The Kingdom Way | Luke 6: 20–26 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

MetaCurch, it's Pastor Clayton.

I'm here at Ambassador's Coffee.

It's an amazing coffee shop here in town.

I'm so excited because we are continuing to walk, not just through Luke, but through the same passage that we've been in now for five weeks.

Our fifth week on the same passage.

That's how seriously we're taking the scriptures here.

If you're new with us, I just want to welcome you in.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor.

We have an amazing congregation here at MetaCurch.

I know you're going to love it.

I hope that you'll jump in with both feet.

Stop by the Connect area at either of our venues.

If you're here in Helotus or Petrenko, I'm so glad you joined us.

And if you're watching with us online, and I'm so grateful for our online ministry.

If you're in the San Antonio area, make sure you come out to one of our venues.

Now, where we're at in the text, Jesus is starting his most famous sermon.

You've probably heard it called the Sermon on the Mount.

That is one setting where Jesus preached it, but we agree with many scholars that this is the sermon that Jesus traveled with everywhere he went because Jesus came to help us understand how to live as a part of the kingdom of God right here and right now, how to operate in the kingdom of God right here, right now, how to build the kingdom of God right here and right now.

Now I want to make something very clear.

This sermon is not about how to get to heaven when you die.

This sermon is about how we, as believers in and followers of Jesus, start living in a way right here, right now, where we start bringing these little glimpses of heaven here to the earth.

And the way that Jesus opens up this sermon just shocked everybody.

And it should shock us as well if we're paying attention.

Let's read our entire passage.

I'm in Luke chapter 6, starting in verse 20.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Then looking up at his disciples, Jesus said, Blessed are you who are poor, because the kingdom of God is yours.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, because you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now, because you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, insult you, and slander your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.

Take note, your reward is great in heaven.

For this is the way they used to treat the prophets.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort, and woe to you who are now full, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are now laughing, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for this is the way they used to treat the false prophets.

Now, in week one, we did a broad overview of this passage, and I believe that the context we presented in that sermon is essential for you to really grasp this and apply it into your life in a way that it changes you.

And so, listen, I don't have time to give you the full context we did in that sermon.

What I want to do is invite you to go to youtube.com slash metachurch.

Some of you are watching this on YouTube right now and go pull up that sermon, Luke 6, 20 to 26, so you can get the full context.

What we've done over the last three weeks is we have been comparing and contrasting the very words of Jesus.

So in week one, we did poor versus rich, and then we did hungry versus full.

Last week we did weeping versus laughing.

And we've been looking at these in very specific categories.

And so the first pair, we said this is about security.

And we asked the question, what do you trust?

In week two, hunger was about satisfaction.

What do you crave?

Last week we said it was about sensitivity, what moves you?

And today we are looking at our last pair, those who are hated versus those who are loved by everyone.

This is about your status.

And it begs a question for us to answer: Who are you living for?

Whose approval are you after?

Who gets the final say in whether or not you're doing a good job during your time here on planet Earth?

I want us to look just specifically about the blessing and the warning that Jesus gives us.

It says this: Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you, when they insult you, and slander your name as evil because of the Son of Man.

And then it says, Woe to you when all people speak well of you.

Every week we have started by getting clear on what Jesus is not saying.

When Jesus says, Blessed are the poor, he's not talking about your bank account.

When he says, blessed are the hungry, he's not talking about what's in your stomach.

When he says, blessed are those who weep, he's not talking about someone who is just eor, they're just always sad and depressed all of the time.

What about when he says, blessed are you when people hate you?

Some of you are like, bro, I must be blessed, because let me tell you, everybody hates me.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Or maybe you're annoying.

Maybe you don't have very good social skills.

Being annoying and frustrating to people is not one of the fruits of the spirit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, being annoying as all get out, being rude, not having social skills.

Those are not things that God has prescribed for your life.

And so if you are creating enemies because you're not acting like Jesus, you don't speak like Jesus, you don't embrace people like Jesus, then you're not blessed for that.

So it's not just that people hate you or that people are insulting you or that people have excluded you.

You have to have enough discernment and lean into the Holy Spirit to go, maybe this is because of character flaws in my life.

The real point that Jesus is making is you're blessed when those things happen to you.

Look at how the verse ends.

Because of the Son of Man.

You see, I grew up in a Christian culture where a lot of times we would make enemies of the very people that God has called us to reach, because we were overly judgmental and we tried to put ourselves in the seat of God, or because we saw every political conversation as something to just hammer people over the head with.

