Navigating Modern Politics as Kingdom Citizens

I'm going to uh get into the message today.

I'm going to talk about the kingdom of God.

We're in week five of this series, so we're going to kind of bring it home today.

But before I do, let's just open our hearts in prayer.

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus.

We thank you, God, for this moment.

Lord, as we open ourselves to you, often, God, we see things a little differently.

Maybe we become reminded of something that we've already known but we've lost track of.

Or maybe, maybe there's something completely different than we've been thinking altogether.

And in these moments, Lord, when you speak to us individually, we predetermine obedience, as tough as it may be.

Lord, give us eyes to see, give us ears to hear what you would say to us.

And Lord, keep doing, we pray, something so special in our community.

Lord, you're doing something here that is an example to the world.

It's what it's intended to be as the body of Christ.

People that come from different places, different backgrounds, different life experiences, people who see the world differently.

And yet, Lord, you've brought us together in unity as your sons and daughters.

And so, uh, God, I pray that you would bring us together even in these moments as you work individually in our hearts, you would do something in us as a collective.

We love you and thank you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

Okay.

Kingdom of God.

We're talking about this.

Um Jesus uh shows up talking about the kingdom of God, and uh it was what he was, it was his primary message, and so we're looking closely at what did he mean by that.

In week one, we uh looked at the contrast between the kingdom of God and the empires of the world.

And so we looked throughout history at all the empires that have, not all of them, but many of them that have uh come and gone over the years, and there's a common thread that empire is built on the love of power and the power of fear.

Um people are often controlled through fear.

Oftentimes, even at the top, leaders with great bravado are often very much afraid, and so they're dealing with their own fear by grasping for power, and then they drive fear down so that people will comply, and that's just sort of how empire works.

You see empire not just in governments, you see it in corporations and companies and businesses, large and small.

You see uh the empire mentality, sometimes even in family units, and so we looked at that, and then we looked at the kingdom of God, which is built not on the love of power, but on the power of love.

We talked week two about authority in the kingdom.

What does it look like to have authority?

What does that mean?

What is the responsibility of having authority?

And so we looked at that week two.

Week three, we talked about our responsibility as citizens.

Uh, what do we as citizens?

We know what our rights and our responsibilities, and we talked about that.

Last week we talked about being law-abiding citizens.

We talked about the law, the first five books of the Bible, uh, the Torah, the 613 laws.

But by the time Jesus showed up, law was a big word.

It was more than 613 laws.

It was also uh oral traditions and cultural uh nuances of behavior that all tied in with wanting to, you know, please God in his kingdom.

And so we looked at how should we think about law.

Uh then this week we're going to actually talk about what does it mean to be in the world, but not of the world, to be citizens of a country, but also citizens of a kingdom, especially as it relates to uh the political structures that we all live in.

Okay, so that's that's what we're gonna talk about today.

It's interesting, uh Mark 1, 15.

Okay, this is Jesus talking.

We see these quotations, and you see he said, This is Jesus.

He said, the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.

When you see kingdom of God has come near, don't think he's saying the kingdom of God is almost here.

What he's saying is the kingdom of God is here, it's near, it's as near, it's it's at hand.

He says, repent and believe the good news.

Uh the word repent, I don't know how you hear it when you read it, but usually often the word repent we think of like uh remorse.

We think of feeling bad, we think of asking for forgiveness.

And certainly uh repentance may require uh those feelings and behaviors, but uh it actually comes from the Greek word metanoia, which means to think differently.

So when he's talking about the kingdom of God and he says you have to repent, he's not necessarily saying you have to apologize.

He's saying you need to reopen your mind, you need to think often in the opposite direction of the direction that you've been thinking.

Uh I will I often will have uh uh guys over the years that will come to me for some relational advice for their girlfriend or their fiance or their wife, and uh they're they're just not, they're they're butting heads, they're having a repetitive conflict, and they're trying to get some advice.

How do how do I figure this out?

And so often they'll they'll come and essentially they're like, you know, I'm I I she's not hearing me.

The things I'm saying, she's just it's it's like it doesn't matter how I say it, how many times I say it, she's not hearing what I'm trying to say.

And so what they want me to do is they want me to give them some magic words or to give them the ability to tell her what you want her to hear that she's not hearing, okay?

And so uh often what I'll do is I'll lead them into a process of metanoia, which is repentance.

