Political Gospel: The Politics of Love

Hearing you guys all sing. I loved that, and I know the Lord loves that too.

So do that more. Sing more, you know? Not right now. That would be weird.

Because today we're launching into a short series. I don't know.

It's probably like three weeks. We'll find out.

It's called A Political Gospel. And as you might guess, we're going to be talking

and thinking through in this series about the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ,

what we believe, what we hold to, and its relationship to politics.

Now, as I've talked about this the last couple of weeks, I made you a promise

and I want to reiterate it. I really, I really, really stand this.

I'm not going to be entering into partisan politics here.

I don't plan on prescribing to you which party you ought to vote for.

And I don't even do, I'm not even going to do what pastors do when they say

they're not going to tell you which party to vote, which is to say,

I'm not going to tell you, but it should be obvious.

I'm not even going to do that, right? Because I've heard that one so many times

and I pulled a muscle rolling my eyes when that happens each time.

So I'm not going to do that either.

And the reason that I'm not going to do that is not because I want to avoid

offending anyone, because that's not going to happen, right?

If I wanted to avoid offending anyone, we just wouldn't talk about politics at all.

Even though I won't be entering into partisanship, I am certain that I will

be offending you. In fact, we could probably like put down like a countdown.

I bet we'll get like five minutes at the most until at least someone is offended.

I'm not trying to do that, but it's just the nature of walking into things like politics.

And that is because Jesus is teaching on this topic. It's difficult for us to accept.

It was difficult to the people that Jesus spoke to originally 2,000 years ago

as he was talking about what the gospel means and its implications for real

life, which is politics, right?

It was offensive, and it caused offense then, and it continues to be offensive

now because Jesus' politics,

gospel-centered politics, just

don't sit in the space nicely with the normal way that we do politics.

Jesus' politics are demanding, and today I'm going to just dig into that a little

bit and really just make something very clear in one way in which Jesus' politics is very demanding.

So I fully expect and I want you to be prepared to be offended.

I expect to offend you, but the reason I don't want to tell you how to vote

is not to avoid offending you, but it's because I want to give you something better.

I would like to give you something better than just to know how to vote.

You know, there's that old saying, that old saying that we're all very familiar

with, tell a man or woman how to vote and he or she will vote in November.

Teach a man or woman to care about the gospel and politics and he or she will

be an agent of blessing, serving the world their whole life.

That old saying that we're all so familiar with, you know, the idea is I could

do the simple thing, the straightforward thing, but it really wouldn't benefit you.

I want something better for you. I want to see you become an agent of blessing,

somebody who knows and feels empowered to and understand that it's part of your

commitment to Jesus to bless the world and serve the world and care about its,

I want to say destiny, but that's not the word, care about its direction.

Care about the way things are going in the world and to feel equipped and empowered

to love the world as Jesus loved it so much so that we can be

a little bit activistic and interventionist and use our voices and witness to

the world that needs guidance.

I would love for you to realize that you have way more to offer in the way of

your political life, more to offer than your vote alone.

And I'm not saying don't vote. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Like, whatever.

I'm not even going to go there. I'm not going to talk about that part of things.

You can vote all you want. But here's the thing.

Well before modern democracy with its system of representation where we vote

and our representatives go and make laws on our behalf, half,

Christians have been political.

Politics precedes our current system, and Christians have been called to engage

in politics from before our time.

We live in a republic, and through our elected representatives,

we participate in the political process.

That's one way that's true, but Christians have lived and been political people

for thousands of years, and in most of that time, they have not cast votes.

And yet, they were political. They were still involved.

Definition of politics, it comes from the Greek word politia,

and this is just a general, it's the philosophical reflection on how the good

should be worked out in a society, in relationships between individuals,

and in how to build a society

that will inculcate flourishing and the

good life for its citizens in its

most basic form politics is about figuring

out how to arrange the world society family

all the social structures that make up our life and maximize flourishing and

bring about goodness in the world the objective of politics is to change things

for the better according to what we believe is good for people.

