Faith Under Fire: Standing Firm in an Era of Cultural Shifts

When you're faced with evil and you do nothing, that's evil.

How long does it take and at what point does your silence help people in their pathway of sin?

Their path further away from God. You know there's a broad road and people are leading

on that road to destruction. We have an opportunity with our voice, with our life,

with what we know the truth is to help them get off that road.

Welcome to the City Light Church podcast. Thanks for joining us today,

as we look into God's word and discover the hope and truth that he has for us.

If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com

that's citylightnyc.com. Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy

Spirit is already working in our hearts and minds. As you listen to today's teaching,

remember that you are deeply loved by God, that you are surrounded by his grace,

and that he has a real hope and a future for you.

God's good, isn't he? He is good. Well, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for being here.

It's my privilege to share with you today. Oh, weather's getting nice, starting to warm up.

Doesn't it just make you want to celebrate Christmas?

Little Christmas in May. I've shared with so many of you that the chavis household is nuts about

Christmas, right? I've told you a million times. Christmas is our favorite holiday. We decorate,

we go all out. When I say we, I mean Nicole, she's fanatical about Christmas so by extension,

she's brainwashed us all and it's our entire family's favorite holiday. I mean, it is decorated,

come November, December, trees everywhere. There are themed trees, big trees, small trees,

trees, trees, trees, trees, trees. Looks like a pine tree forest in the chavis house.

There are travel trees. There's Disney trees. There are family trees. There are white trees.

There are blue trees. They're just trees everywhere. It's beautiful. When I told her I was going

to be sharing this, I went and did something else in another room. She went up in the attic,

got a tree, set it up in the front room. I walk in. There's a tree fully lit in our front window

for the world to see in May. You're hilarious. You know what's funny though? It's none of our neighbors

think it's weird. They fully come to expect this from the chavis household. There's just going to

be some crazy Christmas going on. It is October. Like kids ringing the doorbell, trick or treat.

Why is there a Christmas tree up? Don't worry about it. Jesus is alive. We love you. Here's your candy.

And you think they would think it's strange, but they come back around Easter time. There's

another Christmas tree still up in the chavis household. It's not that weird of a thing for us.

So here's the deal. We're not quite that bad. I'm just kidding. We are.

So I know that Nicole and any other Christmas lovers here today would be excited for a little Christmas

in May, right? That'd be a good time right there. And it kind of got me thinking. I didn't realize

that there was a nonprofit in Minnesota called Christmas in May. Isn't that pretty cool? I got excited.

I thought, man, we need to start a chapter here in New York City. This nonprofit started in 1996

by a group of volunteers in this little town called Cheska, Minnesota. And they decided that one

day out of the year in May, they were going to get together and they were going to help spruce up

houses for elderly people. People that didn't have financial means or physically couldn't maintain

their own homes. And they would clean them up. They'd paint. They'd clean yards. They'd do all

this kind of stuff to really help being a light in their community that one day in May, bringing a

little Christmas cheer even in May. Isn't that pretty cool? I think we need to really start that

in New York. What do you think? You want to wash your neighbor's windows today? No, maybe not.

But it really got me thinking with Christmas, really moving past December and even living in

May in this little town in Minnesota, what has Christmas really become throughout the years

in our culture? It used to be a time when it was cheerful and we would celebrate the gift and

the birth of Jesus, right? It was a big deal. And we knew what it was about. Even in Macy's,

you'd have a little manger and there being activity scenes and people seeing Christmas

carols like the ones about Jesus, not the ones about Santa. And it was like, it was just a regular

thing. No big deal. But slowly but surely, it's become unpopular to mention Jesus around Christmas,

right? You can't even say Merry Christmas. You got to say like happy holidays, right? Anybody

pressure you to do that? At work, you got to say that? Can you say happy holidays? You seem

kind of look at you. You almost got you. I was going to call HR on you because you said Merry Christmas.

And little by little, we've even had to become more inclusive of other religions during Christmas.

Does that make sense? Do you know what Christmas is about?

Jesus, the whole cornerstone of our religion. Yet we have to be inclusive at other religions

into the Christian holiday of Christmas. That's kind of wacky. Even the Christmas tree has become

offensive in so many circles. How weird is that? What is going on? Even Old Saint Nick is

struggling to keep up with all the political correctness in today's world, right? Poor guy.

They even have him on a diet, I think, so he's not so overweight. I've found this politically...

It wasn't me. I think he's beautiful the way he is. Let me share with you this poem that highlights

the struggle that Old Nick is having. Towards the night before Christmas, and Santa was a wreck,

how to live in a world that's politically correct. His workers no longer would answer to elves,

vertically challenged they were calling themselves. The labor conditions at the North Pole

were alleged by the Union to stifle the soul. Four reindeer had vanished without much

propriety, released into the wild by the Humane Society. And the equal employment had made it

quite clear that Santa had better not used just reindeer. So, dancer and donner,

comet and cubit were replaced with four pigs, and you know that looks stupid.

