The message that I've entitled tonight is called Restricted and you will see here in a moment why. First Thessalonians chapter four verses one through eight. We'll be looking at these first eight verses. I'm going to read verses one through eight and then we'll get into our Bible study tonight. It says, finally, then brethren, we urge you and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that you should have bound more and more just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God. For you know what commandments we gave you through our Lord Jesus Christ for this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you should abstain from sexual immorality. That each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. Not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. That no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter because the Lord is the Avenger of all such. As we also forewarned you and testified for God did not call us to uncleanness but holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man but God who has also given us his Holy Spirit. The motion picture Association of America issues ratings to movies here in the United States and they basically formed this association back in 1922. And when they formed this they basically took movies they reviewed movies and they gave them a rating and it has gone through some revisions. In fact back in 1984 they added PG-13 which today a lot of PG-13 movies really should be ours. But they've added the PG-13 back in 1984 and they rate movies based on the content. Now I wonder and imagine this just kind of go along here with me. If the MPAA reviewed your life and they issued a rating of your life what would that rating be? Would it be a PG-13 kind of life perhaps it's an NC-17 or maybe it's a G or maybe it's a rated R. Hey listen I've met Christians that I would rate them a PG-13 Christian and in fact the content that they actually use for those PG-13 movies it's because it has drinking, violence and language. And I've met a lot of Christians that have had issues with that. They drink, they have bad language and they're violent. And yet I've also met Christians that I would say that's a rated R. God right there you know what I'm saying? That person is really confused and you wonder sometimes do they even know what it means to be a Christian? Well as we're looking at this text here and I was thinking about this the rating here as I go into the rated R movies or actually the restriction there that basically says to us that if you're under 18 you are to stay away from that movie. You're not to see this movie because of the content that's in that movie that they've made the restriction a very strong restriction that they will not allow you to see this movie if you are under 18. Now that reminded me a little bit of tonight's study because in tonight's study there is a big restriction in Scripture. There's a very strong restriction that is given to us by God. And this is interesting because what we're going to see here tonight is that we're going to look at one restriction. Now hear me out here real quickly there are a lot of restrictions in Scripture. I'm only going to zone in or actually going to zoom in and one restriction and you're going to see here in a moment what I'm talking about. Now this is a restriction that I think the church should be aware of. It's something that every person in this room I would think understands where we're going to go here tonight but it's a restriction that we have to take seriously. And it's one of those messages that is very very tough to be honest with you. We're living in a very crazy culture and I think that this message tonight is very appropriate for our culture and where we're at and it's Christians being in the midst of this dark culture. We need to be reminded of a few things and what we see here is that as we're going to look at this restriction Paul is going to give us this huge restriction about sexual immorality specifically fornication. What is fornication? Sex outside of marriage.  And Paul is going to really deal with this in a very strong way because the Christians in Thessalonica were very young born-again Christians, young born-again Christians. They were still young in their faith and if I were to rate their life they would be g-rated Christians. They were really strong Christians to be honest with you. They were above reproach. They were growing in some amazing ways that you're going to see here in a moment but Paul spent just a short amount of time with these young Christians and yet as he's writing from Corinth he's praising them for their spiritual growth and how they have actually moved forward and progressed in their walk with Christ. Let me give you an example. If you go with me to 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 3 this is where he begins by telling him in verse 3 he says this Remembering without seizing your work of faith, labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and the sight of our God and Father. Knowing beloved brethren your election by God. Now go to verse 6 and 9. He says it again And you became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit. So that you became examples in all of Macedonia, Ikea, who believe from and he says from you the word of God has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and Ikea but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone out so that we do not need to say anything. In other words these guys were like on top as they're growing and right away we see that they were setting an example to the rest of the Christians in Macedonia. They were great witnesses of the Gospel of Christ. They were living intentionally for Jesus Christ. Nobody was forcing them to be Christians. Nobody was telling them you need to do this. You need to do that. These guys were doing it because they were living intentionally and that's the way we should be living the Christian life to be honest with you. Listen, you should come to church not because somebody is nagging you to come to church. You're coming to church because you want to come to church, right?  Okay, well that guy said I got to read my Bible so I'm going to go read my Bible. No, you should read it because you want to read the Bible. That's the way the Christian life is to be lived. It's supposed to be lived intentionally. I tell young people, listen, if you really want to grow in your walk with Christ, begin to do it intentionally. Don't wait until somebody tells you five, six times to do this or do that. That's what we want. That's what we want to be Christians that are living intentionally for Jesus Christ. There's not much of that going on today. It's like you have to twist people's arm to go to church, to read the Bible, to live holy and whatever else. I mean, it's a crazy kind of society that we're in and Christians are getting duped into the flow of the culture. But what we see here though is that Paul is amazed at their growth and he knew this though that they still had room to grow and it didn't hurt to basically remind them or warn them about the immorality that they were surrounded with or by. In other words, just because you're growing as a Christian doesn't mean that nobody can come to you and say, hey, read your Bible more. You know, that's an encouragement. You shouldn't be like, well, I don't need, you don't need to tell me. But it's, hey listen, take the encouragement. And this is what Paul is doing. Paul is actually doing this for them. So what I want to do tonight, I'm going to kind of give you an outline of where I'm going to go tonight. I'm going to give you three requirements to develop moral purity. Three requirements or maybe three ways, whichever way you want to put it. And I'm going to give these three to you. How do you develop moral purity? Three ways. One, keep growing. Two, keep out. And three, keep it under control. These three are in the texture. And I'm going to develop each one here in a moment. But first, keep growing. Let's look at that. Verse one, Paul says this in verse one of chapter four. Finally, then brethren, we urge you and exhort you in the Lord that you should abound more and more, just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and please God. Urge and exhort. Man, Paul is using this strong word. Because what he's doing here, he's showing his true heart. Paul here is really encouraging these guys from his heart. Paul is not being nosy. He's not kind of like looking over their shoulder. What are you doing? Are you reading your Bible? You know what I mean? What Paul is doing, he's actually encouraging them from his heart. And it really stinks when people misinterpret encouragement as judging them. You know what I'm saying? When you go to somebody, hey bro, okay, I'm going to church. Don't judge me. What do you mean? What do you mean? I said, dude, I'm just encouraging you. Don't judge me. You're getting it mixed up, dude. I'm not judging you. I'm encouraging you. And there's a difference between those two, right? So it's okay for us to encourage each other to say, hey, keep it going. Keep it going. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Man, go, go, go. That's encouraging. It's not judging me. But people will take it the other way around. Why? Because they're convicted. You know, it's interesting.  I have a four-year-old little girl. I love her to death. And we were at one place. I forget where it was. It was by the beach, and we were just kind of hanging out. And she was singing a song, like a church song. You know, I think it was Jesus Loves Me, This I Know. And as she was singing this song, this lady with her daughter were right there. And as they heard my daughter sing the song, they turned to her and us and said, oh, and she looked at her daughter and said, remember that song, honey? And I was, how sad. Remember that song, honey?   