Justice for All with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Alright, MetaCurch, thanks for joining us for week two of this Justice series.

I want to say a couple things about the series at large.

Number one, this is really something that is meant to be taken as a whole.

We're breaking it up across three weeks, but if you want to understand the full context and really be able to appreciate the whole thought of where we're going with this, it would help for you to have all of the component pieces.

This is week two, which means if you missed week one, uh after this is over, it would really be to your advantage to go back and get caught up.

You can do that at metachurch.tv or on our YouTube channel.

The second thing is I'm hoping that this is the series where some of you become note takers because we are covering a lot of ground in this series.

We're in a streaming only season, which means we don't have a service coming in right after this one.

We don't have people trying to transition in the parking lot, which what I'm really trying to say is I get to preach longer right now, and I'm sure some of you appreciate that, and some of you do not.

But what we're talking about is important, and I continue to feel like uh God is imploring me and leading me to speak on things uh that make me very nervous, uh, that are very uh maybe controversial right now in the world world, but we said last week we're not gonna approach these things through the lens of my opinion or your opinion and then look at scripture.

We are going to take a scriptural view of the things going on in our world today.

And so last week we learned something that's a critical truth to understanding what justice really means.

We learned that before Jesus, justice was based on equity.

And after Jesus, justice began to be based on equality.

Equity versus equality, and this is a historical truth.

That before Jesus came on the scene, died for our sins, rose again, started this movement that we call the church, that all justice always was based on equity.

Equality actually wasn't even a societal term.

I mean, the idea that all people inherently have the same worth and the same value, that is uniquely a Christian concept before Jesus.

Equity-based means that if you have more, then you have the right to oppress.

If you have little, you have the right to be oppressed.

And to be oppressed when you're poor was just.

Everything was based on class systems.

The upper class was noble, the lower class was worthless, and it was seen as just.

It wasn't until Jesus and the movement that he started, a movement that has spread around the world and everywhere the gospel of Jesus has infiltrated.

We have seen him move away from equity and back towards equality.

Last week we saw that right now, as people are crying out for a Jesus-like justice in our country.

People who are dying for equality are actually largely organizing themselves for equity.

When you fight for equity, you segment off, segregate off based on external identifiers.

The easiest of those, of course, are race, class, and gender.

Equity means there's one pie and it can only be cut a certain number of ways, and you gotta fight for it.

And so people are sectioning off based on collective group identity, and we're fighting for what we believe to be ours.

We want equality, we want post-Jesus justice, but we're organizing for equity pre-Jesus justice.

And I think that's why we ended up with one of the strangest Fourth of Julys that we've experienced in a long time.

A Fourth of July, which normally is celebrated broadly by all Americans, except this year, many people decided to sit on the sidelines, decided that it's actually not something worth celebrating, but it should be something that we look at with disdain.

I don't know if you guys are on social media, but if you are, you might have noticed that all day long, on July the 4th, even through most of July the 5th, one of the top trending topics was F the Fourth.

And F did not stand for fireworks.

F the Fourth all day long, hour after hour, minute after minute, that means that people are pumping out content about why the Fourth of July should be downgraded from a celebration to something that we look at in disdain.

And I think that there is a clue in this F the Fourth hashtag.

I think that it leads us to an important understanding if we're gonna see things through a biblical lens.

Our generation is certainly not the first to see a very real problem with the Fourth of July.

Famously, Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became the main voice for abolition in the 1700s, he gave a speech that ultimately became a pamphlet, was widely distributed and read across the country.

It was called, What to the slave is the Fourth of July?

Martin Luther King Jr., he echoed this sentiment in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, one of the most famous speeches of all time.

And the content is obvious.

On July 4th, 1776, the nation celebrated its declaration of independence from Britain.

And yet, while the nation celebrated, the vast, vast majority of black people in America were being held in slavery.

The ideas of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the idea of justice was foreign.

It would take hundreds of years for this promise to come to all people.

Today, my message is called justice for all.

Would you pray with me?

God, we're gonna get into it again, and um, I just feel so strongly that you have called us to move forward in faith.

God, in courage, that your word has something to say about every single thing that comes at us in this world.

God, we believe that your scripture is divinely inspired.

