SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's good to see you guys.
SPEAKER_00: I'm back.
SPEAKER_00: It's nice to be with you this week.
SPEAKER_00: I've been uh downtown the last two weeks, so I'm excited to get to be with you guys again.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we are in week two of Uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Who's ready to get uncomfy today?
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a good day.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're new to Spring Lake, if I've not met you, my name is Arlen.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Lawrence Campus pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Uh super honored to get to be here uh as we just continue in our series Uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: And in this series, uh, before I I dive in, I just want to help you kind of shape uh the heart behind it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I know that that sometimes when uh churches talk about like difficult things or like hot button topics, sometimes it can feel like a lecture or even at worse, like a beatdown.
SPEAKER_00: Um and that's not my heart today, and that's not anybody's heart on staff or as a church.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what we want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we do need to have some hard conversations sometimes as a church.
SPEAKER_00: And we do this, and as we have hard hard conversations, it strengthens the church.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: As we have conversations and we walk through things and and we have these discussions, and so that's uh my heart today is to help strengthen the church and to help build us into a church that just loves people to the best of our ability and can help uh just uh care for people.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we're starting off pretty strong.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, Pastor Adam talked about mortality and uh that you're gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna follow that up with politics.
SPEAKER_00: And so some of you are immediately sat back and are like, nope.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, yeah, let's have this conversation, but we're gonna have the conversation, we're gonna talk about politics uh today.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna start off.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say the two words nobody ever wants to hear on a Sunday morning Republican and Democrat.
SPEAKER_00: If we did it, we're okay, we're still here, but we're gonna have this conversation today.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and why?
SPEAKER_00: Why did I want to have this conversation?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we want to have this conversation?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and here's my honest answer because I think political division is one of the most significant barriers that keeps people from walking through the doors of a church.
SPEAKER_00: I think it can be a really hard barrier for some.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then I'm also gonna be even more transparent.
SPEAKER_00: I have been burdened by how politicized the church, not Spring Lake, but the church overall, how politicized the church has become in recent years.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it grieves me when the name of Jesus is used for something that's not what it's meant to be used for.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how it's used, it should be used to preach the truth of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna say this that Jesus was not a Republican and he was not a Democrat because those things didn't even exist in Jesus' time.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Lord, and that changes everything about how we engage with the political world.
SPEAKER_00: And so today's conversation is gonna be hard, but it's gonna be honest.
SPEAKER_00: And it might be a little uncomfortable, but that's the name of the series.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not meant to shame anybody in this room, and it's not meant to create more division, it's help, it's meant to help build this community together.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's grow together.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me pray for us, and we're gonna jump in.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Lord, thank you that we have this church that we get to be a part of together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you that we get to uh just be in worship and in awe of you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you allow us to just make this time about you, that we give this to you because it is your time anyway.
SPEAKER_00: This is about you, it's not about us, and it's about honoring you with the best of who we can be.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you, and we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So here's how I kind of want to start today.
SPEAKER_00: I want to start with a question.
SPEAKER_00: And the question is this Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: I want to start with this question, and I want to start the conversation here because this is something that everybody has to answer for themselves at some points.
SPEAKER_00: And just sit with this question for a second, because if somebody came up to you on the street and they said, Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the vast majority of people are gonna answer just in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: People are gonna answer, uh, I'm a teacher, or I'm a contractor, or I'm a mother, or I'm a father, or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: Or they might even uh answer that question with, uh, I come from this city or this state.
SPEAKER_00: However, we answer that question is incredibly important.
SPEAKER_00: And some people answer that question uh just immediately aligning with uh political affiliation.
SPEAKER_00: But how you answer that question genuinely matters.
SPEAKER_00: And I say that because politics is deeply rooted in identity.
SPEAKER_00: It just is, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's deeply, deeply rooted in identity.
SPEAKER_00: And so how you engage with the political world almost entirely flows from how you see yourself, from where you get your identity, which means to talk about how Christians, and that's what we're talking to today, that's who I'm talking to today, Christians in the room, Christians.
SPEAKER_00: How do Christians engage with a political world around them?
SPEAKER_00: We actually have to start one further step back and we have to talk about who Christians are, who a Christian is.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we're gonna go to the New Testament for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we see uh throughout the entire through most of the New Testament, if you uh read most of it, most of the New Testament is just old guys writing letters back and forth, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like that's what the New Testament is.
SPEAKER_00: And a huge part of the author of the New Testament is a guy named Paul.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul almost always starts his letters uh like this Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Or we see other New Testament authors open their letters in a very similar manner.
