08: Denver - From Private Faith to Public Faith

Today's text comes from Jeremiah chapter 29, verses 4 to 14.

Jeremiah 29:4–14

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters.

Multiply there, and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on his behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name.

I did not send them, declares the Lord.

For thus says the Lord, when seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Hi, my name is James Rasman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh, thanks for joining us this snowy, cozy afternoon.

Uh, we are in the midst of a series that is laying out the vision for Redemption Church Denver.

So we're laying out uh over the course of the fall, here are like our top 10 things that we're focusing on as a church.

This is what it's going to mean to be a part of Redemption Church Denver.

Um, a brief sort of update on where we are.

Uh, you've heard me say this before, but we're meeting at 4:30 right now, which is getting mixed reviews.

We are actively searching for our next location.

We have committed that we don't want to be here beyond March 31st.

And I know that feels a long way off, but we're committed to being out of here, hopefully considerably before March 31st.

But the way that that will happen, one of the things that we need in order to make that happen is prayer.

For our new location to be discerned, to be shown to us, for where we want to settle in, the type of community that we want to move into, for uh us to really have an impact.

Uh that's we're we are really counting on the Lord to provide that for us.

Uh so yeah, we're asking you to just join us in prayer for where we're headed next as a church.

Um with that said, uh, we can go ahead and jump into prayer now uh before we get into our text for the day.

So uh would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for bringing us together on this cold and cozy evening.

Father, I pray that you would help us to engage with your word today, that by your spirit you would apply it to our hearts, that you would set a vision for uh our lives and what it will mean to be a part of our church community.

Father, would you help us to see what you have in store for your gospel moving forward in Denver?

And I pray that you would equip us with the truth of your word to see that mission happen.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, as I said, over these 11 weeks, we're laying out the vision for Redemption Church Denver.

And what that uh that's taking place in three phases.

Bottom line, main thing, the gospel is the power and the purpose of all that we do as a church.

And so we see that the gospel transforms our hearts, it establishes a community, and that community moves forward into the city to bring the redemption of Christ into the city that we're a part of.

So that is Denver.

So the three phases that we're moving through are heart, community, and Denver.

We've moved through heart and community, and this is our first week of three weeks focusing on Denver.

So now is where things start to get a bit more complicated.

Here's where the landmines are.

This is where we see what does it mean for the church to move as a redemptive agent out into the city that we're a part of, out into Denver.

We no longer are just huddling together as a church body.

This is not, this has nothing to do with gathering.

This is the scattering part.

This is where we're sent out into the city to be the salt and light that Jesus describes.

So we need to discuss, okay, so how do we do that?

How do we move out into the city?

But before we do that, we've got to answer a more fundamental question, which is should we, should the church be moving out into the city?

And I think there's two main camps that are sort of shouting no.

Church, uh, stay right there, right where you are.

That's good for us.

So the two main camps that I think are shouting no.

First one, uh, you could see it more kind of on the conservative end.

We're gonna call this group the monastics.

Um, so think monastic like a monastery.

This is the view of church and the view of engagement with the city that says, look, uh don't go out into the city.

You need to stay huddled in your Christian community because that's where real personal growth is going to be able to take place.

It's where your children are going to be the most safe.

That's where you're going to be able to make disciples the most effectively, and you're not going to be tainted by that messy, dangerous, dirty culture that's out there.

So, what type of environments, what type of church environments do we need to create?

We need to create Christian cultures that allow us to be separate and removed from the culture of the city, sort of like monasteries.

Uh, so that's the type of monastic movement that we can see happening in churches.

Uh the uh second one, which you could see as more of the uh tendency of a liberal uh disposition, uh, we'll call the privatizers.

So this is uh this is the view that your faith is private and you can engage with culture, be a part of the city that you're in, but your faith is to just be kept to yourself.

You shouldn't, it shouldn't be influencing the decisions that you're making.

It might influence a sort of personal ethic, a personal morality, but it shouldn't move out into your life in the way that you're engaging with the city at large.

It shouldn't be affecting your uh understanding of policy, of political policy.

It shouldn't be affecting the way that you would conduct your business or the reasons you'd conduct your business.

It shouldn't be affecting your aesthetic preferences, the art that you think is good art or the art that you think is bad art.

We would say the privatizer would say, look, we gotta keep our faith just in the realm of uh our own private lives.