And there were all kinds of Christians, and there are still today, who are very proud of how much division and judgment they cast upon other people, and they wear it like a badge of honor, where they go, Man, you should see how many people are mad at me.

You should see the line of people who just can't stand me.

I must be doing something right.

Jesus tells us to work out our own faith, our own salvation with fear and trembling.

So, yes, we don't compromise.

Yes, we call sin what it is.

Yes, we follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, even if it might make things awkward, even if it might put us in uncomfortable situations, but we do that with the preeminent command that Jesus has given us, which is to love God and love people.

And if your actions towards people aren't loving, and that's why people hate you, insult you, exclude you, and slander your name as evil, that's not something God blesses.

That's something that God is convicting you of so that you can change.

So we have to get this right.

It's not just that people hate you, that proves that you're living right and that God's blessing you.

Really, that's not what we're after.

The aim is not how can I get people to hate me.

The aim, what we're after is how can I follow Jesus without compromise?

And if you follow Jesus without compromise, it will automatically put you into a way of life that runs counter to the culture.

And as you continue to collide with the culture, the friction will be created naturally.

You will rub the world the wrong way naturally, because most of what Christ calls us to is moving in direct opposition to the way that the culture is moving.

So we do it, but we do it from a place of love.

Now, we want to look at every verse in Luke.

That's why we're taking our time and we're allowing the scripture to speak.

So I just want to point out that this blessing and this warning are the only two in the passage that have further explanation.

Let's look at that real quick.

Blessed are you when people hate you, exclude you, insult you, and slander your name because of the Son of Man.

But look at verse 23.

Jesus says, Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.

Take note, your reward is great in heaven, for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the prophets.

He says in 26, Woe to you and all people speak well of you, for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the false prophets.

Now, the first thing this brings up is something I've reminded you every week.

It is essential context for you to understand this passage.

What Jesus is doing here is now versus later.

We have to get that.

Jesus lived perfectly with his eyes on eternity, with his eyes not on the kingdoms of this world and all of the distractions and temptations.

He lived perfectly with the kingdom of God in view, eternity in view.

All of the powerful men and women who have taken the message and movement of Jesus and changed the world with it, all of them share this one thing in common.

They all lived with eternity in view.

At MetaCurch, we call that a pilgrim's perspective.

Every day I wake up and I realize this world's not my home.

I'm a pilgrim passing through.

I'm a citizen of heaven.

This is essential.

And Jesus shows his hand because he says, your reward is great, not in your job, not in your bank account, not in your health, not in your family, not in all this prosperity nonsense.

Your reward is great in heaven.

People hate you, insult you, exclude you, slander you.

Take joy, leap for joy, he says, because you are storing up treasure in the kingdom that will last forever.

Here's the second thing that we see.

Jesus adds this context.

He says, remember, and Jesus is a Jewish man, and he is speaking to Jewish people, and he's reminding them that all throughout what we call the Old Testament, the history of the Israelites, that God would send prophets to them and they would speak the very words of God.

And the prophets who spoke the very words of God were almost always calling them out of sin and out of rebellion and back to God's law.

And that's just not what we want to hear.

We don't want people to come in and heap conviction upon us.

When we are living apart from God, we don't want to be reminded of how far we are from God.

And so the prophets were insulted.

The prophets were hated.

The prophets lived very difficult lives.

Some of them were run out of the country, some of them were in prison, some of them were killed.

He goes, listen, if you live without compromise following God, then you will have friction, you will have suffering, and it will cost you socially.

And then he says, Woe to you, and people speak well of you.

This is the way that they always treated the false prophets.

There were also false prophets who would come, and the false prophets, they always tell you exactly what you want to hear.

They say things like, Listen, I know God technically says that sin, but trust me, it's fine.

False prophets are like, look, I talked to God about it.

We we massaged it.

We ironed it out.

You guys keep doing the things you're doing.

They show up in the Old Testament and they're like, look, you know, you probably shouldn't be worshiping false gods, but as long as you also worship Yahweh, you're you're probably fine.

The false prophets are there to tickle your ears.

Everyone loves a false prophet because a false prophet always tells you what you want to hear.

Everyone would hate the real prophets because the real prophets come and they point out our sin.

And so which line are we going to be in?

Are we going to be the false prophets who wear the name Christ?

I am a Christian.