SPEAKER_00: They open as a servant or a slave of Christ Jesus, or they they open in this way that immediately aligns themselves with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't open it with like their nationality or their occupation or their political standing or their social status.
SPEAKER_00: The very first thing out of many of these New Testament's mouths, the very first thing that they put on paper is their allegiance to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that is an accident.
SPEAKER_00: I really don't.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we read these introductions in context and then we read the rest of the book, we understand that they're not just writing their own agenda.
SPEAKER_00: That they're writing something that is aligned with the truth of who Jesus is, that they are writing in a way that they are in allegiance, that they are aligned with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And their identity set the tone for everything that followed.
SPEAKER_00: And that matters because that's a principle that we should hold to today, because your identity does drive engagement.
SPEAKER_00: And if you get the order wrong, everything else downstream starts to get off.
SPEAKER_00: If you start from the wrong place, everything else downstream is off.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you see yourself as anything other than a Christian first, sometimes, not sometimes, but everything else downstream will be off.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're building towards today is understanding our identity.
SPEAKER_00: Who are we?
SPEAKER_00: And so some of you guys are are thinking, like, yeah, Arlen, I get it.
SPEAKER_00: All right, like I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Christian, Jesus first, but I'm still an American and I still live here and I still vote here and I still pay taxes.
SPEAKER_00: What do I do with that?
SPEAKER_00: And that's a good question to be asking yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Because the answer isn't to disengage, the answer isn't to just throw your hands up and say politics doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: None of this is my problem, I'm just gonna wait for heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's not what scripture teaches.
SPEAKER_00: But this tension is that you exist in two kingdoms simultaneously, and navigating that is one of life's hardest challenges.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna take just a second, we're gonna land in Philippians, and we're gonna look at what Paul has to say about this.
SPEAKER_00: And so um, in Philippians, uh it says, But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is Philippians 3.20.
SPEAKER_00: And now I want us to understand something about where Paul is writing this, right?
SPEAKER_00: When and who he's writing this to.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so he's writing this to a Roman colony.
SPEAKER_00: He's writing this to a Roman colony, and in this Roman colony, some of them were Roman citizens and some of them were not Roman citizens, but Roman citizenship was an incredible honor to them.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a it wasn't just like a legal status, it was a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: And it came with protections and privileges and social standings, and they were proud to be Romans.
SPEAKER_00: They were proud of it, and they wore that identity, and it shaped how they saw themselves, and it shaped how they moved through the world.
SPEAKER_00: And in that culture, to those people, Paul is saying, but your citizenship is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what he doesn't say.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say Rome doesn't matter, he's not saying ignore your civic life, he's not saying just throw your hands up and not care.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying your citizenship is in heaven, and that citizenship supersedes every other one that you hold.
SPEAKER_00: And if you lose sight of that, again, everything downstream gets distorted.
SPEAKER_00: Your citizenship is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus himself, he actually gives us like a framework in Matthew 22.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we pick up Matthew 22, verse 15, it says, Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
SPEAKER_00: They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, they said, We know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You aren't swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are.
SPEAKER_00: Tell us then, what is your opinion?
SPEAKER_00: Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
SPEAKER_00: Show me the coin used to pay the tax.
SPEAKER_00: They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, Whose image is this?
SPEAKER_00: In whose inscription, Caesar's, they replied.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said to them, So give back to Caesar what's Caesar, what Caesar's and give to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees, they tried to trap him and they asked him, Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus asked for this for the coin and he says, This belongs to Caesar, so give it to Caesar, but give to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_00: And they love this moment because Jesus isn't trying to dodge it.
SPEAKER_00: He's not avoiding the question, he's actually answering it with a framework that's meant to last.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Yes, give it to Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: It belongs to him, give it to him.
SPEAKER_00: Government's real, civic life is real, taxes are real.
SPEAKER_00: Participate.
SPEAKER_00: It's not beneath you.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually something you should do.
SPEAKER_00: But know exactly where that authority ends in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because he says it bears Caesar's image, so give it back to him.
SPEAKER_00: But give to God what is God's, and you bear the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: So give to God what is God's.
SPEAKER_00: You are made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's.
SPEAKER_00: We give to God what belongs to God, and we belong to God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Give it to God, give your life to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's where I want us to land before we move forward just a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes something can be good for a country and not good for the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, whatever country you're living in, when that happens, a Christian has to understand where their first citizenship is.