And so uh we have these two, we have these two tendencies that kind of uh work in our own hearts, oftentimes as rivals against each other, where we'll have the tendency to just feel safe and together with just the church around us, and then we'll have this tendency to when we move out into the culture, say, look, my faith needs to just stay private, because to bring it up here uh is dangerous, and this isn't really the place that my faith belongs.

But both of these, although they look really different, well, here's something to say about, I have one more thing to say about the privatizers as I look down at my notes.

Uh I think that that disposition is the majority disposition of our culture.

And we see that both of these, the privatizer and the monastic, results in no real effect that Christianity has on the culture at large.

So it's this is something that's kind of interesting to consider.

You know, we often think that the way culture changes is you just get enough people, you just get a majority, and then that majority will form a sort of grassroots movement that affects a culture change.

But I think if that were the case, then we would see that since the majority of the United States identifies as Christian, then we would think that the majority of our most important institutions would reflect the values of Christianity.

And that's certainly not the case.

I think it's objectively not the case.

Uh, academia does not reflect the values of Christianity, the business world does not reflect the values of Christianity, uh, media and the arts uh do not reflect the values of Christianity.

And we know that the majority of the United States are Christians.

So why do we not see any real effect?

Why is there no touching of the culture?

Why is there no understanding or a grasp of what the gospel, what a gospel-transformed life would look like?

And I think it's because we've adopted this notion of the monastics or the privatizers.

We've either huddled ourselves together and stayed away from the culture at large, or when we were engaged with the institutions that do affect our culture, we've kept our faith completely private, hermetically sealed off from the uh from the way that we operated in our work, uh, or from the uh those aesthetic preferences or business practices or those sorts of things.

And so both the privatizers and the monastics amount to the same thing.

We can have great, thriving, healthy churches, and the city at large gains no benefit from their existence.

The culture is not tended to or preserved.

Our institutions don't tend towards the thriving and flourishing of humanity.

In fact, they tend towards degrading of humanity.

And so the question is, how can we become a church that is actually in step with the redemptive movement of Scripture?

Because being removed, having a bunch of healthy churches that are not affecting the culture in any way, is completely out of step with the biblical narrative.

So let's go way back to Genesis 12, uh, two through three.

This is God's initial covenant with Abraham.

He hasn't even really made the covenant yet, the smoking pot of fire, um, which is how you do it.

In Genesis 12, 2 through 3, it says, And I will make of you a great nation, God says to Abraham, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

See, the pattern is established for how God calls his people.

Abraham is blessed for a reason.

It's right in there, so that you will be a blessing.

And he makes him a people, and that through those people all the families of the earth will be blessed.

We see this fulfilled in Christ, but when Christ fulfills it, that doesn't break down the pattern.

Because what Christ allows to happen is, sorry, I have a cold and I'm about to pick my nose.

Yep, there you go.

I don't think anybody saw.

Uh what happens when Christ fulfills those things is we're brought into these Abrahamic promises.

We are made this same type of people who are meant to be a blessing to the whole world.

Consider how Christ talks about the type of people that he creates when he fulfills these Abrahamic promises.

In Matthew 5, verses 14 through 16, here's how he describes what his people will be like.

Matthew 5:14–16

He says, You are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand.

And it gives light to all in the house.

Hide it under a bushel.

That's right.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works.

You guys really went in on that.

So that you so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.

All right.

There's so much happening in these verses.

We see this city analogy and a light analogy.

What we can see from the city analogy is God is saying, look, you're a distinct type of people.

You know what cities have?

I've said this like 15 times during the series.

Cities have a bunch of people that are all different and tons of different personal stories and personal backgrounds, but they all kind of have the flavor of their city.

You know, in Denver, we all dress like we're about to go on a hike in the 70s.

It's the way I describe Denver fashion.

And in New York City, you it's like mandatory that you wear a black puffy jacket if you're going to uh yeah, walk outside on a cold day.

We all kind of gather the flavor of our city.

So Jesus is saying, you're gonna be like that.

You're distinct individuals, but you're a part of a city.

You're gonna have this different cultural flavor.

But the city isn't there to just be removed and distinct from the culture.

It's set on a hill so that it is exemplary to the culture.

You know, you're not an example if no one can see you.

You're not an example if you've privatized your faith such that uh somebody works next to you for their uh for, you know, however long you work, 10 years at the same spot, and it's like, oh wow, I didn't know I never knew you were a Christian.