In other words, think the opposite direction.

So you're banging your head against this wall, trying to make this person hear you, okay?

And the answer is actually in the complete opposite direction, which is you need to take trying to make her hear you out of your mind.

Don't even think about how frustrated you are, don't think about how much she's not hearing you, don't think about all that.

Just put that out of your mind and then and then hear her.

I'm like, man, is there any is she saying the same thing?

Is she going like you're not hearing me, you're not understanding me?

Like, yeah, I'm tired of her saying it.

I'm tired of hearing this.

You know, she goes and talks to her friends about it and then comes back, and I'm not, and I'm like, okay, so forget about her not hearing you and just give every bit of your attention and all of your energy and all of your effort to be the best listener you possibly can.

Okay, you came to me to hear how you can say something better, and the answer is in metanoia it's think different, it's actually listen well.

So if you listen well, okay, and you hear her and you don't understand, but you go, What I heard you say was this, is that right?

And you're not defensive, and you keep and you learn, and eventually you understand where she's coming from so well, you can articulate it back to her, and she's like, Yes, yes, that's it.

That's it.

You actually want to hear what she has to say.

You're not getting defensive, and you can articulate her position back to her.

She's gonna go, Oh my goodness.

Now tell me about you.

Let me hear your position, okay?

I mean, anybody, any decent person, once you've had someone go to that length to listen and that wants to hear you that well, there is a bond, there's a connection there, and then you want to reciprocate.

So, again, what is it?

It the the answer is in the opposite direction.

Instead of forcing your thought on someone, actually listen and receive theirs, and then we end up in a better place.

So it's a think differently.

So when he says metanoia, he's saying you're going to have to to receive this kingdom, you're you're down the road, you got some momentum on some of your thoughts and beliefs.

You're gonna actually have to think differently, you're gonna have to repent.

And then he says, and uh believe the good news.

Good news was the Greek word Euangileon.

This is a political term.

Ewangileon, good news is this means good news.

There's a new king and a new kingdom.

So Jesus kind of brings up this idea of uh, you know, you're gonna have to kind of think through, um, you're gonna have an impediment in a sense to see the kingdom of God.

Often uh the here and now and the tangibility of your politics sometimes can affect what you're willing to see.

Um, what's interesting is, you know, we've been a church now for 13 years.

We started in 2011 with a handful of people setting up, tearing down in a charter school.

Um, I grew up in church.

I went to a few different churches uh throughout my life before we started one church.

And I had never been to a church where essentially politics was divisive.

Um, pretty much the churches I grew up in, pretty much everybody agreed on politics, or if you didn't, you didn't say anything about it.

Pretty much everybody was like agreed.

So although the world was politically divided, you know, people outside the church, inside the church, everybody kind of saw it the same way.

So I never like had, I was never in a church that was politically diverse.

We launched one church in 2011, and you know, the diversity um, you know, that you see in our church, we had uh political diversity.

Probably at that time, a year in, okay, the so the the first election in our church's history was in 2012.

The first election, uh, probably we had half of our church that voted Democrat and half of our church that voted Republican if they voted.

And and so uh I'm I and again go back in time, 2011, 2012, social media was really just starting to like get some serious traction.

And so so Facebook, people are now posting and Twitter, it's all it's out there, whatever.

So we're a one-year-old church, and I've never been in a church that was politically divided, and I'm on I'm on social media going, Jesus, take the wheel, take it from my hand, because I see people in the same connect group and the same small group, and they're now they don't like each other.

And we used to be willing to make coffee with each other, but now we can't because you're voting for this person, I'm voting for that person, and and I didn't know I didn't know what to do about it, right?

And I'm going, good Lord, we're we're a year in, and I'm trying to hold this thing together and go, all this kingdom stuff we're trying to do, okay, is is is being threatened now, okay, in these forums.

And of course, this now, you know, November 5th, a week or so, a little over a week, we'll have another election.

This will be the fourth one in our church, and each one of them has been a wild ride.

All right, 2012 was wild, 2016 was wild, 2020.

Just let's just pretend like that never happened.

Okay, we're we're where we are now.

And so here's the reality.

In a similar way, of course, things have changed a bit over time, but in this room, this probably comes as no surprise, you have people, you're sitting next to people, you're sitting around people that see politics, they see politicians, they see issues different than you do.

And they fall, you know, there are some people that are super passionate.