The runners had been removed from his beautiful sleigh because the ruts were deemed

dangerous by the EPA, and millions of people were calling the cops while they heard the sleigh

noise upon their rooftops. Second hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened,

and his fur trimmed red suit was called unenlightened. To show you the strangeness of today's ebbs and

flows, Rudolph was suing over unauthorized use of his nose. He went on heraldo in front of the

nation, demanding millions and overdue workers compensation. So half of the reindeer were gone,

and his wife who suddenly said she had had enough of this life joined a self-help group packed

up and left in a whiz, demanding that from now on her title would be Miz. And for the gifts,

why he never had a notion of making a choice could cause such a commotion,

nothing of leather, nothing of fur, which meant nothing for him and nothing for her. Nothing to

aim, nothing to shoot, nothing to clamor or made lots of noise, nothing for just girls and nothing

for just boys. Nothing that claimed to be gender specific, nothing that was war like or non-passivistic.

No candy or sweets, they were bad for the tooth, nothing that seemed to embellish upon the truth.

And fairy tales were not yet forbidden, were like Ken and Barbie better off hidden.

For they raised the hackles of those psychological who claimed the only good gift was one ecological.

No baseball, no football, some might get hurt besides playing sports exposed kids to dirt.

Dolls were said to be sexist and should be passe and Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.

So Santa just stood there to shovel them perplexed. He couldn't quite figure out what to do next.

He tried to be merry and he tried to be gay, but you must admit that he's having a very bad day.

His sack was quite empty and his was flat on the ground, nothing fully acceptable was anywhere to be found.

Something special was needed, a gift that he might give to us all without angering the left

or the right, a gift that would satisfy with no indecision, each group of people in every religion,

of every race, every hue, every one, everywhere, even you.

So where is that gift? It's the price beyond worth.

May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth.

That's crazy, isn't it?

Thank you. I didn't write it myself.

But this world is a mess and I think that little poem completely encapsulates the sheer craziness

that we have to deal with day in and day out in our politically correct world.

So today we're starting a two week series titled In God We Trust.

Do you get that at the end? There's a question mark.

Normally we say In God We Trust and it's an implied.

But In God We Trust because I'm posing that question to you.

Do we really?

Do we really?

So in this message series we're going to spend some time unpacking the state of our nation

and the state of the American church.

We hear Pastor Bo say all the time that we have to stay alert.

We are getting deceived and we got to make sure that we are ready.

So whether we want to believe it or not there are forces actively at work trying to destroy

and dismantle the church.

Our enemy, the devil, he wants to tear down and destroy everything that God has built.

You know that, right?

For some of you that might be a shock.

He's not the benevolent little Halloween guy and a red pyjama jumpsuit with a plastic

pitchfork. You know he's an enemy and he wants to destroy you and God and everything he

stands for. That means the church.

Jesus established the church. Jesus died for the church so you know the enemy hates the church.

Trying to destroy it.

In this summer in our life groups we're going to be reading through Eric Metaxi's book

Letter to the American Church.

It's going to be great one so make sure you sign up for that.

In his book Metaxi's draws parallels between the German church of the Nazi regime

and the American church today.

Oh my goodness, it's right.

I knew some of you were going to think, you might have bristled a little bit

that comparison. You say, James, are you kidding?

I mean, the German church was literally faced with the Nazis brutally murdering millions

of Jews.

I would like to think that the American church would fare much better in the face of such atrocities.

My question to you is, would we?

Would we?

Would we?

Guys got really quiet.

Our enemy is actively using culture and the political system

to attack and weaken the church.

You know that?

We used to feel like we were invincible.

We had this kind of barrier of protection around the church.

We had our little 501c3 bubble.

Nothing could penetrate it, not even the devil.

But we used to believe that the sanctity of life was just that.

That the unborn child in a mother's womb was sacred and to be protected.

And then suddenly the government legislates and makes it legal to kill said unborn child.

And the church says nothing.

I think that's interesting.

Even as I wrote that, I thought, oh goodness, that's a really controversial bold statement to make.

Why is it?

It was kind of a non-negotiable no-brainer for centuries.

Life is life.

God created life.

He created you in your mother's womb.

We protect life.

We don't murder.

Kind of a no-brainer.

But we're in the face of a very different culture.

And yet the church, which is not the building, it's Christians, that's the church.

We stay silent just like now.

Don't say anything.

You know they put people in jail if they say anything about that James, right?

Christians have always believed that God established marriage.

And it was a gift for a man and a woman.

Two genders, man and woman, God created that for them to enjoy.

And then our government tries to redefine what marriage is.

And yet we say nothing.

We're so afraid of being called bigoted or unloving, narrow-minded,

unenlightened,

filled in the blank of whatever else you've been called or are afraid of being called.

That's what's funny.

Fear is a funny thing.

So many of you probably have never even been called any of those things.