I just never, I never knew that, never knew that part of your life.

See, that's you then you weren't, you could have been the best, most loving, kindest type of person, but the example, the connection wasn't made.

The light wasn't really allowed to shine.

So that brings us to the next analogy, which is you're a light and you aren't there to be hidden, but it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

So we are supposed to be a city that is exemplary and shines light into the world.

That means it exposes falseness and it brings truth into the city that we're a part of.

So it we're exemplary, which is what the monastics want.

We wanna be exemplary, we want to be truly discipled, truly committed to the church, truly involved in the project that Jesus is doing, even in our own hearts.

And we need to be bringing truth.

And that's what the privatizers really want.

They want a public sphere that's not guided by just feelings and emotions, but that's guided by truth.

And so somehow we have to live in this tension of this new sort of category where we are distinct from the culture, but radically engaged with it in a positive way.

And scripture provides us with a really helpful category, and that's we are called to live as exiles.

So the category of exile comes from this period in uh the history of Israel, and it's loaded with implications, but it's this period in the history of Israel in which uh the Israelites are removed from their home, uh taken out of Judah and Jerusalem and the northern kingdom, and they are uh taken captive into Babylon.

And so they have this culture of the city that they were a part of.

And now they're called to live in another city, but to still live in line with the culture that God had prescribed to them.

And so throughout the New Testament, we are referred to as exiles, as strangers in a land, as citizens not of this world, but as citizens of a heavenly kingdom.

And so we have this other identity, this distinct city that we are native to, which is the heavenly kingdom, and yet we live here.

We live in this place, in Denver.

So, how are we called?

How does God instruct the exiles to live during their time in Babylon?

That is what provides us with the analogy, with the instruction for how we should approach living in Denver today.

So uh we're going to see that there are three things in this text that God instructs his exiles to do, that God instructs us to do for how we engage with our city.

These three things are we are called to invest, we are called to discern, and we are called to hope.

Invest, discern, and hope.

So, uh a bit of context, and then we're going to jump into the text on how we invest.

So the Israelites had become a united kingdom under David.

Before that, they were just sort of a loose collection of tribes, not their own kingdom.

David has a son Solomon, they remain united.

One generation later, they split.

There's a civil war, and there becomes a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.

The book of first, the book of Kings and Chronicles describes this time in their history, and it's just this downward spiral where we see the people start living more and more out of step with God's commands, and the kings and their leaders start living more and more out of step with God's commands until finally God sends them into exile as a punishment for the way that they had been living.

Now, if you'd been reading the Bible closely up to this point, you'd see, oh, this is this is a pattern that we've actually gotten to know in Scripture before.

Throughout the book of Judges, we see this same thing happen, where there's a pattern, a downward spiral of the people's lack of faithfulness until God says, you know what, I'm just gonna get rid of that old way that we were doing things, and I'm gonna establish a new way of relating to each other, uh, and establish a new way of you understanding me and a new political construct that you're going to know me in.

So this happens when the people are taken into exile.

And it's this amazing time.

It's a time that I think before studying it, really this week, I would have thought of as just a period of punishment that was to be looked down upon.

But uh more and more I've seen that God is revealing a new way that He relates to His people.

And we can start to see that right in the beginning of this letter.

Uh this is a letter that Jeremiah, a prophet, writes to exiles who are in Babylon.

So people who have been taken on this sort of trail of tears, type of uh uh been taken captive, removed from their home, and brought to live captive in the city of Babylon.

Jeremiah writes this letter instructing them on how that will go.

And here's the way he begins it.

Jeremiah 29, verse 4.

Jeremiah 29:4

It says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Okay, a couple of things to note just in that first verse.

This phrase, thus says the Lord of hosts.

This is a phrase that's used throughout scripture, but especially in the exilic period.

This becomes of particular importance.

It's the main way that God reveals himself to his people during their time in exile.

Why do you think that is?

Why do you think God would particularly reveal Himself as the Lord of hosts during the time of exile?

Well, for one thing, Israel is no longer an established nation, and they no longer have a standing army that would be protecting them.

They feel totally exposed.

They have literally already been taken captive by an opposing force.

And so how does God introduce himself?

He introduced himself as the Lord of the armies, the Lord of hosts, the one who is in command of legions of angels.

What an important thing for those in exile to know.