I mean passionate about politics.

They feel very strong.

It's how they express their values.

And not only are they passionate, but they're vocal about it.

They want to stand up, they want to let everybody know where they stand on something because they feel very strongly about it.

There's other people here who are very passionate about politics, but they're not very vocal about it.

They keep their opinions relatively to themselves.

They hold it close to the vest.

And I think, especially over the last uh 12 years or so, with the volatility, some people go, look, I'm not, I've got my feelings, I've got my opinions.

I don't want to lose people I love and care about and have unnecessary conflict.

There's enough conflict I have to have, I don't want to have a bunch I don't have to have.

And then there are some people who are have been so disenfranchised with politics, they're probably not even gonna vote.

They don't even care.

They're tired of trying to pick the best bad option.

You know, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

So, you know what, I'm not gonna do anything.

So there are some people here passionate, people totally dispassionate, and everything in between.

But here's what we have in common as kingdom citizens, we go, okay, we're here, we recognize we're citizens in the kingdom of God.

How do we navigate this modern political landscape in the country that we're in in the right way, in the way that ultimately Jesus would want us to, right?

We know we have a higher allegiance than to our country, to the kingdom of God, right?

If you decided today you weren't gonna be a U.S.

citizen anymore, you were gonna go be a citizen of Uzbekistan, okay, and you went there and did that, you would still be a kingdom of God citizen, whatever country you belong to or are a citizen of.

And so we go, how do we do this in the way that ultimately reflects the heart of Jesus and the principles and the ethos of the kingdom of God?

All right.

Let's start with this.

Let's start with understanding the political landscape Jesus showed up into.

This is gonna be really helpful data.

Uh, some of you might recognize this, I've shared this before, but you don't remember what I say anyway, so I'm gonna say it again.

And then if you weren't here, this will help level set uh for everybody, okay?

Um there when Jesus showed up in the world, you have the Romans, okay, who have conquered the Jewish people, and so they now rule the Jewish people.

They're they're the ultimate authority and power.

And within the Jewish um people, among the Jewish people, there became really five um parties, so to speak, or political ideologies.

And the more you understand this, I'm gonna give you the cliff notes, okay, here really quickly, but that you could totally dig into this.

You could totally go in.

There's so much, there's a lot of good information that would help you understand these mindsets better.

And I'm here's what's gonna happen if you really get into this.

The more you understand the political landscape of Jesus' day, the more you'll see in the conversations that you read in the gospels, you're gonna see more depth to it.

You're gonna go, okay, like I this is how they would have heard that, and here's what's going on.

So let's start with this.

The first group is a group called the Zealots.

The Zealots.

Okay, the zealots are people who are extremely anti-Rome.

Like anybody who would want to, you know, be subject to another nation.

You want to be your own nation, but they weren't.

And so the zealots were like, we got it, we've got to get out of this.

By the way, the Romans, they think their emperor is divine.

There's emperor worship on the coins, it says divine Augustus.

Okay, so how can we be compliant?

How can we be quiet?

How can we just go along to get along with a nation that thinks that their emperor is God?

Okay, the problem with us, the zealots would have said, the problem with us is we're too passive and cowardly.

And if we would just get some guts and slit a few Roman throats, God would give us victory.

Have you ever read David and Goliath?

Okay, yeah, Rome looks like Goliath, but what happened when David was willing to put a rock in his forehead?

All right, the whole nation was delivered.

So if we get a little bit of David energy, God would deliver Goliath.

And all we have to do is look at a couple generations ago, the Maccabees, who had the Goliath of the Seleucids, and they were willing to go guerrilla warfare, and they were willing to go take back the temple, and then for a period of time we ruled ourselves.

So if we'll just get some guts and we'll get violent and we're willing to fight, God will deliver a victory to us, but we're gonna have to be violent to do it.

Okay, so that's the zealots.

Next, you have what are the her called the Herodians.

So think, okay, that you you see the word Herod in there, right?

So these would have been people that would have aligned to Herod and Herod Antipas.

So you have the Herodians and then you have the Sad.

Oh can you bring it up?

I can't spell.

It's a tough one to spell.

It's a tough one to spell.

Some and some of you guys judge me, but you couldn't spell Sadducees if you if you okay.

So the Herodians and the Sadducees were like zealots, you guys are foolish.

Okay, you're extremely foolish.

They they're saying, we if you fight Rome, do you understand how big Rome is?