But sometimes people think that, you know, you're doing something else. But I've also had other situations where, you know, when people know that you're, you know, this is way back in my New York years when I was pastoring a church up in New York. I remember people would ask me, what do you do? And here's the question, or here's the answer. I'm a pastor. Whoa. Where does this conversation go? I usually, actually, sometimes I just refrain from saying I'm a pastor because all of a sudden they just judge you. They look at you differently. And the first thing that comes out of their mouth when I say, when I said that up in New York, yeah, I'm a pastor.  And they start confessing. You know, really? It's like, I'm not judging you. I'm just telling you what I do. Well, here, Paul is doing this. He's saying, hey, listen, guys, I encourage you. I urge you. I exhort you. You know, the Bible says in Hebrews 10, 24, let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.  They're just encouraging you. It's biblical. That's what we're supposed to do. You know, when Paul wrote this later, I said this earlier. He wrote this later from Corinth, where immorality was widespread. So I wonder if he was, you know, experiencing all of this stuff. And he's like, I got to write these Christians in Thessalonica. I got to remind these guys. I got to warn these guys. I know they're doing well. They're growing. But listen, guys, be very careful. Be very careful. And he begins to encourage them. Notice what he says. He wants them to abound more and more. In other words, keep growing. Don't stop. That's the message to you. Keep growing. Don't stop. Keep growing. See, the Christian life is a growing experience, isn't it? It's a growing experience. We should all be growing in our walk with Christ. We shouldn't really be at a standstill. If you are, you know what, listen, tonight hopefully that will change.  Something is hindering you, and only you and God know. But the Christian life is a continual growth, growing in the things of the Lord. And then Paul here is telling him to keep growing. You know, when it comes to the spiritual growth, you know, the Bible is very, very clear that as Christians, we should continue to grow. Listen to this. In Hebrews chapter 6, verses 1 and 2, basically tell us to go beyond the ABCs of the Christian faith. He says, therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death and the faith in God, instruction about baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and internal judgment. He says, go beyond that stuff. He says, grow. Hebrews 5, 12, listen to this. In fact, though by this time, you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you the elementary truth of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk being still an infant is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Guys, listen.  There's no reason, no reason why you shouldn't be growing. And you come here on Sunday morning, Wednesday night, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Listen, you're giving the meat. And that should cause you to grow. You should take that meat and take it home and be like, yes, I want more. And then in your own personal time, then you open up the Bible and then you add to the stuff that you've learned and you start doing your own study. Being Bible students, you don't have to go to seminary for that. But that's just the way it is and that's the way the Bible has laid it out for us as far as to just keep growing and the growth will come through the teaching of God's word by taking it in yourself, by hearing it as well. And then he says in verse one, he says this, that he's exhorting them that you should walk, notice this is just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God. This was Paul's heart and set an example for them in how to live a life pleasing to God. That was his total heart is how can I, as a mature man, set an example to all the Christians that I'm witnessing to that I'm encouraging. I mean, throughout his epistles, Paul was always set in that example. Listen to this, Ephesians 4-1, as a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you, here's another encouragement, to live a life worthy of the calling for which you have received. Ephesians 4-1. Paul exhorting them. And then he gets to places like Corinth. Those guys failed when it came to spiritual growth. These guys were like, they were like carnal. And he said this to them in 1 Corinthians 3, 1, 2, and 3, brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I give you milk and not solid food for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. It's not sad. It's like you're still worldly.  You know, people will leave church because they're going through the Bible. I can't stand this church. This church has just given us too much Bible stuff. I want to go somewhere that will tickle my ears. You know what I'm saying? I want to go somewhere that will just tell me stories and make me feel good. So I walk out and they're like, oh, this is great. But yet when you go through the scriptures and you get the meat of the Bible, man, you're going to get some solid stuff. Especially what we're going through here tonight. We're going to get some solid stuff. I haven't even done. See, someone's leaving already. But anyways, do you know what I'm saying? But this stuff is like meat. That happens a lot to me when I teach. It's interesting. Anyways, so Paul is saying basically, these are the things that he's encouraging him with. Verse 2, he says this very clearly, for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, what do you mean commandments? It refers to the special rules for living. Paul taught them the scriptures very clearly. He taught them the scriptures and that is basically where we get the way to live for Christ's, the scriptures, the Bible. It's our manual for life, isn't it? It's our manual for life. If we want to know what we're supposed to do and how to please God, it's in this book from Genesis to Revelation. So where is Paul going with all of this? Okay, Paul, you're giving us some encouragement here and there. But where are you really going? Are you really nervous here, Paul? Well, here's where he's going. This just brings us to our second. Keep out. Keep out. Keep growing, second, keep out. What does he say? Notice in verse 3, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality. That's where he's going. This is where Paul is going. He's telling us keep out. Keep out. This is where he says something really interesting that should really, like, make your ears perk up. This is the will of God. How many of you guys are always looking for God's will in your life? Raise your hand. Guess what? You found it here today. Here it is. Listen, there is the general will of God. The general will of God is throughout Scripture. And here is one right here. In fact, there's another area where you see the general will of God in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, where we see the will of God is for U.S. Christians to rejoice, to pray, and to give thanks. That is his will for your life. These three elements in the Christian life is for you to live with joy, to pray, and to give thanks. That's God's general will for your life. And here we see that this is God's general will for you here. In a moment you're going to see what he's referring to here. But when you see this, this is the will of God. You should stop, prepare your heart, because this is going to be something pretty interesting that's going to come up, because this is going to be God's plan for your life. Now, there is a specific will of God. You know, I experienced that many times in my personal life, where God calls you to a specific work. In 1998, I was here at Bible College, and God gave me a calling to go to New York and password church and plan. That was God's specific will for my life. I couldn't go to somebody and say, hey, this is your will too. This is God's will for your life too. I couldn't do that. And I fulfilled it for 10 years. This here is God's general will of God. This is something you find throughout Scripture. And here we come up to one here that we have to take close attention, pay close attention to. So what does he say in verse 3? He says, this is God's will, your sanctification. That's a big word, sanctification. You know the word just basically means set apart. That's what it means. Set apart. Set apart by God and for God. Every Christian, every person that enters into a relationship with Christ is automatically set apart from the world. They're set apart from the world by God and for God's use. All of you here who are born again here, God has set you apart and God is using you in some way. And it's cool to see that because this is exactly what the word means. Paul's life, you know, before he was in a Christian actually, you could actually see where his life was at in his BC years before Christ. Turn with me to Acts chapter 8. I want to show you, I want to read with you in Acts chapter 8, Paul's old life before he came to Christ. In Acts chapter 8 verses 1, 2 and 3 we see the description and how his life was characterized. It's not very encouraging but I just want you to see here real quickly. In Acts chapter 8 verses 1, 2 and 3 this is what it says about Paul. At that time it was Saul. Now Saul was consenting to his death, speaking of us, of Stephen here. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea, Samaria, except the apostles. And it says, and devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. And Saul, here it is, made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.  