SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_00: New song church.
SPEAKER_00: We got a new pulpit today from the trustworthy pulpit supply of Walmart.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited about it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but no, it's great to be with you today.
SPEAKER_00: I was in Denver for a couple days last week, and it was good to be back.
SPEAKER_00: And there's two things that I just when I was kind of reflecting, meeting with people, hanging out with my mom, and uh just going to old places, two things stuck out to me.
SPEAKER_00: One, it just made it was very clear.
SPEAKER_00: I think I lived very comfortably before.
SPEAKER_00: I was in a comfortable place.
SPEAKER_00: I was comfortable where I lived.
SPEAKER_00: My house was set up exactly how I wanted it.
SPEAKER_00: I had all my coffee things, my espresso machines, and all the cups that I like, and just everything in the kitchen and my my desk and the speakers, as well as just the church, you know, community and just the routines that I was in, as well as the people that I hung out with, the places I wanted, the restaurants I liked.
SPEAKER_00: Um it just struck me.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, wow, you know, I was comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Moving here kind of kicked me out of that comfort.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that I realized was just how much I've really feel like I've grown in the last three and a half months.
SPEAKER_00: And I just was so thankful for that.
SPEAKER_00: I was so thankful for that.
SPEAKER_00: And really just kind of reflecting when you when I was in a comfortable place, you just kind of can get in a thing.
SPEAKER_00: You know how to do everything.
SPEAKER_00: You know what you like, you know how to do what you're supposed to do, and you just maintain that kind of level of comfort.
SPEAKER_00: Getting kicked out, kind of out of your comfort, it really helped me grow and just in kind of reflecting you as a community.
SPEAKER_00: I just felt incredibly thankful that so many of you have just been instrumental in that, in my own growth, in my own journey, in my own learning, in my own process with God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I just feel clearer and more pure and more confident and just more at peace.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm thankful.
SPEAKER_00: So I say that for two reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One, just to tell you that I'm just thankful for you as a community, as a congregation, um, and as individuals.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you've been influential in my own life in three and a half months.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, in three and a half more months, man, I'll be in a better place.
SPEAKER_00: Start a preaching cohort in May with three other young pastors.
SPEAKER_00: We have a coach, it's a big church in Arizona, and we'll do that for 10 months.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll just keep on growing in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm just all saying thankful for you.
SPEAKER_00: The second reason I brought it up is I kind of know that sometimes the getting kicked out of our comfort can be uncomfortable, right?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe even as news song, right?
SPEAKER_00: We were in a routine before I got here, right?
SPEAKER_00: There was kind of a system, there was expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Verick comes in and it's like everything has shifted, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're getting all these different things and different programs, and it can be uncomfortable, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we are in a comfortable place.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, we will experience the same, where there is out of our discomfort, we can grow in godly ways, and God can use it to challenge us, to convict us, to teach us, to grow us, um, to expand our hope.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's my prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And just kind of in reflecting on like how do we um just maintain that hope in the midst of this uncomfort or discomfort.
SPEAKER_00: But I think there's one thing that helps us.
SPEAKER_00: It's staying focused on where we're going, staying focused on when we're going, right?
SPEAKER_00: We we read this um in Hebrews, you know, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're we're keeping focused on where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: But as a church, I think it also can be helpful.
SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to reiterate um there's three things that I feel like we've kind of settled on, at least I have, of what we're going for as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the first one, Julie, remember?
SPEAKER_00: Uh worship, worship, worship, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be a people of passionate worship.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be a people of passionate worship.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we become a people of worship?
SPEAKER_00: Is it just getting the music to be a little better and the slides a little cooler, and you know, we we're gonna vibe a little better, you know, and feel feel out.
SPEAKER_00: No, worship is a response to the knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's very clear in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: As we know and see God, our universal response is worship.
SPEAKER_00: We worship.
SPEAKER_00: The only response to the knowledge of God is worship.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been talking about through this series that we are beholding Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We want to behold the King, behold the beauty of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember, I just I described beauty is that which stirs joy and love and satisfaction or peace or excitement or awe or wonder or worship when we see it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Beauty is stirs worship when we see it.