God, that it is from you, that it is our map, it is our compass, it is our guide, it is our rock, it's our foundation, it is what is objective in a world where everything is subjective.

And so, God, we lean into it.

And I pray for just this time that we have, God, God, if no other time right now, that all of us could lay down all of the things that are not eternal.

God, that we could lay down our ideologies, we could lay down our worldview, we could lay down our politics, we could lay all of it down and just see what you have to say to us.

God, break down any walls that we are trying to put up because I believe that your movement that we are a part of is so, so critical.

It matters that we get this right.

And so, God, we give it all to you and we pray it all in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

So this year we walked into the tension-filled atmosphere of the 4th of July, 2020.

And what we see in this hashtag, what we see in this trend is a call to burn it all down.

If the promise that all men have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness took hundreds of years, and even after emancipation took all these generations, and even now we're looking around trying to identify systemic reasons that people are held back based just on the color of their skin.

Then is the declaration, is the constitution, is the foundation of America something that's actually worth celebrating?

The cry isn't to change it or or shake it up, the cry is to tear it all down, down to the foundation, through the foundation, down to the studs.

Maybe it's time to just start over.

And that's a very serious idea.

A very serious idea.

And here's why.

Because last week we started talking about justice.

And we had a very simple working definition.

If you get to the very core of justice, this is what it is.

Justice is getting what you deserve, and justice is not getting what you do not deserve.

Justice is getting what you deserve and not getting what you do not deserve, and what that means, and what we found out is that justice can't exist in a vacuum.

Justice can't just stand on its own.

Because there has to be something in the world view, there has to be something in the culture, something outside of justice that informs what it is that people deserve.

If we don't know what people deserve, we don't know what to give them, we don't know how to execute justice.

So justice can't stand alone.

And if America has historically mistreated a segment of its population and continues to live in this racial tension, shouldn't we find a different system, a different way, right?

A different worldview to inform and maybe it would fix it.

Isn't that what Frederick Douglass wanted?

I mean, what is the Fourth of July to a slave?

Isn't that what MLK was pushing for?

And in a simple answer, emphatically, no.

I'd like for you to hear one of the main parts in the conclusion of Frederick Douglass's speech.

He said, in that instrument, in context that meant the Constitution, I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing that is slavery.

But interpreted as it ought to be interpreted.

The Constitution is a glorious liberty document.

Read its preamble, consider its purposes.

Is slavery among them?

Is it at the gateway or is it in the temple?

It is neither.

This is Frederick Douglass, who I'm just gonna say right now has more credibility than anyone walking the earth right now in America to make this statement.

He was a slave for the majority of his life, recently freed and now fighting for abolition.

Did he want to tear it down?

No.

He calls it a glorious liberty document.

In his conclusion, he begins this way: now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it.

On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

For many people, this is mind-blowing today to think that Frederick Douglass would actually stand behind the same constitution that plantation owners hid behind in order to propagate slavery in the South.

How does he get to this idea?

One of the greatest thinkers, greatest writers, greatest orators of all time.

I have uh today three big words.

My grandpa would call these five-dollar words.

These are words that you'll almost never hear in my everyday vocabulary.

And I honestly feel like God almost gave me these words as a framework to preach this through, to preach something very complicated and try to make it a little bit simpler.

It's the words explication, implication, and application.

And pastors love this kind of thing because they all end in location.

We got a rhyme here, so now we can really preach today because we've got words that rhyme and we gotta define them a little bit.

Explication is developing an idea or a principle in detail.

And so this isn't a word I use, but I do use the word explicit.

And when I was growing up and I would try to buy albums, I would look because some of them were explicit.

And if my mom heard the explicit version in my room, then that meant that I was in trouble.

Explicit means we're gonna say exactly what we mean.

We're gonna give it all to you up front.

This is what it is, and then you have implication.

Implication is a conclusion drawn from something that is or is not explicitly stated.

This is the implication.

This is what the just raw, straight to the point words actually mean.

Implication is how we interpret what is explicitly said or written.

And last is application.

Maybe that's more familiar, it certainly is to me, the action of putting something into operation.

And so what Frederick Douglass was able to see when he looked at the Declaration of Independence is he saw what it explicitly stated.