But you're terrified of being called those things.

You know what actually doesn't hurt to be called those things?

I'm just putting it out there.

Sticks and stones.

Preject!

Come on now.

You guys are getting really quiet.

I love it.

But we're afraid of being called bigoted and unloving.

But just like the German church in the 1930s and the 40s,

we're obligated to say what the Bible says is truth.

We are obligated to say what Christians, Christ followers, know to be true

and what we've said for centuries.

But suddenly,

Mom's a word.

Can'ts got our tongue.

It takes courage to stand on the other side of history

and say stop.

This is wrong.

And we're afraid to do it.

It takes courage to understand that we can't do what everyone else is doing.

Look at what Jesus said in Revelation 2, 4 and 5.

But I have this complaint against you.

You don't love me or each other as you did at first.

Look at how far you've fallen.

Look at that in context of the American church today.

Look how far we've fallen.

Ouch.

Turn back to me and do the works that you did at first.

If you don't repent, I will come and remove your lamp stand

from its place among the churches.

And in his book, Letter to the American Church,

Metaxis recounts when Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew

that the German church during the time of Hitler and his time,

they had gotten so comfortable with business as usual.

Sound familiar?

We show up on Sunday, everything's fine.

It's us for no more.

It doesn't matter what's happening out there.

That's crazy, but we're fine in here.

It demanded radical action and change on their part

and they refused to act.

They accepted the status quo and they sat silently by.

That was the whole strategy.

Is that Hitler and his regime would infiltrate church leadership

and start to normalize his ideology

and you accept it as church doctrine.

When you know it's in contradiction to what God's word says,

they stayed silent.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Hmm.

So, we, the church today, we've bought into the lie

that we just need to keep the peace.

You heard that?

Just don't make any waves.

Just be loving.

God is love, love wins.

Whatever slogan Facebook wants you to put on your profile.

Yeah.

Hmm.

But I have two thoughts.

First of all, staying silent

says a lot.

Staying silent, you speak volumes.

Not acting is acting.

You know that, right?

When we stay silent, when the other side

and when I say the other side,

I don't mean another side politically

or people that don't think exactly like you

or people on the other side of your building

or people that look different

that you or came from a different country.

When I say the other side, I mean people

that are actively at war with God,

opposing God, that's the other side.

Because we are on God's side,

that's the other side.

When they're screaming at the top of their lungs,

we cannot stay silent in the face of evil

because that in itself is evil.

Do you catch that?

I know we like to kind of make it sound pretty

and I like to encourage you.

You know I'm an encouraging guy.

I've turned into an optimistic guy in my older age.

The sun is shining.

There's always a reason to smile.

But there's no other way to say it.

When you're faced with evil and you do nothing,

that's evil.

It's not neutral.

Not speaking actually speaks volumes.

How long does it take?

And at what point does your silence

help people in their pathway of sin?

Their path further away from God?

You know there's a broad road

and people are leading on that road to destruction.

We have an opportunity with our voice,

with our life, with what we know the truth is

to help them get off that road.

And our silence, as we watch them

march down that broad road to destruction,

that's just cruel.

Wouldn't you say?

I think it's cruel.

So why do we believe that like we would have spoken out

in the German church when they were faced with such sin and atrocity

when we don't speak out today against the sin and atrocity that we're faced with?

It's easy to cast judgment and say,

oh man, hindsight's 2020, they messed up and they failed big time.

I wouldn't, I would have done the right thing.

We would have stopped Hitler.

He never would have gotten that far.

Really?

Have you seen what we've legislated?

Have you seen what we've normalized in our American culture

and in our American churches?

Have you seen how many gay flags are hanging in church windows

throughout the country?

What are we doing?

They are normalizing sin and we've let it creep in and we say nothing.

Is that okay?

It's evil.

So here's the deal.

Truth is truth.

There's not your truth and my truth.

There's not even Christian truth.

There's just truth.

It's God's truth.

It's all God's truth.

Jesus spoke truth in John chapter 844 when he told the Pharisees

that they were of their father, the devil.

And then he dropped the mic.

Boom, truth bomb.

That's some truth.

I mean, we think Jesus, he was always loving.

He let the little children come.

He didn't condemn the woman caught in the adultery.

He's just, Jesus would have gone to that gay wedding

because he saw he would have probably baked the cake.

He kicked over tables in the temple.

He yelled and he hollered.

He said, you're your father, the devil.

So the preachers.

He spoke truth.

If Jesus speaks truth and we don't speak truth

because we're afraid of offending,

does that mean we're smarter than Jesus?

Our way is better.

Jesus, you did it all wrong.

Our way is better.

We're more popular.

You wouldn't have gotten any likes on your Instagram post

calling them children of the devil.

But I have a lot of followers.

Is our way better?

Really?

We act like it.

We justify our actions.

But if Jesus speaks truth and we're his followers,

we should speak truth as well.