Come on, you're going with me. He throws you into prison for that. That's what Paul was doing. Paul was doing, that was his BC years, his life before Christ. Now here's his life in Christ, his new life, his set-apart life, Philippians 1-21.  There is the life set-apart. If you can say that in your heart, listen, you've been set-apart, but if you're still stuck on, for to me to live is me, then you have a problem.  And that's the set-apart life. Listen, God is not expecting perfection from you.  He's not expecting perfection, but he's expecting you to live in Christ. Because even Paul said this in Ephesians 4, he encouraged the Christians, listen, put off the old self and put on the new man. We have that choice to wake up in the morning and say, listen, I'm going to serve Jesus. I'm going to follow Christ. I'm making that an intentional desire in my heart. I'm going to do it. I'm going to put on Christ. And we see here that this is what's happening here with Paul. Paul is showing us his life before, now his life set-apart. So here he tells us basically that God's will is for you to be sanctified, to be set-apart, to live in Christ. That's his will for your life every single day, every moment, to be honest with you. It's to live in Christ. However, he adds a little more to it. Notice here's the restriction abstain from sexual immorality. Abstain from sexual immorality. The word abstain means to hold yourself apart from, to be distant, or to keep away from. To keep out is what he's saying. There are not many things that the Bible tells us to abstain. In fact, the word itself is used about seven to eight times throughout the entire Bible. And the usage of the word abstain throughout the Bible into seven to eight times, there's three times it's used in the book of Acts referring to temporary restrictions. Once it's used in Timothy referring to false doctrine. Once in 1 Peter, and the other two times are found in 1 Thessalonians to abstain. Whenever you see the word abstain in the Bible, we know two things for certain. One is God. And two, it's an absolute ban. It's a prohibition. And this is something that we have to take seriously. What is God telling me to stay away from?  Period. End of story. You can't really debate that at all. The Christians will try. What do you mean? What does that mean? But listen, it's pretty black and white. Abstain from sexual immorality. Now, we live in a society where this stuff is rampant, isn't it? It's really crazy. Sexual immorality. I'm going to go through some things here to show you where we're at in our culture. And this is nothing new to you guys.  A Gallup poll survey many years ago released a survey in which they compared the beliefs and lifestyles of evangelical Christians with the public at large and the results were quite revealing. Basically that study showed that there is little difference in ethical behavior between those who go to church and those who don't go to church. That's pretty sad, isn't it? I mean, when I read things like that, I'm thinking of what Jesus said in Matthew 5, you're the light of the world. You're the salt of the earth, right? We see one time one man was interviewed after he committed adultery and he was interviewed and this is what he said about his encounter. He said this. He said, basically, oh, actually, you know what? I went ahead of myself. We'll get to that one. But here's another quote that I want to give you. Someone once said this about the church. The church has become so worldly and the world so churchy that it's hard to tell the difference. You know, you guys know that 80% of Americans say they're Christians, right? It's like, could you imagine that if that was true? We wouldn't have the issues that we have probably. So why did Paul have this in mind? Why is he going at this with the Christians in Thessalonica? Very simply, one is the culture at their time.  The Greeks, they influenced the Romans big time. And in fact, the society in the New Testament was just as immoral as it is today. Did you know that the entire mindset there of the Greeks was very, very sexually saturated? In fact, the mindset of that society at the time was described in these words, we keep prostitutes for pleasure, we keep mistresses for the day-to-day deans of the body, we keep wives for the beginning of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes. That was the mindset back then. You're like, whoa, crazy. Well, they had a temple called Aphrodite. It was the temple of love, the goddess of love that had a thousand prostitutes. And these prostitutes would come out of this temple to seduce young men for sex. I would compare that to today's, I guess, equivalent to today's private escorts.  I was in Amsterdam many years ago and if you've ever been to Amsterdam, you know, that place is just, that place is gross, it's sick. Drugs are all over the place. I was actually asked, you know, when I was walking down the street, they would bring in drugs. You want to buy some drugs? And I'm like, no, you know. And yet, going through, and I wasn't really walking with the Lord, but I was still shocked at the things I saw walking through the red-like district. If you guys know where that is, that's just a, it's an open prostitution chamber.   That was open. And it's still on today. And it's interesting that even in the Old Testament, or even in the times of the New Testament, there were things like that, a thousand prostitutes.  That was part of their cult. That was kind of like the way they honored their gods by doing these things. It was very fascinating that they would actually do these things. Well, we see though that our society is no different than the times that they were living in.  Did you know that 94% of sexual encounters that you see on TV and films are outside of marriage? When you see movies, television shows, and this couple goes into bed and what not, most of the time they're not married. And basically, the message that we're getting from Hollywood is this. It's okay. Everyone is doing it. It's okay. So young people are going with that message and saying, hey, what's wrong with it? Okay, there's nothing wrong with that. But listen, we see here very clearly that this is something that Paul is saying according to God that you were supposed to abstain from these things. And not only that, but because we live in a sex-saturated society, we see that marriages today have crashed in so many ways. Not just non-Christians but also Christian marriages have crashed because of sexual morality. One out of nine marriages that get divorced are attributed to sexual morality. And that's a sad stat. A third of all Americans already have committed adultery. And here is the quote that I wanted to give you. A man who once committed adultery, he was interviewed and he said this about his encounter. A feeling like this only comes around once in a lifetime and you should seize it. That's the mentality of our society today. It's weird. And I know it's nothing new, but it's just the way it is. 60% of Americans say that there's nothing wrong with adultery. Isn't it crazy? There's a disturbing attraction to this stuff. And as Christians, we get caught up into this. And it's no wonder that websites like the Ashley Madison make it in our society today. You know that website that just came out recently? You guys probably know about this thing. Ashley Madison, this Canadian website. It was based out of Canada. The service used by the names came from the two popular names of females, Ashley Madison. And their slogan is this, life is short, have an affair. That's their slogan. But that changed, didn't it? July 15th, right? They hacked that website.  And they didn't do anything about it. So the first set of names came out. CEOs, big-time people came out that they were part of this. Because according to this website, they covered you. Everything was all cover-up.   That was the service you paid. Well, these hackers said, if you don't shut down, we're going to expose, we're going to show everybody's data. So they didn't listen. First set of names came out. Ashley Madison didn't do anything. August, another set of names came out. Now they're like, okay, this is serious. Now these guys really are getting us here. And the sad thing is, of course, a lot of CEOs, a lot of big-way names came out and all of that. And unfortunately, a pastor's name came out. A pastor in Mississippi, a Baptist pastor, a seminary professor, well-liked seminary professor came out. He was hit, of course, CNN, Fox. Everybody just totally threw him out. The pastor was one of the names in this online dating network. Well, the sad thing, the pastor could not handle the shame. If you've read the story, he committed suicide. 56 years old. Left a note that said, I cannot take the shame to face my family, my kids. It was sad that this man got caught up. We see things like this happen all the time, even among Christians. And we have to be very careful. No matter how strong you are, it can still happen to you. And we see here that in Christianity today, they pulled 1,000 church members, church members, church leaders, and found that 23% of that group had committed adultery and 45% acted inappropriately in a sexual way. What's happening here? It's sad, isn't it? You expect that from non-Christians, right? You really do. But why are Christians getting involved in this stuff? There's a serious attack going on. The guards are being put down. We don't take scripture serious when it says that the devil is out prowling around, wanting to devour people, waiting for that Christian that has got their guards down to say, I'm going to hit them hard now and crash their marriage. And this is what we see here that this is something that Paul is being serious about because there's a disturbing attraction, like I said, to sexual morality.  