Do you understand how violent Rome is?

Do you understand how powerful Rome is?

You have no shot.

If if you go do this, okay, you they will destroy you.

And by the way, they were correct.

Because what would happen, what ends up happening, okay, we're talking AD 33, Jesus is having these conversations.

In A.D.

70, a group of zealots would try to physically rebel against the Romans, and the Romans would completely destroy their temple, not leaving one stone on the other.

They were where they would kill a whole bunch of people, destroy the priesthood, and then again, much of the New Testament is written from an oppressed church that came out of that violent episode.

And so the Herodians and the Sadducees saw that coming.

They're like, This, you're crazy to do this.

We have to play the hand we're dealt.

You gotta play the game, okay?

So we're not gonna make enemies of these guys.

We're gonna go in and build relationships, we're gonna build friendships, we're gonna leverage the power of Rome, and and and we're going to, you know, use that power to our advantage.

So you gotta be willing to play the political game.

Uh then you have the Pharisees.

So make no mistake about it.

One S, right?

Yeah.

Pharisees.

Make no mistake about it.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees do not like each other.

So when you read often it's like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and you think they're one big happy family.

They these guys did not like each other.

These guys were pro-Rome, these guys were not pro-Rome.

All these guys are violent, but these guys are non-violent.

And the way they go, look, Rome is a problem.

We don't like Rome.

We don't like anything to do with Rome.

We can't wait for Rome to fall apart.

But the way Rome's gonna fall apart is when we become rigorously obedient to God's law.

The reason God is not delivering us is because we have too many sinners, too many prostitutes, too many drunks, too many Roman collaborators, too many bad people that are out there.

And so if we would just become strictly obedient, if we would give God what He wants, which is holiness and perfect obedience, if we were more obedient, God would raise up a Messiah, and that Messiah would destroy Rome for us.

And then the last you have the Essenes, and the Essenes are they basically don't like anybody.

So the Essenes are like you're all corrupt.

The people who like Rome are corrupt, the people, the Pharisees and the temple, the temple's corrupt, everybody's corrupt.

They they thought this was hopelessly corrupt.

These people are unenlightened, and this is beyond repair.

It's irreparable.

So what we're gonna do is we're going to retreat into the desert near the Dead Sea, and we're gonna create an alternative society or an alternative community called Qumran and remove ourselves.

Theologically, the Essenes believed that God was completely sovereign.

In other words, it doesn't matter what people do, God's gonna do what God's gonna do, and someday God's gonna scorch everybody, Rome and all these corrupt people.

And when he does, we're gonna be outside the city and avoid the flames.

Um, the Sadducees did not believe in the sovereignty of God.

They believed in free will completely.

In fact, they didn't believe in any afterlife at all.

So what they believed was you go back to dust, and it really is just about your free will decisions.

And then the Pharisees did believe in an afterlife, and they believed in our free will decisions matter, but they also believed in the sovereignty of God.

And sometimes God's gonna do some stuff he wants to do.

We don't know why and when and how.

We just know he wants us to obey him.

And so again, you have different theological views, but these are represent the five political ideologies that Jesus shows up into.

Okay, I'm just scratching the surface.

There's there's more nuance, very similar to our world that would have how we would have, like, you know, right wing and left wing, or we would have uh uh Republican and Democratic, you know, conservative and liberal and progressive, however you want to say it.

You have people who are on the extreme ends, and then you have people that are more moderate.

So even within the own parties, right, there are times that they come at Jesus with questions.

The Pharisees come to Jesus with questions of basically trying to find out where he would even fall within their own party boundaries.

So there's a Rabbi Shemai, Rabbi Halel that would represent moderate and would represent, okay, far right, so to speak.

And so they're trying to, they're asking him questions about like divorce or different things.

Again, the undertone is political.

They're trying to find out, okay, within this mentality, which side do you fall this way or that way?

So it's crazy similar to the world we live in that Jesus walked into.

And so we want to step back and go, okay, cool.

How did he navigate this?

Okay?

All right, here's what you're gonna find when you read the gospels.

Knowing this, you're gonna see that Jesus finds both common ground and conflict with all five groups.

There are times that Jesus would say or do something that one or two of these groups would have been like, yeah, man.

And then there are times that he's going to say and do things that would have upset them, that would have been the opposite of what they would have wanted to hear.

