Submit for the Lord's Sake
First B Jackson
2024-06-30

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Well, morning, everybody. Hey, would you stand and join us in song? We'll start with how great thou art. But here's a verse to lead us into worship from Psalm 86. It's, you are great and you do marvelous deeds, God.

You alone are God. Shall we sing a bit? Let's sing. Great is thy faithfulness. Amen.

You can have a seat here for a moment.

Okay. It's time for announcements, everybody. How joyous is this music? Aren't they fantastic? Don't you love it?

I I realized I had a lot in common with the little baby. When I was in a little singing group, they would just put a pacifier in my mouth, and I just did this the whole time. It was great. Best contribution to music I've ever given. First of all, we would just wanna thank everybody who was in in part of VBS.

If you were a part of VBS, would you stand up? If you decorated, if you if you gave, if you let's clap for these these four folks here. That's what an unbelievable success it was this week. The Jordans did an amazing job putting it all together. It was very organized, very colorful, very playful, and there were there were a lot of people that volunteered so that each kid got a little bit of attention.

And that was really so wonderful to see them getting the the love of Jesus instilled into their hearts. And thank you for all of you who who participated. The first BBQ is coming up again July 14. It'll be right out here between services. Food is provided.

Come mingle with everybody and bring those sunglasses because it's way brighter out there than you think it's gonna be. And those go throughout the summer. The first beach camp out is July nineteenth through twenty first and August twenty third through twenty fifth. And if you're not a camper, just stop by during the day and hang out anyway, and then you can come sleep in your own comfy bed or in somebody else's bed. I'm not gonna judge.

It's fine. Use mine because I'll be down there. You can you can hang out in my bed that night. But con contact Brian McCooey. I shouldn't have said can we edit that out?

Brian McCooey and Mike Demetrius, if you have any questions. Sound booth volunteers are are needed. If you are at all interested, we would love to help you run the online streaming. It's it's really fun, and you can learn a lot, it's a great opportunity to get involved. Just talk to Blake or myself.

We'd love to have you there. The Compass Women's Care, the grand banquet thing is going on July 9, but they want you to respond by tomorrow if you can. So if you need help, let us know. We can help you register. You can also go online to our to this video here and use that QR code to to register.

But they ask that you register by tomorrow if possible. They help ladies it's not just a crisis pregnancy center. They also help them with all kinds of classes. If somebody needs care, diapers and things like that, they have them on hand. They do so much.

And please be praying for them because they're a great organization in this town, and they do so much. Sunday school, the only grades not meeting throughout the summer are grades three through five. Everybody else is still meeting, including high school and middle school. So if you know any high school, middle schoolers, they meet downstairs in the library during the 09:00 service, and we'd love to have them. Through welcome in Crystal's class as well.

So she she's doing a lot of heavy lifting this this summer too. So thank you, Crystal, for your faithfulness there. And is there anything else we've forgotten? Oh, the men's group. The the Wednesday men's group is meeting at 06:30 in the Fellowship Hall in the 06:30 in the morning.

If you have any questions about that, the information is on the website. And it's a great thing that meets only once a month. Yes? No Thursday men's group because July 4 this week. But anything else?

Well, lovely to see all your wonderful faces here today. Would you stand up, greet each other, and then we're gonna be brought back with some some song.

You can have a seat here for a moment and this is a worship through giving part of the service. I'll invite our ushers to come on forward and while they're coming forward, can I pray? And we give thanks. Lord, we have sung it that we would like to say it to. The longer we serve you, the sweeter you grow.

The more we understand of your love, and we haven't fully comprehended it, but the more we understand it, the more we receive it, the sweeter you grow. Thank you, Lord, for grace, for mercy,

for

forgiveness, for life and joy and peace in the spirit. Thank you, Lord, for every good and perfect gift. This comes from you. You are the father of heavenly lights. You do not change like shifting shadows.