And unfortunately, that was fatal to that one pastor because he committed suicide because he couldn't take the shame. He just committed suicide and he left behind a wife and some kids. It's sad. Instead of just saying, you know what? I repent. Forgive me, God. Maybe he would lose his wife and whatnot but at least we still have a dad. But here we see that these things can actually throw people into that kind of stuff.  That's where we get it, from pornography. And it's a very broad word covering every kind of sexual activity in the circle of God's will. So what Paul is telling Christians is this, listen, this is what he's telling us, abstain from a pornographic lifestyle, that's what he's saying. Abstain from a pornographic lifestyle in the broadest sense of that word. How? Well, listen, purity comes from the heart. Purity comes from the heart. You have to make a covenant. We all know that sexual sin is wrong. We know that it's just not right to have sex outside of marriage to commit adultery. We know all that stuff is wrong. So the question is, why are Christians still falling into that sexual sin? You know why? It's because they do not know the meaning of biblical abstinence. What is biblical abstinence? Well, the word abstinence carries the idea of staying off the road that leads to sexual morality. Don't even take that road.  Get off of it. A good example of biblical abstinence is actually in Genesis 39 verses 1-15 where Joseph, remember Joseph, his boss's wife came on to him? Remember that? She wanted him big time, right? And what happened when she came on to him? He laughed, right? And this is what he said. Listen to this. Genesis 39-12 But he left his garment in her hand and fled and ran outside. I had to fled and ran. And Joseph bailed out. He didn't walk out. He didn't say, no, I'm not going to do it. No, stop it. Get away. He says, I'm out of here. And he left his garment. He didn't leave naked. A lot of people think, oh, he left naked. No, he didn't. What he left was his other garment. There were two garments that they would wear at the time. There was the outer garment and the inner garment. It was the outer garment. So he left in his underwear basically. And he just left. He fled. It's to leave it. Run. And that's what it says in 1 Corinthians 6-18. Flee. Sexual immorality, right? Flee. It doesn't say walk. Flee. Get away. Walk away. Turn around. You know, when I turned, this happened just a couple weeks ago. I went to a Dodger game. I'm a Dodger fan. Hallelujah. Anyways. Boo. Hey, come on. San Francisco. No way. Wait a minute. Anyways. Right. Sorry. I'm getting off track here. So I went to a Padres and Dodger game.  And then I turned into the street and it was the wrong way. And I'm like, why are they coming at me? What's wrong with those guys? And you see them one way. You know, the other way, I'm like, whoa, do a quick U-turn. That happens to me a lot. It happened to me in New York City. It happened to me in LA. San Diego, I'm going for it all. I'm going to listen to Chicago someday too. But what did I do? I didn't just say, oh, bummer, excuse me, excuse me. No, I turned around and I left. I went the other way. That's exactly what the Bible says.  Get away from it. Proverbs 7, 25 through 27 says this, Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths. Many are the victims she has brought down.  Her house is a highway to the grave or highway to hell, really, leading down to the chambers of death. That adulterous woman, Solomon says, listen, don't even stray into her path. Don't even get on that road. He says, get away from it. Now, the path can be different to other people. It could be music. You may be listening to music that is very explicit, very sexual in nature. Hey, listen, get off that path. Maybe it's a movie. Maybe it's movies that you're watching. Movies that have a lot of sexual content. Listen, get off that path. Or perhaps they're romantic novels. Novels about romance that you're reading that is kind of messing up your mind. You don't get off that path. It could be anything. Anything that could lead you to those things. TV shows. Perhaps it's entertaining in pure thoughts. All that stuff, Paul says, keep out. So keep growing. Keep out, and the last one is here. This is it. Keep it under control. Listen to this, verse four and five. Paul says this. That each of you should know how to possess his own vessels in sanctification and honor. Not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. That no one should take advantage and defraud his brother in this matter because of the Lord is the Avenger of all such as we also forewarned you and testified. Given the moral atmosphere of the day, there must have been an enormous pressure on those young Christians to lower their standards to conform to the world around them. And that's exactly the pressure that we're experiencing in our world today.  You know that, right? Before pornography was in the back of that video store, right, with a curtain. You couldn't go in. No one under 18. But it's come out of the closet now. You can get it on your device. Facebook, Instagram, you got it. It's there. It's right there in your room. You don't have to go into a store. So we see here that these things are things that we have to be very, very careful because of the way, the culture that we're living in. And Paul says here, keep your body under control. It's interesting because when God is not in control, the body is in control of you. If God is not controlling your body, listen, the body is going to control you. And it's sad because animals live by the appetite of their body. It's like whatever they want, they get. And it's interesting that we see here that we need to submit our bodies to God for His control, for Him to say, Lord, control my body. And Paul says, because Gentiles who do not know God, they do this. This is something that they do. This shouldn't be you. That's his point here. You should not live the Christian life like a person that doesn't know God. When men turn away from God, anything is possible. And he's telling us this in verse 6. He says, don't defraud your brother. And children and the fornicator defrauds his future wife and his future children. And this is what he says. And he says this, listen, don't worry, God is going to judge the sexual immoral person. That's what he says here. God is the avenger. So we can trust that God will punish sexual immorality. And no one will get away with this sin even if it's undiscovered. I remember when pastors said this and I always remind myself, and you probably will hear me say this a lot when I teach, don't care of your sin privately before God, then God will expose you publicly. And that happens a lot, right? Hey, listen, when I goof up, man, I'm on my knees. Lord, I'm sorry. Forgive me, please.  That's what happened with David, right? Nathan came to David.  He goes, no, you're the man. You're the one that did this.  And what did he do? He did the proper repentance. God, to you and only you, have I sinned. He dealt with it right there. He didn't say, no, I didn't. What do you mean? She came on to me. You know what I'm saying? It was a woman. No, you did it. And we see here very clearly that what Paul is telling us here is that God will deal with it. You know, perhaps the saddest thing about lust is that it never satisfies. It never satisfies. Someone has said that lust is the craving for salt by a man dying of thirst. In other words, it promises everything and delivers nothing. It promises everything. There's a fantasy. It's a fantasy that it promises, but that it delivers nothing. It delivers pain. And in verse eight, he says, listen, if they reject you, man, they're rejecting God. They're rejecting God. So let me conclude here. It's very clear that being a Christian means living different in the world. They're different from the world. We're to live differently. God's will for you and for me is sanctification. Is sanctification. We've been set apart by God and for God's use. But I like this and I want to end with verse eight because there is hope there. He says this, but God who has also given us his Holy Spirit, we have the Holy Spirit within us. If you're born again Christian tonight, you have the Holy Spirit in you. And the cool thing about this is that when God commands you to abstain, he also will give you the power to obey. He will give you the power to obey if you yield to the Holy Spirit. Because there's a tug of war going on in your life every single day. The flesh wants to pull you into that way and the Spirit wants to pull you. But listen, once you yield to the Spirit, there's no tug of war. And when God gives you this, the Holy Spirit is to help us walk the Christian life. To help us obey him as he wants us to obey. We're not alone in this battle, guys. We're not alone. Your weakness is his strength. But you have to go to God. The Holy Spirit helps us grow in our walk with Jesus. He's the one that will help us keep ourselves away, keep out of these things, these sexual sin. And he's the one that will help us keep our bodies under control. The Holy Spirit has a huge job and sometimes we forget. And maybe tonight you're not struggling with this stuff. Maybe you just listen and you're like, yeah, that's cool. I have no problem with that. It's all right. But maybe you're struggling with spiritual growth. Maybe you're just not growing. Maybe it's something that you're dealing with tonight. Or maybe it's something else that you're dealing with tonight. But listen, God loves you and he wants to make things right with you. Or you to make things right with him.