I follow Jesus, but we compromise on all the things Jesus has asked us to do.

Are we going to stand in the line of the prophets?

Are we going to be Jeremiah?

Are we going to be Daniel?

Are we going to be Isaiah?

Are we going to stand no matter what it costs us and stand on truth?

You see, really, what this is digging at is one question.

Whose approval matters most to you?

Where are you softening truth so that people will accept you?

Where are you staying silent to avoid tension?

Where are you adjusting your convictions so you don't lose people's approval?

So you don't make the barbecue awkward, so you don't lose friends at work.

We are tempted to do this all of the time, sometimes in very big ways, sometimes in very subtle ways.

You know, there is many a man who has built great companies, billion-dollar companies, trying to seek the approval of a parent who passed long ago.

There are many people who have given their bodies away to countless sexual partners, trying desperately at a subconscious level to find the approval and affection of a parent who walked out on them.

There are people in their 20s, 30s, 50s, and 90s whose entire personalities are built out of a lack of approval from classmates when they were in the single digits.

At seven years old, they didn't get picked for the team.

At nine years old, they were left alone at recess.

At 12 years old, they were ashamed about their body and they're just desperate for validation, desperate for approval.

There are few things as powerful as validation.

It is like a drug that if that's what you're looking for, you will keep seeking it, keep seeking it, keep seeking it.

And if you want approval and validation from the world, I'll just tell you point blank, you will have to compromise on following Christ because the world is moving in a very different direction than Christ calls us to move.

And maybe the only drug more powerful than searching for earthly validation is the fear of rejection.

And so when you finally get in that friend group and you've been lonely for a very long time and you want friends so badly, and you found them in the wrong place, and it becomes apparent very quickly they have very different values than you, and they're not connected to their Heavenly Father, and they're not interested in following Jesus, you can kind of start to lie to yourself, like, no, no, no, you know what I'll do is I'll be in this friend group and I will be the witness.

I will show them God.

And the problem is every time there comes an intersection of your values and their values, your beliefs and their beliefs, you keep compromising yours so that you don't stand out or cause friction or potentially lose a friend.

If you're single and you're dating, this is very, very difficult.

It's like the first thing we should be looking for are people who are yoked equally with us, who also believe in Jesus and are following after Jesus.

And yet it's difficult out there.

It is hard in a world where everyone is just swiping left, swiping right.

And so you sit down at a date and you have so much in common, and you think they're handsome or beautiful and they they're successful, and you're having a great time, and everything's great.

But somewhere in the conversation you pick up that y'all are not on the same page spiritually.

What are you gonna do?

Because everything in you wants validation.

Everything wants approval, everything wants a second date.

Maybe you can already see the wedding bells, and yet you know, you know better.

Are you going to compromise?

This is the question that we all have to deal with, and here's why.

Because worldly approval is often the reward of compromise.

All you have to do is chip away a little bit.

Give a little bit.

Maybe they know you're a Christian.

They're like, oh, that's so-and-so, our Christian friend.

But you never really stand for your faith.

There's never really any distinction, there's never really any difference.

They're never under any conviction because you will never stand for what you actually believe.

You'll never call sin, you'll never remove yourself from the situation.

In order to do this well, I'm just gonna go back to this.

You must have a pilgrim's perspective.

If you are not living with the throne of Jesus Christ in view, like all of the time, then you will be overcome by the need for validation in the world.

Whose approval are you after?

I know the right answer.

If you're a believer in Jesus, you're like, I'm after God's approval.

And I hope you are.

But we don't come here to metachurch to play games.

We come here to get honest.

And so when push comes to shove and you come to an intersection where someone is moving in a direction that goes against your faith, do you stop?

Do you stand up?

Do you turn around?

Will you call sin sin?

Even if it is not socially, culturally, or politically expedient for you, will you call sin sin?

Will you remove yourself?

Even if it costs you socially, even if it costs you friends, even if it affects or offends your family.

Now we do this with love.

We're not out here to make enemies, we're out here to follow Jesus.

And so even when we have to stand up and even when we have to say something, and even when we have to remove ourselves, we do that like Jesus would do it.

We do it with love, a deep, passionate love for the people that God puts in our path.

But here's the thing we do it.

If we want to follow Jesus, we do it.

We do it without compromise.

Whose approval are we after?

Every week we have been looking at a character study in scripture.

Let me just remind you very quickly, when we looked at blessed are the poor, Matthew calls them the poor in spirit.