And I would love for you, follower of Jesus, if that's who you are,

to realize that you're called to be a political person.

You're called to be someone who is thinking about and pursuing the good into the world.

You are called to be somebody who works alongside with Jesus to do what he's

doing, which is renewing the world, restoring creation,

filling it with goodness, being an agent of blessing, seeing people set free

and finding life and enjoying all that God has given us in life.

You're somebody who's to be a participant in that.

Now, where it gets complicated is getting real about how you strategically go

about accomplishing that, right?

Just like with anything, like you have to have a plan to make something happen

to affect change in the real world.

How do you go about pursuing making real positive change in the world?

This is where the arguments come in.

There's a theological ethicist by the name of David Zach Naringi.

He kind of studies politics, and he has described four historic positions that

Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, have taken in terms of their political posture.

He calls one a disengagement, which I think we can understand.

It's just to say, hey, not my problem.

I'm going to back into my corner. I'm going to go to church.

I'm going to care about that. And I'm not going to be involved in the political

process. There's cooperation.

That's to pursue common good, to identify things that the church and Christians can agree with.

The rest of the world is good. And to move into those things.

There's co-optation, which is to say, well, we'll just go with whatever seems best with everybody.

We're going to adopt cultural norms. We're not going to worry about the particularities of scripture.

We're just going to go with the flow, and then there's confrontation, which we're.

That is engaging the powers, like just saying, no, we're going to be the ones

in charge and we're going to bring about our will.

And all we need is 50.0001% in order to win.

That's all we're going to go for and forget the rest, right? Yeah, it's fun.

There's a, there's a confrontational side, a way to approach.

Now, this is no law by no means an exhaustive list. This is just describing

historic ways and approaches.

What Narendra is pointing out is the fact that Christians and evangelicals in

particular have approached cultural and political engagement with different postures.

And these are just kind of the different postures.

And my guess is that every person in this room has a pretty strong conviction

about the one that they feel most comfortable with.

You probably have like, no, I'm a cooperation guy, or I'm a disengagement person,

or I'm a confrontational sort of type.

And I would also bet that at different times in your life, you've identified

more with different aspects.

Maybe before the last eight years, you felt a little bit different about how

we should engage in politics, but now you have a strong conviction.

Or maybe even you think about different issues and you think,

actually, the most appropriate way to approach this particular issue is with this posture.

And in other circumstances, we want to approach it more delicately or less delicately,

depending on the circumstance.

You know, the the problem with talking about politics is we get into all this

nuance, and we find that Christians are different, and we're even different

at different times, and different when we think about different things.

And so how do you get to, this is my problem, my conundrum, how do I stand up

here and tell you something definitive, right?

Because that's what you want. You just want me to tell you what to do,

and I hate telling you what to do. It's just a terrible thing.

But then otherwise, I'm just blabbing on, right? And that's not good.

But to just choose one of these things and say, this is the right way,

this is the Christian way, seems a bit arbitrary.

And also we have to wonder, how does it align with scriptures?

And I think that the challenging thing is that if we were to take all four of

these things and think about the gospel, think about scripture,

think about Jesus' example, the example of the early church as it's laid out

in the book of Acts, you know, because there's political engagement going on there.

If we were to compare these four postures with politics, then we would have,

it just complicates things.

I do not believe that scripture prescribes any one particular posture,

but I do think it helps us to orient our thinking and our action.

What we're going to do next week, not this week, is actually kind of think through

each of these and to think about what the gospel is and what it kind of the

implications are for the gospel.

And then how do we figure out our posture of engagement with culture.

We're going to compare each of these things to the gospel.

Because what we're doing as Christians, right, as people who take on the name

of Christ, is that we have to compare our approach, our desire,

our strategy for political engagement with what Jesus says about the world and what his gospel was.

Because his gospel is his engagement with the world.

And the thing about Christians is that we're called to come behind Jesus and take up his way.

That's not something I'm going to argue with you about. I know some people say,

oh yeah, Jesus was that way, but we've got to be mean.

And I just don't think that's true. And I don't really know what else to tell you with that.