Cellulose nanocrystals, CNCs, or cellulose nanofibers, CNFs, with different morphologies, properties can be obtained through enzymatic, chemical, or mechanical treatment of microcrystalline cellulose. Tempo-mediated oxidation leads to a decrease in fiber length and an increase in degree of crystallinity of the fibers as compared to mechanical treatment and ultrasonication, introducing carboxyl functional groups, COOH, on the surface of the fibrils for further chemical functionalization. This article was authored by Edwin S. Medivli, Patrick G. Kauru, Antony N. Gachanga, and others.


Yes, NAFAC stands for Naval Facilities Engineering Command, and we are the systems command that builds and maintains the facilities that the Navy and the Marine Corps use in the execution of their mission. We've got professionals, civil engineer corps officers, civilians, contractors, who design professional engineers, professional architects, and sustain. We've got a large, talented, blue-collar workforce that works at every Navy Marine Corps base around the world to make sure that these facilities meet the needs of our sailors and marines. We also have a group of professionals who support the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, and so we purchase and field some of the equipment that they need to execute their mission. We've got groups of people who support contingency engineering reach back, so anywhere in the world that a disaster may happen, a humanitarian assistance mission or a humanitarian assistance mission or some sort of natural disaster, we have groups of people who can help deploy or support the engineering work to resolve the issue. So we've got a wide group of professionals who support the Navy and the Marine Corps across the missions. In the future, I see NAFAC continuing to try to find ways to reduce the total ownership cost of Navy shore infrastructure. This is vitally important today as we have less resources and the demand for naval forces only continues to increase. We're continuing to be very focused on energy. We've got to find ways to reduce our energy demands and improve our energy security. This is an important critical capability that NAFAC provides to the shore installations and we're laser focused on finding ways to do this more efficiently, more securely, and to better support the Navy mission. NAFAC provides a number of areas of support to Expeditionary Warfighters. We are the principal systems command supporting the Expeditionary Combat Command. So we help to provide them with capabilities, purchase equipment, help sustain equipment for them so that they can have capability at the lowest cost. We provide reach back engineering services for things that may be required in theater. So for example, if you have a bridge and you need to figure out the best way to repair it, we have the ability to reach back to professional engineers who can design and assess the ability to put that bridge back in operation. We're also closely supporting Navy Expeditionary Units, for example, the SEALs, in determining new ways that they can operate with less dependence on fossil fuels. So for example, right now, we're trying to field a new type of water systems and battery systems that can help support them at their forward camps where they can help to cut the tether to fuel and other types of utility support. I think NAFAC touches sailors' lives in a variety of ways. The facility that they may live in, a barracks, was probably built and is maintained by NAFAC. The sailor has dependents, children. They may be spending time in daycare in a child development center that NAFAC built. The fitness center that they work out in, the facility that they might train in, are all things that NAFAC professionals have designed and built in order to support sailors, their families, and their ability to accomplish the mission. I think the pieces of NAFAC's history that stand out the most are our support in different contingency environments that the Navy has supported throughout the years. So during World War II, the design and construction that NAFAC did in supporting the war effort. Most recently with the closure of bases around the world, NAFAC has helped to do the design and construction for the consolidation of facilities. Most recently we were the construction agent for the new Walter Reed Bethesda Hospital, which opened about a year ago and supports wounded warriors coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq and other conflicts around the world. And that was a major construction effort, about a billion dollars worth of new facilities that provides world-class support through the Navy system to these warriors. Well, NAFAC was founded in 1842, was the Bureau of Yards and Docks, and its initial mission was to help build and sustain the Navy shipyards at that time. So at the end of this month on August 31st will be the 170th anniversary of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Twenty-five years later in 1867 the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps was founded. And this is a cadre of professional officers who helped to lead the Naval Facilities Engineering Command and also command and serve in construction battalion units around the world. In 1942 Admiral Ben Morell founded the Seabees, and this was the group of contingency engineers that could deploy into war zones and do construction while also defending the work that they were doing and operating outside the wire. About six years ago we went through a major transformation where we realigned to better support the Navy installation command and reduced our number of flagpoles by about fifty percent while singling up accountability and ensuring that we were providing the best and most economical support to the Navy and the other commands that we support.


So this video is part of a mathematical online course on group theory and this lecture will be on homomorphisms of groups. So we will just recall that a homomorphism f from a group g to h is just a map from g to h that preserves multiplication.  A consequence of this is that f of 1 is equal to 1 where this is the identity of g and this is the identity of h and f of a to minus 1 is the inverse of f of a. So you can think of a homomorphism as being a function that preserves the group structure. It's called an isomorphism if f is by a bijection. This means that f is onto and each element of h is the inverse of a unique element of g. So in particular there is an inverse function f to the minus 1 from h to g. It's called an automorphism if it's an isomorphism from g to itself. And finally the kernel of f is the set of elements a with ga equals 1. So an isomorphism between two groups g and h sort of means that g and h are in some sense the same group. I mean they're the same group except the elements have been re-labelled. So an automorphism of a group can be thought of as a symmetry of the group. So you remember a symmetry is just a bijection from some mathematical object to itself that preserves whatever structure. So these are just symmetries of groups. In particular a set of automorphisms of a group is itself a group because it's the set of symmetries of something. So having reviewed those basic definitions let's just review the standard examples. And the first example that most people come across is just the exponential map where x with x is as usual 1 plus x plus x squared over 2 and so on. And this has the property of x plus y is x of x times x of y. And here we have the group operation of the real numbers under addition and this is the group operation of the group of non-zero real numbers. So this means non-zero reals under multiplication. So when I wrote the definition of a homomorphism I said that f of a b is f of a f of b. A b should sometimes be replaced by the group operation if you're not writing it as multiplication. So here the group operation is written as addition so we change the definition of homomorphism slightly. So it's not a bijection because it's not onto. The image of x is always positive. However it is an isomorphism from the real numbers under addition to the positive real numbers. So let's call this positive reals under multiplication. So the positive reals under multiplication form a group and this is essentially the same as the group of reals under addition because we have this exponential map that is an isomorphism. So here we've got this exponential map and of course everybody knows the inverse of the exponential map is called the logarithm or ln if you want to use this dreadful notation. So the next example comes from linear algebra and we recall we have a determinant of a matrix. So for a two by two matrix this is just going to be ad minus bc and there's a similar formula for larger matrices and the basic formula is that the determinant of a product of two matrices is the product of their determinants. This means the determinant map is a homomorphism from the general linear group of dimension n over some field may as well be the real numbers to the nonzero real numbers. The real numbers can be replaced by any field. So you recall this is the invertible linear maps from rn to rn or at least it can be identified with a group of invertible linear maps. So there's a homomorphism from this group on to the nonzero real numbers. It's on to at least if n is greater than one if if n is greater than or equal to one.  