Thank you for your consistency. Lord, with the gifts that we offer in these plates and otherwise, we ask that you would use these these gifts to advance your kingdom. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Okay. Sorry. This is a good passage. First Peter two eleven through 20 out of the New American Standard Bible. Beloved, I urge you as foreigners and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles. So that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God on the day of visitation. Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right, you silence the ignorant of fool ignorance of foolish people. Act as free people and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as a bond servant of God.

Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are harsh.

For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person endures grief when suffering unjustly. For what credit is there if when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience. But if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

Thank you, Steve. Morning. Good morning. So a little poll here. Who here will admit that they like the feeling of mild rebellion?

Just a little sticking it to the man to show, you know, to kind of show him what's hot. Purely for the sake of it. Nothing destructive, just, you know, good fun. Since they aren't here, I'll tell you who loves it. It's my children.

Now for those of you that know my family, you probably know that we have some the kids have some pretty severe food allergies, eggs and most nuts. And generally, they do a pretty good job of managing what they eat because we've set some healthy boundaries around them and some rules to help them, as well as they've experienced what happens when it goes wrong. So it helps them with their maturity and things like that. But one time, the kids are probably three and four years old, and they're playing upstairs, and we just had some some guests in the house. It was summertime, none of you can identify with that.

And it's it's that thing that you if if if you're a parent that you've experienced before where it's too quiet upstairs. And you're like, we need to go check. So we go up there, and we just had guests, like I said, so we got this little kitchenette up there that we'd stocked. And who knows what this is? It's creamer.

Has anybody ever tried it by itself? It's terrible. So my little mature, you know, obedient three and four year old kids are up there, and we walk in, and they are partying jazz. And they're drinking this creamer, and they're drinking this, like, cheap cranberry juice that I guess was in the fridge or something, and they've got just these horrible stomachaches, but they're having a ball. They'd spilled some of the cranberry juice on Natalie's new white carpets.

It was a whole thing. It turned out fine, but it could have been a disaster in any number of ways. And it wasn't because the creamer was any good to drink or that the cranberry juice was any good to drink. The reason why they enjoyed it is because they weren't supposed to be doing it. Now, before I dunk on my kids too much, we have to admit that we're all kind of the same, and I can prove it to you with this.

Think about your favorite movies, your most iconic characters. They're rebels. They're fighting against the man. So you think about these classic films. You think about Cool Hand Luke.

You think about James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause. You think about the outlaw, Josie Wales. You think about Braveheart. Think about Gladiator. Think about Moana.

Maybe not Moana, but it's it's the classics. So today, we're gonna see what the Bible has to say about about rebellion and about spiritual and physical submission to authorities. So here's our key verse that we're gonna focus on today, which is first Peter two thirteen out of what mister Baldock read for us, which is submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority or to governors as sent by him. Now for context, when I get the opportunity to teach, I usually bring you guys things that are weighing heavy on my heart. Things that I'm working on in my own walk with Jesus.

And in truth, these direct exhortation passages are actually kind of the hardest for me because I'm usually bringing you something that I'm falling short on and it makes me feel a little bit like a fraud for teaching it to you. But as Paul would say in Philippians two twelve, we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and we can do so together. So with that intro in mind, let's take a look at our thesis for today, which is that for the sake of the kingdom of God, we who are truly in Christ should be in humble submission to those God has put in authority with very little concern for pragmatism or our own well-being. Now our outline today is going to be fairly simple. We're going to look at three points that come straight from that verse, which is who submits?

It's ourselves. To whom do we submit to? To every human institution. And third, why? It's for the Lord's sake.

So our first point then, and this is really simple, we'll be fairly quick with it. But who submits? It's ourselves. We do not, we cannot submit for others. This is so simple, but it is so key to remember.

Because just like in any other application where the text is giving us something to work on, it's a function of the heart. We here at church, we can teach you, we can lead you in worship, we can encourage you to go to Bible studies, to be in a community group, whatever. But ultimately, it's up for you and the Holy Spirit to engage on these things in order to grow. Now, the most helpful thing that I've ever seen is to be in small groups with other faithful believers where you give them license to speak into your life where they see and they can either encourage you or rebuke you. They can come alongside you and bear your burdens.