And everything that was explicitly stated had an implication.

What is explicated is implicated.

And so when it says that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that is explicit.

And what is implied is that there are some truths that are written and seared on the conscience of our hearts.

It's the same language that scripture uses.

Says that all men were created.

That implies all men, black, white, and everything in between, all men were created, and they were created equal.

That's the explication of the declaration.

They're created equal, which implies that all men, the men and women and children in slavery on July 4th, 1776.

The document implied that they should be free because they're equal, that they're endowed by their creator.

That's explicitly stated.

Implied is there is a creator, that there is a God, that there is a law that is higher than human laws, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that cannot be taken away, and among them is life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness.

And what is implied, the implication is that everyone, that black people who were living in slavery, who were later living under Jim Crow law, segregation, that they had the right to thrive, to flourish, the right to upward mobility.

You see, the foundation of America is imperfect.

I mean, if you don't if you think it's not imperfect, we have all kinds of amendments because it wasn't perfect.

There is no perfect document other than the inspired word of God.

But was it pointing us in the right direction?

And it seems today that we're saying no, F the fourth, change it all, burn it down.

Frederick Douglass said, what it explicitly says is correct.

The implication is correct.

And here's what you need to understand in life, there is a massive gap between implication and application.

Finally, years later, and through a civil war, where tens of thousands of people died, there was the emancipation.

That was a step toward application.

What about MLK?

In his I Have a Dream speech, perhaps the greatest speech ever spoken, he said this in a sense, we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

The implication of what is explicitly written in those documents is for all men.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of a life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The problem isn't with what was written or what was implied by what was written.

The problem was that those who held the power took forever to apply it.

This is a lens to see the world through.

Because if there's contradiction between the explication and implication, it will eventually implode.

If there is contradiction between the implication and the application, then what is said doesn't actually matter.

And we're going into it.

We're going into all of it, we're walking through all of it.

It doesn't matter how controversial, because I think God has something to say about it.

And so let me just say something that is so freaking obvious.

It is so obvious that it's a given.

Black lives matter.

Second-class citizens, but inherently, because we have something that is guided by a higher law, a creator, and if we're all linked to the same creator, we are all created equally, not equity, equality.

Black lives matter, and yet it's difficult.

Because we also have an organization that has an agenda, and in their agenda, what they say in their theme explicitly is Black Lives Matter.

Yes, God, please, black lives matter.

What that implies is exactly what it says, and yet their steps of application are things that lead in the opposite direction of what they are explicating.

And you don't have to look for it's not hidden.

You can go to their website, and one of their main tenants is to disrupt and destroy the nuclear family.

That means a mom and a dad in the house.

You may not know this, but there is nothing else sociologically that is as proven, like unchangeably proven, that for a young person, for a child to grow up and to thrive and to have upward mobility and to have wealth and to avoid prison and to stay off of drugs and to stay away from depression, the number one factor is a mom and a dad in the house.

It is proven, it is empirically proven.

It doesn't matter where you live, it doesn't matter what religion you are, it doesn't matter your income bracket, it doesn't matter what color your skin is, the thing that determines the future success of children is a mom and a dad in the house.

And a movement, an organization that explicates they are for the flourishing and upward mobility of black lives in their application moves people further away from what they are stating.

Here's what this means.

What this means is if you apply what they imply, you will eradicate what they explicate.

Let me slow that down.

If you apply what they imply, if you follow their actual agenda, you will eradicate, you will dismantle the very thing that they say they stand for.

And so it makes it so difficult for something so obvious that every black life matters.

Brianna Taylor's life matters.

George Floyd's life matters.

Every black life matters.

And it's important we talk about this, even though it's uncomfortable, and maybe you're just like really like squishing down into your seat right now.

And just imagine being the one who's got to be behind the camera and holding the microphone.

I know it's uncomfortable.

Hot topic.

But if the movement of Jesus matters, we have to see this through the right lens.

And there's a massive gap between implication and application.

And if the church can't get it right, we will lose all of our credibility.

The inescapable truth is that our country and our general sense of morality were both born out of a uniquely Christian worldview.

You can hear it in the declaration.

All men created equal, created a God, created equality.

That's post-Jesus justice.