It would have ruffled their feathers.

Um, Jesus was not willing to just accept the status quo.

He challenges uh the status quo, but yet each of these groups he found some overlap, and there are things that they would have applauded.

So I'll give you a few examples uh quickly.

Um the first would be think about the zealots.

Jesus shows up, okay, and he shows up not hanging out in the temple.

He shows up as a revolutionary.

He's out on the street corners, he's in the community, he's among the people, he's out on the hillside, he's Out talking about a new kingdom.

The kingdom of God is here, a new king in a new kingdom.

And the zealots would have been like, heck yeah, new king, new kingdom, down with Rome.

And yet, Jesus, when he goes and starts to teach the Sermon on the Mount, he says, Blessed are the peacemakers.

So he takes a nonviolent approach.

He says, Hey, if somebody disrespects you by slapping you on your right cheek with their right hand, turn your other cheek.

Don't don't stab them back, don't punch them back, don't hit them back.

You show them the the you show them your dignity.

He says, hey, uh, you know Angaria, right?

Where these Romans they come and they can make you carry their equipment a mile.

Okay?

A zealot would have been like, nope, you come try to get me to go a mile, no, you you gotta fight on your hands.

Jesus goes, carry it two miles.

What?

Second miles on me.

In a show of freedom and generosity, that like I don't care what the politics are, I don't care what the empire says, I'm free.

I could walk 10 miles, 20 miles.

I I'm operating in freedom and liberation.

This wouldn't have been a message they wouldn't want to hear.

They'd have been saying, absolutely not.

They wouldn't have liked, they wouldn't have liked that Jesus says, render unto Caesar what Caesar's.

So they would have liked his revolutionary spirit and the fact that he was saying there's a new kingdom, but they would not have liked his approach.

Um the Herodians, the Herodians would have loved that Jesus said, render unto Caesar what Caesar's.

He would have said, absolutely, pay the imperial tax.

Go ahead, give him, give Caesar what his image is on.

Um they would they but they certainly wouldn't have liked what these elots liked, which was that he's talking about a new king and a new kingdom.

Um the Essenes.

The Essenes, okay, would have liked that Jesus went after everybody.

They would have liked that they heard there's this Jesus guy, and he's standing up to the Pharisees and he's talking about how corrupt they are, and he's calling them whitewashed tombs.

Okay, they would have loved that.

But they wouldn't have loved the fact that Jesus was condemning them, removing themselves.

Ultimately, what Jesus was doing was calling people to engage and calling people to action.

In fact, you'll see that in John 17, Jesus prays the high priestly prayer.

Okay, this is right before he goes to the cross, and he's praying for his disciples.

So he's interceding for his disciples.

He's praying to God for his disciples and the disciples to come, and he says, uh in John 17, 15, look at this.

He said, My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world, but that you would protect them from the evil one.

Okay, so so what he's doing is saying, Essenes, you've taken yourself out of the world because you think it's all hopeless.

He's like, My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but you would protect them of the evil one, that they would be able to be, by this all men will know you're my disciples, that you love one another.

Um, when we look at Matthew 5, we looked at during the Sermon on the Mount, we looked at an interesting text.

It says in verse 43, you've heard the law that says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

All right, and if you've got your Bible, verse 43, Matthew 5, 43, there's a footnote there because it's like, okay, you've heard it said, love your neighbor.

Okay, if you hit the clip, if you hit the footnote, it'll take you to Leviticus 19.

Because in Leviticus 19 it says, love your neighbor, but then it says, but you've heard it said hate your enemy.

And you're like, well, where is that?

Is that in Leviticus 19?

No.

You read Leviticus 19, it doesn't say hate your enemy.

Hate your enemy came from the Essenes.

So they found many ancient writings of the Essenes where the Essenes said, Hate your enemy.

In other words, all of this corruption is so bad.

Not only are we gonna, we're gonna love your neighbor, who's their neighbor?

Us.

And we're gonna hate them.

We're gonna love us and we're gonna hate them.

So he said, You've heard it said, love your neighbor, and the Essenes have added to it, hate your enemy.

He says, But I say, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.

They wouldn't have liked that, and they wouldn't have liked the fact that Jesus wasn't gonna just let them get off on, you know, wringing your hands of the world and go hide out in the desert.

Um, I could go on and on, but each one of these, the the real, the overarching lesson is that we see that Jesus found overlap with each of these groups, Jesus found common ground with each of these groups, but Jesus did not shy away from conflict.

