Justice for One with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time to get alive.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, MetaCurch, it is so good to be back with you guys.

Man, I uh I want to thank Pastor Whitti and Pastor Null for jumping in and doing an incredible job, just delivering us some truth that we can apply to our life during this difficult time of you know rising rates and COVID and all of the unrest that's going on in our world right now.

We thought it'd be appropriate on April 4th weekend to start our new series about justice.

Really, for the next two or three weeks, uh, I want to talk about a biblical view and also through the lens of the history of Jesus' movement, because what we need right now is some real perspective.

At the end of May, the world watched the video of George Floyd's death.

Nine minutes, so incredibly shocking that in the midst of a global pandemic, in the midst of just in our country, over a hundred thousand deaths in that moment, it was like nothing else mattered.

And after seeing this, so many people were literally shocked out of maybe just the comfortable bubble that we have lived in, forced to face some realities.

And I gotta be honest, you guys know this.

Uh, I am I am an off-the-charts optimist.

I mean, I I really, I genuinely don't know that I've ever met someone as optimistic as I am.

And in that moment, what I saw is I saw everyone I know, which represents a true cross-section of every demographic, every worldview, every political leaning, every race, everyone outraged.

And I thought, this will be a catalyst.

George Floyd's life will be a catalyst to bring people together.

And here we are, over a month removed, and it feels like we're more fragmented, we're more separated, we're more distanced, we're more divided than any time I can remember during my time here on this earth.

How did we miss the mark so badly?

How did we land so far?

And it's it's the cry for justice.

We've gotta address it and we've gotta see it, and if we're not talking about it in the church, then we're gonna miss it.

And if we miss it, it might be the very thing that fractures the church itself.

And if we believe that the movement of Jesus is the hope of the world, then we have to do what we can do to get the perspective to seek Jesus.

We're gonna go in today, and man, when I was preparing this, I have some people who really love me.

I have some other pastors who honestly just advise me just don't touch it.

Just preach something else.

Just just just just do the book of John.

Just just go into, you know, just go into Old Testament.

Let's let's talk about Israel again.

Let's do the walls of Jericho.

Like, just don't touch it because you can't win.

That was their advice.

You can't win.

You can't win.

Because if you speak on it, to the liberals you'll be too conservative, and to the conservatives, you'll be too liberal.

And if you say something you don't say it exactly right, then all of a sudden speech is violence.

But if you don't say something, then silence is violence, and if you stand with the members of law enforcement that are in your congregation, you'll be seen as anti-equality, and if you stand up for black lives, you'll be seen as anti-cop.

And if you stand with the protesters, you'll be conflated with the rioters, and it's like you can't win.

So the advice was don't just don't speak on it.

Just give the Sunday school answer, just Jesus will take care of it.

We're all gonna be okay.

And so here's what I need you to know as we wade into potentially very uncomfortable waters together today.

I'm very well aware that by speaking directly about what's going on, you almost cannot win.

And I also need you to know that I don't care.

God did not call me to win, God called me to preach the truth of his word, and he called me to preach the gospel of his son, Jesus Christ.

And if I cannot be faithful to my calling, then I cannot lead this movement.

And so we're going in.

And I've got a lot to say.

And to be honest, it's a little bit complicated.

And I know most of you just listen, and especially right now, we're just streaming, but man, this is one to take notes on.

We're gonna take a wide perspective over the next couple of weeks.

We're gonna see it through the lens of scripture, we're gonna see it through the lens of the history of the movement of Jesus that you and I are a part of.

Today we're gonna see it through the lens of what's going on right now.

And I'm praying that God will open your eyes.

And I'm praying that God will show us what's going on truly behind the scenes.

I'm praying for justice for all.

And yet, today we have to start with the title of my message, which is Justice for One.

Would you pray with me, Father?

Um, I've been uh I've been nervous, you know that?

I've been nervous because I have uh a lot to say, and what I have to say is a little bit complicated, and most of all, because I believe that this message from your word matters.

It matters so greatly.

It speaks right to the heart of the deep pain, the deep divisions that we're seeing in the world around us.

I thank you for your church.

I thank you for this movement.