You know, some people want to say, we'll be the best Christians when we're least Christ-like.

Now, they might not say that directly, but I feel like that's oftentimes the way we talk about it.

But this is the thing, and then I'm going to really hold to this.

And again, I'm just going to put it out here. I'll try to explain to myself in a second.

I really think that Christian politics is the politics of love.

Christian politics is the politics of love.

Now, before you think about what that implies, just, I mean, think about that thing.

If Jesus was somebody who was demonstrating love, if Jesus taught the importance

of love, and he did, and we'll talk about that in just a second,

then I think we have to hold ourselves to his standards.

You can be political in a lot of ways. You can be not a Christian and be political.

We certainly know that. But if we want to be Christians, if we want to be people

who are engaging in our political lives in a way that's consistent with the

gospel, then we have to hold ourselves to the standards that are set up in scripture,

and we have to hold ourselves to the authority of scripture,

and we have to hold ourselves to at least aspirationally aim to do and approach

things the way Jesus taught us to approach them.

And Jesus was all about love, and so I think our political engagement has to

follow right behind him, our Christian politics.

Christian politics has to be about politics of love.

And this is a statement that to me seems so obviously true. And I think for

anyone who's spent some time in scripture would probably say it is,

it at least has to be aspirationally true.

And I don't, I feel like it's almost something that I wouldn't have to defend,

but I really want to dig into the scripture here and defend it to just make

sure that we're all on the same page.

I think it is impossible to read the New Testament, to actually read it,

to actually understand it, and to miss the priority of love in all things, inclusive of politics.

Jesus and the apostles were unequivocal in their very clear teaching that love

was like the absolute necessity.

When Jesus was asked by the political and religious leaders of his day,

people who were trying to bring about their version, their ideas of what the

good life would look like through their political prescriptions,

through their legal legal prescriptions, through their religious idea,

what he says to them, he says that the most important commandment is what?

To do what? To love. You know the passage, Matthew 22.

He says, if we look past everything, if we want to simplify it down,

we want to boil it down, like really practical,

must-have, necessary instructions for being involved in the world,

for being somebody who's trying to seek after God, to please him,

then it comes down to love.

Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

You have to love God with everything that you are. That's the greatest and most

important commandment.

Is it an important commandment? No, it's the greatest and most important as

eliminating the importance of all other things.

All other things are less important than this one commandment that we would

love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all your mind.

And the second one, so actually he says, and this other one,

which comes right before it, it's right in the same level of importance is love

your neighbor as yourself.

And as if that wasn't clear enough, he says all the law and the prophets,

all this religious talk, all this book, everything that I am telling you and

explaining and trying to demonstrate to you, it all depends on these two commandments.

You want to be a person who calls yourself a Christian. It depends on love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

There's no arguing. Jesus makes it, and he's so frustrating.

The people who want to argue him, they're just like, oh, come on, that's not cool.

And they walk away and they kind of don't say anything to him because he's like,

well, he just made it so clear.

And I can't look at Jesus and just say, no, no, actually God wants me to be

more angry and less loving.

Jesus is so frustrating to people. He really offends his people because they

want to say, well, but what about this? And how about this?

And what about this weird circumstance? Am I supposed to love them?

Am I supposed to love them?

The whole life, the whole vision of what goodness and a good life looks like,

Jesus says, it runs through the way of love, love for God and love for neighbor.

Paul explains the same thing in 1 Corinthians 13.

He basically says that a life devoid of love, a life trying to pursue anything

good, anything from God without love is just futile.

He says in 1 Corinthians 13, 1, if I speak in human or angelic tongues,

but I don't have love, I'm just a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and I understand all the mysteries and all knowledge

and I have all faith so as to move mountains, but I don't have love, I'm nothing.

And if I give away all my possessions and I give over my whole body in order

to boast, but I don't have love, I gain nothing.

These are not squishy statements. And these are just a few verses and I could

supply you with many more.

And if you've read the Bible, you know, No, I mean, it's like,

there's probably 80% of the books in the New Testament lift up this priority

of love. I'm just ballparking that.