There's a difference between just being divisive and polarizing for the sake of being divisive and polarizing, versus being willing to stand up to the status quo and to go, it's not good the way it is.

We've got to make some changes.

I'll tell you what the Herodians definitely wouldn't have liked was um was in Luke 13, 31.

It says, at that time some Pharisees said to him, Get away from here if you want to live.

There's a lot of heat on you, Jesus.

We keep trying to put you on a category and you're not aligning with anybody, so nobody's protecting you.

Get away from here if you want to live.

Herod Antipas wants to kill you.

Who's Herod Antipas?

It's it's it's Herod's son.

So Herod's dead now.

His son Herod Antipas is a ruler, and Herod Antipas is the one who kills John the Baptist.

So he killed John the Baptist, now he wants to kill you.

And Jesus replied, verse 32, go tell that fox that I'll keep on casting out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and the third day I'll accomplish my purpose.

Now, when we hear somebody calling somebody a fox, we don't think that's that big a deal.

In fact, I call my wife a fox all the time.

She loves it.

She's totally into it, it works.

But like, so if you call somebody a fox, it's actually a compliment.

In this world, in their time, calling a man a fox was a huge insult.

The better comparison would be to call him in our world to call him a rat.

You tell that rat, Herod, that I'm gonna keep on healing and casting out demons and he can't stop me.

Okay?

Herodians wouldn't have liked that.

They would have liked render unto Caesar what Caesar's, but they wouldn't have liked that when Jesus saw somebody who was misusing their power and somebody who was manipulative, self-serving, and hurting people, he would have wouldn't have taken kindly to it.

Here this is here's an interesting dynamic once you think about all this fun context.

Luke 8, verse 1 says, Soon afterwards Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Yuan Gileon, the good news, the new king and the new kingdom about the kingdom of God.

Luke 8:1

He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases.

Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.

Verse 3 Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's business manager, was one of them as well.

And he's gonna go on to mention a few more.

And what he's gonna say is it was actually from those resources that they funded Jesus' ministry.

So just think about that.

Herod has a business manager.

The person controlling Herod's wallet is this woman's husband, and this woman had been delivered through Jesus and is now following him and taking care of travel and taking care of food and taking care of their ministry expenses.

The funding is coming from Herod's right-hand man.

How do you think that news went?

How do you think the zealots felt about that?

Yeah, we knew this guy was corrupt.

You know who's funding it, right?

He's getting it from Herod.

How would the Herodians have felt?

Okay, we see some allegiance.

How would the Pharisees have felt?

How would the Essenes have felt?

You see, you see Jesus, even in his connections, Jesus doesn't push a woman away simply because she's connected to Herod's right-hand man.

You look at Jesus' disciples.

Jesus' disciples are a cross-section of this.

He has Simon the zealot in the same group, okay, with a tax collector.

A Roman collaborator, Matthew the tax collector, would have would have been in this mindset.

A lot of Jesus' disciples came from the region of Beth Seda, which was heavily influenced by Pharisees.

So what even though they weren't Pharisees, they were of that culture, they were of that mindset.

So Jesus brings together this collection of people.

And what does he do?

He ministers to the Roman centurion.

He offers to go to his home and nurse his servant back to health.

He is unwilling to be reduced to anyone's category.

So he finds common ground with everybody, and yet there are conflicts to be had with everybody because all of us have a little bit of hypocrisy, and we all have a little bit of altruism, and there's some good stuff in there, and there's some bad stuff in there, and so Jesus is ultimately setting the tone.

I want to give you three things quickly of how do we navigate modern politics as kingdom citizens.

Number one, look at politics through the lens of Jesus, not Jesus through the lens of politics.

I think in their world, the zealots, all the way from zealots to Essenes, they all had a tendency to go, here's why we're right and why God is in our party.

The Pharisees were like, How in the world could you pay this tax to this guy who calls himself God?

That's against the law.

And so they think they're defending Yahweh, and Jesus keeps trying to change the conversation.

So notice again, this is a pattern to see.

Everywhere Jesus went, he kept deepening the conversation, deepening the conversation.

Okay?

He does it with the tribute coin.

Hey, what whose image is on it?

Caesar.

Who he goes, give Caesar what Caesar?

Whose image, who's where is God's image?

Whose image is God on?