We were declaring our independence from monarchy, from a class system, from an equity-based system, and we were attempting to move towards equality.

If there's one thing that I'm convinced of, it's that the movement of Jesus is key, the key to moving towards a future where racial equality can actually thrive.

And here's why.

Not only is Jesus the source of the kind of kingdom equality justice that we're longing for, but Jesus, Jesus moves us from implication to application.

One day while Jesus was on earth, he was teaching when he was approached by a lawyer.

In Luke chapter 10, 25, it says, An expert in the law stood up to test him, saying, Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And we're quickly gonna see what kind of test he's putting before Jesus.

Luke, the author, already gives it away.

This is a test.

This isn't a good faith question.

He's not really trying to learn.

There's something that he's getting at.

In verse 26, Jesus answers, What is written in the law?

You ask, What must I do to inherit eternal life?

So what is written in the law?

And he asked him, How do you read it?

See, here's the thing.

When we come to test Jesus, we oftentimes end up getting tested.

And that's why I'm okay with you questioning Jesus.

Question God.

He's big enough to handle your questions.

Just know that while you're asking what, he might be telling you why.

He might be pointing you towards your future.

This man comes to test Jesus, and Jesus turns around.

What's written in the law?

How do you read it?

And the lawyer answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

Pastor Noel just preached on this.

He just preached on this.

Like this is a shockingly right answer.

Like this answer is so right that it's almost like he had the cheat sheet.

And here's why.

Because he just strung together two verses from the Jewish scriptures from the Old Testament.

The first is Is the Shema that you find in Deuteronomy.

The Shema says, Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

A good Jewish person would actually say that at least twice every single day.

You would recite the Shema, Hero Israel, the Lord your God is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

That's from Deuteronomy.

And love your neighbor as yourself is from Leviticus.

They're books apart.

They don't actually go together in scripture.

The first person whoever puts them together is Jesus.

This was the crux of the message of Jesus during his time on earth.

And so, unless this guy is truly the star of all star students, he's probably heard Jesus give this answer before.

The lawyer parroting back the teaching of Jesus, and Jesus answered, you've answered correctly, do this, and you will live.

Test over.

Great conversation.

But remember, he didn't come to get tested by Jesus, he came to test.

Love God, love people.

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

Here's the real test.

Here's what the lawyer actually wants to know.

Verse 29, wanting to justify himself, he asks Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

Here's what he's asking.

Jesus, I know what you explicitly teach.

But what's the interpretation?

How do we get from explication to implication?

You say love your neighbor as yourself, but who does that imply my neighbor actually is?

Verse 30, Jesus took up the question and he said, a man was going down from Jerusalem, Jewish territory, to Jericho, Jewish territory, and he fell into the hands of robbers.

They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead.

And a priest happened to be going down that road.

Now, if you're Jesus' audience right now, the priests are the keeper of the Torah, and the Torah is the law, and the law is where you find love God, love people.

And so you just know the priest is about to be the hero of the story.

It's obvious.

There is a woman in distress, and Superman comes walking down the road.

What is the logical conclusion?

He's gonna take care of it.

He is the guy who is best outfitted to step up and step in and do something about the situation.

And when the priest saw him, he passed by on the other side of the road.

The priests know the law.

They should actually have it memorized.

That means that the explication of God's word, what it explicitly says in the law, no one knows better than the priest.

And yet he convinces himself that even though he explicitly knows it all, this situation, a fellow Israelite dying in a ditch doesn't actually apply to him.

And what good is someone who knows the whole law to a man who's dying in the ditch?

Frederick Douglass said, What good is the 4th of July to somebody in slavery?

The answer to both is it is no good at all.

In verse 32, in the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place in Psalm, passed by on the other side of the road.

A Levite, someone who is from the great lineage of Israel.

Someone who, throughout all of Israel's history, has had a special place.

They had special garments, a special way of grooming.

They looked a special way.

Just by their genealogy and their outward appearance, implied that they would execute the law.

They're a Levite.

If a priest doesn't do it, now we've taken it up a step.

Now it is a Levite, the Levitical priesthood.

The book of Leviticus is where you find the law in scripture.

It's a Levite.