SPEAKER_00: Um we talked about that Jesus is the source or the creator or the beginning or the the the initiator, the designer of all beauty.
SPEAKER_00: He's the designer of all beauty, as well as the summation, or he's the fullness, or he's the embodiment of all beauty as well.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he is worthy of worship.
SPEAKER_00: He's worthy of worship because he is the beginning of all beauty, the designer of all beauty, and the embodiment of all beauty.
SPEAKER_00: So when we see him, we worship.
SPEAKER_00: Our response is only worship.
SPEAKER_00: So I say that of us becoming a people of passionate worship.
SPEAKER_00: How do we become that?
SPEAKER_00: We seek to know him, we seek to see him, we seek to understand.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first pillar.
SPEAKER_00: What's the second one?
unknown: Formation.
SPEAKER_00: Formation and formed into what?
SPEAKER_00: The like-mindedness of Jesus, the like-mindedness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I've been in several churches in Denver.
SPEAKER_00: I was kind of a church hopper because I I kind of knew a lot of people in a lot of churches, and as different things would were needed, or just programs came up, or just friends kind of changed, I would, you know, move around.
SPEAKER_00: So I've been to a lot of churches in Denver as well as in Texas.
SPEAKER_00: Generally, that is not the objective in my personal experience, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're we're focusing, you know, emotional health or financial security.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be formed in some sense, and both of those things are great, but an actual like-mindedness to Jesus, that he is our standard, that he that his humility is what we're genuinely going for, I feel like is less emphasized or less expected, right?
SPEAKER_00: But no, Jesus is not just the beauty that we worship, but he's also uh the Lord that we follow.
SPEAKER_00: His life is our example, and so we look to him in beauty and know his humility and meekness and gentleness and kindness and goodness and generosity.
SPEAKER_00: And and Paul is jumping up and down throughout the New Testament saying, conform to the fullness of Christ, the full measure of Christ, which is maturity or perfection.
SPEAKER_00: And so we want to push into that, be formed into the like-mindedness of Christ, because in it internally we are formed before we are externally transformed.
SPEAKER_00: And so formed into like-mindedness of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Monday night we talked about that.
SPEAKER_00: Paul also talks, mentions that we train ourselves in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just happen with us sitting, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, there's a work, there's a diligence, there's a dedication, there's a training, there's an effort, there's a daily dying, there's a laying down our life, carrying our cross daily, which which allows us to walk into this godliness that of Christ within us.
SPEAKER_00: So the second thing we're going for, we want to be fully formed into the like-mindedness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the third thing?
SPEAKER_00: We want to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be sent, right?
SPEAKER_00: We want to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: We want to go to where the people are.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I've been in several churches, and I've never seen a church that like that is our focus of church growth.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's very hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: Generally, in all the churches I've been in church growth, and and Bill Bright somehow does this calculation.
SPEAKER_00: He says 95% of church growth is just a transfer.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're hoping you're in a city where you're getting a lot of people moving to.
SPEAKER_00: If not, you're just trying to pull around the merry-go-round because that is kind of the nature generally of church growth, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's from one church to the next.
SPEAKER_00: Going missionally, where we want to be sent to the lost, to the confused, to the the the prodigals, is a whole lot more difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of just reflecting on why I think that is.
SPEAKER_00: One, I think just practically, it takes a lot more effort, work, you know, a relational capacity to go out.
SPEAKER_00: But two, I think just spiritually sometimes, if a church becomes incredibly missional, I feel like the enemy knows, okay, well, this is problematic.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because, like, he gets the game, he knows eternity.
SPEAKER_00: The last thing he wants is more people to come into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But as a church, that's what we're going for.
SPEAKER_00: So everything we're doing with Lorraine, the you know, guiding lights and the community center, and you know, just everything else, the men's nights, regen, a big focus of that, even just kind of building out Sunday garments.
SPEAKER_00: We want to go and reach the lost.
SPEAKER_00: And I've kind of been hoping, you know, that through April we'll get things organized, and then in May we'll just be going out.
SPEAKER_00: And I told you know, Lindsay and Loretta, you know, three or four people a month, which not it's not about numbers, but I just want to see people reached.
SPEAKER_00: And so kind of building the infrastructure where we can be sent now.