A movement that matters now more than ever.

A movement that I believe you are positioning to be ready for a spiritual awakening in our culture.

And so, Holy Spirit, do not let a word escape my mouth that you have not covered.

And God, I pray that the people listening, streaming this right now, that also, God, that they have the Holy Spirit inside of them and it would translate these words to mean more than I could ever make them mean on my own.

And I pray for receptive minds and receptive hearts.

And God, there are a lot of things we're holding on very tightly, and they are things of this world.

And I pray that we would enter into your scripture with fully open hands, that we would allow the truth of your word to change anything inside of us that needs to be changed.

We give this to you, and we ask it in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

We're gonna jump right into scripture because we've got to center this in truth, and I don't want any of my opinions to become the filter that we see truth from.

This is what happens a lot of times with scripture is you start with a presupposition that's based on your own experience and your own life and your own personality and your own beliefs that came from who knows where, and you take that and you read it into scripture, and that's bad, that's bad interpretation.

We have to start with scripture and let it speak to us.

There are a lot of books that are being almost prescribed right now in society.

If you want to understand what's going on, you've got to start with this book.

You've got to start with this author, you've got to start with this history.

And we always start with the word, and scripture speaks to everything.

Today we're gonna read a letter from the Apostle Paul.

He wrote this while he was in prison in Rome.

It's a very short letter.

A lot of these letters, like to the Corinthians and to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, they're so long that we've broken them up into chapters.

Philemon is one chapter long, it's very short.

This letter to Philemon, I believe, is the greatest evidence of what the movement of Jesus has actually begun to accomplish and the power that it holds to transform hearts and minds and societies.

This is a unique letter, it's very personal to Paul.

He says in the letter that he actually wrote this with his own hand.

Paul was becoming an old man, and all of the content would be his, but he would have someone else who had better vision, better eyes, better penmanship.

Someone else would notate his words for him, but not on this one.

The letter to Philemon is intimate, it's personal, it matters to him.

Paul writes to Philemon, and in this simple letter, he turns the world upside down.

In verse 8, after his salutation, he says, For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you, to command you to do what is right.

Paul is saying he has spiritual, God-given authority to make a mandate to Philemon.

He can coerce him, he can compel him.

But in verse 9, he says, I appeal to you instead on the basis of love.

Did you catch that?

I have great boldness in Christ to command you, but instead, instead, I appeal to you on the basis of love.

What Paul is saying here is that even though he has a God-given right to force Philemon into a change, that he doesn't just want to change Philemon's circumstance, he wants to change his heart.

And this is something that's consistent all throughout scripture.

God just doesn't want to change our minds, he doesn't just want to set rules and regulations and change our behavior.

True spiritual transformation happens from the inside out and not from the outside in.

And you can coerce someone's behavior, but if you have not changed their heart, then change has not really occurred.

This is how Paul starts.

I could command you, but I appeal instead on the basis of love.

He says, I, Paul, as an elderly man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, Paul is in prison in Rome.

In verse 10, he says, I appeal to you for my son, Onesimus.

I became his father while I was still in chains.

Now let me just debunk this right off the bat.

He doesn't mean biological father.

Paul is not in prison and somehow at a very old age having a biological son and name him Onisimus.

This is not what is happening.

This begins to get to the very heart of the letter.

This revelation would have been shocking to Philemon because Onisimus, Paul's spiritual son, Onisimus is Philemon's slave.

Onesimus did what was common during that time.

And in Rome, there was about 50% of the population that was in some form of slavery.

Throughout the history of the world, slavery was common among all people groups.

In Rome, there were different forms of slavery.

There was a kind of slavery we think about through our American context, which was based on race and which was generational, in which someone truly owned someone else and owned their children and their children's children and passed them along and sold them in the marketplace.

What was more common in Rome was something called a bondservant.

And a bondservant is an agreement between the servant, between the slave and the master.

Oftentimes people would find themselves in very, you know, disadvantaged positions socially or financially, and they would come into an agreement with someone who was wealthy.

And Philemon, we can extrapolate from this was a wealthy man who came into this bondservant relationship with Philemon, where Philemon now serves him and lives with him.