It's been the biggest change in my life, and I've seen it work time and time again. So that's a little bit of a pitch for community groups. But here's the problem. Your community group cannot change your heart. It's up to you and the Lord.

You have to decide if this whole Jesus thing really is what the book says it is because we can't do it for you. If Jesus is who he really said he is, then submission to him and to everything written in the Bible is the only logical choice. And if he's not who the Bible says he is, then we shouldn't submit at all. We shouldn't do this church attendance thing. This is some of what I talked about at Easter.

In either case, nominal surface level occasional attendance at a church is not the logical conclusion. It's all in. Because our hope is not in church attendance. Our hope is in the resurrection. So that's the first point.

So our second point is whom do we submit to? We submit to every human institution. Now because I'm I knew I was teaching today, I went ahead and did the work for you guys, and I went this went and looked it up in blue letter Bible what the Greek translations are here. And the word that we have here is every, and that Peter has here is every. You know what it actually means?

It means every. It means all, every one of, whosoever. You get the idea. And it's similar with the words human and with institution, with king and with authority. I went looking for loopholes in this, and they're not there.

Because unfortunately for us, Peter didn't leave us any wiggle room here. He is talking well, actually, I do need to say there's one exception, which is that Peter is talking about governing authorities. He's not just talking about every human institution. So like the Girl Scouts can't like kick in my door with like a green sash or whatever and tell me what to do. It's governing authorities that are appointed over us.

But this imperative is locked tight. And Paul, in Romans thirteen one and two, basically says the same thing. So we have Peter in our text today. We're also looking at parallel text from Paul, which says that every person is to be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God. And those which exist are established by God.

And in case you think that this is only applying to authorities that exist that are in alignment with God. You need to know that when Peter wrote his letter and when Paul wrote his, they were talking about Nero. Now, in case you've been a while since you've studied first century history, Nero was insane. He rose to power when Claudius, his stepfather and great uncle, was poisoned by Nero's mom. So that would be Claudius's wife and cousin.

Her name was Agrippina. This was not a legal or peaceful transition of power. Nero then had his own mother, Agrippina, killed. And then the year before this very letter was written by first Peter, Nero had his wife killed. Couple years later, he then had his favorite male sexual companion castrated, dressed up like the ex wife he'd had murdered, and then the two of them got married.

So a lot of details there, but suffice it to say, this is not a godly or moral man. In sixty four AD, so the year after this letter was written, Nero famously played the fiddle while Rome burned. He was excited to redecorate Rome in a more classical and Greek style. He decided to instead blame the Christians for starting the fire, which actually accidentally started the official Roman distinction between the Jewish and Christian religions. He also unofficially started the official the Roman policy of persecuting Christ Christians.

All of that to say, he was thought by many in the early church to actually be the antichrist. So when Peter wrote this letter and when the early church is reading this, they knew that he really meant it when he said every human institution, every governing authority. The point here is that God allows us to be governed in the world by people that are not for God. An important caveat though is that though we submit to them and and follow this text, we reserve our fear for the Lord. We do not fear those human authorities.

I think Matthew 28 is really helpful here, and I particularly like Eugene Peterson's paraphrase the message. So that's NASB up top, message down below. Save your save your fear for God who holds your entire life, body and soul, in his hands. We don't fear the human authorities because the human authorities can only kill our flesh, and we have an eternity. So we submit to every human institution, but we do not fear them in the same way that we fear God.

We have a special reverential fear for the creator God that does not belong to anyone or to anything else. Now this also brings us to the exceptions to what Peter is talking about. And like anything else, we don't wanna lean upon human wisdom. We don't wanna lean upon personal experience. We want to lean on scripture.

So here are six examples from from scripture of biblical rebellion to authorities. I'll leave those up there for a minute. I'm not going to walk through them point by point. If you want to take a picture of it and look at it later, you can. But here's the idea.

Whether Old Testament or New, these are faithful people choosing to obey the explicit commands of God rather than the explicit commands of man when the two are in direct conflict. Now, none of these people made these choices out of personal convenience or out of pride. They made these choices out of a deep conviction for the Lord. So clearly, if the government or a human institution is calling you to violate the explicit law of God, you have to disobey. You don't get to disobey.