Give God that, right?

What's he doing?

He's taking the conversation deeper.

You're making this about politics and Pharisees and Sadducees and zealots and taxes.

He's like, and I want to take it into a different level of how God thinks.

The whole Sermon on the Mount, he keeps taking it deeper.

Jesus, what are you what about adultery?

When can somebody divorce?

Okay, he's like, listen, you guys are so caught up in the legality of adultery.

You're caught up in the bullet points of adultery.

He's like, you know, you you say it's like this.

He goes, think about this.

He goes, I'm not just saying uh if somebody is unfaithful and does the deed physically, he's saying, I'm saying if you take somebody in your mind, you're building grooves in your brain that's doing damage in the same way.

Maybe you didn't go physically do the thing, but you're it's it's corrupting your heart and your mind.

It's it's negatively affecting your intimacy that you have in a relationship.

And so, yeah, you can go, but I'm clean.

I don't, none of my DNA ended up anywhere.

I didn't end up doing this.

But you go, no, it's not about that.

I want to take the conversation deeper.

What is your thought life doing to your relationship?

I'm saying this not because I want you to be in shame.

I'm saying this because I want you to be free.

And so you could end up with a false positive because you kept making it about categories and bullet points and politics.

He drives the conversation deeper.

In John 8, he drives the conversation deeper.

The woman caught in the act of adultery was a publicity stunt.

It was a politics stunt.

They bring this woman who has who has committed a capital crime, and they're coming and they're standing in front of him with all the political parties going, Jesus, the law says that we should stone her, that we should put her to death.

What do you say?

And instead of going into that, Jesus essentially says, and in the text says, they were trying to trap him.

It was a publicity stunt.

And Jesus goes, Yeah, yeah, that's what the law says.

I don't even want to talk about that.

He without sin cast the first stone.

He drives the conversation deeper.

Essentially, what he's saying is, you set a trap for this lady, and you're humiliating her.

You dragged her out here after she was caught in the middle of a of a of an act, and it was a huge mistake she made, but you brought her out here naked, and you have her in front of everyone, and she's drowning in shame, and all of that was to try to trap me.

All of that was to try to that was to try to trap me, and what he invites them to do is to trade places with her in their minds.

He without sin cast the first stone.

He without sin, what if I caught you in your stuff?

What if all of your stuff was laid out?

What if you were naked in front of everybody?

What if you were totally vulnerable?

Okay, so did she do wrong?

Heck yeah.

Did she hurt people?

Yes, that needs to be dealt with.

And he's gonna talk to her.

Go and sin no more.

He's gonna give her truth, but he's in the moment, he's saying, the conversation we need to have is deeper than whatever I think about politics and the law.

Are you willing to trade places?

And how many times do you see in the scripture Jesus try to deepen the conversation and they're amazed and then they walk away?

They're amazed and then they walk away.

And they're amazed and they walk away.

And they refuse to see that they're putting the cart before the horse.

They refuse to let Jesus control the conversation.

They want to control the conversation, so they keep taking it back to taxes, and they keep taking it back to law, and they keep taking it back to categories.

Don't look at Jesus through the lens of your politics.

Look at politics, look at everything through the lens of Jesus.

Let Jesus take you into a deeper conversation.

You know, this church has given me an incredible gift.

Often I'll come across somebody, I'll meet you guys, or I'll talk to somebody, and they'll go, thank you for what you've given.

Thank you for what you give.

I want to thank you for what you've given me.

Because over the past 13 years, I've sat down with people and I've listened to people and I've listened to stories and I've listened to people's realities of people who struggle with things I don't I've not struggled with.

People that have battled things I haven't battled, people that have dealt with chaos and thoughts and things that I never had, and as I've listened to them, it's created a human connection.

It makes me feel different about the person.

Doesn't even mean I'm gonna change my politics.

It doesn't mean I'm gonna change my policy.

If I might feel some way about policy, but there's something that happens at the heart level when the conversation goes deeper, and I actually listened to somebody to describe a situation I never had to live.

And what did it do?

It didn't necessarily, you know, change the math in my mind.

It didn't necessarily change what I think in terms of policy, it changed what I think in terms of person.

And so Jesus kept doing, he kept doing that.

He's like, pay the taxes, engage the politics, do the stuff, but don't do it at the expense of thinking that this is your answer and then creating it us and them.