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of where we are going.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be a people of passionate worship, we're gonna be people formed into the like-mindedness of Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: That his humility is our standard of maturity.
SPEAKER_00: And three, we want to be a people sent, we want as people saved back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just thought I'd start with that to give us a little bit of hope.
SPEAKER_00: That one, you know, two things.
SPEAKER_00: One, I'm just thankful for y'all as individuals.
SPEAKER_00: I have been changed already, three and a half bucks.
SPEAKER_00: That's praise God.
SPEAKER_00: Inwardly, I just feel I'm in a better place.
SPEAKER_00: Two, I understand the discomfort can kind of be or or or changing of things can kind of be uncomfortable, but hopefully it leads us to where where we are growing in greater ways.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to start with that encouragement, and then I will pray and we will start in the beauty of Jesus, John chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we do just thank you for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, God, that Lord, you are present, you're active.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, speak to us, encourage us, Lord, just that we would um just be fully conformed to the fullness, the full measure of Jesus, Lord, and Lord, in that Lord, we would be just people of passionate worship, that we would be a people sent, Lord, and that Lord, there would just be an excitement and a hope and expectation, Lord, that you are able to save people, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We just thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So the beauty of Jesus, today we're talking about his justice and mercy, his justice and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Generally, when we think of justice, at least for me, I think of a courtroom, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a guy in handcuffs, there's a police officer, there's a judge about to sentence them for whatever he did wrong.
SPEAKER_00: There's a jury listening to a trial.
SPEAKER_00: This is criminal justice, right?
SPEAKER_00: When somebody has done something wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of how we in English define the term justice mostly.
SPEAKER_00: For mercy, we might think of Trump pardoning the turkey, the turkey, right?
SPEAKER_00: It is a pardon, right?
SPEAKER_00: The turkey isn't gonna be eaten this year, but it I mean, it's pretty big, it might be eaten next year, but there's a pardon, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we think of mercy in terms of a pardon, but I thought just from the beginning, it'd be helpful to kind of clarify terms.
SPEAKER_00: And biblical justice is really living in right relationship, living in right relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's the doing of righteousness relationally, it's interactive.
SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time trying to find the simplest biblical definition of justice, but I think this kind of summarizes it that it really is the relational aspect of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It's the relational aspect of righteousness, which is why in Hebrew, a lot of times the the word that we that is used for justice, we just translate as righteousness in English.
SPEAKER_00: So justice is is the right interactions between us.
SPEAKER_00: It is the right, the perfect, the the good interactions between beings, whether us to God or us to each other.
SPEAKER_00: But in sin, we we no longer live in right relationship with God or others.
SPEAKER_00: So, what did that God do?
SPEAKER_00: God gave us the law to so that we could know how we live in right relationship, right?
SPEAKER_00: The law was given so that we can know how to live in right relationship with each other, and we can live in right relationship with God with God.
SPEAKER_00: And we know from Romans that whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.
SPEAKER_00: The commandments: you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and whatever other command there may be, they're all summed up in this one command.
SPEAKER_00: And what is it?
SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor as yourself, love your neighbor as yourself, the fulfillment of the law, the law given to us so that we can have right relationships with each other.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, actually, love is all we need to have this fulfillment of right relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Because why?
SPEAKER_00: Because love does no harm to a neighbor, does no harm to a neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Injustice is exactly that, harming a neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Justice, again, being right in our relationships with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, love is the fulfillment of love.
SPEAKER_00: So that'd be helpful to also define love, biblical love.
SPEAKER_00: People define it in several ways, but I think it's also kind of three points.
SPEAKER_00: It's the joy of giving ourselves for another's good.
SPEAKER_00: The joy of giving ourselves for another's good.
SPEAKER_00: I think they're all important.
SPEAKER_00: We also read in Romans chapter 5 very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person.
SPEAKER_00: Though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die.
SPEAKER_00: They're good.
SPEAKER_00: But God demonstrates his own love, right?
SPEAKER_00: The joy of giving himself for another good.
SPEAKER_00: He's demonstrating his own love for us in this.
SPEAKER_00: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: And in Hebrews, it says, For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
SPEAKER_00: For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The word in Greek is very clear.