And usually it's for a certain time.

And by 30 years old, most of these bondservants are free.

It was common for these servants, these slaves, to escape.

They would take off, they would normally steal from the owner.

They had nothing on their own.

So to buy clothes, to buy food, they needed something.

It wasn't always malicious.

They just took what they needed so that as they went on the run, they could actually survive.

Philemon would have been shocked to find out that Paul now is in relationship and in touch with Onisimus, his runaway slave.

Now, Philemon and Onesimus, they live in the area of the Church of the Colossians.

This is another letter that we have in scripture.

Paul wrote this letter because Paul started the church.

Philemon was one of the Colossians that he wrote to.

And so this is conjecture, but we can imagine that Onisimus knew Paul.

Paul was the apostle who did the works of God, spoke the truth of God, had the power of God.

And it's interesting that when he ran away from Philemon, he went to the clear source of spiritual authority.

He went to Paul.

And now Paul has accepted him.

Here is the power of the gospel.

He says, I appeal to you for my son.

Philemon's slave has become Paul's son, from slave to son.

This is a statement, a strong statement of identity.

In verse 11, Paul says, Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me.

Identity.

Identity.

There's a word play that Paul's using here.

The name onisimus actually means useful.

And he's saying, Philemon, he he really is kind of useless.

What's more useless than a runaway slave?

What's more useless than someone who robbed you and took off in the night?

He was once useless, but now he's onisimus.

He's speaking identity into him.

Paul sees it so differently.

He sees a value in this servant.

He sees life and love and potential.

In verse 12, he says, I'm sending him back to you.

Just like I'm sending my very own heart.

Paul loves Onesimus.

He says, I wanted to keep him with me so that in my imprisonment for the gospel, he might serve me.

Now we can't get it twisted because what he's not saying is be a servant to me.

He's not saying, Listen, Philemon, I know he's your slave, but I kind of want him to be my slave.

Like we'll do a little trazy because I really like this guy.

He's got a lot of capacity.

No, no, he says he could serve me in your place.

Paul is saying, your slave, the one that you look down on, the one that you are not equals with, the one that you have ownership of actually has equality with you.

He's spoken of his identity.

He's not useless, he's useful, he's onissimous.

He speaks of his equality.

I want him to serve me, Philemon, the same way that you served me.

Literally a swapping of position.

Verse 14, I didn't want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but out of your own free will.

Paul is desperate for a change in Philemon that comes from the inside out.

Not just a change of mind and not just a change of circumstance, but an actual change of heart.

In verse 15, he says, Perhaps this is why he was separated from you.

I can imagine Philemon reading this, like, uh perhaps he was separated because he ran away and robbed me.

Maybe that's why he was separated.

There's such two different perspectives on this one individual.

Perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, Paul said, so that you might get him back permanently.

And verse 16 of the letter that Paul handwrote to Philemon, verse 16 turned the world upside down.

He said, You might get him back no longer as a slave.

No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a dearly loved brother.

In this one short letter, we see justice for Onisimus.

And some of you are clever, and you know that my title is called Justice for One.

And you saw the name Onisimus, and it starts with O-N-E, One Simus, Onesimus, Justice for One.

Because by understanding how Onisimus, a Roman slave, found justice, we begin to find the key to what justice actually looks like in our world today.

And so here's what we have to do.

And this is where I really need you to consider taking notes.

Because to understand how impactful this letter to Philemon actually was, how revolutionary it was, how different it was from anything that had ever been written in the entire history of the world, we have to attempt to take off our 21st century American Western worldview lenses.

For most of us, when we think of slavery, we think immediately of the southern plantation state at the beginning of America.

The sin that started America, the sin that will always be Amar, the sin that kept us from living up to our own declaration that all people are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The declaration wasn't wrong, it just took a long time for it to be applicable across all people.

It was, as Frederick Douglass would speak of, it was a promissory note.

And his call to the abolition of slavery was it is time to call it in.

It is time for the declaration to be applicable across all people.

To understand the justice we're fighting for, we have to understand the justice of where we came from.

First of all, we tend to think of slavery as a thing of the past.

