A Camera Does Not Add Justice It Adds An Audience

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On December the 3rd, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, the United States Army is going to shoot a man to death at Fort Hood, Texas.
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And you're going to be able to watch it on your phone.
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Now, friend, that's not a rumor.
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The Pentagon's confirmed it.
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The execution of Nadal Hassan is now going to be live streamed.
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Don't take my word for it.
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Listen to the Secretary of War.
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Welcome back.
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I'm Austin Westfall getting some breaking news.
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We're hearing that the Fort Hood Shooters firing squad execution is going to be live streamed.
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That's according to Secretary Hegseth.
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The Pentagon says it will be firing, and it will be streaming the firing squad shooting of Abdomalik Hassan.
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He was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to death for the massacre.
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President Trump approved the use of an army firing squad following Secretary Hegseth's recommendation.
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Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell previously announced a decision on X, saying that judgment day for Hassan has finally come.
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If carried out, Hassan's execution would be the first by the U.S.
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military since 1961, and it would be the first military execution by firing squad since 1945.
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Hassan remains on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
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Again, the news we're getting in at this hour is that not only is there going to be a uh firing squad execution that's going to be carried out by the department, but also they are going to be live streaming it.
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We will uh share any details on how this will work.
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We don't have any clarity on uh where it will be streamed or or uh what this all might uh shape up to look like once they uh do this in December.
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So uh we'll keep you posted.
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Just getting this in, depending on saying it's going to live stream the firing squad execution of Nadal Malik Hassan in early December.
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Wanted to make sure that we got that on air.
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We will keep you posted here on live now as we learn more about this developing situation.
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So, for those of you that may not have followed this story, let me tell you who he is because I'm not going to try to like talk this away.
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In November of 2009, he walked into a building full of unarmed soldiers that were getting ready to deploy and he opened fire.
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13 people were killed, 32 people were wounded.
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He admitted it, he was tried, he was convicted, sentenced to death, and now it's been 13 years of appeals, and honestly, just 13 families that are having to set at a table every year with an empty chair, literally for the past 17 years.
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So hear me.
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I am not here to defend this man.
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I'm not even here to argue over the death penalty.
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People have been arguing about the death penalty as Christians, and they land on both sides of it for literally hundreds of years.
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What I want to talk about today is about the camera.
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Okay.
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The Secretary of Defense, you already heard it, said the public will get to watch because his words, people need to understand that there are serious consequences.
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So the hour was chosen to match the attack, the place was chosen to match the attack.
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And the last time that Americans gathered to watch an execution was almost 90 years ago.
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And now we're bringing it back.
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And this time we can watch it from the thing that sits in our pocket.
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Okay.
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So let me plainly say where I stand.
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As a follower of Jesus Christ, I will not be watching.
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Okay.
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And the fact that millions will tells the truth about what kind of nation we are.
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Okay.
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This isn't about one man on death row.
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He's guilty.
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That's already settled.
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Okay.
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It's about us and it's about what we want to see.
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So let's ask the question that nobody's asking.
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What does the camera add to this situation?
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The trial gave us justice, the verdict gives us justice, the sentence is the law.
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The camera doesn't add one thing to justice.
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All it does is add an audience.
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So when you add an audience to the killing of a man, you stopped doing justice, and now you're making a statement through a show.
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And we know that because we've seen this before.
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Some of you remember back in 2014, men in orange on their knees by the ocean, men in black standing behind them and a camera, and they filmed and they made sure that the whole world got to watch them kill these men.
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Why did they film it?
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So people would understand their consequences.
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Death was their message.
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Now I want to be exact.
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The people in those videos that got killed, those were those were innocent people.
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Hassan is guilty and he got a trial, and that difference is enormous.
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Okay, so I'm not trying to erase that at all.
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But I want you to notice what the difference is.
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Okay.
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It's a courtroom, it's not the camera.
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The courtroom is ours, but the strategy of filming death is theirs.
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It's a terroristic strategy.