Then he introduces himself as the one who sent into the one who sent them into exile.

How easy it would have been for them to think, you know why we're in exile?

Because Babylon was really strong.

And King Nebuchadnezzar was a great strategist.

And God just doesn't allow that way of thinking.

Says, you know why you're in exile?

Because I sent you there.

And I am the Lord of hosts.

So you're here, and it's exactly where I want you to be.

It's not where you want to be.

You want to be back in Jerusalem, but it's exactly where I want you to be.

We want to be in the kingdom of heaven.

We want Christ to have returned.

We want things to be good, established now.

We want his truth to be reigning and wickedness to be judged.

And yet here we are in exile, in between Christ's first coming and his second coming.

So we see God reveal himself as the Lord of hosts.

And what he's saying there is, he has sent his people into exile.

They've been removed from the temple where God had dwelt with them.

But what we see is that God they were not exiled from God.

While they thought that he might be furthest away than ever before now, he is telling them, Look, I'm with you.

God reveals this spiritual presence that he has with his people during the exilic period in a way that he had never previously revealed it.

He dwelt just face to face with just Moses.

Then he dwelt in a tabernacle, then he dwelt in a temple.

But here, removed from all of those things, God tells his people, I'm with you.

So in this context, in a foreign land, God gives them their first marching orders.

How are you going to live as exiles?

This is Jeremiah 29, verses 5 through 6.

Jeremiah 29:5–6

He says, Build houses and live in them.

Plant gardens and eat their produce.

Take wives and have sons and daughters.

Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters.

Multiply there and do not decrease.

You know, I think if you were to step back and see, okay, this is how we're supposed to live while we're in exile, you were to read this first bit of the letter, you'd think, well, that's incredibly normal.

It's like God said, My command to you is just like do what humans normally do.

Whatever humans are normally doing, don't stop doing exactly that.

You know, when you go go ahead, uh build a house, live in it, get married, have some kids.

Maybe they should get married, and then they can have kids.

Don't decrease there.

What he's saying is see this wicked city that you're a part of, invest your life there.

It feels incredibly normal, but it's beyond normal.

It's it's fundamental, it's absolutely foundational, it's it's creational.

It's as normative as creation is over the way that we live.

Uh, this is the this is the exact command, not word for word, but this is the exact type of command that God gives to Adam and Eve when he places them in the garden.

He says, Look, I've made you, now what do you do?

Go be fruitful, multiply, you know, take dominion, uh, it start bringing this place more in alignment with how I want it to be.

Continue my creative project.

And God takes his people, he places them in exile, and he gives them that same creational command.

He returns them to their this deep level of their humanity, and he says, invest in this place.

Treat, this is insane, treat Babylon, right?

Wicked, evil empire who has destroyed your family.

Treat Babylon, who is this hostile occupying territory, like the Garden of Eden.

It's insane.

So what we see is that his people are no longer called to, he doesn't say, look, remove, form your own city.

He says, invest.

Invest in this city that you are a part of.

You know, whenever we're doing that, whenever we're making real investment, it's always an act of faith.

It's always an act of faith to uh to say, like, look, I'm gonna live here.

And I can't see the fruit of this yet, but it's coming.

So he first calls his people to invest.

Next, he calls his people to discern.

In Jeremiah 29, verse 7, he says, But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29:7

Uh I once heard, if I hadn't heard another pastor make this analogy, I wouldn't feel comfortable making it.

Um, but another somebody else said it, so it must be right.

Uh this command, he says, he says, look, to uh a helpful analogy for understanding how the Jewish people would have related to Babylon, it's like they were uh in Nazi-occupied territory.

It's what it would have felt like.

Taken over by a people that hated them and uh uh had ripped them from their home for their own gain.

And God is saying, yeah, seek their welfare.

Their welfare.

In fact, seek it so much that I want you to be praying to me for their welfare.

And I want you to unite yourself to the welfare of Babylon.

I want you to consider that if it goes well for the city, that's how it's gonna go well for you.

And if it doesn't go well for the city that you're in, then it's not going well for you.

You need to unite yourself, identify with Babylon.

So the reason that this presses us to discern is because he says, seek the welfare of your city, and its welfare you will find your welfare.

Uh the word that's translated welfare there is the word shalom.

And it's this uh it's this uh abiding goodness, uh a full and complete uh peace that moves perfectly in line with the creational norms that God set up in the garden.