The kernel is called sln of r the special linear group which is the special linear group is just defined to be the set of matrices of determinant one. Special by the way in linear algebra often means determinant one so the special orthogonal group is the set of orthogonal matrices of determinant one and so on. So the next example will come from number theory. So we recall that we have this group z over four z which is the integers modulo four. So it's got four elements nought one two three and the group operation is denoted by addition and you subtract multiples of four whenever you add two things. So this is a little little group of order four. On the other hand we have a group z over five z star so this is the nonzero integers mod five under multiplication. So it's got four elements one two three and four and the group operation is good by multiplying them and if the result is bigger than five you reduce modulo five. So you can recall from any number theory course that these are both groups and these two groups are in fact isomorphic and you can have an isomorphism which takes zero to one one two two and two four and three to three. So this is going to be the definition of the map f and the point is that f of a plus b is equal to f of a times f of b so again we're changing addition to multiplication and in fact f of a is just going to be two to the power of a so you can see this is two to the one this is two squared and this is two cubed at least if you're working modulo five um so this is a sort of exponential map to um except where the base is two rather than e um one thing people sometimes do with groups is write out a multiplication table so if you write out the multiplication table of the first group under addition it looks like this so this means that two plus one is three and so on and we can write out the multiplication of the second one it looks like this um so um we get two four one three three one four two four three two one and if you look at these you don't get the second table from the first by by changing zero one two and three to these numbers here so um a common mistake people make when they're starting over the group theory is they these two multiplication tables um are not the same if you change zero one two three to one two three four you can see that things go wrong here so these two groups are not isomorphic that's a mistake because you can also switch the order of rows of a multiplication table so if I switch these two rows and these two columns then the two multiplication tables really do become the same if you just relabel these elements according to this rule here so um you can't it's difficult to tell whether or not two groups are isomorphic just by staring at their multiplication tables in fact writing out the multiplication table of the group is nearly always a rather stupid thing to do it gives very little information and for any group of order larger than about four it becomes ridiculously tiresome to write out the multiplication table so my advice for dealing with group multiplication tables is just don't bother with them there are a lot of work and don't really give you very much useful information um the elements of z modulo four z are automorphisms of um z modulo five z here we are identifying z modulo four z with z modulo five z um the non-zero elements of this um for example if you take um an element of z modulo five z and map it to two times g this is an automorphism of z modulo five z the reason being that it has an inverse g goes to three g because two times three g is six g which is equal to g in z modulo five z so this gives several examples of automorphisms of groups another example of a homomorphism is um the a map from the reals to the circle group so the circle group s one its elements are just the elements of the unit circle so that pairs x y with x squared plus y squared equals one and if you fix a point you can think of an element of this group as corresponding to a rotation of the plane by this angle so the points of the circle correspond to possible rotations of the plane fixing the origin and the group multiplication is easy enough to work out if you've got two points x one y one and x two y two on the circle then the product is going to be x one x two minus y one y two x one y two plus x two y one you can see this in two ways you can either think of x y as being the point cosine theta sine theta and then um if x one y one is cosine theta one sine theta one then this becomes cosine theta one cosine theta two minus sine theta one sine theta two which is the usual formula for cosine theta one plus theta two and similarly this becomes sine of theta one plus theta two which i'm not going to write out explicitly so um we have um a nice group operation on these numbers here and there's a homomorphism from the real numbers two s one which just takes a point um theta of r to cosine theta sine of theta and um we've um the um group operation that we've defined here just makes this into a homomorphism by the formula for cosine and sine of an angle so um if we call this f then f theta one plus theta two is equal to f of theta one f of theta two where this is the product given above um next we can ask what is the kernel of this homomorphism well the kernel consists of all real numbers theta such that cosine of theta equals one and sine of theta equals naught so it's just multiples of two pi that's integer multiples of two pi um for a final example of a homomorphism um let's look at a slightly less obvious one what we're going to do is to take the group of rotations of an octahedron so let's take the rotations of an octahedron which has order 24 meaning it's got 24 elements in it and we're going to have a homomorphism from this to the group s3 which is permutations of three points and this is order six um and what we're going to do is we're going to take three objects what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the three diagonals of an octahedron so you see it's got one diagonal between my finger and thumb here and it's got another diagonal here and a third diagonal here and here so these three points are going to be the three diagonals and any rotation of the octahedron will just permute these three diagonals so this homomorphism in some sense trivial um any rotation of an octahedron automatically gives us a permutation of the three diagonals and if you think about this for a few seconds you see this is just a homomorphism and what's the kernel of this homomorphism well this group here is order six and this group is order 24 so there are definitely some elements of this mapping to the same element of this and we'll see fairly shortly that the kernel of a one group mapping on to another has ordered the quotient of this number by that number so the kernel should have four elements and we can see these four elements here's one of them I picked this diagonal and I just wrote by 180 degrees about this diagonal and you can see it maps each diagonal to the to the same diagonal and there are three ways of doing this because there are three diagonal so the kernel is the three rotations by 180 degrees about the diagonal plus the trivial symmetry where you do absolutely nothing to the octahedron so that's enough examples of homomorphisms the next few lectures what we're going to do is describe the small finite groups in order of size making a sort of rather forlorn attempt to classify all finite groups and what we'll do is we'll introduce lots of theorems about finite groups whenever we need them to classify finite groups of some order


Hi, my name is Augusto and today I'm presenting about the NCFMC Carrier General Purpose FPG Card for Fast Data Acquisition. So to start I will talk about a little bit of history. The development started in 2011 and was inspired by the CERN OpenHard initiative, so we decided we would try to release our designs as open source hardware back then. It was intended to be used on the bin position monitoring and fast orbit feedback systems for the forthcoming new Brazilian synchronized source, CERIOS, and it was developed initially under contract with the Warsaw University of Technology and last year we released version 4 of the hardware in a partnership with the Warsaw University of Technology and Creotech. So our goals were to promote a common hardware platform for fast data acquisition, real time processing and that is flexible enough that you can use in a wide range of applications. So for example we use the NCFMC Carrier for our bin monitoring position system and fast orbit feedback but I know that folks at the Warsaw University of Technology are using it for quantum computing applications. By virtue of it being open source hardware, you can avoid vendor locking. So if you want to produce, manufacture the board for a different vendor, you can. You can make modifications to suit your needs and this is good because it also alleviates some of the problems we are experiencing right now with supply chain problems. You don't depend on a single vendor for this hardware and from the start we decided that would be a good idea to follow open standards whenever possible so we didn't want to invent our own platform and try to stick with is already industry standard. So what is micro DCA? Micro DCA is short for Micro Tagalic Communications Computing Architecture is a descendant from the advanced DCA standard. It is an open standard and it's like the standards we use in desktop computers but for high availability systems. It offers a remote management via IPMI and it has a very flexible architecture. So in a typical micro DCA system you will have a crate that is this metal case on the right. A crate can come in different configurations, different number of slots and you can buy it from different manufacturers and inside the crate you will have a MCH that is card here on the left and is responsible for managing all the hardware inside the micro DCA crate. It manages the power, the clock routing and checks the temperature sensors, the voltage sensors and allows you to control the crate remotely. It's kind of like BMC if you are familiar with. An MC stands for Advanced Measuring Card. The board we are talking today, the MCFMC card is an MC. I will call it from now as AFC to make it short and the MC is connected in the front slots and it connects directly to the backplane. And then there is the RTM that is a board that you will fit in the back of the crate and it connects directly to the MC. So just to give a quick harder overview, the AFC comes with Xilinx Arctic 7 FPGA. This FPGA has 16 high speed transceivers for which we are using for PCI Express. The order 12 you can use for any application you need, you can use for Ethernet, you can use it for some special custom made serial protocol. It has 500 IO pins so you can connect plenty of hardware to this FPGA and it has 215,000 logic elements. It's not a huge FPGA but it's quite powerful. It comes with 2 GB of DDR3 memory so mainly in some applications that you deal with digital signal processing you may