SPEAKER_00: It is happiness, it is celebration, it is excitement, it is joy the way we think of joy, and for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning his shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of a side note, Dallas Willard wrote two books, Divine Conspiracy and Great Omission.
SPEAKER_00: Just in reading them, I was forced for a seminary class, I had to write kind of a summary.
SPEAKER_00: My summary of it there is the of his books.
SPEAKER_00: There is no joy without happiness, and there was no love without enjoyment.
SPEAKER_00: For me, it was a shift because up to that point I thought joy and happiness were separated.
SPEAKER_00: I thought love and enjoyment also were separated.
SPEAKER_00: You can love out of duty, but biblical love is the joy of giving ourselves for another's good, combining them.
SPEAKER_00: Justice is love, which again is the joy of giving ourselves for another's good.
SPEAKER_00: Love demonstrated in relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And with that, we'll pick up kind of as a just a background.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll pick up in John chapter 7, verses 1 to just kind of understand justice in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_00: After this, Jesus went around in Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders were looking for a way to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember from last week, what was the scene at the end of last week?
SPEAKER_00: Does I remember I know these are kind of cruz questions, but he gave some very insane words, right?
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of his disciples left.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he said, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you can have no part of me.
SPEAKER_00: People were like, okay, you know, I'm done with this guy.
SPEAKER_00: This guy is nuts, right?
SPEAKER_00: And they all started leaving.
SPEAKER_00: And it says after this conversation, Jesus was up in Galilee, up in the north.
SPEAKER_00: He did not want to go down to Judea because they were looking for a way to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: But when the Jewish festival of tabernacle was near, Jesus' brothers, his own biological brothers, said to him, Hey, leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do.
SPEAKER_00: No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret.
SPEAKER_00: His own brothers mocking him, his own brothers mocking him, saying, Hey, don't hide up here in the north.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be this public figure.
SPEAKER_00: You want all these people to follow you.
SPEAKER_00: Go down where all the people are and show yourself, right?
SPEAKER_00: His own brothers mocking him.
SPEAKER_00: Since you're doing these things, show yourself to the world.
SPEAKER_00: For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
SPEAKER_00: His own brothers did not believe in him.
SPEAKER_00: James became the leader of the Jerusalem church.
SPEAKER_00: James, the brother of Jesus, after James, the brother of John, was martyred.
SPEAKER_00: James, the brother of Jesus, became the leader of the Jerusalem church.
SPEAKER_00: So eventually, after Jesus' resurrection, his more than like that his brothers came into faith, at least we know of James.
SPEAKER_00: He continues, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.
SPEAKER_00: The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to his brothers, saying, Hey, the world can't hate you.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because at that point they were one with the culture.
SPEAKER_00: They are one with the culture, but Jesus is saying they hate me because I testify or I speak the truth that its words, works are evil.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was hated because he called out their injustice.
SPEAKER_00: First point.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a world of injustice.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like so simple to say.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus is saying, He's saying it's true that the works of the world are evil.
SPEAKER_00: If injustice is karmic causing harm to another, that is the world that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: Relationally, there's harm.
SPEAKER_00: We all experience it personally.
SPEAKER_00: We all can read about it in the newspapers.
SPEAKER_00: We can see it, you know, in just in global news.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a world of just injustice.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a relationally broken world, not living in this perfect love in every relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is testifying that the works of the world are injustice.
SPEAKER_00: He continues in verse 14 of the the gap between he was he was going to go down to the festival.
SPEAKER_00: He says he's not going.
SPEAKER_00: About halfway through the festival, Jesus did go up to the temple courts and he began to teach.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews there were amazed, and they asked, Well, how did this man get such learning without having been taught?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, My teaching is not my own.
SPEAKER_00: It comes from the one who sent me.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is laying out a dichotomy.
SPEAKER_00: Those who speak the words of God, which is the truth, which is Jesus, and what he is teaching, again, he's testifying the world's works are evil, that it is unjust, that it's relationally broken between God and people, and that is the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And then there are those who speak on their own or for their own glory or good.
SPEAKER_00: And there are only the two options: those who speak for their own glory and those who are speaking the word of God, the world is speaking to their own personal gain.