But you don't need to get hung up on the number of verses. I mean,

just pay attention to these verses and how they function.

These are being presented as indispensable.

These things, if we would lack love, if we would try to approach the Lord,

try to approach the good life prescribed by Jesus without love,

then it is a futile effort.

Doesn't mean you can't try, but it does mean that you'll fail.

You'll fail without love.

See what Jesus and Paul are doing is that they're talking about love and they're

elevating love and they're cutting through all the whatabouts and,

but on the other hands, and all this, there's a particular circumstance and

they're just leaving everybody without excuse.

I don't see how you read scripture and think, no, I've got a way to do it without love.

They're making it clear that love is indispensable. Love is purifying of all of our desires.

It's purifying of our actions.

There's no laws against love, Paul says in another place.

And all of our aspirations to create a good life and to be people who are involved

in society and shaping the world for good, they have to go through the path of love.

Love is the filter that as Christians, if we're going to call ourselves by the

name of Christ, we're going to do so honestly. we have to run everything through love.

And if we don't, we're nothing.

We're not what we think we are. We're not what we're saying we are.

And so our politics likewise needs to be filtered through that.

Christian politics is the politics of love.

Loveless Christianity is not Christianity. And loveless Christian politics is

not Christian politics.

It might be politics, but it's not Christian politics.

And I don't think that's my opinion.

Oh, gosh. I'm sorry about this.

And I think just thinking through that, there are at least two really important

implications of the fact that Christian politics is the politics of love.

First of all, it means that if Christian politics is the politics of love,

that means that we are precluded from being involved in the politics of contempt,

which I think is the normal way of politics in the world.

Politics that is devoid of love is the politics of contempt.

And I think I hardly need to explain to you what the way the world engages in politics is like.

In our day, politics of contempt is the norm on the left and the right.

And it's a whole enterprise that is all about identifying the bad people who

need to be hated and opposed,

who need to be gotten rid of by any means, and then operating in such a way

so as to motivate us to oppose them through our fear and hatred of those people.

Left and the right, they do it just the same. They identify.

Each party has created a class of enemies.

And each is seeped in an ideology and ideologies that demonize and dehumanize

the other side and blames national problems on certain groups of people or certain

classes or certain identities.

And these people become the enemy and we are encouraged and the way we get people

out to vote is we motivate them to hate these people and have contempt for them

and to think of them as subhuman.

And I just think, I just think we have to be honest about what Christian love requires of us.

And that is that this, that you cannot have contempt for people while also loving them.

Those two things can't go together.

And I realized what we're talking about, this is hard because what we're talking

about is not, we're not assessing the surface level.

We're talking about our hearts and what our motives are and what are the things

that are going on within us.

And it's It's difficult for me to know exactly what all my motives are at all

time, which Jesus knows this about us.

And yet he still tells us that we need to look out for our love.

And so how much should we care about what's going on within us and how we're

being motivated and how much should we be skeptical of the world,

which is just really selling us contempt because contempt motivates people.

Fear and anger and hatred motivate people. They have forever.

No one is going to dispute this.

Are you so sure that you're moving in love?

I'm not sure if I am all the time, but it is so important that we worry about

this. Look, and this is an age-old problem.

Jesus talks about it in Matthew 5. He says, you've heard it said,

love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

What Jesus is, he's wading right into the politics of contempt,

which are so common. And he's saying, everybody says this.

Everybody thinks this. You've heard it said before.

We love people. We love our neighbor.

But in order to love our neighbor, we need to find these other people that we need to hate.

Because we'll fail to love these people unless we appropriately hate these other people.

Jesus knew what the politics of contempt were like.

And the logic of that is, well, since my enemy is doing harm to my neighbor,

loving my neighbor requires me to destroy and have contempt for and treat this

other person as someone who is not worthy of my love.

And what does Jesus say? Does he say, and that's the right way to go?

No, he doesn't. He says, you've heard it said, love your neighbor, hate your enemy.