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And we, as a supposed Christian nation, we just reached for it.
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And when we watched those videos back in 20 2014, we were like, these guys are barbaric.
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This is gross.
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This is disgusting when they did it.
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And we told our kids not to click, literally, because this was a stay a killing staged for an audience, timed for effect, literally broadcast to America as a warning.
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So on the day that we press go live, on that one point, turning one man's death into content, we are literally no better than they are.
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Okay.
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And here's what should bother people that are cheering the loudest right now.
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His own lawyers, what they're concerned about is that this is what he wanted.
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A man, the man who committed this crime, he wanted to die a martyr's death.
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And now he's about to die, and he gets a worldwide broadcast produced by the government that he attacked.
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Now, people tell me, and I don't know if I believe this or not.
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I know that we've had many Christians in this nation, but are we currently right now acting as a Christian nation?
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Well, the only thing we can do is look at it, not by what's printed on our money, but by what we can stomach.
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So let's go back in time here, okay?
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The year is 177.
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Christians are literally being accused of murder.
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And there's a believer named Athena Goras.
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He writes to the emperor, and his defense is stunning.
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He says, How could we be murderers when we even refuse to watch?
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Okay.
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So what is he talking about?
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Rome had an arena.
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So condemned criminals, many of them guilty, were executed in front of a crowd.
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And Christians would not go.
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Athenagoras said that to watch a man be put to death is as much the same as killing him, even when it's just.
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This is what Athenagoras said.
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He said to watch a man be put to death is as much the same as killing him, even when it's just.
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And when I say a church with no power, I'm talking about no governmental cultural power.
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They couldn't bear to watch a guilty man die.
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And we, with a church on every corner, are going to make this public execution and try to make it a trend.
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And we can't pretend that this is new.
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Friend, the last public hanging, okay, in 1936, 20,000 people came in Kentucky, the Bible belt.
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So maybe the honest sentence is we stopped being a Christian nation.
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Maybe it's that a nation doesn't become Christian by saying God's name while it does the same exact thing that Rome did.
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So somebody's already typing Romans 13 while I'm talking about this.
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I guarantee it.
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You're already typing it out.
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Good.
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Read it.
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Romans 13 hands the state a sword.
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It does not hand the state a stadium.
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And it never hands out tickets for justice.
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And somebody else is going to tell me Israel sanguine Pharaoh's army drowned.
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They did.
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James and John knew those stories.
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That's why when a village rejected Jesus, they wanted to call down fire like Elijah.
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They hate they had a verse for that.
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And Jesus turned and rebuked them and said, You don't even know what spirit that you're of.
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Friend, I read my whole Bible through that moment because Christ calls us to a higher way of living, not one built on law, one built on love and mercy and grace and forgiveness.
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See, friend, the law can tell you what a man deserves.
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Only Jesus tells you what to do with your heart while while he like while he gets it.
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Okay.
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So, and the mercy was always in there.
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Ezekiel already said it.
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God takes no pleasure.
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This is what the prophet Ezekiel said.
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God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
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So Jesus just made it impossible to miss.
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So I'm going to say it as plainly as I know how.
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I believe celebrating death, any death, is antichrist.
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Paul calls death the last enemy.
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Jesus stood at the tomb and wept minutes before he emptied it.
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He didn't come to use death, he came to destroy death.
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So when a crowd cheers at death, even a deserved one, we're cheering for the enemy that he defeated.
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And we were not made to, I'm just going to say it plainly, we were not made to see these types of things.
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We've always known that.
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It's why firing squads traditionally load one rifle with a blank so no man knows he fired the shot.
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Okay.
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So we protect the executioners from it.
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And now we're going to stream it to where freaking teenagers can watch this.
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This is crazy.
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See, there's another part of church history that you need to know.
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So Augustine tells a story about a friend named Olypius who got dragged into the arena and swore that he'd keep his eyes shut.
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Then the crowd roared.
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And then he opened them for one second.
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And Augustine says, he drank in the savagery and walked out a different man.