SPEAKER_00: Second point, injustice is perpetuated by lies, people speaking for the personal gain.
SPEAKER_00: If justice is being in right relationship with God and others, and injustice is the opposite of that, then only the truth of God can lead us back to right relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, looks are deceiving.
SPEAKER_00: Or what seems to make perfect sense can be deceiving.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 24, he tells them stop judging by appearances.
SPEAKER_00: But judge with righteous or right judgment.
SPEAKER_00: There is the appearance of truth, and there is the actual truth.
SPEAKER_00: Summarizing those justice or right relationship between God and others requires the truth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Switch over to mercy.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 8, where it says the teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.
SPEAKER_00: It's always so interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00: They were caught in adultery.
SPEAKER_00: And only one person is brought, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's only one woman brought in in adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly they know the God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because they were caught in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: They made her, not them, they made her stand before the group, and they said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman, this woman alone was caught in the act of adultery.
SPEAKER_00: In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.
SPEAKER_00: We should stone her.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what do you say?
SPEAKER_00: They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing me.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
SPEAKER_00: People speculate of what he was writing, right?
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea.
SPEAKER_00: Some say he was writing the name of the man that they knew he was caught with, you know, like saying, Okay, well, here is a woman you're you're you're accusing.
SPEAKER_00: Here, I'm writing the name on the ground of the man who's not here who should be with her.
SPEAKER_00: When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.
SPEAKER_00: And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: We again don't know what he was writing.
SPEAKER_00: Some people speculate he's writing a list of their affairs or whatever it is that they knew they had been involved with.
SPEAKER_00: And he's writing a list of things of their own sin.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, and told until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they?
SPEAKER_00: No one, sir, she said.
SPEAKER_00: Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.
SPEAKER_00: Go now and leave your life of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Neither do I condemn you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We read in John 3 earlier that Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world, right?
SPEAKER_00: He did not come to condemn the world.
SPEAKER_00: So even though we're in this works of evil or this this this injustice of this world of injustice, he did not come to condemn the world.
SPEAKER_00: He came to save the world, he came to show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: I thought it'd be helpful just also defining mercy is the father forgiving, restoring, and delivering the broken.
SPEAKER_00: Just in reflecting and reading, I thought it was interesting.
SPEAKER_00: There is no mercy without brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: There's no mercy without brokenness, and mercy is demonstrated to the broken in forgiveness, restoration, and deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: And I gave all this as context of justice and mercy just to talk through how do we engage the world?
SPEAKER_00: How do we engage the world?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has said, okay, the works of the world are evil, the world is injust.
SPEAKER_00: How do we engage this world?
SPEAKER_00: This man by the name of Richard Nieber wrote a book called Christ and Culture.
SPEAKER_00: He was the brother of Reinhold Nieber, who was much more famous and is public intellectual and very uh good at kind of apologetics and just speaking into culture.
SPEAKER_00: Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society, but Richard, his brother, wrote this book called Christ and Culture.
SPEAKER_00: And it was really just reflecting on how does the church or Jesus call us to engage with this world that is broken, this world of injustice.
SPEAKER_00: He found five categories, or he kind of listed five categories, and they're not a continuum.
SPEAKER_00: Those that are more opposed to culture than those that are more aligned with culture.
SPEAKER_00: And it starts with those that are he calls Christ against culture, Christ against culture.
SPEAKER_00: Think of Christ against culture.
SPEAKER_00: We might have the Amish, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or the Mennonites, or even the monastics, right?
SPEAKER_00: They are saying that culture is evil, the works of the world are evil.
SPEAKER_00: There is injustice.
SPEAKER_00: So as the people of God, we need to isolate away from the culture of the world and form our own separate culture, either monastically or in just kind of Amish type communities or Mennonite type communities.
SPEAKER_00: Christ against culture is protection.
SPEAKER_00: It's this idea that Christ is the antithesis to culture.
SPEAKER_00: His second category was Christ in paradox with culture.
SPEAKER_00: Christ in paradox with culture.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this idea of dualism, similar to what kind of Luther taught.
SPEAKER_00: Luther wrote temporal authority to what extent it should be obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: And in that, he's reflecting on this two-kingdom theology: that there is the kingdom of God, and there's the kingdom of the world, and they are entirely separated.