He says, but I tell you, in contrast to the normal way of thinking about life,

love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children

of your father in heaven.

For he causes the sun to rise and the evil and the good and sends rain on the

righteous and the unrighteous.

And so the question we have to ask ourselves is, as we engage.

He doesn't say you won't have enemies.

He doesn't say in the task of loving certain people, you won't come up against opposition.

Of course you will. There will be resistance as we work out a particular vision

of the good. There's going to be resistance. There's going to be difficulty.

There will be opposition.

He doesn't say that that's not true. He says, just act like everybody's your friend.

No, he says, know who your enemy is and love them and pray for them.

If we're going to be people who are political in the world, we're going to be

people who are operating to shape and bring about and enact our love for other people.

Then we have to ask ourselves, well, are we doing so in the manner of our father in heaven?

Because that's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, yeah, like there's this way

of going through the world, but if you want to be children of your father who

is in heaven, here's a different way to approach the same problem,

to look at the problem differently.

If we want to be children who are like him, who are walking according to his

ways, according to his wisdom, being Christians,

then that means that as we go about our work of being political people who love

and who really want the best for others, when we meet opposition and when we

find enemies, which we will,

and when we find people who are working against us and who are treating us very

badly and who who have lots of contempt for us, and we will,

then we don't just go ahead and meet them with the same kind of contempt that they're giving to us.

Instead, we pray for them, and we have compassion for them, and we understand

that they are actually, yes, they're enemies of the good. They are deceived people.

They are hurting people. They are people who are acting from their ignorance.

He says, but we don't let that...

Let that turn into hatred for them. We love them despite their hatred for us,

despite their contempt for us.

And Jesus gives the reason for that. He says, he says, and the reason you can

do that, it's because of what the father is doing.

It's the way he's engaging in the world.

How does God engage in the world? He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the

good, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

God's MO in the world, his way of operating in the world is to be active,

to be proclaiming the truth, to be revealing that some ways in life lead to

death and some ways in life lead to goodness and flourishing and peace.

Of course, yes, there is a right way. And we are to be people who are partaking

in that and moving out into it.

He says, but in this time and in this world and in this current moment that

we live in, God is doing something.

He is shining his light. He's sending rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

We live in a moment of time where everything is mixed up in this world.

And as Christians, we're to be people who are fully aware of what's going on.

And yet we are going in as light, going and following after Jesus,

right? Doing what he did.

I mean, we read John 3, 16, that famous verse. What does it say?

God loved the world in this way. He gave his one and only son so that everyone

who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world,

but to save the world through him.

See, when you take on politics of contempt, you think I'm the righteous person.

I'm acting in God's name. And I know God hates these people and he hates the

unrighteous and he's going to judge them.

And so if he's going to judge him, I'm going to get before it.

I'm going to show God that I agree with him. And I'm going to prejudge.

I'm going to prejudge God.

I'm going to beat God to the the judgment. And I'm going to hate these people

even more than he hates them because he hates sin and he hates people who are

just like wicked and evil. And sure he does.

But we live in this time where God has sent his son into the world.

This is a time of grace. This is not the time of condemnation and judgment.

And if we read the whole biblical story, that time will come.

But until Jesus comes again in the flesh, unmistakably in the clouds so that

everyone one can see. He hasn't come yet.

It hasn't happened yet. Until that time comes, God shines, the sun shines on the wicked and the just.

He makes rain shine on the righteous and the unrighteous.

He's being patient. He's enacting patience in the midst of a difficult, messed up world.

He's withholding judgment and holding out grace through Jesus Christ.

And who are we to condemn when he says, no, I'm still in a patient mode.

I'm still engaging with these people. I'm still pleading and offering and saying,

I would love it that they would come.

I would love it that they would turn from their wickedness. I would love it

that they would be forgiven and brought into my family and become children of God.

Who are we to condemn when God is bringing grace? grace.

We're not Christians if that's what we're doing.

We're not coming after Jesus and engaging in the world the way he has been engaging.

And Jesus just doesn't let his disciples off the hook. Before he was crucified, he's like working.