We've become so desperate to show those listening

that we're exactly like them.

And we're not judging them.

I'm just like you, I'm normal.

I grew up as a preacher's kid.

That was my desire all through middle and high school.

I just wanted to be normal like them.

What does your dad do?

He's a director of a non-profit organization.

I didn't want to be like the Bible thumping,

holy roller crazy guy.

Why?

Because I was afraid.

I was a coward.

And I looked back with so much regret

over wasted opportunity and influence.

I wasn't the most popular kid.

But I had friends.

People would listen to me.

And I wasted it.

Because I wanted people to think I was just like them

dying and going to hell.

How smart is that?

I actually have hope.

I'm the king of, I'm the kid of the king of kings.

And I was hiding that.

But we want people to think I'm not judging you.

I'm just like you.

But that's not the only thing worth considering

when communicating with people.

But we say I don't want to lose friends, James.

I might lose my job, James.

If people knew I sat in a meeting

where people were talking like this,

I would be ostracized.

I really would get called into HR.

They'd say, do you subscribe to those beliefs?

You remember old Chris Pratt,

star lord from the Guardians of the Galaxy?

He got in trouble because he went to church.

And they tried to cancel him.

They said, you go to a church that's anti gay friendly.

It's like, what?

I haven't said anything.

Well, you go to a church that believes in the Bible.

Yeah.

Well, the Bible is against gay.

Well, no, it's against same sex marriage, right?

Like girls and boys and marriage are supposed to have sex.

Not boys and boys and girls and girls.

Okay, yes, I believe that.

And then try and cancel him.

Why?

By association to truth.

But the good news is he didn't get canceled.

He's still doing a great job.

Oh, look, Chris Pratt.

But what if I get blocked on social media?

What if I get canceled?

Those are all great questions.

But Jesus spoke truth and we got to speak it to without fear.

Don't be afraid of being canceled.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Right?

Yeah, you can clap for that.

If he is for us, who can be against us?

It was so afraid.

God, look at all these people.

Look who's for you.

Cheers.

Jesus himself knew that we'd be facing a spiritual battle.

He warned us and he told us that we would be canceled

and we would be ridiculed and we would be hated.

Expect the criticism.

Because he said it in John 15, 18.

He said, if the world hates you,

remember that they hated me first.

The world would love you as one of its own if you belong to it.

But you're no longer part of the world.

I've chosen you to come out of the world.

So it hates you.

So if everybody likes you, you're doing it wrong.

Seriously, you're doing it wrong.

Some of you that's the goal is to be liked.

You're a people pleaser, you're a peacemaker.

That's not the way of the gospel.

Truth is controversial.

They're going to hate you.

Not because you're weird and mean and hateful,

but because you stand for truth and that's convicting.

My second thought is, why don't we want to make waves, right?

When we're speaking and standing for truth,

is that we've bought into the lie that staying out of politics

for the sake of the gospel is a good thing.

But it's not.

It's a noble pursuit, we would say.

We can separate those.

I keep my faith over here, safe in church,

safe in my house, safe in my life group,

and they can be crazy all they want out there.

But politics has no place in religion.

Religion has no place in politics.

Hogwash.

I'm not from New York, so I can say stuff like that.

Here we'd say that is hogwash.

Staying out of politics for the sake of the gospel

is not the gospel at all.

The good news is we both have a responsibility

and an obligation to be involved in the process

and we have to speak truth.

Even when we feel like we're the lone voice in the wilderness,

you gotta speak truth.

Billy Graham himself, he spoke out against the evils of Communism in the 1950s.

You guys remember who Billy Graham is, right?

Great father of the faith.

He really had one message.

You're a sinner.

Jesus died for your sins, accept him, repent,

and become a Christ follower.

He really stayed true to the gospel message.

He didn't veer to the left, he didn't veer to the right.

But even he thought it wasn't a deviation of the gospel

to speak against the atrocities of Communism that were at war with God.

He saw them as congruent.

The American founders feared that if we didn't keep the separation

of church in state, central, in time, the state would be tempted

to control the church and we would be completely wiped out over time.

We get that conflated.

We think all separation of church in state.

That means the church needs to completely stay out of the state.

That's not what it is.

The whole point, the founding fathers wrote it into the document

so that the government couldn't stick its nose into the church.

That was the whole point.

They fled England where the church was run by the king.

You understand that, right?

He started a church because the Catholics wouldn't get him divorced,

so he started the church of England.

He's owned church where he was the leader of the church

and he said, you got to worship at this church, period.

And they said, well, we don't subscribe to that.

We want to worship God the way the Bible says.

And so they fled and they started this country.

It was a pretty cool little process.

Founded on Christian beliefs and ideals.

And they said, you know what?

We don't want this to turn into another England.

So let's write it into our documents.

Our founding documents that the state cannot dictate how we worship God

according to the Bible.

See, that's where we get confused too.