If the priest doesn't know the law, if he can't figure it out, now comes a Levite.

And everyone from the tribe of Levi is listening to Jesus.

And they're like, Yeah, boy, here we go.

The priest got it wrong.

But the Levites are gonna get them.

Pull them out of the ditch, put them on the donkey, take them to the hospital.

And he passed by on the other side of the road.

And I gotta pause and I gotta hit a little bit of a tangent here because there's something that's weighing very heavily on my heart.

And we're we're already opening, you know, all the folders that say do not open, warning, stay away.

So let's just talk about all of it.

Let's get a Christian perspective on all of it.

Because the priest and the Levite had it explicitly, they had it implicitly, they had everything they needed to make sense, to apply the law of God, the higher law that guides us all and will judge us all and to help this man.

And yet they did not.

They looked apart.

They had the right garments, they had the right trappings, they had the right education, they made sure that they looked right to everybody around them.

They would judge people harshly, they would castigate you if they found you, missing the smallest piece of the law.

They had all of the signals of virtue without actually having any virtue themselves.

And in our culture right now, what might be the most dangerous force and the most dangerous pattern is that everyone is compelled to virtue signal.

You have to understand.

You do not have to have virtue to virtue signal.

You just have to have the appearance of being virtuous.

What it does is it appeases guilt that you place on yourself or society places on you.

And so you do it as long as it's cost-effective.

You do it, don't miss this, as quickly as possible.

What is the fastest way to make everyone think I actually care about this movement?

It's not conviction.

See, the difference between guilt and conviction is guilt is a negative feeling.

The scripture's clear, guilt doesn't come from God.

And when you feel guilt, you're gonna act as fast as you can to get rid of the feeling of guilt.

Conviction is from the spirit, conviction is long term, conviction creates real change.

Conviction still cares about the movement when it's no longer on the 24-hour media cycle.

Here's a way to understand it through our conversation today.

Virtue signaling is a way to avoid application.

You don't actually have to do anything to avoid application through meaningless explication.

Post the right thing, say the right words, go the right places, vote the right way, explicate, do all the things that everyone can see and do it as visibly as possible and do it as fast as possible without actually having to take any action steps so that you can appease your sense of guilt and move on with your normal life.

Signaling our virtue without ever having to do real long-term work or affect real long-term change.

Shifts our thinking and our actions away from the path toward real, equitable, equality, and kingdom justice.

We have a priest, we have a Levite, the two most obvious.

They should have stood in the gap, they should have helped the man.

And now Jesus brings a plot twist.

In verse 33, but a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion.

Now I want us to try again to put ourselves there that day, and Jesus is teaching this Jewish audience to a Jewish person, their neighbor was a fellow Jew.

That was obvious.

When the lawyer said, Who is my neighbor?

Everyone in the audience had the answer.

I know, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that's our lineage, and that's where we're from.

And if you are a child of Abraham, then man, I am with you.

All the Jews are our neighbor.

And Jesus said, a man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, Jewish territory, Jewish territory, but in between was Samaria.

And the racial division between the Jews and the Samaritan, I promise you, rivals any modern-day racial tension.

They hated each other.

As a matter of fact, it was only about 120 years before Jesus was teaching this that the Jewish people went into Samaria.

They desecrated their temple, they burnt it to the ground, they cycled them into poverty, and uh soon enough the Assyrians came in and they took advantage of the vulnerable Samaritans.

And now the Samaritans were all uh intermarried and interracial, and the Jewish people saw them as half-breeds and called them dogs and hated them, and they would actually walk around Samaria.

They'd had an entire day or two to their trip to Jericho just to not see a Samaritan.

It was vicious racism.

And Jesus says, but a Samaritan came and he had compassion.

And he went over to him and he bandaged his wounds.

And to the Jewish people listening to this, to be touched by a Samaritan was to be defiled.

He poured on olive oil and wine.

He put him on his own animal, he brought him to an inn, he took care of him.

The next day he took out two denarii and he gave them to the innkeeper and said, Take care of him.

And when I come back, I'll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.

And the Samaritan gave time and attention and resources.

He gave love to this Jewish man.

He gave love to someone he knew would probably never be able to love him back.

He saved his life.