He knows he's going to go up into heaven. He knows the disciples are going to be tried.

He knows he needs to prepare them and coach them, not only in that generation,

but also all the disciples are going to come after.

And he's preparing his disciples to continue to be faithful to all that he taught after he was gone.

And he warns them in Matthew 24, anticipating the trials that they're going to face.

He warns them this way, like, when I'm gone, you need to worry about this.

These are the concerns. He says this in Matthew 24, 10.

Then in that time, the end times, many will fall away. There'll be an apostasy.

People will betray one another. He's talking about Christians.

People will hate one another. Rather, many false prophets will rise up and deceive

many because lawlessness will multiply and the love of many will grow cold.

See, Jesus knew as he sent his disciples into the world to do this difficult

work of being people who were loving in the midst of a contemptuous and difficult circumstance.

As he sent his disciples into this world, there was going to witness there would be risk involved.

And he knew that as the world went on and time went on and times got lawless

and it felt like the world was falling apart, two things were gonna happen.

They were gonna be challenged in two ways. One is gonna be like deception and

false doctrine was gonna come in, but the fruit of that deception and false doctrine is what?

It's lovelessness. It's the love of many growing cold.

And evangelicals are great about watching our doctrine. We wanna believe the

truth and we should. We wanna hold ourselves to scriptures and we should.

I wonder if we do with the same fervency if we watch our love.

Because that's the ultimate end of this false doctrine, lovelessness.

I just want to pause for a moment, and I want to pray.

God, I am such an unintentional person. I feel like I wander through my life most of the time.

And then I sometimes, Lord, I think, well, I should just be different,

but I'm never going to be different. I'm 40 years old.

But God, all I can do is bring you my heart and bring you my failure and my

intentions and all the stuff that we all do. like, well, we want to do our best, Lord.

We don't know how to do our best. We don't know how to even care for our heart,

but you know how to care for our heart, Lord.

And so, Lord, I just lift us up and I lift myself up and I pray for anyone here,

Lord, who feels condemned or feels like discouraged or feels like we can't love,

that we need love that comes from you.

And we need that gift and that restoration and that hope that comes from you.

Holy Spirit, I just, you're always tending our hearts, Lord. You're like a gardener.

There's so much that grows up from us. Contempt grows up from us, from our hearts, Lord.

Lord, anger and deception and false things come up from our heart.

But Lord, you call us to tend what's going on inside of us, Lord,

and to do that along with you. So Lord, come beside us.

God, convict us of sin. If we're stubbornly trying to nurse something thing

that's not good, that's contrary to what you've called us to,

Lord, would you teach us to just let that go?

And would you, by your spirit, just remove these things, Lord?

The fear. Perfect love casts out fear.

Lord, if there's anxiety, would you take those things away? You've given us

love and power and a sound mind.

God, if there's despair or hopelessness, Lord, we want those things gone, Lord.

We want a faith, hope, and love, those abiding things, those gifts from you,

Holy Spirit, would you send those down into our hearts, Lord,

and give us a renewed vision for what it might be to be people of faith,

hope, and love in the world in the midst of crazy circumstances.

Amen. Here's the thing. I'm not, I'm not quite done. Sorry.

I said, amen. That's like, everyone's like, can I get coffee now?

No, you can't. You can't. Not yet. You'll, you'll make it.

The other thing, the other side of love, the other implication of love,

if we have the politics of love, that's this, the politics of love is,

is particular. It's particular.

I don't know if you've noticed, but we live in strange times,

but I mean, I don't, I don't just say that because like every generation says that.

If you look at the history of ideas, we live in the midst of a very strange age.

We're a very anxious people. I mean, that's just statistically very clear.

And part of our anxiety comes from the fact that I think as a world,

and particularly as Christians, we feel like hung up between two callings.

On one side, we know we're supposed to be people who love, Which means we can't hate other people.

I'm not sure if we've talked about that yet already. Yeah, but I think we did.

And then on the other side, this is the pushback, right?