The reason that calls us to discern is because he doesn't say, seek what your city thinks is good.

He says, seek what's good for your city.

That's a harder thing to do.

To seek what our city thinks is good allows us to privatize our faith.

And to go in and we can just say, Yeah, whatever you think is good, I'll think is good.

And that will allow me to climb the ranks of my job.

We will let the city define for us the values that we should have and the things that we should most be promoting.

But that's not what God is saying to do here.

Saying seek the welfare of your city, and that means bringing it in line with what I think is good.

Bring this in line with what Scripture describes as good.

That's where the welfare of the city will actually take place.

Now, that's why we constantly find ourselves as Christians being pushed into these gray areas that are really hard to discern.

Because what's good for our city and what our city thinks is good sometimes overlap, but oftentimes they don't.

This is uh a quote a quote that I'd read in uh Tim Keller's book, Making Sense of God.

And I thought that it's so well described the way that our culture relates to what we think is good and why it makes it so hard to discern.

In this section, he's describing uh where most young adults uh uh get our moral framework.

He says this most are relativistic.

We're not believing in abiding moral absolutes, and yet they have many very strong moral convictions, which they insist others should honor.

When asked how they knew if an action was moral or not, most said that they automatically know what is right and wrong in any situation.

When asked how they would explain to someone else why they should do or not do some action, they repeatedly insisted that everybody already knows what is right and wrong.

Now, I I I related to that so much.

This sense of uh friends, friends that I have, and even gut intuitions that I have, of like, look, need to explain what's right or wrong.

Like, have it, like we all know what's good and what's not good.

Right?

That's that's the way I feel like we engage with the world.

But it's out of step with what scripture teaches.

Shalom is not something that's just intuited, shalom is something that's defined by scripture.

Shalom means bringing into alignment with scripture the culture that we are a part of.

That's a much more challenging thing.

That means when our culture comes and it says, look, this is what goodness is.

Goodness means it's wrong to impose your faith on another person.

And yet we think God has given us the keys to heaven by the power of the gospel, by this exclusive claim that Jesus is the only way of knowing God, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

That's that's an offensive exclusivist claim.

And yet to bring our culture in line with that welfare means entering into those types of conversations.

So what that makes us want to do is retreat from the culture because we don't want to have those conversations.

We don't want to hear a better counter-argument for how we're actually regressive and exclusive and homophobic and all of these things.

Instead, we can just sit with each other, we can tell each other all the things that we all like to hear, we can just do our own Bible studies and not engage with the outside world.

We can retreat.

Or we can move out into the culture and we can try and cause some sort of revolution where we occupy all the positions of power, and once we get all the positions of power occupied, then we'll be able to legislate a world that allows us into it.

The exile is afforded neither option by God.

Instead, as an exile, we are called to be flavored as this other culture, and then live in a way that organically brings welfare into the city that we are a part of, in the little domains that God has given us, in the relationships that we have, in the places of work that we're a part of.

So the purpose of the church then is to give us that flavor.

In the church, we establish the counterculture.

We experience what it means to be a city that's built on truth.

We experience what it means to have relationships that are shaped by the good news and the freedom that the gospel of grace brings.

And then when we become flavored like that, when that becomes our fundamental culture, then when we move out into the culture that we are part of, we start to season it.

We start to flavor it, we start to shine light.

And so our city becomes not something that we're using for our own advancement, it becomes something that we're moving out in to bless, to seek the welfare of.

So what pulls us through?

What allows us to become the type of people that are not retreating and are not writing off our culture, but are engaging in its redemption?

What makes our faith really go public?

Well, if we continue on in the letter, uh Jeremiah writes this in verses 10 and 11.

It says, For thus says the Lord, when seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

What allows us to really move into our city is if we've really received the hope of the gospel, if we've really heard this hopeful promise.

Because consider where the exiles are, they have this promise from God, but they're not in the promised land, they're just looking forward to it.

And God is saying, live in such a way that the place you're in now will start to be flavored like the promised land will be.

And then this place will become a part of your blessing.

And look, that's exactly what happens.

It's uh when Israel is sent back to Jerusalem, they're sent back with the wealth that was Babylon's, became Persia's, and they're sent back with that wealth.

The welfare of the city that they were a part of became the means that God uses to bless them when they go back to Jerusalem.

And so what we're called to do, and there's this other element here, which is it's not until 70 years are completed for Babylon, which means that nobody reading the letter will go back.