SPEAKER_00: They cannot be conjoined in any way.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God is those within the church renewed, reborn into his lordship.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of the world is a kingdom of wrath and severity.
SPEAKER_00: God has ordained two governments, the spirit, or the spiritual, by which the Holy Spirit produces Christians and righteous people under Christ, and the temporal, which restrains the unchristian and wicked, so that they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly, at least outwardly.
SPEAKER_00: Through that part is.
SPEAKER_00: But the temporal is our worldly governments.
SPEAKER_00: And he believed that basically there were two kingdoms: there's the kingdom of God, there's the kingdom of the world, and they are in paradox with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we think of it as a paradox?
SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like a contradiction that the view can simultaneously believe that Christ has claim over culture while insisting that Christ has nothing to do with culture.
SPEAKER_00: So the second one, Christ in paradox with culture, kind of views it as this dualism.
SPEAKER_00: Third one, try Christ transforming culture.
SPEAKER_00: Christ transforming culture.
SPEAKER_00: We're acting as an agent in a sense of justice to restore some sense of relationship, whether it's with the homeless, um, it could be changing the the you know that's that's one run down.
SPEAKER_00: Um guy by the name Abraham Kuyper, one of my favorite people.
SPEAKER_00: He was all about Christ transforming culture.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I like him?
SPEAKER_00: He started out as incredibly liberal, liberal Christian that they basically was almost not even a Christian because he they they so devalue the crucifixion of Christ and the deity of Christ and the whole gospel that you're not even sure they're Christian.
SPEAKER_00: He started out in that camp.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Dutch guy.
SPEAKER_00: Through his studies and research, he became very conservative reformed, very conservative reformed, but he maintained a bend that as a transformed child of God, we are called to transform culture.
SPEAKER_00: So he wrote a whole political platform.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Dutch prime minister for four years, and he wrote he has a quote that kind of summarized a lot of this view that there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry my, does not cry my.
SPEAKER_00: He believes that Jesus was sovereign over it all, and we need to engage culture to transform it.
SPEAKER_00: Christ transforming culture, there is conversion in culture.
SPEAKER_00: Christ above culture, kind of Aquinas' view.
SPEAKER_00: This is the triumph of St.
SPEAKER_00: Aquinas.
SPEAKER_00: It's a painting.
SPEAKER_00: I'll zoom in on it.
SPEAKER_00: But Aquinas saw culture as genuinely good and meaningful, but it was incomplete.
SPEAKER_00: So he thought, like Plato, Socrates, there's there's some truth to it, but without Christ, it's essentially all meaningless because Christ perfects or summarizes or is the needed ingredient to reveal and perfect all of culture.
SPEAKER_00: So he thought culture was good, but it just needed Christ to kind of dictate it.
SPEAKER_00: And in this painting, you have Jesus up at the top surrounded by a crowd of witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: I find it interesting.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of old paintings for most of actually church history, they thought theology was downstream of theology.
SPEAKER_00: The church was downstream of theology.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, from Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, our reformers themselves, they were theologians, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and even before that, you know, it was it was theologians, thinkers that were knowing God, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so the people up in the heavenlies around Jesus, they all have their books out.
SPEAKER_00: Below that is Aquinas, again, with other scholars sitting around him, and below that is all the heresies and cardinals and others.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's just this idea that that Christ is above culture and and it's downstream.
SPEAKER_00: Christ's culture is downstream of the Christian thinkers.
SPEAKER_00: There is synthesis eventually, and finally, Christ of culture is an article from 2020.
SPEAKER_00: A trans Christian minister came out in a sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Now she's bracing for what comes next.
SPEAKER_00: The articles published, I think, on the same day she gave she or he or uh they gave a sermon and came like the coordinator, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is this is Christ of culture.
SPEAKER_00: Then it's this idea that culture is always good, and and we as Christians just accommodate and live in the culture that we're given.
SPEAKER_00: So Niever just gave an overview of different options, how the church through history in different congregations, individually, even people engage culture.
SPEAKER_00: We're knowing this world is is in a place of brokenness and unrighteousness and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: How do we go out and engage it?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's a continuum.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we engage correct culture?