SPEAKER_00: And our citizenship is first the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We are Christians first.
SPEAKER_00: And so when those two things come into conflict, and I promise you they will at some point, where's our allegiance?
SPEAKER_00: And we just have to ask ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that because I'm saying like our country doesn't matter, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't love your country because you should love your country.
SPEAKER_00: I love this country, and I love the freedoms that we have, including the freedom to do this right now, to have this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: These are things that we should never take for granted.
SPEAKER_00: We should be incredibly grateful for.
SPEAKER_00: But the biblical reality is this we're a citizen of heaven living in America.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a New Testament in the New Testament, Peter actually uses that language.
SPEAKER_00: He calls us foreigners.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we should be hiding from the world or that the world is evil, but because it's not our final home.
SPEAKER_00: We're passing through.
SPEAKER_00: And that changes our posture.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way: if you moved to another country, you get called tomorrow, you get offered a cool job, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00: You move to another country, you go to this country, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna follow the laws, you're gonna be a good neighbor, you're gonna do what the government asks you to do, you're gonna do the things that you're supposed to do, but you're probably not gonna forget where your home is.
SPEAKER_00: And if that country starts to butt up against what you believe your values are, you're not gonna forget where your home is.
SPEAKER_00: Christian, don't forget where your home is.
SPEAKER_00: And it's with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We are guests here, grateful guests, engaged guests, but we're guests, nonetheless.
SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, we do need to love the place that we live.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: And we should participate and we should pursue the good of this country.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah actually tells us to do this in the book of Jeremiah, it tells us to seek peace and the prosperity of the city that you've been placed in.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing for us to want.
SPEAKER_00: But we should love America in the way that a kingdom citizen does it.
SPEAKER_00: With open hands and with Christ at the center, and with a clear-eyed understanding that our ultimate allegiance was settled long before we ever got to step into a voting booth.
SPEAKER_00: That is faithfulness to be a Christian first, because everything else flows from there.
SPEAKER_00: How are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: It's quiet in here.
SPEAKER_00: We good?
SPEAKER_00: Getting a lot of crazy stairs.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: So, like, what do we do with this, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's good to know, it's good to have in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am a Christian first.
SPEAKER_00: I am a citizen of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we do as kingdom citizens, faithful foreigners?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, I have uh a few anchors that I have for us, and I'm gonna give us the do's and the don'ts.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna start with the do's.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna start with with the good ones, the do's.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the first one is this do seek justice with humility, not just victory.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so uh we start with this, and we're gonna look at the book of Micah for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and before we jump into Micah, Micah 6, verse 8, we have it for you as well.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Micah is his book where they're talking about idolatry and the like this struggle with immorality.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a really good book to kind of understand uh what's going on and how we should engage.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says this he has shown you, a mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
SPEAKER_00: Pause.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna stop and we're gonna actually have like a mini sermon within a sermon as we walk through this verse together, because we should act justly.
SPEAKER_00: And so the first thing, one of the first ways that a Christian should pursue and engage with politics around them is to seek justice.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: We should act justly.
SPEAKER_00: And politics is actually a really legitimate place to achieve justice for the poor and for the for the foreigner, for the vulnerable, for the marginalized.
SPEAKER_00: God cares deeply about these things, and so we should too.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We should care about what God cares about, and politics is a good place to do that, and it can help us do that, and so engaging with politics for this reason, I would argue, is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to seek and act justly.
SPEAKER_00: But notice what comes next love mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where it can get hard because justice without mercy is just self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Justice with no mercy is just about being right.
SPEAKER_00: And a motto that I I I've clung to for a long time, and I'm gonna share it with you, and hopefully you pick it up and run with it.
SPEAKER_00: If I am wrong about the way that I'm right, I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_00: If I am wrong about the way that I have that I'm right, I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And I might have the correct thought on something, but if I am cruel in the middle of that and I lack any mercy, I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I handled myself incorrectly.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where mercy matters.
SPEAKER_00: It means you pursue justice, but you hold compassion for the people on the other side of the conversation, even if you disagree with them.
SPEAKER_00: We still show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And then the third one is to walk humbly.
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, humility is the last thing that exists in political discourse.
SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't exist there, right?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's certain that they have the correct answer, and nobody's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And there's not a lot of humility there.
SPEAKER_00: And when that kind of absolution bleeds into the church, when we are so set that we're gonna defend stuff that's just not Jesus, then that level of absolution can bleed in.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we lose sight of what's important.