You may not know that there are more people enslaved right now in 2020 than have ever at any other time been enslaved in the history of the world.

Slavery is not something that was gone with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Slavery didn't end when slavery ended in America.

In fact, it is still rampant all over the world.

Not only that, but before Jesus, don't miss this, and if you're taking notes, before Jesus, racial equality was not a category in any society anywhere ever.

Before Jesus, equality was not a societal category at any time, anywhere, ever.

There is a distinct historical difference in pre-Jesus justice and post-Jesus justice.

A distinct difference.

And here's why.

Because justice cannot be defined alone.

A lot of people will give you a working definition of justice, but every definition you will hear is informed by that person's worldview.

Here is the core of justice.

Justice is giving people what they do deserve and not giving people what they do not deserve.

That's it.

Write it down.

Justice is giving people what they do deserve and withholding from people what they do not deserve.

It is that simple.

If you get what you deserve, it is just.

If you do not get what you do not deserve, it is just.

That's it.

And because of that, justice is incapable of operating in a vacuum.

It has to be informed by worldview.

And you might wonder, why is that?

Why can't justice stand on its own?

Why can't we just call things just when people get what they deserve and don't get what they don't deserve?

The problem is who gets to say what people do and do not deserve.

Something has to fill in the rest of our understanding as a culture into what it is that people do and do not deserve.

Our worldview informs what we think about justice.

Before Jesus, justice was seen as the strong oppressing the weak.

That was just.

Before Jesus, the poor being dirty and hungry and dying young, that was seen as just.

In fact, entire religious systems adopted the idea that if you were born in a lower class, it's because you were cursed.

And if you are born in an upper class, It is because you are blessed.

Worldview.

Most of history has operated on class systems.

Justice was determined by class.

If you were middle class and you lived an okay life, that was just.

If you were lower class and you lived a hard life, that was just.

If you were upper class and you lived a privileged life, that was just.

If you were the majority population and you oppressed the minority population, that was just.

Justice is determined by worldview.

It's determined by morality.

It is informed by the culture.

You see, before Jesus, justice was never based on equality.

Before Jesus, justice was based on equity.

Write that down.

Before Jesus, justice was not based on equality, it was based on equity.

Whoever owns the most wins.

And when the people with the most equity get more equity, it's just.

And then when the people with no equity are oppressed and abused, it's just.

This is the way the world functioned forever.

Equality was not an option.

It was not a category.

And there's a reason it all changed with Jesus.

Because Jesus turned the world upside down and he implemented into society the one necessary virtue for equality.

And if you were to guess, what's the one virtue, what's the one characteristic that we really need that is essential to having equality, you might say, well, obviously it's love.

If we can't love people, we can't handle them as equal, and that's a great guess.

And maybe it's hope, and maybe it's patience.

But there is one virtue that supersedes all others in the fight for equality, and that is the virtue of humility.

John Dixon is a historian, a researcher.

He put together a huge research team, and they looked through all of ancient literature, all ancient artifacts, all ancient hieroglyphics, and what they were looking for was how humility played a role in society in the BC world, the before Christ world, the ancient primitive world.

And it wasn't hard to find, and here's why, because um, like philosophers and emperors and great minds and authors, something that they liked to do is they would put together a list of virtues.

This is something that was still happening, like with Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s was still doing this.

This is what people did.

They would write out the list and try to rank the virtues, and this is how you live a successful life.

They looked through it all.

They scoured all of ancient literature, and they could not find one, not one single instance where humility was seen as a positive virtue.

Humility is from the Latin word humilitas, which means to get low or to be put low, to have humility, to get low, or to be humiliated, to be put low.

You see, if we were all, everyone streaming this, everyone listening, if we were all to make a list of virtues, every single one of us would have humility somewhere near the top.

Like we all believe in it.

We all know we're not good at it.

As a culture, we're getting further and further away, but we all believe in it.

Kendrick told us, sit down, be humble.

We know it, we know it's important.

In the ancient world, it was not a virtue, it was a vice.

Why is that?

Because justice in the ancient world, justice before Jesus was based on equity.