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One look.
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Friend, the psalmist said, I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
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Friend, he wasn't being delicate.
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He knew what eyes do to a soul.
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So now, almost finished here.
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Put the news down because I can't preach this at Washington and skip my own house.
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Okay.
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So when I read back in that day what that man did to those soldiers, something in me said, What in the world, man?
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Like it grieved me.
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It was it was a horrible thing.
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Then to read in the news now, I mean, like it really bothered me back back then, but then to read in the news now that like they were gonna finally shoot him, something in me said, Okay, well, now he get he gets what he deserves.
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And friend, now that I look back on that, I realize that's not the Christ-like response.
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Like that's not a holy response.
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Justice is sober, but for us to want to watch this, for us to think that this is a good thing, guys, we need to check our hearts.
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And years ago, I watched those videos.
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Nobody made me.
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I told myself I was staying informed.
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I was literally Olipius.
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I opened my eyes.
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Friend, that appetite is in me and it's in you, and we don't need a firing squad to feed it.
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We feed it every day.
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The clip of the person that you can't stand getting humiliated and you watch it over and over again.
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The pastor who fell and you read you read the article two or three times.
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The mugshot that you shared, the finally, the you know, the statement of you making finally, he got what's coming to him.
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Guys, we've been watching execution for years.
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They've just been bloodless.
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December 3rd won't create an appetite in America, it just reveals one.
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They're not offering this because they're cruel and we're kind, they're offering it because they know we're going to show up and watch.
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So before you post about how barbaric this is, and I think it is, ask what you've been watching.
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I'm asking me because here's what the gospel does with all this, okay?
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The center of our faith is a public execution, state-sanctioned, staged outside the city so everybody could see, meant to send a message.
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Rome literally invented this genre of killing.
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And Luke says the people stood by watching, and then he gives it a name.
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He says that the crowds had gathered for the spectacle.
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Friend, that's the gospel writer's word for the cross, a show.
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And where were we in that story?
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We weren't the hero, we were the crowd.
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Two men died beside of him, guilty men.
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One of them said so.
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We're getting what our deeds deserve, a justly condemned man by his own confession.
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Okay.
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And the last conversation that Jesus had before he died was with that man.
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And he says to that man, Today you're going to meet with me in paradise.
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Friend, that's the higher way.
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Not law, mercy at an execution for a guilty man from the only innocent man who was there.
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The crowd came to watch guilty men get what they deserved.
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And hanging between them, God was taking what all of us deserved.
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Paul says that at the cross, that that God literally disarmed the powers and made a public spectacle of them.
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He turned the show inside out.
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The thing built to display the state's power to kill ended up displaying God's power to forgive.
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Friend, every appetite for vengeance in you, like every appetite for vengeance that's in you is a demand for payment.
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Somebody has to pay.
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Friend, and I want to tell you that instinct is wrong.
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Evil is real.
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13 people are dead because of this man.
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So I'm not trying to not be compassionate towards those families at all on any level.
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But friend, the payment for all of our sins and the sins of the world has already been witnessed, like literally witnessed once.
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You don't need to see the blood of another person when publicly Jesus' blood was spilt that took away the sin of the world.
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You've already seen it.
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So I'm not telling a court what to do with him.
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I'm telling you what we should do with our eyes.
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Friend, that's why the early Christians could leave the seats empty in the Roman arenas.
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Not because they were soft on evil, because they had already been to an execution and it finished something in them.
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So on December 3rd, 1 o'clock, I will not be watching.
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I'll be praying for 13 families, and God help me, I'm going to pray for him too, because my king prayed for the men who were killing him while they did it.
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Friend, you don't have to watch a man die to believe in justice.
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You already watched one, Jesus hanging from the cross, and he said, It is finished.
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Now, if you love content like this, if you feel like it's helping your soul, discipling you in the good news, I want to tell you that everything that we do is partner supported.
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There's no network behind us, there's no sponsors.
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It's people who decided that this is worth standing behind.
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God bless you.