The people reading the letter aren't going to be the ones that move back.

It's their children.

It's a generational promise.

And so they're called to hope in what God will be providing.

So much of our faith going public means bringing hope into hopeless places.

It means moving into relationships that we thought there's no way this could possibly be redeemed.

But because we have the hope of the gospel, we move into those places, thinking God is actually intending his redemption for these types of areas.

It's the hope of the gospel that allows us to move into a city and a culture that has become completely disenchanted.

And I mean that in as like like fairy tale as that word can possibly be.

Like there's there's there's no meaning beyond in life anymore.

There's no reason to hope for children.

If the the the narrative of our culture is that the world is just getting worse and worse and worse, and the the best thing we can do is just retreat from it.

Try and cut off humanity, not multiply, minimize the pain.

But a Christian comes in and says, I think that there's real hope here.

That this can actually get better, that this can be a beautiful, joyful place, that Denver that you look out on that can be more like Eden.

I think that our art can be more rejuvenating and it can foster our souls.

I think that our work can be less soul-sucking, and it can be, uh it can actually be a place where there's honesty and thriving, and it can be a part of our joy in the world.

We're able to come in and re-enchant the world that we're a part of because we see the story of redemption that Jesus is bringing into it.

So as a church, we need to develop an imagination for the narrative that we're actually a part of.

And that imagination means seeing hope in the city that we're a part of by becoming actively engaged in it.

It means we're gonna need to invest in it.

We're gonna need to be incredibly discerning, incredibly wise in the way that we engage with it.

We're gonna need to be driven by the hope of the gospel.

So, with that, I'll take one question.

So, practically, how do you not hide it under a bushel?

Is it not equally ineffective to blatantly tell everyone you're a Christian, proselytizing at work, et cetera?

Yeah, uh probably is probably is blatantly ineffective to just like walk in and be like, the Christian has arrived.

Let the uh let the let the Christian weigh in on this one.

Uh, my first job in Denver was selling software for a company that was contracted by HP.

And uh the lady that I replaced on the team uh used to like walk around the cube.

I never met her, so I can mock her publicly.

I don't even know her name.

Um, but I heard the stories.

Uh because she used to like like go to people's cubicles and be like, hey, like, could you please stop cussing?

Like it's just really offensive to me, and like it her husband was in seminary or something, some nerd.

And um uh anyway, her Christianity was just like repulsive to the whole community.

And it's because she came out and was like, I'm the Christian, and so I'm going to impose my morality on all of you, and that's how I'll bring my goodness into this space.

Uh the the problem is uh it also doesn't it also doesn't work to to remain hidden.

So, okay, let's get let's get practical with this.

I think what Christians tend to do is we tend to let our non-Christian friends outpace us in the relationship, or we allow them to have a more authentic relationship with us than we would be willing to have with them.

You know, they'll share, like, I'm in this relationship and I'm going through this really hard thing, and you know, we lived like this together or whatever, and and you'll get to know their deepest motivations, what's really driving them in their life.

And they'd be authentically sharing this with you.

And what we become in that situation is a worse and worse friend, because we're not sharing what our most fundamental driver is.

We're not sharing what has become most core to our lives, we're not sharing who we really are, what really motivates us in our work, which is we think that it like I think that Jesus is coming back.

And I think that I'm here as a part of his story of making the world literally more like what he intended it to be at creation.

You know, if those things are at our core, if they really are, then sharing the gospel just means being an authentic friend.

It means not letting your non-Christian friend be a better friend to you than you are to them.

I think if we started there, where we just shared at the same pace?

What if we did that?

What if we shared at the same pace that our non-Christian friends share with us?

You know, I I think that that would be an incredibly uh I think it would be really winsome.

Uh does that make sense?

Apparently not.

Um yeah, so with that, uh uh let's turn our eyes outward as we move to the city.

So would you pray with me?

Father, I pray that you would uh give us eyes to see how you've called us to live as as exiles, uh, that you have called us to bring your culture to bear on the culture that we're a part of, that your redemption of our hearts uh uh turns us into ambassadors for you.

Would you make us the seasoning that that goes out, the salt that preserves, the light that shows what truth is.

Lord, would you transform us into a type of people that uh it's good news that we're here, it's good news for the city.

Father, we praise you for the redemption that you're working that you've secured in Christ.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.