And if you get low, you have less equity, and it is just for those who have equity to oppress you.

Humility was for suckers.

Humility was for people who were cursed by their God.

To be put low, it's what you get.

It's just.

To put yourself low, it's what you deserve.

It's just.

No humility, no equality.

No equality.

We will never see the kind of justice that we're fighting for today.

Here's what you need to understand.

In the history of the world, Jesus shifted justice.

Justice existed, it just exists in a vacuum.

It is informed by the culture, the morality, and the worldview around it.

Jesus shifted justice from equity to equality.

The first instance that anyone can find of humility truly used in a positive light, truly held as a virtue, starts with Jesus.

Early in his ministry, one of his most famous sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, he said this: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

The poor in spirit, those who are made low, those who are in emotional turmoil, those who are at the bottom rung of society, no equity, and now the most equity, the kingdom of heaven itself.

Blessed are those who mourn.

If you have reason to mourn, it's because your life isn't going well.

If your life isn't going well, it's probably because you don't have much equity.

If you don't have much equity, that's what you get, and mourning is just.

And Jesus says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Now, if you can imagine being in the crowd and you've grown up in a world and you've grown up with a view of justice where humility is a vice, humility is something to be avoided at all costs, and Jesus is really tripping you out because he is taking negative aspects of the human experience and shedding positive light on them.

And if that wasn't weird enough, you get to verse five where Jesus says, Blessed are the humble, the ones who have been made low.

Blessed are those who have no equity, for they will inherit the earth.

But what actually changed things was not that Jesus taught it, but that he lived it.

The king of heaven stepped off of his throne.

The one with total equity.

If it exists, he owns it.

And he came.

And he allowed broken, sinful, jacked up, finite, thinking way too highly of ourselves humans to put him on a cross.

Philippians 2 says that Jesus humbled himself.

This isn't how you write about a king.

This isn't how you write about a ruler.

This isn't how you'd write about the emperor.

Man, you put on paper that the emperor humbled himself, he's gonna have your head, he's gonna feed you to the lions.

This is how scripture talks about our king.

Our king humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

And for this reason, for this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that's above every name.

So at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father and Jesus' death and resurrection and the movement that he started was proof positive that humility and all that it entails, those are the only way of living that actually makes sense.

We're a movement that is founded on grace.

Grace is the idea of getting something you don't deserve, getting a good gift you don't deserve, a gift like eternal life, the ultimate gift.

It's grace.

We can't deserve it because we're too sinful and we're too jacked up, but we get it anyway.

Mercy is not getting a punishment we do deserve.

Punishment withheld that we have earned.

And if you've believed in Jesus, someday you'll get to the end of your life and you'll see so clearly that all you deserve is hell.

It's all you deserve, it's all you've earned.

You spit in the face of God.

I've spit in the face of God too many times.

My only destination that makes sense is the fires of hell.

And we'll see mercy.

But how can you judge mercy or grace if you don't have true justice?

Justice informs what we deserve.

It's the only way of living that makes sense.

And scripture says that Jesus is sitting on the throne of heaven, he is ruling and reigning as king of all kings exactly because he humbled himself.

He showed us that the way up is down.

When we get low, we will be made high.

When we are humble, we will inherit.

And for Philemon to make the change of moving from someone in bondage to someone as a brother, Paul says he's returning no longer as a slave, but as a dearly loved brother.

That verse, that verse changed things from bondage to brother.

It required from Philemon an incredible act of humility.

And we don't have to guess whether or not he did it.

We can read in Colossians, and in Colossians it's Philemon who is working for Paul.

He actually delivers the letter to the church.

And now, Onesimus, who was the slave, is the pastor to the man who used to be his master.

Jesus turned things upside down.

He changed everything.

And what I want us to see is, I want us to see the strategy that has taken a moment, like the horrific injustice of watching George Floyd die, and instead of uniting us, has divided us.

And it starts by retracting from us the humility necessary to lead us to equality.

You see, the first lie that was ever told on earth was from a serpent to Eve.

And he said, Don't you know if you eat the fruit, you will be like God.

And for the rest of humanity, we have been wrestling to sit on our own throne as our own king, to be our own judge, jury, and executioner of everyone else around us.