SPEAKER_00: Walking humbly means means holding your political convictions with open hands and being willing to acknowledge I might be wrong about some of this, and I need to seek what Jesus wants.
SPEAKER_00: And I should want what Jesus wants.
SPEAKER_00: Because the goal of Christian engagement isn't just victory or to win, it's to see flourishing, and to see the flourishing for the vulnerable and the common good, even for the people that don't vote the way that you do.
SPEAKER_00: Because if winning is just the primary goal, you have lost something more important than the election.
SPEAKER_00: It is about loving people, pursuing justice, showing mercy, and walking humbly.
SPEAKER_00: Then the next one, do pray for all governing authorities.
SPEAKER_00: This comes from uh 2 Timothy 2, 1 through 2.
SPEAKER_00: I urge then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say, all people.
SPEAKER_00: Let's try it again.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say, all people for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in godliness and holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before you just nod along and you're like, yeah, I do that.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to focus on something because sometimes I think our natural tendency is just to pray for the leaders we like.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for the ones we voted for, and then we don't really pray for the ones that we didn't.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not what Paul's saying to do.
SPEAKER_00: He says, All people, pray for all people, for all kings, all governing authorities, pray for them, pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at when this was written, there's some debate on when this, like in history, when this was actually written, but uh timeline-wise, it was either written under Nero, who was not a good dude, or it was written under another really bad Roman emperor, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like no span in time was this written in like a friendly democracy.
SPEAKER_00: This was written in the time when Christians were most likely uh persecuted.
SPEAKER_00: This was written in a time when it was really difficult for those who claim the name of Jesus, and yet Paul still writes this.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul still says, pray for your leaders no matter what.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: And so I uh I have homework for you today.
SPEAKER_00: I have I have a challenge for you today.
SPEAKER_00: When you leave here, pray for a leader that you don't agree with.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for a leader that you don't agree with.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I don't want you to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Don't pray that they just lose.
SPEAKER_00: And don't pray that their agenda that their agenda fails.
SPEAKER_00: Actually pray for them by name.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for their family, pray for their kids, pray for their salvation, pray that God reaches out to them, pray that they open their eyes to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: Genuinely pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'll tell you this it's really hard to dehumanize people that we're genuinely praying for.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: It's good.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for your leaders.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the do those are the do's.
SPEAKER_00: We're doing good?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: On to the don'ts.
SPEAKER_00: Don'ts, number one.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make your party your tribe.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I want to say this up front.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a lecture, and I'm not up here standing pointing fingers.
SPEAKER_00: I'm standing up here as somebody who loves this church, and I love the church, and I love uh the body of believers.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to see that that is our home, that is our group, that is our community, that is who we belong to.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We are not a part of any other tribe.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to that.
SPEAKER_00: And we get this from Psalm 146, 3.
SPEAKER_00: Don't put your trust in princes and in human beings who cannot save.
SPEAKER_00: Who cannot save.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's a question that I want us to sit with honestly.
SPEAKER_00: What happens to you emotionally if your party loses?
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: Because if the answer is despair, like if a bad election cycle just wrecks you, and you've lost all hope, maybe, just maybe, we've put hope in the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Don't make your party, your tribe, it can't be more than just it's it's it's something that you align values with, sure, it's all these things, but it's not your home.
SPEAKER_00: It's not your identity.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to be gentle but also clear: the political parties, neither one of them, any of them, not no political party on planet earth carries the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Not one.
SPEAKER_00: And the moment that we start saying that Jesus is whatever political party, we have watered down something that is never meant to be diluted.
SPEAKER_00: The name of Jesus is much more pure and it's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Because the honest truth is the world is not broken because a Democrat spent money in a way you don't like, and the world is not broken because a Republican made a policy you don't agree with.
SPEAKER_00: The world is broken because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Full stop.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The world is broken because of sin, and it's not broken because of any one person, it's broken because of all of us, it's broken because Because of sin, that's the diagnosis.
SPEAKER_00: And no election, no matter how important, fixes that.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing fixes sin.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say this as directly as I can.
SPEAKER_00: There is no political party, no leader that stands even close to the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: He is the great I am.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Alpha and the Omega.
SPEAKER_00: He is just God incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: He is God.
SPEAKER_00: And we should treat his name like that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying leaders don't matter, and I'm not saying that policy doesn't matter, but no leader, no matter how good, no matter how much they might align with your value, with your values, none of them have died for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: None of them died for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: None of them rose from the grave for you, and none of them hold the world together by their power, by the very words that they speak.