You have to disobey. But you're still gonna face the consequences. Many of the people in those biblical examples, they suffered for their choices. And first Peter three seventeen, so later in our letter today, says, for it is better if God should will it that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. Philippians one twenty nine says, for it has been granted to you for Christ's sake not only to believe in him, but also to suffer on his behalf.

This is not a popular teaching in today's era of prosperity gospels. But suffering for doing right can be in God's will for us. Now to be clear, suffering is never a goal. This is not poverty theology. This is not asceticism.

Faithfulness is the goal. Suffering can be an outcome that can still be in line with God's will. Does that make sense? That's first Peter three. So let's lay out some practical and very specific scenarios.

One, if anyone in government tells you not to gather to worship, not to pray, not to read your Bible, not to share your faith, you humbly, humbly, and clearly say that you cannot comply. And then you face the consequences. But if the government that God has put over you spends their tax money on false idols, if they spend money collected from you in the form of taxes, and they spend that on building heathen temples, on human trafficking, on unjust wars or sexual immorality, you still need to pay those taxes. That comes from Mark 12. That's when Jesus is telling to the crowd around him.

He says, render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar. He is telling the people gathered to pay the taxes to Caesar with the very coin that bears the image of Caesar. But then he goes on and he says, and give to God the things that belong to God. Because what bears the image of God? Every single one of us in here.

So we render under Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and we render unto God what belongs to him. So if the government is committing blatant immorality or just making bad choices or they're violating wisdom or they're violating our conscience, then you have to submit to them. Or you can physically and legally flee to a different jurisdiction, renouncing your citizenship and dealing with the consequences of that. But here's the deal. The biblical answer is never armed insurrection or violence, but is Christ centered humility.

When we stand firm, we stand firm in Christ and we bear the consequences of it. So in summary, if we're going to disobey, we do so only in accordance with God's word. And that brings us to our third and final point. Don't get too excited. This one's the longest.

Why do we submit? We submit for the Lord's sake. This is the most critical part in today's message. We don't submit so that it will go well for us, for our children, for our grandchildren, or even for our nation. We submit for the Lord.

I'm gonna say that again because I think this is the most critical part in today's in today's message. We do not submit so that it will go well with us or with anyone around us. We submit for the Lord because it is a testimony to his faithfulness. And we have to remember all the time in every season, this is how we get there, that the world is not fundamentally about us. That's true both individually and collectively.

Individually meaning it's not about me. It's not about Carl. It's not about any one of you. But it's also true collectively. It's not even about the church.

Creation is about God and his glory. God uses the church. The church is God's primary instrument for bringing him glory in this world. But it's not about that. It's about God.

Now, I'm guilty of getting this wrong sometimes where I obey only if the side benefits go to me. This is Sabbath, time in the word, prayer, generosity, serving. God's word says that all of these things are good things to do. That it will go well with you if you do these things. And the science is backing it up.

But what I have to do right in my heart is I have to evaluate, am I doing these things because those side benefits accrue to me because it's wisdom? Or am I doing it because it's for the kingdom of God? How do I get my heart to take the spiritual disciplines from the have to's and the wisdom and make them into the get to's? I do that as a response to the love that God has already shown me. I get there by looking at the cross and at the empty tomb.

Submission, as Peter states here, is for the Lord's sake, and it starts with the right motivation in the heart. This is the same fundamental problem with sin that we're dealing with in the Garden Of Eden. We only want to obey when we see it as advantageous. Adam and Eve sinned, and then they could not obey the one simple command of God, do not eat of this one tree, because they didn't see what was in it for them. It didn't seem practical.

They didn't understand the wisdom in it, so they chose not to obey. This is the lack of total trust that Satan took advantage of as tempter. This is the foundation of sin. Anytime we don't trust God, that is sin. This is also effectively what we as a church have been walking through in Romans seven as we do the first being the Bible plan.