And it wasn't because of what he said, and it wasn't because of what he thought or how he looked, it was because of what he did.

Somehow the Samaritan bridged the gap between implication and application and literally saved a life.

Verse 36, Jesus asks, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robber?

And this is this is the big moment.

This is where we see whether or not the lawyer gets it.

Which one?

Priest, Levite, Samaritan.

Which one?

Here's your test.

Final exam.

Who was the neighbor?

Verse 37.

The lawyer says, the one who showed mercy to him.

And unfortunately, he gives a display of his heart.

Because even on the final exam, he can't give the right answer.

He just can't say it.

He cannot say the word Samaritan.

He can't admit it.

He's like, you know, the guy, he had a donkey, not the priest, not the Levite, the other guy.

The Samaritan.

Yeah, yeah, the other guy.

The one who showed mercy.

He can't do it.

The racism is just too bottled up inside of him.

And Jesus told him, Go and do the same.

Jesus turns justice upside down.

There's nothing that's ever happened in the history of the world that has affected justice and equality and our view of our fellow man like Jesus Christ and his movement.

This is a big deal.

The lawyer was testing Jesus.

Jesus is telling us to love our neighbors, and he wants to know exactly who his neighbor is.

It's an equity-based question, and Jesus turns it around and says, Go and do the same.

Here's the question that our world is asking right now.

They are asking, who is my neighbor?

I need to know.

I need to know explicitly.

I need to know what's implied by that.

Who is my neighbor?

And the most obvious answer is gonna be the people who think like you and look like you and live in proximity to you and have the same worldview and vote like you do.

That's your neighbor.

Good.

I've got my neighbors, we can come together, we we can ban, we can kind of separate ourselves out, and we can fight together for equality, they think, but no, it's actually for equity.

And Jesus turns it around.

It's not who is my neighbor, it's whose neighbor am I?

You go and do the same.

And Jesus makes the hated Samaritan the standard for what it means to actually love.

Do the Shema.

Do the Shema every hero is with the Lord our God is one and love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind.

Do it all day.

Man, quote the Old Testament: love your neighbor as yourself, but who is my neighbor?

Wrong question.

Whose neighbor am I?

How can I go out and find as many people as possible across all demographic divisions to love the way that Jesus loved me?

It's not equity-based movement.

That's who's my neighbor.

It's Jesus justice, it's equal justice, it's kingdom justice.

Whose neighbor am I?

How can I make a difference?

How can I love?

How can I get beyond just signaling that I might have virtue and actually live a virtuous life by standing next to and standing up for all people?

Who are the all men that were created equal?

That was the question America had to answer because they had said it, they wrote it, it's the founding document.

It's what is going to guide, it is the rudder on the ship that is leading us somewhere.

Who is it?

What is implied by it?

And then there's a massive gap.

A massive gap.

Last week we looked at Philemon.

Philemon was a believer.

He's got a book in the New Testament named after him.

We know he's a believer because Paul tells us he is a believer, a believer in Jesus who owns a slave.

And Paul writes him a letter, and we have it in our scriptures, to push him from implication to application.

Philemon, do you understand the gospel?

The gospel that started with a call to go to all nations and preach the gospel?

All people, the gospel that says, do not show partiality among anyone, the gospel that says greater love has no one than this, then they would lay their life down.

Jesus called us to take up our cross and follow him.

And maybe because of where you're from or how you've been raised or the worldview you've held or the lies that you've bought, maybe your cross to pick up and bear is a racial cross.

Maybe it is this idea that you have had and this way that you have segregated in your mind, all different people from all different demographics, so you can pit them against each other and pit them against you, and you can either be the victim or the hero on whatever day and however you're feeling.

Maybe that's what you have to bear.

Maybe that's what you have to submit.

For Finleman to begin to apply the gospel into his home, he had to let his slave Onismus free.

The implications are massive for how followers of Jesus should, keyword should, live.

Jesus says, half brother has a letter in our New Testament.

In James chapter 2, it says, What good is it, my brothers and sisters?

James 2 · chapter mention

That's uniquely Christian language in scripture.

These are believers.

If someone claims to have faith but does not have works, can such faith save him?

If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of you say to them, virtue signal, go in peace, stay warm, be well fed.