We looked at Abraham, who God came to and called into an incredible promise, but he would have to leave everyone and everything that he knew.

He gave up earthly security so that he could follow after God.

Week two, we looked at Esau.

Esau was a negative example.

He was trying to find satisfaction in the things right here, right now, instant gratification.

And because he looked for instant gratification, he gave up eternal reward.

Last week we looked at King David.

Blessed are those who weep.

King David got it really, really, really wrong.

His heart was so hard and he was not sensitive to the voice of God.

But when he was confronted by the prophet Nathan, his heart was broken and he did become sensitive once again.

He wept, and blessed are those who weep.

Today we're going to look at another character from the Old Testament.

We're looking at Daniel.

Now, Daniel's a very interesting character because he followed God just without compromise all of the time, and it actually brought him a lot of success.

Around 605 BC, Babylon was the dominant empire at the time.

They came and they completely took over all of Israel.

They let a lot of people stay, but they took from Israel the best and brightest of the young men.

They raised them up in the Babylonian courts to work for the new empire, and Daniel would not compromise no matter what.

He had three other friends.

We know them as Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.

They would not compromise no matter what.

And this actually led to their success.

By the time Daniel is a grown man, he becomes like second in line to the king himself.

And this is multiple kings later.

And so we're in Daniel chapter six.

I want us to read this together.

It says this King Darius decided to appoint 120 satraps over the kingdom, stationed throughout the realm.

And over them three administrators, including Daniel.

These satraps would be accountable to them so that the king would not be defrauded.

Daniel, though, distinguished himself above the administrators and satraps because he had an extraordinary spirit.

So the king planned to set Daniel over the whole realm.

Let's look at this hierarchy real quick.

You have the entire Babylonian Empire.

In order to steward the entire empire, the king puts 120 middle managers.

With those 120 middle managers, he has three guys in the C-suite.

One of those guys is Daniel.

But Daniel is so heads and tails above even the C-suite that the king goes, we're gonna re-org one more time.

And you three in the C-suite, you guys are getting a little bit demoted.

And Daniel's getting a lot of bit promoted.

And now Daniel was soon to be the only person in the entire empire who reported directly to the king.

And those who he used to be peers with would now be reporting to him.

And Daniel is an Israelite.

Daniel is a foreigner, and Daniel believes in the God of Israel, Yahweh, and is unwilling to compromise his beliefs.

Now at this point, you may be thinking, I thought this whole message was about following Jesus, and then you would be hated and excluded and insulted and slandered.

And it looks like for Daniel, everything is like up and to the right, nothing but success.

Listen, there's a pastor I listened to growing up, and he would say all the time, if you follow Jesus, your life will get better, and you will get better at life.

And that is true in a lot of settings.

God's desire is not for his people to just fail in all their endeavors all of the time.

God wants men and women of God to follow him and to be put in influential positions in the culture, in our companies, in our neighborhoods, in our gyms, in our places of work and relaxation and fun.

He wants influential people of God.

But as you gain success the correct way, you will gain haters.

When you are unwilling to compromise, when you live out the values of God, the values of Jesus Christ, there will be haters along the way.

There's an amazing book by a guy named Adam Grant.

It's called Give and Take.

And he did this massive social study.

He looked At different people and how they operate inside of organizations.

He looked at those who are takers.

They are ruthless.

They do not have Christ's ethos.

They will just take from you, they will step over your body, they will climb the ladder at any cost.

And then he looked at givers.

And givers are kind of like Jesus.

They're selfless, they will sacrifice, they will give away, they will love and support even those who position themselves as their enemies.

They're very Christ-like.

And what he found is that even though takers may jump off to an early lead, they may get the early promotions.

It is the givers, those who are Christ-like, who build the kind of uncompromising reputation that in the long run they see massive success.

Following Jesus like this does not mean you are just going to fail at everything.

However, along the way, you will make some enemies.

Along the way, there will be haters.

If you have no haters, no one hates you, no one slanders you, no one insults you, you might be in danger.

You might not be doing anything significant enough to get people's attention.

And so, yes, Daniel is up and to the right, and he's having a lot of success in living a godly life.

But he is about to leapfrog to other people who he was peers with, and they are not happy about it.

Let's read about that in verse four.

It says, The administrators and satraps, therefore, kept trying to find a charge against Daniel regarding the kingdom, but they could find no charge or corruption, for he was trustworthy, and no negligence or corruption was found in him.