That because whenever my perceived short term desires run contrary to the stated will of God, I struggle in my flesh to obey. In the spirit, we want to do right, but in the flesh, we not only don't want to obey, we revel in our disobedience. We enjoy rebellion in and of itself. Romans fourteen twenty three is really clear on this, and it says, whatever is not from faith is sin. Right there, we have to kick out every argument around this stuff that stems from pragmatism or experience because God works differently from us, and we're glad for it.

That's Isaiah fifty five nine. So the heavens are above the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Because if I had to game plan the kingdom of God, if I had to figure out how to expand God's kingdom, I would do it by making myself rich and famous and dashingly handsome and probably a little taller. And yet just humble enough that every time they put a microphone in my face, would give glory to God. That's how I would expand the kingdom of God.

But God, how he chose to glorify himself, how he established and continues to grow the kingdom of God is by his own son, setting aside all of his glory and taking on the life of a peasant, being born a vulnerable baby in occupied Palestine. First Peter two twenty three tells us about Jesus' motivations in this because he's describing this is describing Christ while on the cross for my sins and yours. He says, while being abusively insulted, he did not insult in return. While suffering, he did not threaten, but he kept entrusting himself to him who judges justly. That's our savior, and that's our motivation.

If the death on a cross of the eternal son of God as a peasant is the establishment of the kingdom of God, then and only then does submission to authorities, whether they're good or evil, make sense. Jesus himself submitted to a series of illegitimate governments and seriously illegal trials, even though he had never done anything wrong, not once in his life. You and I, we're brought up in front of an illegal trial. We still deserve judgment from God. He's paid for it.

But Christ had never done a single thing wrong. He had only lived righteously. And Christ himself, in front of those illegal trials, in front of those illegitimate governments, he didn't even open his mouth. That's our impossible example. And yet, I tend to struggle to obey the speed limit or buckle my seat belt or pray for our elected officials, especially if I don't agree with them or if I think they're corrupt.

This is hard. Here's another way to think of all this. When we chase the same things as the world, we forfeit our witness. If we chase money or success or fame or power, the world doesn't need to hear what we have to say because we're doing the same things that they are. The same is true with political power.

When we chase political power, we are doing the exact same thing as the world. Instead, the historical record has been that when the church is oppressed, when it truly costs something to be a follower of Christ, when we actively, individually take up our crosses and follow him, then the world takes notice that our hope is in something different, totally different. Think about the parable of the found treasure. This is in Mark thirteen forty four. This is Jesus telling the story of a man who finds a treasure of great price in a field.

He goes and sells everything he has with joy in order to purchase that field, and Christ is calling us to the same. Your identity in anything other than Jesus, it might be part of that price that you have to pay. You might have to give up some of your comfort, your status, your control, whatever it might be for the sake of Christ, and we do it gladly. Conversely, you can look at any of the classic application texts that we tend to talk about in church. Galatians five twenty two, Romans 12, Philippians two, James four, our reading today in first Peter two.

These are classic application texts. And you know what you never see in those? You never see stick up for yourself, your tribe, and your family for this is what the Lord desires. I looked all over the Bible. It's not in there.

The opposite though is all over the text. So let's talk really practically for a minute. Let's talk street level on this. If you find yourself getting consistently wound up about politics to the point that it's hurting your Christian witness, that it is hurting your ability to tell the other side about Jesus, then stop it. Take a time out.

Make some apologies. Seek reconciliation. Get off social media. Stop watching and reading the news. I've said this before, and I will say it again because I firmly believe in it.

If you spend more time with Fox News or CNN or Facebook or Twitter than you do in your Bible, you are setting yourself up for anxiety and anger and failure. We should, in view of God's call for for justice, we should support policies that are in line with what God has commanded. We should advocate for justice, for mercy, and for life. We do not partner with evil. If you think a platform or a person is evil, you don't vote for them.

You don't support them. If the both options are evil, then you abstain. But we cannot allow our support for those messages or those policies, even that are in line with God's word, to be at a pitch and a volume where it drowns out our gospel message. We have this weird thing in American Christianity where we've equivocated consumption of information with being a good citizen and therefore being a good Christian. But it's hurting us and it's hurting the world.