We think separation of church and state, religious liberty

means that we have to be tolerant of every religion.

That's also not true.

The founding fathers did not anticipate

that we would have Islam and Hinduism

and all these other religions competing for space

against Jesus Christ.

It was all Jesus Christ.

It was just Puritans and Anglicans and Baptists

and Antibaptists and Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists.

It was just different flavors of Christianity.

And again, the enemy takes a little bit of truth

and he distorts it and we say nothing.

We accept it.

That's not good.

So in real time, we see this.

We see it playing out all the time.

That our enemies, our ideological enemies

try and tell us what we can and cannot think.

They try and tell us what views we can subscribe to

and what things are not acceptable.

The thought police.

I almost went down a whole rabbit trail of Orwell's 1984.

We're living it.

They're redefining words.

They're changing culture.

They're telling you what you can do.

They're watching.

They're listening.

They're listening on our phones right now.

You're going to get ads for like

Republican rallies, white supremacists,

nationalists stuff after this.

It's ridiculous.

They're listening and they're trying to control and manipulate you.

You cannot let your ideological enemies

tell you what to think and what to say.

You can't.

It doesn't work.

We've taken our eyes off God when we do that.

People pushing critical race theory

and transgender and queer theory.

They're at war with God.

Is that politically correct?

They might add that as a line

and that Christmas poem I read at the beginning.

But it's true.

They're at war with what God has established.

And they're counting on our

good nature, our tolerance, our compassion.

And they say just stay quiet in the corner over there.

While they boldly proclaim their proclamations

and push it down our throats.

You remember that on Easter?

You remember the Easter proclamation

of transgender visibility awareness

on the day we celebrate the resurrection of our Savior?

You don't think they're loudly proclaiming

that they're at war with God?

But you Christian just stay quiet.

Don't make any waves.

We have to speak out against this anti-Christian idea in agenda.

In 1936, Dietrich Bonhoff wrote to the German Church

words that can be seen as an indictment

to the American Church even today.

Let me share it with you.

He said, I can go on sinning as much as I like

and rely on this grace to forgive me.

I can cling to my secular existence and remain as I did before.

Before he found Christ, that's what that means.

And with the added assurance that this grace of God will cover me.

He goes on to say that the Christian life comes to me

nothing more than living in the world and as the world.

You remember we're told to be in the world but not of the world?

But he said in the 1930s, I can live in the world as the world.

Excuse me.

Speaking truth, this got me all fired up.

In being no different from the world, in fact being prohibited

from being different from the world for the sake of grace.

He says, the upshot of all this is my only duty as a Christian

is to leave the world for an hour or so on Sunday morning

and go to a church to be reassured that all my sins are forgiven.

Wow.

In so many ways, that kind of does sound like the American Church today.

Make no mistake, we're saved by grace, so that part he got right.

I don't want to diminish grace.

But following Christ requires something of you.

I say it all the time, if it were just a matter of you accepting Christ

by the finished work of Jesus and by grace, as soon as you accept him,

he'd kill you right then.

He'd stop your heart and you'd be faced to face with your Savior

and you'd live eternity with Jesus.

But you still have breath in your body.

You still have a purpose.

Jesus said, take up your cross,

die to yourself daily and follow me.

He said, go into all the world, making disciples,

teaching them to obey what I've commanded you.

That sounds like action.

We got to do stuff.

We have responsibilities.

So what do we do?

I've posed a lot of problems.

That's great, James, super encouraging.

Can't wait to go barbecue now after this.

Well, here's a couple of things I think we can do.

To turn the tide and gain back some ground

that the enemy has stolen from us, okay?

First, we got to speak out.

I've said it in a few different ways,

but in case I wasn't clear, speak out.

You got to speak out.

And I know it sounds simple and it's easier said than done.

You're like, okay, that's awesome.

James really speak out.

If it was that easy, we would all have done it.

I get it.

But you've got to speak out and you've got to be bold in truth.

That's what you have to do.

Speak truth.

But here's the first part of that that I want you to let sink in.

You have to speak truth in love.

That's an important distinction.

Because Christians were extremists and not always in the good way.

We go way to the side of truth or way to the side of all love.

We don't like anything in the middle.

Which, okay, that's cool.

But truth and love is essential.

If you're all truth and your goal is to cut the listener so deep

that they're bloody and battered by the time they're done listening to you,

rendering them completely helpless, that's not truth and love.

And it's not really that effective.

If you air so far on the side of love, which most Christians do,

culture has pushed us into that,

that if you're not completely loving, then you're not being like Christ.

And so they shame you into being so loving and complicit in their plan.

But if it's too much love and not enough truth,

then you're not actually showing the love of God anyway.

It's an incomplete truth.

But there's a better way.

There's a gospel way.

Speaking the truth, one without the other,

love without truth is ineffective.

So when we show all the love with the truth, we're being honoring.

Because even when someone has an ideology that doesn't align with God's truth,

it doesn't make them your enemy.