SPEAKER_00: And I encourage you to think through in your own line.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what how do you personally engage the culture that is goddessing, or your neighbors, or your co-workers, or even the greater culture of this country?
SPEAKER_00: And I think from just kind of going back to the passages in John, Jesus at least gives us two ways that he clearly engaged culture.
SPEAKER_00: The first is we speak the truth of God.
SPEAKER_00: We speak the truth of God.
SPEAKER_00: There's two sides to it.
SPEAKER_00: I think we speak truth to power, which is what he did, which got Jesus killed eventually, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was speaking truth to power, but he's also speaking truth to neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: Since we live in a world of injustice or broken relationships, full of sin and abuse, and that injustice is perpetuated by lies, and can and those looks could be deceiving.
SPEAKER_00: Justice requires the truth of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So we speak the truth, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's how do we engage culture?
SPEAKER_00: We speak the truth of God in whatever communities, whatever context, whatever platforms we are given, not in an arrogance, um, not in condescension, but also not in hiding.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, as Jesus did, we show mercy, we show mercy, mercy, we forget, we restore, we deliver the broken.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the whole ideas of kind of the guiding lights circles or regeneration or aang or all these things.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's reaching, showing mercy to the broken.
SPEAKER_00: And so just as me personally, and and reflecting on how did Jesus engage the injustice of this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's a big question.
SPEAKER_00: People have answered in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's clear he did at least two things.
SPEAKER_00: He spoke the truth of God.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know the truth of God?
SPEAKER_00: We know the word of God, and so we can speak the truth of God unashamedly and and and unabashedly.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it is necessary in us engaging culture.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we dialogue to bring a world of injustice back into right relationships with God and others.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's something that we show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We show mercy, we we work in forgiveness and restoration and deliverance of the broken.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke Jesus tells us, be merciful, even as your father is merciful.
SPEAKER_00: So, in closing, I just thought I encourage you to reflect on what does it look like for you to engage culture.
SPEAKER_00: There is so many confusing, contradicting ideas of how the church should engage culture right now.
SPEAKER_00: If you're if you're paying attention to any authors online or watching them preachers, it is so many ideas of how the church, we as a church of and the people of God should engage culture.
SPEAKER_00: And I encourage you to to wrestle in your own sense.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't, we I mean, I don't think we should stand back and be the Amish, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna separate entirely from culture and or or even the dualistic Martin Luther that we huh?
SPEAKER_00: It's not biblical, um and it's not Jesus, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But there's certainly people who do it, but there's people in the spectrum and just a confusion.
SPEAKER_00: And for us as a church, like what does it mean when we're we are being sent?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean that we're we're sent out?
SPEAKER_00: I think just in demonstrating the mercy of Jesus, as well as communicating the truth of God.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the world is evil, its works are evil, it's suffering in this brokenness of relationships with each other and in God.
SPEAKER_00: So there's an abuse of relationship, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's a lack of love.
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do we go out and communicate to them and to reach them and to engage them?
SPEAKER_00: We speak the truth of God and we demonstrate the mercy of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: With that, I will pray.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord Jesus, I just pray that as a church, Lord, we would be engaging this culture, this community of God's Lord, and that we had see your example, or that you spoke the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You spoke truth to power, and you were not ashamed of it, or embarrassed or hiding, or afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you're fearless in speaking truth to power, but you also spoke truth um to the neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: And and Lord, I just pray that the truth of God would just be free on our lips, Lord, and that we we wouldn't hide, uh, but Lord, we would engage, Lord, this community and and and and be a presence, Lord, in this community, Lord, that is active.
SPEAKER_00: I pray also, Lord, just our hearts would be moved in mercy, Lord, that as we've received mercy, and that we as as you have been merciful to us, the Father, that we would also just be moved in mercy toward the broken.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we just yeah, in any situation where people are broken, Lord, I just pray that we would step in as a community just to engage the broken.
SPEAKER_00: That we'd be sent in mercy, God.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, you'd fill us, give us vision, give us ideas, give us dreams, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That Lord, we can't just engage this city, this town, Gunnison, Colorado, Lord, with the mercy of God, Lord, because we know the mercy we have received.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.