need a large memory or when you need to do fast bursts of data acquisition it's very useful. It has two general purpose FMC slots. These slots are standardized, you find it typically on FPGA development kits and these slots you can design your own hardware to fit there or you can buy some off the shelf hardware also. You can find one rear transition model or RTMs slots that you can fit another board if you need more space for your hardware. It comes with Cortex M3 microcontroller that is dedicated for housekeeping so it reads the temperature sensors, the voltage, current sensors. It also allows configuring the clock switch so this board has a clock crossbar that you can route clock signals to and from the FPGA. It comes with logitor clock oscillators and it's wide-rebed capable. Wide-rebed is a timing network protocol that was developed by CERN and it's useful for synchronizing devices with sub nanosecond precision. We don't use it but I know that some people are very interested so the AFC is capable of doing that. So the AFC V4, the last release, had a lot of hard bugs fixed. It has automatic JTAG configuration so what this means is each FMC card and the RTM card can have the JTAG chain routed to it but if you disconnect each card, the FMC, the JTAG chain will automatically bypass the disconnector so you won't be left with a broken JTAG chain. It has a simpler clock crossbar configuration and the FMC microcontroller was upgraded to microcontroller from the same family but with more flash and RAM. So the design files are available in the open hardware repository. From now we didn't merge the version 4 to the master brand so if you want to look at the latest release, please check the CTIFC for a branch. It's licensed under the CERN open hardware license version 1.1. We might update this license to the version 2 that it has a better wording and it's more clear what you can, what you cannot do with the hardware. So openMC is the firmware that runs on the MMC microcontroller is responsible for providing an IPM interface to the IFC so the MCH will talk to this microcontroller, request a sensor data request if you want to do a hot swap or something like that and it manages power for the FPGA, the FMCs, the RTMs and also configures the clock crossbar as said previously. So here is the repository we are right now doing a huge refactor to make it more modular so it can be more easily ported to different hardware. So the board support package is a basic project design. It defines the pin mapping, it supports PCI Express and the DR memory. It uses the HDL MAKE build tool for synthesis and simulations, it's very interesting too because you don't need to do directly with the Vivado IDE, you can just write some Python files to describe your project where your sources are and how to build them and the HDL MAKE tool will generate a MAKE file that automates all this synthesis and bit string generation process and with that I conclude my presentation. If you have any questions please reach me and thank you.


Hello, and welcome to the video, Digital Scores at Tulane and Overview. In this video, we'll provide a brief overview of the Digital Score resources available at Tulane University. Because each resource has a different user interface, advice on how to use each database may be found in separate, in-depth video tutorials. All of the Digital Score databases subscribed to you by Tulane University Libraries as well as a selection of open access resources are compiled on the Music Library Guide, which you can find through the library's website or by navigating directly to libguides.tulane.edu. Once on the guide, use the left-hand menu to navigate to the section Scores for Performance and Research. This page is divided into three sections, Digital Practice and Performance Editions, Digital Historical Editions, and In-Print Scores to check out. We will briefly be looking at only the first two sections of this page. There's very little overlap between the variety of databases under Digital Practice and Performance Editions, and unfortunately, there's still no way to search across multiple Digital Score databases with just one search. This means you may need to look in multiple databases to find the musical work you need. Very quickly, take a look at each of these resources, beginning with Music Online Classical Score Library. This one is by far the largest resource with downloadable, in-print PDF scores of works that are still in copyright from the medieval period to the present. The focus of this resource is largely classical art music. Nexo Sheet Music is the next largest collection of in-copyright Digital Scores. This platform has the unique capacity to transpose works at the click of a button. Nexo Sheet Music is a source for art music as well as instructional and method books, classic jazz, and traditional blues music. Art Song Central provides access to public domain editions of the traditional art music song repertoire. You may download and print PDF scores here. Be advised, however, you will find the occasional pop-up advertisement on this site. Contemporary Music Scores is a collection of scores submitted to the 2020 Kaleidoscope New Music Competition. PDFs of the scores may be downloaded and printed. IMSLP, also known as the Pertuchy Music Library, is a vast collection of early edition scores that have passed into the public domain. Here you will find here the standard repertoire, but note this is not a resource for 20th or 21st century repertoire. Finally, WLSCM, or the Web Library of 17th Century Music, provides online access to downloadable and printable scores of otherwise unavailable works from the 17th century. Returning to the Music Library Guide, we see the second section provides access to a selection of digital historical editions. In most cases, the resources here provide digital access to collections of manuscripts and early published editions by composers such as Beethoven, Bruckner, Chopin, and Mozart, or of a certain time period, as you will find with the remaining resources on this page. We hope you found this introduction helpful, and you're invited to dig into each database and explore them on your own. If you'd love to answer any questions you may still have, or help you find an especially tricky piece of music, send your questions and your stompers to media services at tulane.edu. Thank you so much for your time, and happy music making!


Ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. First, let me thank His Excellency Datto Ali-Apong and the Government of Brunei Darasulam for taking a strong leadership role in hosting this event. The Second Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit. Your government has done an outstanding job in bringing together the region in this beautiful city of Bandar Seri Begawan. Before I go further, I would also like to acknowledge the role of my predecessor, Mr. Greg Hunt, who hosted the first Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit in Sydney in 2014. I know the former Minister well and know his strong personal commitment and the passion he has for forests. We are partly all here today due to Greg Hunt's vision and drive to forge an opening of dialogue and a partnership for action between countries and the private sector and civil society more broadly. This is my first international engagement as the new Australian Minister for Environment and Energy. And I'm proud to be here as a representative of the Australian Government to address this audience on such an important issue. I'm 15 days into this job and still learning. However, I already know that conserving the great rainforests of the Asia-Pacific will be critical to achieving sustainable economic development and to meeting the climate goals we have just set ourselves under the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Deforestation and the resulting carbon emissions account for an estimated 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, one of the largest sources of global emissions after electricity generation. At the global level, we know that tropical forests store 25 per cent of the world's carbon and harbour 96 per cent of the world's tree species. Turning to the Asia-Pacific, we know we have some of the most significant tracks of rainforests anywhere in the world. However, the trends in forest loss in the Asia-Pacific are of some concern. Just looking at the forests of Southeast Asia between 1990 and 2010, these forests contracted in size by 3.32 million hectares, an area greater than that of Vietnam. It is also estimated 200 million people in the Asia-Pacific region depend on forests for income, as well as for subsistence needs including medicine, food, fuel and construction materials. Statistics like this are compelling. They lead to two unmistakable conclusions. That the forests of our region are vitally important to the economic, to the social and to the environmental viability of individual countries. And that actions taken in the region are critical to realising the global climate change ambitions we have agreed under the Paris Agreement. Consequently, all delegates participating in the summit have a clear opportunity and a responsibility, which is to meaningfully engage, to listen, to learn from one another on the best ways to co-operate to conserve the region's forests. For my own contribution to the summit, I wanted to put forward today three issues that may prove critical to realising our aspirations to slow, to halt and ultimately to reverse deforestation in the Asia-Pacific. First, we must use the global momentum of the Paris Agreement to drive forward meaningful country-owned actions on forests in the Asia-Pacific. Second, we cannot forget the important role of markets, of strong institutions and governments to drive and sustain these changes. And lastly, we must recognise, welcome and encourage the critical role of the private sector in scaling up these efforts to improve outcomes in our forests. Now let me reflect on each of these individually. Fundamental to the Paris Agreement is the acceptance, by all countries, of the need for an effective and progressive response to the threat of climate change. This is based on the best available scientific evidence. There is no doubt on the implications of the science or indeed of the scale of the challenge. The Paris Agreement provides us with a global framework to drive a unified and effective response. The critical role of forests is acknowledged specifically in Article 5 of the Agreement, which urges countries to take action to conserve and enhance forests, including through reducing deforestation and forest degradation. The Paris Agreement also calls for individualised action and leadership by countries. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have put forward their own commitments through intended, nationally determined contributions. Almost all of the countries represented at the summit have made significant commitments on forests in their nationally determined contributions. These commitments include increasing forest cover, reducing deforestation and improving sustainable forest management policies. For example, the Laos People's Democratic Republic has set out its ambitious national forestry strategy target to increase cover to 70% of land area by 2020. Similarly, Myanmar has set out targets to have 30% of its total land area designated as reserved forest or protected public forest and 10% of total land area designators protected area systems by 2030. Given the considerable economic and social pressures on these countries, I think these are remarkable commitments. And while the weight of expectation is upon us, the next critical step under the Paris Agreement is to turn these commitments into action and this action into investable plans and bankable projects. As a liberal, it probably comes as no surprise that I am a firm believer in markets and competition as the most effective and efficient means to deliver policy outcomes in society. To me, markets are the solution to many of the issues we face and have come together to discuss at today's summit. Yet it is fair to say that the market and our institutions could do better when it comes to valuing forests appropriately. For example, a 2012 joint report by the United Nations Environment Programme and Interpol suggests that up to 30% of all wood traded globally is logged illegally. And illegal peatland fires, along with their environmental and health consequences, make significant contributions to climate change. Markets have not properly valued the economic, the environmental and the social value of rainforests. If the forests were valued, including the carbon and non-carbon values, markets could respond appropriately. The critical question is how much should governments intervene and indeed in what form? We know for a market to work you need information, strong institutions and indeed effective governance. And when you apply this to climate change, a fundamental precursor to the operation of any market is the institutional capacity to measure and account for greenhouse gas emissions. As they say, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So returning to the question on the role of government, I offer the following practical examples of action drawn from my own country's experience. More than a decade ago, the Australian government invested heavily in developing a state-of-the-art land, sector and forest monitoring system that made us and made use of satellite data. Over time and off the back of these investments, we have the necessary institutional capacity to support policies that incentivize large scale emissions reductions in the forest and the land sector. For example, under our market-based emissions reduction fund, we are protecting native forests by reducing land clearing. The fund allows businesses and farmers to undertake activities that reduce emissions and receive carbon credits for the reductions. The activities must meet the requirements of an approved method. The method sets out the rules for determining and verifying the number of carbon credits that can be used. To date, the government has contracts with farmers for 52 avoided deforestation projects to deliver emissions reductions of 25 million tonnes of carbon greenhouse gases. This is achieved within a clear regulatory and governance framework. The fund is administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. That said, one issue we still face in Australia is how do we place a monetary value on the biodiversity and the ecosystem services provided by our lands and forests? While my department and many others are working on new ways to value biodiversity and use this to mobilize private sector investment, I see this as a shared problem for our region. One other thing that governments can do is to share knowledge and lessons learned. And this is what the Australian government has done and will continue to do in sharing our forest monitoring expertise with countries in our region. We have done this bilaterally with Indonesia and I'm pleased to announce today that Australia has committed to work with Indonesia on the second phase of its national carbon accounting system with a special focus on emissions from peatlands. And we have also been working in partnership with Norway and the United States through the Global Forest Observations Initiative to extend the outreach to more countries in our region. This initiative promotes a globally integrated approach to measuring forest emissions using satellite-based data. The work is already making a tangible difference in supporting countries in our region to measure the emissions from their forest resources. These are great practical initiatives that Australia is proud of and this summit provides an opportunity for delegates to learn more about them and how they could help countries meet their own commitments under the Paris Agreement. For those who want a hands-on experience, my department will be running a demonstration of the release of the Global Forest Observations Initiative's online tool called Red Compass at the summit tomorrow afternoon. Red Compass has just been updated to take account of the Paris Agreement. We know that making real progress on climate change and conserving our forests requires the participation of the private sector. Indeed, a core tenet of the Paris Agreement is the need for both governments and the private sector to invest in activities that lower greenhouse gas emissions and develop climate resilience. In the past, the business case for forest protection has been challenging to make. And as a result, it has been difficult to attract private sector investment in the scale that is required. But this is changing. Institutional investors are beginning to turn their attention to sustainable development because they see a shift is taking place. And they see the potential of commercial returns. We are on the cusp of significant opportunities, but as the region, we need to be better prepared by creating the right conditions for well-functioning markets to develop and to facilitate large-scale private investment in activities that do conserve forests. My predecessor, Greg Hunt, recognised this and established the private sector round table as part of the Asia Pacific Rainforest Partnership. And I would like to thank the chair of the round table, Ms Ada Greenbury, of Asia Pulp and Paper and the deputy chair, Mr Martin Wilder of Baker and McKenzie, for spearheading this initiative over the last six months. Your support, your expertise and your time and effort is greatly appreciated. I was pleased to be briefed on these promising pilot projects and the policy briefs put forward by the private sector round table. For example, there are private sector projects that are working on peatland protection in Indonesia. Another that is generating voluntary carbon units in Papua New Guinea, as well as interesting projects on how the legality of timber sourcing can be improved through DNA sampling of timber species in supply chains. There are also private sector projects that identify how to increase resilience of farmers in Sumatra and Borneo and how to provide viable alternative livelihoods for communities that are currently relying on deforestation. And I know that the likes of Credit Suisse and Baker and McKenzie have been working hard in this context on identifying how finance can reach the communities that rely on forests for their livelihoods in order to ensure sustainable outcomes. These projects are diverse in nature. Some are about creating credible, tradable units under a Red Plus mechanism. Some are about improving information gaps to better inform timber supply chains for consumers. And others are simply about demonstrating what best practice looks like when it comes to sustainable forest management. But they all have one thing in common. They are improving our understanding of how businesses can be competitive while still advancing the economic and the social conditions of forest communities in which they operate. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to point out on a lighter note that as a keen amateur photographer, I was deeply impressed with the photo exhibition of rainforests that are part of this event. I understand these photos came through a competition that drew over 200 entries. This was an open and inclusive way to bring attention to the different values we place on rainforests and a great and a great prelude to this summit. And for the summit itself, I urge you to take full advantage of the wealth of knowledge, experience and creativity of all the participants in this room. I look forward with great interest to hearing more about the actions being implemented in the region to protect and conserve our forests. But I also encourage you to extend the collaboration beyond the sessions themselves and to engage as broadly as possible in the hallways and the site events. This summit is all about partnership. And partnership is about a full exchange of ideas between the policy makers, the scientists, the business leaders and the community members. And I will be most keen to hear how your ideas take practical actions forward and I wish you all the very best for a very successful summit. Thank you very much. May we invite the chairperson to cordially invite the guest of honour to present a souvenir as a token of appreciation to the keynote speaker.