That's what you have to understand.

Speaking the truth and love means God values you,

Jesus died for you, so I don't hate you.

I might not agree with what you stand for,

and that's what we're going to talk about.

But I'm going to listen to what you say,

and then I'm going to calmly share what truth says,

and we're going to have dialogue.

That's truth and love.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is gentle, love is long-suffering.

It doesn't hold record of wrongs.

Don't come in with guns blazing and take your enemy out,

because they're not your enemy.

The devils are enemy.

This person just needs to be introduced to truth.

Truth and love, okay?

So don't be afraid of speaking truth in love.

Truth is going to be controversial.

I've said it over and over, but you still got to speak it in love.

The second thing is we've got to study and stay focused.

Study God's word.

Like I just quoted from 1 Corinthians chapter 13,

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

where did that even come from?

Like I'm not going to just speak truth that's James truth as I told you,

James truth is irrelevant.

I think a lot of crazy things.

Half of them are stupid and wrong and weird.

But when I speak God's truth, that's right.

I can be confident in that.

But how do I speak it if I don't know it?

So you've got to study to show yourself approved.

You've got to read his word.

Get it in your heart so you don't sin against him.

Read his word, study it.

Why else do we listen to sermons on Sunday?

Why else do we study his word, go through books,

and sharpen each other in life groups,

if not to be equipped for moments like this?

It's not just a little Christian country club where we come

to get our ears tickled and feel good and leave for,

you know, the rest of our week feeling like we got a gold star

because we showed up for an hour on Sunday.

It's to be equipped and mobilized because we're in a spiritual battle.

Are you armored up or are you defenseless?

So you've got to listen and you've got to be equipped.

The third thing is don't stay neutral when it comes to faith and politics.

Don't stay neutral.

I know a lot of people, even pastors, who say you've got to just,

you've got to use the word balanced and I get fired up.

If you're balanced, that means you're not doing anything.

Balance means I'm standing still.

Okay, I don't want to fall backwards, but I want to go forward.

I want to go somewhere.

I want to do something.

Balance and neutrality are the enemy of effectiveness.

You've got to be leaning in and doing something.

Neutrality is your enemy.

So what do you do?

Don't remove faith from politics.

Have you seen politics today?

The state of our politics?

It's an election year.

Things are ramping up.

There are distractions because one of the candidates is in court all the time.

But that also is an issue.

Like, this is crazy.

So my question is, and this is a real question.

Why would you want to remove God from that process?

The desperately needs him.

This thing is a mess.

It is tow up from the flow up.

You take God out of it.

We are far worse off than we are now.

And yes, it can't get worse.

As bad as we are in America, it still can get worse.

Trust me.

Let us fight for what God has given us.

Nicole and I, we sent our kids all growing up to public school.

And our friends then and even some now are shocked by that.

They think, how could you send your innocent little kids into the lines

then like that?

Home school them or put them in a Christian school or do something.

And it was a hard decision.

We wrestled a lot with it.

We prayed a lot about it.

But we see that the enemy has taken prayer out of schools.

The enemy has taken Bibles out of schools.

They are fighting to take Bible clubs and Christian clubs out of schools.

So if we take our kids with Christ in them out of schools,

we've removed Christ from schools all together.

But if we send our kids with Christ in them into the schools,

we've kept God in schools.

Let them take whatever they want out, but they can't take Christ out of schools.

The same is true with politics.

If you try and stay neutral and remove God from politics,

you've taken him out of the process.

If Christians are involved in the process,

you've put God in the middle of politics.

And he needs to be there.

Three of you like that.

I appreciate that.

So get into the process.

Leverage your votes, both the privilege and the responsibility.

Not voting is the same as seeing silent.

And we know what I think about that.

It's evil.

It's evil.

You got to do something about it.

We know that politics doesn't replace gospel.

I've heard people when we talk this way,

and we actually give actual tools and practical application,

how to live the Christian life in a tumultuous season.

People say, I feel like I'm at a political rally, James.

This has no place in a church.

Why don't you just preach the good news of Jesus

and we'll go home and feel good about ourselves?

This is ridiculous.

I understand.

I get it.

You're wrong, but I get it.

Because as I just said, we cannot remove it.

You cannot separate it.

They're interwoven.

It's like when I'm taking the offering and I say,

why are you trying to separate your money from everything else?

God bless every part of my life.

I commit every part of my life.

I surrender every part of my life.

But don't touch my money.

He's the God of all or he's the God of nothing.

Don't remove him from the political process either,

from your thoughts in this area.

We're not replacing politics with the gospel.

You realize that, okay?

You understand.

God's truth trumps everything.

We're not substituting a politician for our Savior.

And that's important for me to say as well.

No politician can save us.

I'm not advocating that.

I don't believe that.

And I'm not suggesting that you subscribe to that.

But both politics and politicians

can be used by God to affect his will.

You see that all throughout scripture,

Old and New Testament.