Inequality takes humility.

The ultimate act of humility is to turn over whatever right you think you have to judge over to the one who judges us all.

You see, I don't actually buy the full media narrative.

Right now, every source of information is convincing us that we're more divided than maybe we even actually are.

You spend one hour, and all you will see are the divisions: white versus black, black versus police, police versus minorities, liberals versus conservatives, conservatives versus minorities.

We're just going on and on and on.

And here is the simple strategy that has been so effective in keeping the world from experiencing true equality and true justice for all of time.

And it starts with the idea that we are identified by external markers and we are grouped together, and we are only as good as we are a part of that group.

And this is rooted in pride.

It's rooted in the idea that you and I have the capacity to judge one another, that we are the ones responsible for passing the judgment upon one another.

And we're not God, we're too limited, we're not the king, we can't see it all, we don't know everyone's intention, and the only hope we have is to cheat.

And the way that we cheat is instead of treating people one-on-one on an individual basis, we group them together and we judge them.

Listen to this, based off of the action of the outliers in that group.

And so it's not person by person, it's whites by blacks.

And it's not looking at systems.

I'm about to go all over the place.

I've got too much to say, and I just need you to buckle in because I'm like I'm about to go way off script and just see what happens.

Because a lot of what we're talking about right now is systemic injustice.

You have to understand before Jesus there was no equality.

That means no race equality, that means no gender equality, that means no class equality.

All of the things we are fighting for.

It is a month and a half after George Floyd, and we are still marching in the streets.

Do you realize what we're marching for?

We are marching for a post-Jesus form of justice, and we are organizing ourselves in a pre-Jesus fashion.

We're not fighting for equality, we are fighting for equity.

And here's the difference.

Equity is based on our limited, finite resources, which means there is one pie and it can only be divided a certain number of ways, and you have got to get while the getting's good and grab what you can.

Kingdom justice says that we have a God who is infinite and eternal, from whom all blessings flow, that will give us all that we need for all that we go through in this life.

And there is no fighting over limited resources with an unlimited God.

It takes equality, it takes equality because we want to be king.

We want to be king, but we don't have the capacity.

And what is systemic injustice?

Justice is people getting what they deserve and not getting what they do not deserve.

Here's what I need you to understand.

Systemic injustice is based on systems.

That means it is policies, procedures, and processes.

Notice what I did not say.

I did not say people.

That means that hypothetically, there can be a system of injustice that is being governed by people who are not intentionally being unjust.

That means that there can be something that is systemically racist that is not being governed by people who themselves hold racist ideologies.

It is processes and procedures and policies, and I believe it.

I believe that there are things right now in our world, in our country, that have unequal and unjust opportunities for people.

And maybe they were inherited and maybe they go way back and they need to be studied.

But because we're fighting for equity, we are talking about systems, but we are fighting against people, and we're so focused on the people that we're not fixing the problems.

And we had like slavery in this country.

We put black people in chains, made them three-fifth of a human, owned them.

And when you read about the abolitionists, they were overwhelmingly guided, not by social justice, but by kingdom justice.

And the problem with social justice is that it's up to society, and society does not have the means and the perspective and the power and the capacity that only God has.

And so we always revert not to equality but to equity.

And we segment off and section off based on external identities and we fight.

Because there's only a certain amount of equity.

Who's gonna get it?

The abolitionists came together.

They saw blacks as equals because they saw them through God's eyes.

Together, they joined forces to not look just at people, but to identify real problems, policies, procedures, processes, systems of racism, systems of injustice.

And I'm terrified that we're gonna leave the systems unscathed because we're so busy fighting each other.

It's a hard thing to step into.

This is what Satan's done from the beginning of time.

He's convinced us that the way to win is to segment off, to segregate ourselves into the groups that make sense, groups by politics, groups by worldview, groups by race, groups by gender, groups by income bracket.

If we can all section off and we can all fight each other, then maybe our group can win.

This is what the movement of Jesus has been fighting from the beginning.

Paul wrote to the Galatians where there was racial tension.