Because no one needs your vote. No one needs your dollars. No one needs your voice. Not nearly as much as they need to know about your Christ. So while the Bible set never says that we need to participate politics, there are a bunch of places that explicitly show that we are supposed to evangelize, that we are supposed to give generously, to love our enemies, to be persecuted for the church, to be at peace with all men, to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ, to even cut off our hands or pluck out our own eyes in order to better pursue righteousness.

And that's hard. That's offensive. But it's biblical because the Bible is offensive to our flesh. It says that we are sinners totally without merit or redemptive qualities, that our most righteous work apart from Christ is filthy rags, and that's using the polite language. Yet the eternal son of God, the right king of all creation, he chose to lay his life down for us, for your sins and for mine.

Now as I look through the scriptures, I noticed that Jesus never once made a recorded comment about politics except for what I've mentioned earlier about paying taxes to Caesar. He did though chastise those that had made a political bargain with a ruling party. So those are our two steps from Christ. We pay taxes, and we don't make political alliances. Jesus didn't he didn't pull back.

He reserved his harshest comments, not for tax collectors, not for prostitutes, not for heretics, or even enemy soldiers of an invading army. In Israel, he saved his harshest comments for the Pharisees that misapplied God's word and led God's people astray in order to justify their actions and their desires. He also went really hard after the Sadducees that sold short the kingdom of God and made pragmatic political alliances. So for us, we can stop posting on Facebook about politics. We can take off our bumper stickers and our t shirts because your wrath against Joe Biden or Donald Trump or any other elected official, local or national, is not helpful.

At best, it's humorously impotent, and at worst, it is seriously harmful for your witness. I'm not saying that we shouldn't vote or that we shouldn't weigh our conscience. What I am saying is that any any imagined civic duty is a far cry from your actual duty to the kingdom of God. God is sovereign. You and our great nation, no matter how much I love it, are not sovereign and are not eternal.

We have to get our priorities right. Because what if the church were so committed to our savior that we actually lived in view of the fact that there is an eternity at stake for ourselves and everyone around us? Think of how that contrasts with the manufactured lie that every four years of a political cycle is life and death. C. S.

Lewis, in his book, The Weight of Glory, has a great quote about this. I'll leave it up there so you can read the whole thing or take a picture. All day long, we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. That is crazy. You are going to outlive your civilization. You are going to outlive this country. So is everyone around you, Christ follower or not, and we can live like that is true.

Now that said, if you feel called to participate in our local government and you can do so without ruining your Christian witness I'll put it back for you. You got it? Alright. I went one too far. There we go.

But if you can if you can participate in politics without ruining your Christian witness, do it. Run for school board. Run for county commissioners. Sit on the library board. These are good things.

But if you're not capable in doing it in a way that glorifies God first and foremost, if you're not capable of doing it in a way that shows that you actually live for something different, you got some soul work to do first. So I'm not saying don't get involved. I am saying, and this text is saying, don't be involved in politics if you can't do it in a way that honors God first. That is in submission to authorities. It can't be a power grab.

It has to be for God. The irony, of course, is that if we rebel and therefore disobey the word of God on this about submission because we don't want to, we put ourselves in the same spot that those who oppose the gospel openly are in, And that's pride. And I know this is June 30. This is the end of pride month for many in our country. It is no different to ignore God's word on submission than it is about sexual morals.

Yeah. And we should never have pride about sin of any kind. Celebrating sin is the same for gay pride month as it is for Let's Go Brandon. The common thread there is that it feels good to feel self justified, that you don't trust God's word and you want to look down on the others. We want to throw rocks at sinners.

And don't be deceived. The religion of new humanism, and it is a religion, is also the same as the religion of the independent moral patriot. They are both religions, and they both throw rocks at proverbial sinners that are outside of what they perceive as doctrine. Those that are on the outside of their man made orthodoxy, but not Christians. Because if we've forgotten what we were saved from, that we were all dead in our sins and trespasses apart from Christ, The bad news of the gospel is that none of us are good.

Not one of us. But no one has out sinned the power of the cross and of the empty grave. We were all enemies of God. This is Romans five eight. But he showed his love for us in dying for us while we were still his enemies.