So then these men said, We will never find any charge against this Daniel unless we find something against him concerning the law of his God.

Slander.

They are actively looking to slander him.

What charge can we bring against him?

They are excluding him.

They are having conversations on their own without him.

It is clear they hate Daniel.

They secretly insult him.

And look, they just come to the conclusion this guy is uncompromising.

We cannot find anything to charge him with.

And so we're gonna have to look at his God and see if we can set a trap using the law of his God.

Man, may this be said of me.

May this be said of you as a follower of Christ.

I can't find any corruption, I can't find any compromise.

If we're gonna get this guy out of here, if we are going to sabotage this lady's journey, we're gonna have to pit them against their God, them against Jesus.

If that's the only way that they can get at us, and we are doing something correct.

Now, you might know what they came up with.

It says this So the administrators and the satraps went together to the king, and they said to him, May King Darius live forever.

They're buttering him up.

All the administrators of the kingdom, the prefects, satraps, advisors, and governors have agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an edict that for 30 days anyone who petitions any god or man except you, the king will be thrown into the lion's den.

If anyone prays to anybody but the king, they will be thrown into a den of hungry lions.

This is the trap.

Here's what's happening.

The king for 30 days is going to act as a Babylonian priest.

And so, whatever gods you worship, whatever religious practice you have, for 30 days, everyone has to come through the king.

And this will unify the empire, and this will increase his influence with the people, and this will cause any kind of divisions to fade away.

Here's what they know: Daniel will never do this.

Daniel is absolutely cooked.

He is caught.

They know this about Daniel.

That the very first of the commands is you shall have no other gods beside me, that you will not worship any other gods, that you will not bow a knee to a man in prayer.

They know this and they know they've got him, they've trapped him perfectly.

They know this is going to work.

They're going to use his unwavering love of his God to trap him and ultimately to kill him.

He's a sitting duck.

And maybe you know the story.

Daniel hears about this and nothing changes.

Every day, three times a day, Daniel will go to the second story of his house.

He'll open a window that's facing Israel, and he would pray sitting in that window where he's easily seen.

They know that this is his rhythm, and he's not changing.

He's not compromising.

Yes, he is about to be second to the king in the greatest empire on earth, but to him that's nothing.

He's not looking for King Darius' approval.

He's not looking for the empire's approval.

His life isn't to get in a certain position.

His life is just to honor and love God.

And so we know the story, but I want us to really slow down.

Look what it says in verse 10.

When Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house.

The windows in its upstairs room opened towards Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, and he gave thanks to his God just as he had always done before, no compromise.

I'm gonna do it just like I've done before.

I want to point out specific words in this verse.

Because it's not just that he kept doing it in his normal rhythm.

It says this when Daniel learned, he went and gave thanks to God.

His response to this edict being signed into law was to go open his window and pray where anyone could walk by and see.

He is not changing who he is, he is not changing his spiritual disciplines, he is not changing his affection towards his God for anything, even at the cost of his life.

Many of us who bear the name Christ, we will compromise to keep a position.

We will compromise to keep a relationship.

We will compromise to keep a family member's approval.

We will compromise so that we don't lose money.

We will compromise for the smallest things.

This isn't just him risking the empire that he's about to be in charge of.

This is him risking his very life and he does not blink.

The rest of the story goes as you would probably imagine.

They entrap him and they take this news back to King Darius.

King Darius, for his part, is brokenhearted.

He loves Daniel and he sees the spirit that Daniel has, the leadership that he has, the capacity and potential that he has.

He wants Daniel to be second in the empire, and now he has to kill him.

He tries to find a way out of it, there just isn't a way.

And so King Darius calls Daniel in.

He actually appeals to Daniel's God, a God that he doesn't even believe in.

And then he throws Daniel into the den with hungry lions.

If you know the story, you know that the Lord sent an angel into that den, and it says that the angel shut the mouths of the lions.

Daniel spent all night there.

What they would do when you were thrown into the den of lions is they would basically starve these lions for days or even weeks, ensuring that the moment they put something in there, they would devour it, and yet the angel comes, and Daniel is not harmed.

Here's how much Daniel means to King Darius.

King Darius shows up right at dawn the next morning, calls out to Daniel on the off chance that maybe he made it through the night, and Daniel responds.

God saved Daniel's life.

But even if he didn't, Daniel would still remain as an incredible example to you and to me of what a life that is unwilling to compromise looks like, what it sounds like, how it acts.