He raises up nations.

He raises up kings.

He brings them down.

He uses them to affect his will.

And I'm so glad he's still involved in a messed-up process

that the enemy has dominion over.

The enemy is doing his work.

He is wreaking havoc.

God is holding his hand at bay,

keeping the flood from taking us over

and drowning us completely.

And I'm thankful for that.

We don't want him completely removed from it.

And as Pastor has said all the time,

he's not to blame for all the bad things happening.

Either, okay?

So you think,

is this the best we have to offer these two candidates?

Why is God going to do it, okay?

That they have a invented politics, okay?

God said, why do you want a king

like all the other evil nations?

Let me be your ruler.

We said, no, we want to rule ourselves.

This is as a result of our letting the enemy lie to us, okay?

So don't mistake God's hand for what the enemy is doing.

But God still can redeem things

and he loves to do it on our behalf.

So look at a politician's policies.

Don't get fixated on the man.

Yes, every politician's going to have flaws.

I'm just going to write in a name.

What?

You're wasting your vote.

I'm not going to vote.

You're wasting your life.

You've got to be involved.

Every politician is a mess.

That's a prerequisite.

They find the worst of the worst and say,

let's vote you into office.

That's a given.

They all have flaws.

Don't get hung up on that.

Look at their policies.

What are they fighting and advocating for?

And then don't vote what's in it for me?

Are they going to lower my taxes?

Are they going to pay off my student loan?

Are they going to fight for the cause that I believe in?

Are they going to save the speckled owl from the fore?

Are they going to save the whales?

Who cares?

What's in it for God's kingdom?

That's how you need to vote.

He's given you his word.

He's given you his truth and his principles.

And that's what you need to look at and the lens

that you need to view it through

when you're making your decision as to who to vote for.

When there's a candidate who is actively at war

with all things God and everything Christian

and you still try and rationalize voting for them,

you're lying to yourself.

You're lying to yourself.

You can't do it and vote your faith.

You're separating them.

That never leads to a fulfilled abundant life.

So you're going to rob yourself.

But when you look at what they're looking to do,

their policies and you say,

well, this one is most in line,

the lesser of the evils,

really is what it is.

It's going to advance God's kingdom.

Then that's it.

If there's something in it for you

as a byproduct, then win-win.

They pay off your loan.

Great.

But that's not why you vote for someone, okay?

So listen, God cares more about who our president is

than even we do.

And I want you to hear that.

Because we sometimes believe that he's running the whole universe.

I don't know if he really cares about these two guys.

And you get really passionate about it.

And I know you do.

Because there are some things that have rubbed you a little wrong.

And in a crowd this size in New York City,

I know not all of you believe the same politically.

And when you talk to someone who believes different than you,

you get mad.

We used to not.

We used to just really be one one's big government,

one one's small government,

one one's high taxes, one one's low taxes.

Everything in the middle is kind of the same,

and we can all get along.

Now it's all out war.

Lines have been drawn.

So you're in a battle whether you know it or not.

Are you effective?

That's the question.

We just want to arm you so that you're ready to fight on the right side of history.

God cares more about who our leaders are than we do.

So you got to pray, you got to give it to God.

Trust him.

In his farewell address to the nation,

President George Washington said this in regard to faith and politics.

Of all the dispositions and habits which led to political prosperity,

religion and morality are indispensable supports.

And let us with caution indulge this opposition

that morality can be maintained without religion.

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education

on minds of particular structure, reason and experience both forbid us

to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Our first president knew that we could not legislate morality apart from faith and Christianity.

Every year for years as a tradition,

Congress will read on Washington's birthday that final speech that I just read from.

I think that's fascinating.

I don't think they're listening to the words that they're reading.

If they did, they would either be convicted or they would stop reading it.

I don't know how that can be any clearer.

Jesus said this in John 155.

Yes, I am the vine and you are the branches.

Those who remain in me and I and them will produce much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

Oh, but James, I'm sure we can run a country without him.

I'm sure we can vote in a president with him or we can at least vote in some senators and Congress people.

Or at least some local leaders.

Our New York mayor, that we can do that without God.

Apart from him, we can do nothing.

I think that pretty much sums up what we're going to do is we're going to do something

I think that pretty much sums up that we need to include him in the process.

In Nicole's book, The Silent Star Me, it's fantastic.

Chapter nine is called Silence by Culture.

And she's written several books and this one is a fantastic one.

And I teased, and I was teasing her earlier today.

She wrote her a few years before Eric Metaxas wrote his book, Letter to the American Church.

So he stole her ideas, okay?

Because she shared so many of those things that he shared and it's great.

But I love the way she finished that chapter.

Basically saying, when you stand for truth, boldly on God's truths,

people are not going to run and rally to you.

They're not going to always rally to your cause.

They're not going to stand in support.

They're not championing you on.

If you stand out on this street corner and say,

I vote for the sanctity of life.