But you don't give them what the body needs.

What good is it?

And in the same way, faith, if it does not have works, is dead.

Now this is written to Christians.

This isn't about how to go to heaven.

This is about living in a kind of way where you move from virtue signaling to virtuous living, where you don't just imply what the gospel says, but you apply it into your life.

And James is making it very clear.

Our value to this world as the movement of Jesus is not found in what we say, and it's not found in what we imply the movement is about.

It is the application of God's love that actually changes the world.

People want to tear down America.

Not because the founding principles were wrong, but because it has taken us too long to apply them into society.

And likewise, people have abandoned the church.

The church has lost its influence, it's lost the culture, it's lost the youth.

And what is the biggest steeple in town?

It's an implication.

What is a dress code to come to church?

It's an implication.

And what are the words that we say and the posts that we put up and the scripture that we put over our selfies?

It's an explication.

And if we can't get past this to actually radically loving people, submitting outright that we think we have to judge others, and instead pursuing the kind of love that really changes things, we will lose.

And if we count on what scripture explicitly says without us acting on it, we will lose.

We will be the priest that continues to walk by as the world is bleeding and hurting and dying.

If we're the Levite and we constantly signal our virtue and make sure everyone knows that we are holier than they are and more Christian than they are, and sing more Christian songs than they do, memorize more scripture than they do, wear better suits than they do, we'll be the Levite.

We'll walk by on the other side.

We'll miss our opportunity to create real change in the world.

We will lose.

There's a massive gap between implication and application.

And the times where the movement of Jesus that we call the church has been able to bridge that gap, we have seen revival.

We have seen people coming to Jesus in numbers that are unimaginable.

And I believe that we're on the cusp of a spiritual awakening.

And I believe that people are coming to the end of putting their hope in all of the things of this world.

Will we be ready?

You can say it all you want, you can signal it all you want.

But if MetaCurch is ready to live it, especially in these moments where it is hardest to live out, the moments where we want so badly to fight, the moments we want so badly to tweet them back and show them what's up and win our political points that nobody cares about and that we'll all burn up on the other side of this life.

Listen, if the church loses, if we give up and give in, if we just count on what the church has always been, if we just count on our virtue signaling, if the church loses, there will be no more foundation for the kind of justice that people are crying out for.

But if we begin to win, people will find the hope, the equality, the justice, the life, the liberty, and most importantly, the eternal security that everyone is longing for inside.

We have an opportunity right now, but we must get from implication to application.

Would you pray with me?

God, we love you.

And uh I thank you.

God, I thank you for giving me some words to preach through that I had to look up the definitions to.

Um, but man, they just helped me.

They helped me to see where I fall so short often.

Just trusting on my knowledge to create change.

Counting on what I look like or what my life looks like or what my social media profile looks like to create change, none of it's good enough, God.

We've got to apply your word.

God, if we are hearers of the word and not doers, we deceive ourselves.

That's what your word says.

But if we put into action a Jesus type of justice, a Jesus kind of love, if we don't just settle to believe in you and go to heaven, but we start actually following your example, I believe we will see these pieces of heaven right here on the earth.

So, God, I pray for everyone who is hurting, who has been hurt through this process.

I pray, God, I pray for racial reconciliation.

God, I've received emails this week from people who are hurting, who are afraid, who feel threatened.

I pray for peace.

I pray that your church would step up and do what you've called it to do.

God, I pray you start with me.

God, that I would in more and more ways bridge that gap between implication and application.

That we would live right in the middle of the power that you've given to us through your death on the cross, your resurrection, and the movement you've started.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Man, we want to uh we want to thank you guys so much uh for just streaming with us, for continuing to find ways to serve with us.

We want to keep you up to date with what we have going on.

So, man, make sure you follow us on Facebook and on Instagram.

This movement matters.

It matters.

I I believe that we need to be in a position for people who are spiritually seeking, and I think that God is preparing us for that.

Let's make sure we're also funding that with the resources it requires.

And so, man, if you're still working, you're still receiving income, please do your part.

You can give online at metachurch.tv or by downloading the MetaCurch app.

I love you guys.

We're gonna wrap this series up next week.

You guys stay safe and continue to be the movement.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.