It's like, well, what is love anyway? What does it look like?

On the other side, we know we're supposed to be people who have a particular vision of what is good.

I think sometimes when you set out to be a person of love in the world,

you get people meeting you with a, well,

if you love me, can't you just tell me that whatever I want is what's good?

Don't I get to decide what's good for me?

And as Christians, we actually say, no, actually, love requires me to tell you otherwise.

That's the rub about Christianity. We're called to love people,

but the politics of love is particularly because politics is about a specific vision of the good.

And in our current age, in the world that's kind of captivated by a postmodern

idea of what the world looks like, good is, in postmodernity,

whatever the individual thinks is good at that moment.

And who is someone who could come in and tell us otherwise.

I'm going to skip one slide ahead there, and then I'm going to go back to the

other one later. So this guy, be ready. Thank you.

I've used this quote before, but a theologian named Richard Bakken, one of my favorites.

He's such a great, great, great theologian. He says this, in postmodernism,

the age, the kind of way of thinking that we have right now,

any claim to universal truth is oppressive because it delegitimizes difference.

You guys experience this ever in the world where you say, oh,

no, here's what's good for you. And people say, well, Well, I think differently.

How oppressive of you, how rude and how unkind and how unloving.

But what he says is, I believe in the end that Christians must contest the preference

for diversity over truth.

It is not the case that diversity is such. Any kind of diversity whatsoever is a good in itself.

It is not better for there to be people whose lives are blighted by destructive

illusions than for their illusions to be dispelled.

Part of the burden of being a Christian is that we believe that truth has been

revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. And he's a little bit particular.

He looks at the world and he says, there are people who are in light,

who are in grace, who are saved, not because they're so great,

but because of my mercy, they believed and therefore they're not condemned.

They have faith and trusted me and therefore their lives are changed,

not because they're so great, but because they've recognized my goodness and

they've received it and they've made something of it. and they become a part

of the kingdom as a result of that.

Jesus looks at the world and says, some people are like that and other people

are resistant to the good.

They want to hold on to hate and contempt. They want to be, they are participating in deception.

They're deceived, they're ignorant, and then they willfully continue on in that

path. Bible calls that sin.

So Jesus, he's the prophet of love. He's this Messiah come to reveal that love

is so important and essential.

But love, he understands also that love requires us to lay hold of a certain idea of what is good.

I could point to so many examples in scripture where this laid out,

but Romans 8, 5 is a good one.

He says, those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things.

Those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death,

but letting the spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.

For the sinful nature is always hostile to God.

It never did obey God's laws and it never will.

And that's why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

Jesus and the apostles had a particular way of looking at the world.

They didn't look at everyone and say, Oh, God loves everybody.

Therefore, whatever they want, he's totally cool with.

He said, God loves everybody so much so that I'm going to die so that they might

have grace and that the light and goodness and mercy of God might shine upon

them and they might receive that and be transformed that they could turn from sin and walk in light,

depend on God and his spirit and not trust in themselves only anymore,

which is leading them to death and destruction and ultimate misery.

Jesus looks at the world. He says, I love it and I'm not condemning it,

but I'm not gonna lie and say that everything's okay.

And yes, that is a difficult thing to be the sort of person who has to come

out with that kind of confidence into the culture that we live in,

who thinks that that's unloving and just say, let me tell you, that is not love.

It is not love to tell people that they're on a road to destruction,

and it's going to be fine, because Jesus came to reveal the truth,

and he called people to truth.

Leslie Newbigin, one of my favorite theologians, he says this,

and it's a sobering thought.

He says, a society which is permanently abandoned, the attempt to know what

is true, finally true, is on the way to death in the long run.

So true of people as well, individuals.

And in the short run, it is rife to be taken over by those who have an answer,

even if it is the wrong one.

The gospel is about love, political gospel is the gospel of love,

but politics are particular and the world needs Christians to be clear and honest

and brave enough to step into the fray and to proclaim and witness to what Jesus says is true,

that there is a good way of faith and trust and repentance and being filled

with the spirit and turning away from sin.