You're not going to have a bunch of people just running out, putting you on their shoulders.

For he's a child, he could fail over.

No, they're going to throw stuff at you.

They're going to call the police.

They're going to push you down.

They're going to get in your face.

You're not going to be popular.

It's going to be hard.

But when you're living your purpose and calling, which God has given you,

you're not alone.

The enemy likes to separate us and make us believe that we're the only one that believes

God's truth and we're standing boldly in the face of it.

That no one in New York would vote their faith.

But that's not true.

You're not alone.

Do you know who's standing next to you?

God.

If you're standing on his truth, God is standing next to you,

whispering in your ear, now this is a person I can use to change the world.

Don't you want God to say that to you?

The mighty Sequoia tree and the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains have been

under attack as of late.

You know the Sequoia trees?

We'll put a picture up there.

These massive trees, hundreds and hundreds of feet tall,

live for hundreds of hundreds of years.

These massive trees have lived and stood the test of time.

And now they're under attack by a little pinhead-sized beetle.

The smallest thing, no more than like a millimeter or two large.

These things that are as tall as a football field, older than the Bible,

are being taken down by the tiniest of little beetle bug.

These two guys standing at the base of that picture, I don't know if you can see it.

They're super small.

There's another guy in the crack and crevice of that big tree.

These things are massive.

They seem like they're impervious to anything.

These trees right here?

Imagine it was a sapling when Jesus walked the seas of Galilee.

That's true.

It was coming into maturity when Columbus discovered America.

It was looking down from its lofty perch over the American Civil War.

There's no reason to believe it wouldn't have lived for centuries more.

But a few years ago, this crazy little beetle started to burrow into the park and lay its eggs.

At first, it was like, who cares?

Look at this massive thing.

What's it going to?

You can drive a car through some of these and they still live,

and they still grow.

What's a little beetle going to do?

But the few beetles kept laying eggs.

The few turned into hundreds.

The hundreds turned into thousands.

The thousands turned into millions.

Then they started eating away at the bark,

and then they started eating away at the inside

and the massive trunk and strength of these forest giants.

And then the wind came.

The rains fell.

The lightning flashed.

And then these mighty giants fell to the ground.

Look at this.

That's the root system.

Laying up sideways, you can see people to the left of it.

There's massive tree laying on the ground.

Not because of all those elements.

The wind and the rain and the lighting didn't take it down.

This tiny little beetle who had silently burrowed into the inside over time

rotted it from the inside.

The American church has been under attack slowly for a long time now.

We've thought, oh my goodness,

nothing could come against our Christian nation.

Nothing could come against our church.

We're as strong as the mighty Sequoia.

Sure, we can take our lumps, but nothing can take us down.

You still believe that?

Hmm.

But we're faced with a choice.

Faced with the rot from within.

Do we stand by silently and let this rot within the American church

and in our nation take us down from the inside out?

Just like Germany in the 30s and 40s?

That was an inside job, you know that, right?

They weren't attacked from any external force.

We're facing the same thing now.

Or do we stand up?

Do we use our voice and use our vote to affect change?

The choice is ours.

History will judge if we've chosen wisely.

I hope we do.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for letting us be part of your process.

Father, thank you for loving us enough to give us direction and instruction through your word.

You have an abandon us and left us to figure this out on our own.

You've given us truth, your truth, you've given us a voice, and you are for us.

You're active in the process, Father.

So give us the courage to partner with you where you're at work.

Not to ask you to bless what we feel like we should do.

But see where you're working.

See where you're moving.

See what lines up with your will and your word and align with that.

Put our energy, our dollars, our voice behind that.

Let this place look more like heaven than earth or hell.

And that only happens one way.

When you in us leads us into a process.

We can change a nation.

We can stop the decline.

We can affect change for you.

And when one person stands up courageously, it gives courage to the rest.

Father, use us to affect that kind of change.

Let us be a light in a dark place to where others are drawn to your light.

Father, reveal in us whatever it is that's keeping us from stepping out boldly.

Whatever it is, if it's fear of ridicule, if it's fear of persecution,

if it's just embarrassment, whatever it is, keeping us from using our voice

to stand boldly for you and your truth, reveal it to us, Father.

Show us.

We don't want to lie to ourselves, we don't want to lie to you.

Just tell us what it is.

And then we need your strength to be courageous and bold enough to blade at your feet

and walk away from it.

So we can't do it on our own.

Father, thank you that we're not just your plan B, we're your plan.

You've entrusted this to us.

Let us rely on your wisdom to be found faithful in it.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

This is the City Light Church podcast.

If you've missed any part of today's message or if you would like to find out more about

Pastor Boyan Jansik in City Light Church, visit us at citylightnyc.com.

That's citylightnyc.com.

Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime.

We would love to connect with you.

We pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God loves you,

and that you are surrounded by grace.

Thank you for listening.

Make sure that you subscribe to City Light Church podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.