He said, Therefore, there is now no Jew or Greek that's race, slave or free, that's class, male or female, that's gender, since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And Jesus prayed the night before he died.

Father, may they all be one as you and I are one.

And the disciples said, Jesus, teach us how to pray.

And he said, Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And Ezekiel, the prophet in the Old Testament, said that we all, we all are longing for heaven.

What we're marching for is the kingdom.

We want the kingdom, but we've rejected the king.

We've put ourselves on the throne, and we are too finite and we're too limited and we're too prideful.

And if we are not willing to submit what we see as our right to be the judge to the only one who judges, to the only one who sees us all, to the only one who sees all the way to our heart, our intention and belief, then we will never pick up our calling.

And our calling is not to judge, our calling is to love.

You remember back in the day when we got to like come to services here at MetaCurch, and we got to gather together, and I'd be here, and I wouldn't be looking at a camera, I'd be looking at you, and you'd be right here, or right here, or right there, or right there, and we would all sing together.

And you know what I would see?

Because at MetaCurch, we're not one of these vanilla churches that has a white pastor and a million white people, even though we're in an ethnically diverse city, and I feel bad for those pastors because they got some explaining to do.

We look like our city, we look like heaven, we've got everyone in here, and you might not even know it, but I watch.

I watch as black brothers and sisters sit right next to brothers and sisters who are in law enforcement, sit right next to people who are millennials, who sit right next to people who are boomers, who sit right next to people who are like raging, raging conservative.

Like, man, they got MAGA hats in their car, and right next to them, you got someone with Field of Burn Bumper sticker, and right next to them, you got someone who grew up right in the middle of the Bible belt, and man, they have been like toting their Bibles and smacking people over the head with it their entire lives.

And right next to them, there's a lesbian couple, and right next to them, we have got it all.

It looks like heaven is going to look.

And we come together, we meet together, and we move together, and the movement of Jesus matters right now, and it matters that we come together, and it matters that we move in unity, and it matters that inside of ourselves, with all of our differences, that we don't allow the lie that Satan has been propagating from the beginning of time, that you are only as valuable as the group that you identify with.

You are valuable because you are a son or you are a daughter of the most high king of kings, the only one who judges.

Somebody say amen.

I wish you were here right now so I could look at you, so I could see you because you're beautiful and I love you, and God loves you, and it matters too much.

It matters that we get this right.

The world has decided that the video of George Floyd and his life that was lost is going to be lost.

We're gonna segment and fight for equity.

What if the church decided we'd make it count?

What if the church decided that instead of propping ourselves up, making ourselves higher, grabbing more equity for ourselves?

What if we would humble ourselves?

What if we would turn over the right to judge?

Just give it to God.

Listen, if we're gonna understand justice, we gotta see where it actually happens.

We gotta see God's justice in action.

In 2 Corinthians 5 10, it says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

You wanna know where it all ends?

After all the drama and all the stress and all the pain and all the setbacks and all the injustice and all the inequality, you wanna know where it ends?

It ends at justice.

The judgment seat of Christ is uniquely for believers, people who've put their faith in Jesus.

For humanity, there's two judgments.

The judgment seat of Christ are for those who are in Christ, the great white throne judgment or for those who never believed.

The first thing that this tells us is that there is one point of division, and that point of division is the cross of Jesus Christ.

And there are only two groups, and those two groups are divided by that cross.

And those two groups are those who are saved and those who are perishing, those who are in Christ and those who are of the world, those who have believed and those who have rejected.

That's it.

And at the end of your life, you will not be judged as a white Christian.

That's not a thing.

A black Christian, a police Christian, a conservative Christian, a liberal Christian, you cannot attach worldly identifiers to an eternal reality.

There are those who are lost, and there are those who are found.

And the only thing we'll be judged on is what we did as the movement of Jesus to get as many people from this category over to this one.

Listen to what it says.

We must all appear, we will all stand before our Savior.

So that each.

Each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, what we've done during our time on earth, whether good, whether evil.

God knows us all.

And anything we prioritize above that is simply a fight over worldly equity that will all burn someday.

We've tried to make ourselves the king, and that's a real problem.

It's a real problem.