The world needs that because something will fill that void.

This is not a world of neutrality.

There will be a version of good, even if that good is bad and it will be laid

hold of and it will destroy societies and people and eternal destinies.

And like, I know it is, it requires, that was a good one.

We should, I'm sure one of the kids will make a remix of that.

It requires, requires... It requires us to... I'm not the sort of person who

likes to take a stand. I'm not a stand taker.

I'm more of a sit taker. It's my temperament, you know?

But love, compassion demands a little bit more of me than being passive. It has to.

Because the alternative Alternative for the world and for individuals is destruction, deception.

And that's a problem.

Worship team is going to come up here, but I'm just going to leave you with

one scripture because this tension that we feel is not new.

I think it's uniquely heightened given the cultural norms of post-modernity

where everybody says, oh, well,

what is truth and who can even say what's the right way to do things?

But it's not that new really. I mean, this dynamic is not new.

And in And in 1 Corinthians, as Paul is just kind of signing off,

he's encouraging the church.

In 1 Corinthians 16, 13, he says, he gives them this charge.

He says, be alert, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong, do everything in love.

Love is the indispensable quality of Christians in everything that they do,

in their politics, in their engagement. and yet it will still require courage and strength.

It will still require from us to be alert, to be people who stand firm,

who are committed to truth.

Love requires that of me and it requires it of you.

So as we just close out here, we're just going to, again, we're going to ask

you guys, the thing that I want us to do as a church is to be people who are

constantly receiving from God.

I'm just a beggar. I'm a beggar and I like it.

You know, like, I think sometimes we want to have this ideas of who we are.

We want to be strong people.

You know, we are, it says right here, be strong.

It's just a question of what does strength look like? For us as Christians,

Christian strength looks like maximal dependence on the Holy Spirit.

You don't have the love, you don't have the courage, you don't have the strength

in and of yourself, but we receive those things from God.

And so what I wanted to do is just, as we close out in prayer and we're going

to worship here, is to just sit where you're at.

And if you want to, I like putting my hands out, even though I can't do it very

well. Put your hands out. It's like a posture of receiving.

You know, we want to be a church that receives from the Lord.

I mean, just ask God for these things that we need. So God, we just come before you. The world is crazy.

Things are wild. We want to have enough love, Lord, first off to repent of our

contempt and our anxiety and our fear and our hatred of other people.

We want to have enough love to be willing to do that, Lord.

So we ask you for that work to be done in our hearts, Lord, for you to just

minister to us and cleanse us and to purify us, God.

We ask you to that according to love. And Lord, then we ask you for the other side of that thing.

Lord, enough courage and enough conviction and enough wisdom and compassion for.

Are lost and you are pursuing their version of the good, but it's actually just

leading to their destruction, God, Lord, would you give us boldness, Lord?

Not boldness that just like, you know, channeling some strength of our own,

but God, the kind of assurance, the kind of joy that you had,

Jesus, Lord, you had nothing to prove.

You had nothing to manipulate.

In any in any situation, you weren't trying to get ahead or to be liked,

Lord, or to be unlike, Lord.

You were just there. You were present. You were caring, Lord.

You were carefree and yet so committed to the truth.

Lord, we just want to be people who are changed, God.

You can learn what it is to have this easy yoke of following after you, Jesus.

Lord, would you lift our burdens? God as we come to you with all our desire

Lord would you just fill us with your with your spirit God would you take away

our cares and our anxieties Lord and give us confidence and hope,

and God give us opportunity to grow in that confidence and in that hope and

to be witnesses to the truth Lord Lord and to just bless and care for people

Lord make us people who have a voice and who know how to use it Lord make us

people who have something to say to the world Lord you're gospel,

Lord, people who are just full of that gospel, who just believe that it's true,

who are experiencing it ourselves, and then ministering that out into the world,

Lord, would you move in power among us, God?

We just receive that from you, God. We don't need to muster it up in our own

strength, Lord. We just ask you to make us and shape us into those kind of people.

Amen.

Music.