He would not let them put him in a category, which leads me to the second point.

The second point is this don't allow yourself to be reduced to your political party and don't reduce others to theirs.

They kept trying to trap him, they kept trying, which which which party are you in?

Which category?

I'm not in any party, I'm not in any category.

I got some stuff that I have in common with some people, and then every single one of those parties, I'm not going to allow, you know, the the community uh engagement or the fact that I don't want to be ostracized to cause me to now get caught up in group thinking now I gotta align with you guys on everything, otherwise you're gonna throw me out.

It's all or nothing.

I can't sit here and go, yeah, that's good stuff, but that ain't right.

That doesn't pass the smell test.

I that's not kingdom right there.

It doesn't resonate.

It doesn't, I don't vibe with that.

So I gotta be able to say yes and no and be able to think independently without being worried you're gonna throw me out if I don't line up as a full Herodian or a full Pharisee or a full Essene.

Jesus wouldn't let him do that.

And he didn't do that to them.

So, hey, you know what?

You probably have a party or you have a politician or you have a candidate that you've got some things that line up that you think, hey, this is kingdom and this works for me, and that's fine.

And it's a binary choice that you're gonna make on November 5th, yes or no, him or her or whatever you're gonna do.

But but at the end of the day, you're more than that, and so are the people around you, and they have their reasons and you have yours.

And just like Jesus, he was able to find that common ground, but to not reduce others and not allow himself to be reduced.

I end with this, Luke 19, 41.

It says, as he came closer to Jerusalem.

So by the way, this is this is um right after the triumphal entry.

So Jesus comes in to be crucified.

And as he comes in to be crucified, this is where he says the thing about the rocks crying out.

They're like, hey, you should make these people stop worshiping you.

And he's like, Well, if I if if I do, then the rocks will cry out.

Okay, right after that he says, but as he came closer to Jerusalem, he saw the city ahead and he began to weep.

Imagine this, Jesus, after all of the conflict that he's had with all five of these parties, he's coming to Jerusalem to die for them.

And he looks at the city and he breaks down in tears.

And it says in verse 42, Jesus said, How I wish today that all you all of you people would understand the way of peace.

But now it's too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.

Before you're long, your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side, and they will crush you into the ground and your children with you.

Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place because you did not recognize it when God visited you.

Ultimately, what Jesus is doing is again, he's foreseeing AD 70, the destruction of the temple.

Okay, and Luke is writing this down for us.

He's he's saying, Look, you guys got so caught up in this.

You refuse to repent, you refuse to change your mind, you refuse to look in a different direction than the one you're looking.

You kept beating your head against the wall, you kept going us and them, you kept saying, It's their fault, not mine.

Nobody looked inward.

I kept trying to deepen the conversation, I kept trying to change it, and you would, you, you, you were determined to control the conversation.

And because of that, all of this empire mentality that is not only in Rome, it's in your temple, and all of that's gonna spill over in a way that's going to cost you way more than you'd ever want to pay.

And so Jesus wept, and he wept.

Think about this.

He didn't weep for the the dust, he didn't weep for the stones in the walls, he wept for the people, the same people that he had conflict with, he had compassion for.

And that's the third thing I want to give you is if we're gonna navigate modern politics with a kingdom mind, we have to keep a heart of compassion for the people that we have conflict with.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

We understand that we have a context not terribly different from yours.

We don't necessarily have the Roman government or we're not necessarily subject to another nation.

But yet, Lord, I we can all see things in common that we have with these five parties.

And yet, Lord, we see that you came in and and without falling into the same foolish thought patterns that they did, you came in and you found common ground, and yet you were not afraid of conflict.

You were willing to stand up for something that was not in alignment with the kingdom of God.

And Lord, it's hard, it's hard sometimes to try to sort that out.

What is my fear?

What is a blind spot that I have, and what is really walking in the spirit and not the flesh, and ultimately bringing your kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.

And so I pray, Lord, in this critical time that you would help us to walk in confidence and to walk in kingdom.

I pray, Lord, that even in this world that is extremely divided, and in a time that's especially divisive, that you would use us as a city on a hill, a beacon of light, an alternative, a place where even though we might see things differently, that we find common ground, and we call out the things that don't line up to the kingdom.

Help us to not forget.

Yeah, we're citizens of a country, but we're citizens of a kingdom first.

Help us to walk that out in a way that honors and pleases you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.