It's pride that puts ourselves in the judgment seat.

And our only capacity to judge is to judge at the group level.

The group level leads us to equity, not to equality.

Because equality demands humility.

And the ultimate act of humility is you submitting your right to be the judge to the only one who judge the one.

The equality and the justice that the movement of Jesus has brought to the world, it's it's evidence of something greater that is to come.

And what I really want to say on this July 4th weekend is that until there is justice for one, for one, there will be justice for none.

Until you are willing to engage the world on an individual level, until you are willing to see people, not as a part of some stereotypical segment of society, but as people who are in need of a savior.

Until we're ready to see people through God's eyes, and not the lenses of what the media informs we're supposed to see people or society or culture or our social media pages, until we are ready to humble ourselves.

If we're fighting for equity, we'll never win.

There's never enough, there'll never be enough.

But if we humble ourselves, we will see that we are all equal in Christ.

No Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female.

Doesn't mean those things disappear.

Right?

It's not helpful.

Other white people, let me help you out.

Quit saying, I just don't see color.

I'm just colorblind.

Unless you're really colorblind, unless you look at red and see green, quit saying that.

It's not helpful.

Paul's not saying there aren't men and women and different races and different like income brackets.

He's saying that perhaps the distinctions among us are opportunities for us to love each other through them.

And when the world sees that, when the world sees the church, when the world sees the movement of Jesus humbly loving instead of pridefully judging, that's when people will come to Jesus.

Not by the hundreds and not by the thousands, and I know I'm crazy, by the millions.

There will be a spiritual awakening if the church can get this right.

We can't fight for Jesus justice and organize ourselves like they did in the pre-Jesus world.

We can't try to move towards equality while organizing ourselves for equity.

We can't move from bondage to brother, from slave to son.

It never happened until Jesus.

And if we want the kingdom, we have to start with the king.

Would you pray with me?

Father, I am as guilty as anyone.

God, I'm judgmental.

And I get it.

You've asked us to make judgments, to know right from wrong, good from evil.

But only you, God, judge the hearts and intentions of people.

God, we pray for justice for one.

It's so easy to look at a group that is opposed to our ideas and label them all as radical or all as idiots or all as evil.

God, it's much more difficult to label someone that you know.

God, I pray that we would not shrink back from engaging with all people, from all worldviews, all walks of life.

And God, we are not trying to win.

We're not trying to prove our point.

We are not trying to get our political perspective across.

We are trying to bring the hope of Jesus into the lives of hurting people.

And our world is hurting, and the pain is real.

And God, there's been oppression.

There is oppression.

God, there is fear.

From having black people treated as second-class citizens.

God, it's real.

And if we cannot acknowledge that, we've disqualified ourselves from the conversation.

God, you have called us.

You've called us to be your hands and feet to people, equal people.

God, all of us equally in need of a savior, equally sinful, equally lost.

We all need you so badly.

God, we want justice for all.

We want to start with a renewed effort to give justice to the one, to everyone, to each person we encounter, to the people on the different side of the aisle, to the people that we vehemently disagree with.

Justice for one.

We love you.

We thank you for Jesus.

We thank you that he changed everything.

We're here because of him.

And it's in his name we pray.

Amen.

I want to thank you.

I want to thank you for sticking with me through difficult content, a big picture, an uncomfortable conversation, maybe.

I want to encourage you.

I went on Facebook right when all this happened, and it was so clear on my heart what James told us.

It's why we, it's why we waited weeks to do a series on this, to be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

If we can do that, if we can do that, we can begin to make a real difference in our world.

MetaCurch, we're continuing to find ways to move during this pandemic, during all this that is going on.

Make sure you follow us on social media, Facebook and Instagram.

That's where we keep you guys up to date.

Listen, if you're still working, if you're still having income that's coming in, do your part.

And right now in this season, those of us who are still getting paid, it's time to even step up on behalf of those in our movement that aren't.

Make sure you're giving generously, sacrificially, giving first, prioritizing this movement that you are a part of financially.

You can give online at metachurch.tv or on the metachurch app.

I love you guys so much.

We're going to continue this conversation next week.

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.

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