That's Romans five eight and that's first John four nine through 10. This same truth, it applies to the leader of the gay pride parade, and it also applies to the leader of the storming of the capital. It also applies to you and to me, that each of us were enemies of God. The other side of politics is not our enemy. Our enemy is not of flesh and blood.

Our enemy is Satan. So the unbelievers, whether conservative or liberal, gay or straight, American or Iranian, they are not actually our enemy. They are prisoners of war of the enemy. Our true enemy, he loves the conflict. He loves that we're too busy fighting with each other instead of laying our lives down for one another to rescue them from his lies.

I'll show you a thought experiment. Imagine for a second, how do you think about an abused child soldier in Central Africa, in The Middle East or in Burma? Kidnapped from their home, potentially forced to watch their parents be executed, abused, starved, and brainwashed. And they have an AK 47 shoved in their hands, and they're told to point it at the supposed enemy. Meanwhile, the greatest threat to their life and existence actually stands at their back, telling them lives and pressing them on to their death.

We don't hate that child soldier. We have compassion for them. We have sympathy for them. We work towards rescuing them from the lies that enslave them. We can think the same for those that don't know Christ.

We pray for them. We love them. We talk with them without malice. We try to rescue them from the lies of the enemy. We tell them about the precious grace that you have received and how you were once a sinner, lost, alone, and confused, and are now rescued by the blood of Christ, but that you still struggle.

Here's the thing, church, and I love this phrase. You once fought in a battle you could not win, and now you still fight, but you fight in a battle that you cannot lose. You once could not win, but God rescued you, and now you cannot lose. So here's a helpful paradigm for me. We think eternal, and we try to be faithful in the immediate.

So much of what I think gets us as as Christians worked up is second order effects. We can leave those instead to God. So much of where I see Christians spoil our witness or or disobey Christ's commands about anxiety is because we worry about, well, if we allow x to happen in our nation, then y will surely follow after it. But time and time again in the Bible, it is very, very clear that those second order effects are up to God. Those causalities don't link in the same way that we think they do.

Just read history. Read how crazy the turns of history are. Instead, our time and energy be and energy would be so much better spent being faithful in the six inches right in front of our faces, fulfilling the direct commands of God. So we can get rid of the slippery slope argument and the anxiety that comes with it, and instead we can trust in the God that sustained Israel, not through conquering, but through slavery. That grew the church not through political power, but through persecution, depicts the youngest brother, not the oldest, and that saved all of the world, not through a king or through a military campaign, but through a peasant.

Do we actually trust the sovereignty of God? Do we really believe that Romans eight twenty eight is true? That God works all things together for our good. Do we really believe that? Or do we think that we would be better at being God than him?

Because those are the two choices. And we're making those choices every day in little increments. This is the core of faith versus sin. To trust God's heart when we can't see his hand. To know that he loves us when we don't understand what he was doing.

Because if we think that we know better than God, we're trying to supersede his sovereignty, and that does not go well. Do we think we know better? Because sometimes it's tempting. If you were David in that cave in Ein Gedi, would you have killed Saul? I might have.

I might have been able to justify in my own mind that one act of murder and sin and think of all of the good that it would cause for God's chosen people in Israel, that it would spare them the despair of having a a a terrible king and a terrible leader. All I'd have to do I've if I'm David, I've already been anointed. My time has come. My enemy is right here. All I have to do is kill him, and then God's people will be led well.

But David knew better because we never justify sin. If you were Stephen, would you have allowed yourself to be stoned? If you were Paul, would you have submitted yourself to multiple illegitimate trials? Jesus healed the hacked off ear of Malchus' servant in the Garden Of Gethsemane. The very man that was going to take him to the cross was injured in that skirmish.

And Jesus is following him to his death and to his cross, and he takes a minute and he heals the ear of his enemy right before he goes to die on the cross for his sins. Can we do that? Can we allow ourselves to be figuratively trampled upon? Because I feel the same way as you guys when I read the news. When I read about the corruption, the it's not even hidden anymore, just the corruption of our political class.