SPEAKER_00: His name cannot be a political brand, and it never has been and it should never be.
SPEAKER_00: Because our allegiance was bought by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: And our allegiance is so valuable that we should not give it to somebody who can't keep it.
SPEAKER_00: We give it to Jesus and Jesus alone.
SPEAKER_00: That is our tribe.
SPEAKER_00: It is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Don't dehumanize a neighbor across the aisle.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 22, verse 39.
SPEAKER_00: This is coming off 22, 37, and 38, where he says, A new command, I give to you, love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: And similarly, uh, love your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a this is a very important one because we live in a world that has politicized everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean everything.
SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the lines, we as people just uh have started to dehumanize the person across the aisle, and we've started to make them our enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't see them as image bearers, we see them as enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we see somebody across the aisle as the reason that everything's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00: And the church hasn't been immune to this, not even close.
SPEAKER_00: We have pastors who have uh taken sides from the pulpit.
SPEAKER_00: We have had uh Christians compromising the truth of God's word because it's more comfortable than confronting their own political party.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've had people who are louder on Facebook about whatever insert political agenda here than they are about the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we have had people who are so outspoken about political frustrations, but then are silent about the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And we have been fighting each other in the trenches.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been hurting each other.
SPEAKER_00: And he needs to see that the person across the aisle is not the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: They're an image bearer, and they're somebody that Jesus died for, and there's somebody that Jesus loved, and they may be your neighbor, they may be your coworker, they may be the very person that Jesus put in your life to share the gospel with.
SPEAKER_00: And if political identity burned that bridge, that's a tragedy.
SPEAKER_00: That has nothing to do with policy.
SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm gonna say this: lying is wrong, full stop.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter if a Republican does it or a Democrat does it.
SPEAKER_00: Lying is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Dehumanizing people is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Cruelty is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: When anybody does it, we as Christians should say, this is not good.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't treat people poorly, we shouldn't be cruel to people.
SPEAKER_00: And we must hold their hold that standard consistently, not just when it's politically convenient.
SPEAKER_00: Because the second that we compromise the truth just to protect a political tribe, it's not just a bad political decision.
SPEAKER_00: We have to hold true to what Jesus' standards are.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus deserves that, and he's worth so much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do with this?
SPEAKER_00: Like, where do we go with this?
SPEAKER_00: I know that this one isn't like everybody's favorite one, you know, happy Father's Day.
SPEAKER_00: But how do we how what do we do with it?
SPEAKER_00: We started with the simple question, who are you?
SPEAKER_00: And I hope by now we can probably answer that a little clearer.
SPEAKER_00: We are citizens of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: We are citizens of heaven, we are a faithful foreigner.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture tells us that we are ambassadors of another kingdom, living in a country that you are part of, but you were never meant to fully belong to.
SPEAKER_00: And let's hang out with that word ambassador.
SPEAKER_00: I get this from uh 2 Corinthians 5.20, uh, and it says, we are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
SPEAKER_00: Think about what an ambassador actually does.
SPEAKER_00: They live in a foreign country, they engage with its culture, its government, its people, they follow its laws, they work for its good, and they might even love it deeply.
SPEAKER_00: But again, they never forget who sent them.
SPEAKER_00: And when the values of that foreign country conflict with the values of the one that they represent, there is no confusion on where they stand, because their identity was settled before they ever got on the plane.
SPEAKER_00: And that's us, that's you.
SPEAKER_00: You are a you are an ambassador of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you call yourself a Christian, if you have signed on the daughter line and said, I want to call him Lord of my life, you are a citizen of heaven, but you are an ambassador of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are not a refugee from the political world, hiding from it, pretending that it doesn't matter, and checking out because it's just messy.
SPEAKER_00: You don't do that, you shouldn't engage with it.
SPEAKER_00: But you're also not a conqueror of it, as if the right election cycle finally ushers in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: You're an ambassador.
SPEAKER_00: You show up and you love your neighbors and you pursue justice and you pray for your enemies and you hold truth without apology and without cruelty.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, the end of every election cycle, the end of every new cycle, every existing political season, you know exactly where home is.
SPEAKER_00: And before we end today, I want to bring it back to the to the person that it should come back to, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let's bring it back to Jesus because here's what I want us to leave with today.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to leave and just be like, um, now I have a list of do's and don'ts that I have to follow, and I don't want people to feel guilty about something that they've posted online, or I don't want people to feel guilty about like a bumper sticker, and this isn't just like a civics lesson with some scripture in it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to have a conversation about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to leave with Jesus because here's the thing: Jesus is the ultimate example of everything that we talked about today.
