he came to address that. There was plenty of injustice in his time, perhaps even more so than what we’re experiencing here now. There were plenty of things that he could have addressed on the socio economic front that he could have addressed while he was wokeing the Earth and his perfect knowledge and his omniscience. He chose not to address those things, at least not primarily. Not directly. He went straight to the issue. He went straight to the issue of the heart of the sin that needed to be atoned for that could not be atoned apart from his shed blood on the cross. And so would Jesus be woke? Well, we would have to say no because he struck at the heart of the issue. Meanwhile, woke activism and woke ideology are whacking at the root of the issue to very little success, I should say, because if you think about the issue of racial equality and racial this and racial that this whole racial thing has been an issue from the founding of the world, you can go back into scriptures and other ancient documents, secular documents that deal with this particular issue, disparities between what people look like and how they’re treated. This is not a problem that arose in the United States in the last 200 years, however old we are as a nation. And that’s the problem that woke ideology has. It’s striking at the root of this evil tree, but not getting down to the root. And as you said earlier, MCG, that’s because Christ has already dealt with the root of sin. He’s already dealt sin and death their death blows. He’s already defeated them on the cross. But if you don’t believe that, if you want to reject him and go your own way, all you have left as an option is to whack up the fruit and get nothing accomplished because you’re never touching the root. It’s also your idea to establish your own type of justice. And it’s interesting they have an adjective for justice. There are so many different adjectives for justice under this ideology. Social justice, economic justice, racial justice, this justice. That Justice, Justice, Justice, Justice. Well, you have to do that when you are rejecting the one who has already accomplished that on the cross. And so it’s very sad to see. But even going back to the issue of poverty, economic justice is what they would call it. Of course, they would have to address those things, and of course, it would have to fall under the umbrella of oppression. And this, that or the other, how else would you address it? And so it’s a hopeless ideology. It’s an ideology that doesn’t address the problem. It’s an ideology that exacerbates the problem. And it’s an ideology that doesn’t do anything to the people who hold to it. In fact, they are left more confused than they were before they were involved with it.

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So how about the issue of pluralism? Pluralism, I think, is one of the things that the woke ideology is promoting. The whole idea behind pluralism is this idea that there’s more than one way to achieve a desired goal. So pluralism, there’s more than one way to God, as it were. There’s more than one way to fill in the blank. Yeah. In software engineering, we said there’s more than one way to skin the cat. To skin a cat. Right. But pluralism goes a little bit deeper in the sense that the basic idea of it is we can accomplish these lofty goals of equality, of obliterating racial tension, of putting everybody on the equal playing field and doing all of these wonderful things they claim they want to do, even though we know that’s not what they’re really aiming for. Pluralism says that it can be done apart from Christ. We don’t need God to be good is the basic underpinning of pluralism. I’m sure I’m simplifying it, perhaps oversimplifying it. But at the root. That’s what it is, setting up your own structure, your own infrastructure, apart from what Christ has already provided through his atoning work on the cross. And so when you give people the option to live aberrant lifestyles and still call it, okay, what you’re saying to God is your way is not the only way we’re going to achieve this idea of equality that we have apart from you, and this is how we’re going to do it. So pluralism says male and female created heathen? Well, I am attracted to men and I’m a man, so why not men and men? Why not woman and woman? Why not a man who thinks he’s a woman who’s going to be with a woman who doesn’t like men? And so you open up Pandora’s box, basically.

And some people would say, well, what’s wrong with that? Well, first of all, it goes against God, the one who created you, who has already established all of these things. Think about the children that come after us, not who are going to be who already are all kinds of confused because all of the spiritual underpinning has been ripped from under their feet. Young women, I’m talking teenage girls to early 20s are the fastest growing demographic for body dysmorphia. And like going through the transition to go from so called male to female. I say so called because just because you go through that torture process, it does not mean that you’ve successfully changed your gender. I realize it’s not popular to say, but if you were born a male, you are always a male, no matter what sort of gender transition you’ve gone through. If you were born female, you will always be female, regardless of what gender transformation you claim to have gone through. But when we raise these children in this environment of pluralism, where there is more than one answer, there’s more than one way to do things. God’s way is not the best way. In fact, let’s do it this way. You rip the soil from under their feet and they’re floating aimlessly, almost like being in zero gravity. It’s a very interesting astronauts that are in zero gravity. They have to Orient themselves a particular way, and they have to do things a certain way because there’s nothing anchoring them. There’s nothing rooting them. Children are very much the same way growing up in this. So one thing that the Church will have to probably begin probably behind the ball curve, but things that we’re going to have to realize and addresses, there are many people that we’re going to be witnessing to that didn’t grow up with a mom and a dad. They grew up with a mom and a mom or dad and a dad. And to them, that’s normal. How do we teach them? How do we reach them and explain to them, no, from the beginning, this is what God has actually established. This is the pluralism. And this is the result. We said this in another podcast. The chickens have come home to roost. All of these evil seeds that we’ve allowed to grow in our society and in our country have taken root. The chickens have come home to roost, and now we’re having to deal with that particular issue. Scripture talks about how it is a shame unto a nation, and it’s not to their benefit, it’s actually to their demise and to their oppression when women are in charge of the country or when children are leading them. I heard a pastor say recently that America is under that condemnation. We have a woman as a vice President and a child as a President. America needs to really take notice of these things. This idea of pluralism is destroying or perhaps has already destroyed our nation. And Christians need to stand up and speak the truth and to tell them what thus saith the Lord and seek whatever way we can to do that.

The gospel is the antidote to wokeism. It’s the antidote to pluralism. And I say antidote because yes, indeed, these things are poisonous. The fruit will not yield anything that will be of benefit to anyone. Jesus Christ came to this Earth God in the flesh and willingly gave himself up to be sacrificed for our sins so that we can be set free from sin, set free from having to establish our own justice, our own infrastructure, our own ideas that inevitably lead to death. God Himself has said that the soul that sends shall die. There is no remission of sin apart from the shedding of blood. So every sin that we’ve committed requires sacrifice, requires payment, requires payment, not just in penitents or I’m sorry or I shouldn’t have done that. I made a mistake. No payment in blood. And that’s what Jesus came to do on the cross of Calvary. He willingly gave himself to pay for our sins. Many years ago, I came to the realization that he came to do that for my sin personally. And so when we put our trust in faith in what he says, then we can be saved. The Bible says we are saved by the Grace of God through faith in Christ. We are saved by Grace through faith. Jesus has promised that in spite of everything we believe with the woke ism and our own ways to fix things in our own ways to justify ourselves. He promises that if you will turn from your sin, turn from your woke ideology, turn from doing everything apart from Him. If you will turn from your sin and put your faith and trust in Him, not only will he save you from your sin, which will inevitably lead you to hell, he will save you from the power of sin in your life. And so you can break that way of thinking that says that wokism is okay, this ideology is okay, and he will save you from the power of sin. That corrupts your thinking to the point where you’re creating these false gods and false ideas of who he is in your mind and he will give you eternal life that’s the gospel Jesus died for your sin and for the sin of the whole world. Trust him today he will turn you from your sin and give you a new heart and a new clear mind and through the washing of the water of the word he will transform you and it’s my prayer and I know it’s MCG’s prayer that you would do that today.

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