When I read about all of the bad news that goes on in the world that could seem so easily stopped and changed, I get riled up and I want to do something about it. But the truth is the vast majority of the time, can do nothing about it. So what I do is I either cram it down or I lash out verbally. Neither of those are our call. Our call is to be faithful where we can be faithful and then to leave the rest to God.

Guys, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. That's James five. We can put our sail in God's wind. We don't change his will, but his will can change our hearts. A good paradigm here is to pretend just for a second that you are one of our brothers or sisters in Christ in a nation with actual persecution.

Think about Iran, India, China, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia. You know what's true about those nations that I just listed? Those are the fastest growing churches in the world, and they're also subject to the harshest persecution. But you know what those the members of those churches are doing? They are not overthrowing their government.

They're not speaking ill of their government. No. They are doing something far more powerful, effective, and important. They are growing the kingdom of God. They are participating with God to save souls.

They don't have time to do something less important, and it's the best part of their lives. So what do we do about all this? We have concrete commands in scripture that are not conditional. Jesus summarizes all the law and the and the prophets with these two lines. He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Guys, this is the job description of a Christian. What I'm trying to show you today is that in every aspect, every inclination of our heart is subject to these two lines. We need to be experts in our own sins so that we can remind ourselves every single day of the grace that has been shown to us.

Because as importantly is what Paul famously says in Romans eight one, and I know I quoted a lot, but we can't hear it enough. Therefore, is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you are in Christ, you have not out sinned the cross. I don't care what that decision you made was. I don't care what your anger was like.

I don't care what you did when you were scared and alone and helpless. You have never out sinned the cross in the empty grave. Our lives, having been rescued from sin and death, are no longer our own. That is a huge call and an amazing blessing, and we can live accordingly. And I'll invite Judy back up, and we'll we'll start to close with this.

Because just like with my children, God has so much better available to us than dairy creamer and cheap cranberry juice. He has the good wine. He has an eternal life and a life filled with purpose and joy in the interim. And it's not supposed to be easy. But we have to remember that Jesus never sought power, he never sought fame, he never sought wealth, and he certainly never called us to.

And neither did his disciples. We are to be in glad submission to those that God has put in place for that. And it's all for God's sake. It is for the kingdom of God. You have an eternal reward waiting for you in heaven.

Not on earth, in heaven, and we can live accordingly. Now if what I've talked about today is not your struggle, you by definition have a struggle someplace else. We all have struggles. What are some aspects of your life that have not been fully given over to Christ? What's that last 1% that you're holding back?

That thing that you swore you would never tell anybody. Bring it to God and share it with believers. We have to remember the bad news of the gospel. Not one of us is good enough on our own. But the greatest news in the history of the world is the gospel.

That God knew we weren't great enough, and he made provision for it in sending his son to die on the cross

for

us. Nothing is more powerful than God's love. Now if this church is gonna do more than just survive for another full century, if it's going to thrive and rise to the calling of our savior, we're gonna need revival. And I pray for revival often and you should too. But we need to remember that revival doesn't start spontaneously in our nation, doesn't start in our state, doesn't start in our town, it doesn't even start in this church.

Just like Jesus told Nicodemus in John three, it starts with a new birth. It starts in our hearts. So each one of us can take a look at ourselves and a look at the cross. Now if you feel convicted about any of this, we're gonna stand up. We're gonna sing one more song together and I pray we sing and sing loud church.

But don't go through the motions. If you don't have the relationship through the cross, don't don't just sing. Hit your knees, take your seat, pray to God, and then come talk to one of us. People of first B and Jackson, we're gonna adjourn here in a little bit. We're gonna go out and we're gonna actually do the real work of the Christian, which is not just to worship in here, but it's to live it out for the rest of the week.

We can have a great week of worship. Thank you, church.

As we go from here, let that continually be that, Christ, as you submitted to your yourself to the one who judges rightly. May that be us. This song that we just saw may be our prayer and our song this week. Would you search us? Know us, God, as we humble.

Submit our will to yours. In Jesus name, amen.