I want to point something out to you because look, if somebody came and they threatened your life and all you had to do was turn your back on God, maybe you would have the character to go, I just can't do that.

I cannot compromise on this.

I can't renounce my faith in Jesus.

Maybe.

I'll tell you what I think is way more dangerous.

What I think is way more dangerous is subtle compromise.

Let me point something out to you.

Daniel didn't have to stop praying.

Daniel could have done exactly what he had done for his entire life and just shut the windows.

Nobody knows that he's praying if he just closes the windows.

If you or I were Daniel's friend, we might even tell him that.

It's like, look, dude, still pray, obviously.

This is like important.

We should be praying.

Just shut the windows, they'll never know.

And if they never know, they can't arrest you, and if they can't arrest you, they can't feed you to the lions.

So just look, it's like pray, but not everyone's gotta know about it.

Daniel's uncompromising.

He knows in his heart, in his spirit, that to change that, to go from his public faith to now going private, not for good reasons, not for spiritual reasons, but for fear of man.

At the risk of losing the approval of the king, at the risk of losing his position in the empire.

That's why he would be shutting that window.

And so would it be strategically smart from the outlook of the world?

Yes.

Would it be compromise?

Yes.

You see, the devil doesn't start by just going, hey, you're madly in love with your wife.

How about an affair?

How about go hire 17 prostitutes?

God doesn't uh the devil doesn't start with like black tar heroin as your addiction of choice.

Nobody starts there.

It starts with subtle compromise.

It starts with conversations you shouldn't be having or text messages you shouldn't be hiding.

It starts with a little habit that you can't quite kick that becomes the gateway to the next habit and the next habit.

It starts with subtle compromise.

It starts by just closing the window.

We think like this.

It's like, yeah, I mean, I love Jesus, obviously, but I'm not gonna like ruin this family reunion.

I love Jesus, obviously.

I'm just not gonna make this dinner awkward.

I love Jesus, obviously.

I'm just not gonna ruin this outing.

I love Jesus, obviously.

I just don't want my kids to dislike me when I start putting rules and boundaries in place.

It's subtle compromise that ends up killing us.

And the temptation to compromise is just always going to be there.

And Daniel is such an incredible example because Daniel lived only for God's approval.

Only.

Here's what that means: it means that Daniel never took his eyes off God, that his eyes were always on eternity, that he was always looking at the kingdom.

He was always living with the end in mind, trusting that even if he loses his position now, God will reward him tenfold later.

Even if he loses his life now, God will welcome him into the eternal kingdom as a martyr and will bless and reward him greatly.

So do we live only for God's approval?

Maybe we do some of the time.

Do we do it all of the time?

Would we do it if it really cost us?

What relationships are you managing through compromise?

What habits are you rationalizing?

What earthly approval are you seeking?

Approval is often the reward of compromise.

Where are you getting approval from people or places or jobs?

Where are you getting approval financially?

Where are you sacrificing your soul to find approval in the world?

There's really gonna be two options.

Are you going to compromise your faith for the world, or are you willing to compromise your place in the world for your faith?

You know, here's what I love about this teaching from Jesus is it's not complex.

It's not super nuanced.

You know, blessed are the poor.

That's a little more nuanced because it's like it's not really talking about your bank account, it's talking about the poor in spirit.

You look to Jesus alone for your security.

Hunger is not really talking about physical hunger, it's not about how much food's in your pantry.

Weeping is about the sensitivity of your heart and whether or not you have a heart that is hardened by this world or whether it's soft and sensitive to the things.

It's it's nuanced and we had to dig in and look at the Greek words.

That this is just like what it says, is what it says.

Are you willing to be hated by people, real people in your life to follow Jesus?

Are you willing to be insulted over and over and over again because you're not willing to compromise in following Jesus?

Are you willing to do the one thing that scars all of us when we are children to be excluded?

There are a few things that feel worse than being rejected.

There are few things that feel worse than knowing everyone went and got together over here and I was not invited.

And they specifically did not invite me because they know I will not partake in the conversations that they are having because of my faith.

That I will not do the habits that they are in because of my faith, that I will not go where they are wanting to go because of my faith.

And now I'm excluded.

Are you willing to be slandered?

Which means people are lying on you.

They are lying on your name.

They are dragging you.

Are you willing to do that to follow Jesus without compromise?