SPEAKER_00: He was a citizen of heaven who came into a foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: He engaged fully with the culture, with the government, with the broken and the messy in the politically charged world of the first century.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't check out, he didn't hide, he showed up.
SPEAKER_00: And he loved them.
SPEAKER_00: And he never lost sight of why he came.
SPEAKER_00: And when they tried to make him a political king, and they did, they actually tried to like take him, like kidnap him and make him a political king.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us this in John 6 that the crowd wanted to take him by force and make him a king.
SPEAKER_00: He retreated, he withdrew because he knew that he was a king, but he just wasn't a king in the sense that they wanted him to be king.
SPEAKER_00: And he understood that his kingdom was bigger and it was eternal.
SPEAKER_00: And he gave to Caesar what was Caesar's, and he gave everything, his life, his blood, and his last breath to God.
SPEAKER_00: And because he did that, because he lived as the perfect ambassador, and he died in our place.
SPEAKER_00: We have been made citizens of the kingdom of heaven, not because we earned it, not because we voted for it, and not because we just like found a loophole in, because he gave us that opportunity with his life, death, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what's at stake when we attach his name to anything less.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's my charge to us as we close.
SPEAKER_00: Go home today and ask yourself that question.
SPEAKER_00: Genuinely ask yourself that question.
SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
SPEAKER_00: And I really, really, really, really hope that the answer to that question is I am a citizen of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I am a king, I am a king follower.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But then however you answer that question, ask yourself the next question: Does the way that I engage with the political world reflect that answer?
SPEAKER_00: When you sit down at Thanksgiving and politics comes up because it's gonna?
SPEAKER_00: Does your family see you as an ambassador?
SPEAKER_00: Or just like a cable news commentator?
SPEAKER_00: When you're on Facebook and you're scrolling and that familiar rage comes because we all know it comes, what's your first tendency?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna respond like a kingdom ambassador?
SPEAKER_00: When you walk into that voting booth, and I think everybody should walk into the voting booth.
SPEAKER_00: Do you walk into someone who has the ultimate hope and a candidate?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you walk into somebody whose ultimate hope was settled on the cross 2,000 years ago?
SPEAKER_00: You're an ambassador.
SPEAKER_00: You've been sent, and you have a role, and you're your role is not just to win the culture war, and it's not just to own the other side.
SPEAKER_00: Your role is to build the kingdom of heaven and represent your king faithfully, humbly, courageously, and lovingly.
SPEAKER_00: In every conversation, every post, every vote, every interaction with someone who sees the world different than you do.
SPEAKER_00: Your role is a Christian and ambassador because the world is not looking just for better politicians.
SPEAKER_00: The world is in desperate need of Christians who live like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Be that person, be the ambassador, be a Christian first and understand that everything will flow from there.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for this opportunity to be together as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, in this moment, I do confess that I have aligned myself with things I shouldn't, and I have I have given hope in the people that I shouldn't, and I have, I have had idols in my life, and I have had struggles.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I repent of all that, and I ask that you open my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I ask that you open the eyes of anybody that is looking for anything other, looking anywhere other than you, for hope and for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I pray that you give us a heart as a church to just cling to the truth of who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's how uh we're gonna kind of end our time to get in today, right?
SPEAKER_00: We just talked about the value of Jesus and the gift that he's given us.
SPEAKER_00: And we should respond.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways that we do respond to that is in communion.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna take that in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't have it, it's it's just in the back of the rooms.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we're gonna prepare our hearts to take this.
SPEAKER_00: And as we take this, I do want to say uh this is a family meal.
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is this is for Christians, right?
SPEAKER_00: So if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, we are so incredibly happy that you are here.
SPEAKER_00: We just ask that you not take this with us.
SPEAKER_00: This is for those who place their faith and their trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we take this uh as a way to remember the gospel, the way to remember the truth of what Jesus did and what he did for us on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh we get this from 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: It says, For uh I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he had given thanks and said, This is my body which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: And so go ahead and open up the bread piece together now.
SPEAKER_00: And as we take this, remember that this is the body of Jesus that was broken for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: We can take this together.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can open up the cup and it says he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant, my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in rememb in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: And when we take this, we represent it represents the blood that was spilled for you and I.
SPEAKER_00: We do this in remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and so you may take this together.