Woe to you, who are loved by everyone.

Woe to you.

We're either the prophets or the false prophets.

We will either stand on business, stand on the word, call sin what it is, not compromise, do it all through the lens of love, or we'll be the false prophets, and we'll tell people what they want to hear.

And we will live a version of Christianity that is filtered through the lens of our culture instead of filtering how we interact in the culture through the lens of following Jesus.

It is one or it is the other, and we're not really given a third option.

We're not given something in between the prophets and false prophets.

We're not given something in between following Christ without compromise or compromising our faith so that we have a little bit more of a relaxing experience in our social circles.

Are we willing to do that?

And the answer will come on how we are looking to eternity as our ultimate goal, or if we are looking to the world.

Now, for some of you who are listening to this right now, you don't have a relationship with God.

And I'm so glad that you're here at one of our venues, or I'm so glad you're watching this online right now.

I don't think it's an accident that you've gotten to this point in this message.

Because if you don't have a relationship with God, with something transcendent outside of our reality, then ultimately your status has to be determined by this world.

And so you will live a life of natural compromise, and the culture will inform who you are and how you live and how you act, how you react.

But if you are connected to a transcendent Heavenly Father, then you no longer have to look to the world for your approval, and that will bulletproof your life.

That means, come what may, I am living out the truths of my Heavenly Father as a child of God.

That this this world can't give me status.

My status comes from my Father.

My status comes from my Savior, Jesus Christ, who's called me one of his own.

When your status is not held by this world, it cannot be determined by this world, it cannot be corrupted by this world, it cannot be changed by this world.

And so we look to Jesus, we look to our Heavenly Father, and it bulletproofs us.

And if you don't have a relationship with your Heavenly Father, today is the day to get that right.

Here's how much your Father in heaven loves you, and He loves you so much that God condescended to us, came down to our world, put on human flesh that could be broken and bruised and nailed to a cross, lived in this world of pain and suffering, was tempted in every way that we are, but never sinned, was tried in every way that we are, but never compromised.

As the only perfect human being, he became the only perfect sacrifice to cover all of the sin of all of the world.

And when Jesus died on the cross, his sacrifice was made available to you and to me.

And what he asks is that we put our faith in him.

And when we put our faith in Jesus, when God looks at us, he no longer sees the sin that separates us from him.

When God looks at us, he sees his son, the righteousness of Christ.

At the moment you put your faith in Jesus, you are given the gift of eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can take away from you.

For those who are already believers, you have to decide.

Are you willing to compromise your faith for the world, or are you willing to forfeit the world to stand by your faith?

For those who do not have a relationship with God, the question for you today is: are you ready to get that right?

Those who are here at our venues right now, I'm gonna ask everyone across our venues to just bow your head and close your eyes to enter into a time of prayer as we seek the Lord.

I want those who are believers to just start asking the Holy Spirit to expose the areas where you have been compromising and then just hand those over to the Lord.

I'm done with that.

I'm done seeking my approval from the world.

I am done rationalizing.

I am done making these little subtle compromises that are tearing away my soul.

For those who are here and you don't know God, what Jesus said is all it takes is believing in him, that he is your only hope for this life, your only hope for what comes next.

Jesus didn't come offering you religion, he came offering a relationship, and you can get that right today.

And so across our venues and online, if you've never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus and you're ready to do that right now, my guess is the Spirit of God's pressing in on you right now, calling you to surrender.

And I would strongly encourage you to do just that.

If you're at our venues with everyone's eyes closed, if you're ready to make that decision, I want to ask you just to raise your hand right where you're sitting.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that just says, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

As hands go up, I want you to know that God sees your faith, accepts it, forgives your sins, and has given you the gift of eternal life.

All I want to do now is help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

And so if you put your faith in Jesus today, I'm gonna ask you to pray this with me.

I'm gonna ask all believers at MetaCurch to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Now let me pray for us.

Jesus, we do love you.

We thank you that you loved us.

We thank you that you modeled a life of complete surrender and of never compromising.

We thank you for Daniel's example, who's not just willing to risk status, but risked his very life to not even make a small, seemingly subtle compromise.

May we have the strength and the conviction of Daniel.

May we be willing to give it all for you.

And I believe that if we will live uncompromising lives, there is no limit to what you can do in us and through us to change the world around us.

I thank you for those who raised a hand.

We just celebrate with all of heaven, new life.

And I pray that they would find out all that it means to follow after you.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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