Matt Sturdevant: Good morning. It’s great to see all of your smiling eyes! It’s great to be together. I want to start out by praying, so would you join me in prayer? Father, thank You for who You are. We live in a strange and difficult set of days, but in the middle of all that is around us, You are still God. Thank You for Your Word. Thank You that regardless of what we think or what we feel in any given moment that Your Word is true. Your Word is living and active. Your Word corrects us when we’re wrong. It teaches us to do what is right. Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light unto our path. Your Word will stand forever, and Your Word contains Your message of hope and love to us. Holy Spirit, we invite Your presence here this morning. I ask that You would please open our hearts and our minds and show us what you want us to hear and see today. Father, please give us the courage to take the next step that You have for us as we listen to Your Word. I pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Well as Brian said, we are continuing our summer series, Parables: Stories to Live By, and now we’re all synced up. We’re doing this message online, as well as here in the building. Well, they’re the same as they can be when we were doing multiple services that is. We’re all on the same page. We have a working definition of a parable, and I just wanted to give that to you again one more time. It’s using a natural object of human circumstance to convey a spiritual or moral subject. Also each week, we’ve been considering the parable might be acting as a picture, a mirror, or a window for us. A picture that is giving us something that we can actually see and wrap our minds around so that we can remember it… Then, a mirror reflects truth back to us whether or not we like what that truth is. With a window, we see what we see in the room that we’re in, and as we look out the window, we see a different perspective than what we might see. So, we want to consider how the parable is a picture, a mirror, or a window.
This week’s parable is just four verses. This is a very short parable, but it fits in really well to a conversation I think we need to have. There is so much happening in our nation right now, and if you thought that life was stressful, that life was fluid and rapidly changing back in the middle of March when the Covid situation was just coming online, when you think about today, it’s just mind-boggling. There is fear and stress and uncertainty. You name it, all around us all of the time. Sometimes it’s even just hard to get our bearings because of all that is going on around us. I want to take this parable that we’re going to look at today. This is the parable of building your house on the rock, and I want to use this as the launch pad for the conversation that I want us to have today.
I’m not sure what kind of a week you’ve just had. You may have experienced thoughts and feelings across the entire spectrum that exists. What I want us to do for a few minutes today is to pause, to stop, to take a look at, and then see what God’s Word says to us and how we can apply it to our lives even in the very situation we find ourselves in. Earlier in the spring, I heard a pastor giving a talk, and in the talk, he quoted someone else. But, here’s what that quote was, as much of it as I remember. It was, “Take your Bible and your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” We don’t read physical newspapers today as much, but what he was saying was I have my Bible in this hand and my imaginary newspaper here. What we need to do is we need to take our newspaper and we need to read our newspaper through the lens of God’s Word. Often, we’re tempted to do this (the opposite).
What I want to do today is I want to look at what God’s Word has to say, and then we’ll look at our situation in light of the truth and the reality found in God’s Word. Let’s take a look at today’s parable. It’s found in Luke chapter 6, verses 46 to 49. “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
One of the things that I find interesting about this parable is that we know that Jesus’ earthly trade was that of a carpenter. So, it’s very likely that Jesus had a lot of experience in building houses, and He’s using His own experience to give us a message. Essentially what Jesus is saying here is that this parable is that if we obey His teachings, if we obey His Word, that is the only solid foundation that we can build our lives on. Without building on Jesus, life will amount to ruin. For me personally, I’m not sure how I could have sanely made it through these last three months with Covid and what we’re walking through right now today and even be able to look at the future with much hope at all if it were not for God’s Word and for the fact that I am a follower of Jesus. For me, my daily quiet time, the time that I get up early in the morning...I try to get up before anyone else in my house is awake and just spend time at my kitchen table with me and God. That time has been like food and like oxygen. It’s necessary to even make it through the day.
It’s during these times that I’m reminded of a hymn. The name of that hymn is “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand.” I want you to know that there is a really, really good reason that I am your lead pastor and not your worship pastor, so I’m not going to sing this hymn. I want you to hear as I read some of the words to you. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid Rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. His oth, His covenant, His blood supports me in the ‘whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ the solid Rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”
This is a song about the very parable that we’re looking at today. My goal for our time today is to do the following: I want to look at some issues that we’ve got to consider as followers of Christ. These are issues that are brought up for us in this parable. Then, I want to take a few minutes, and I want to take a look at the situation we find ourselves in today as a nation. I’ve got questions. I’m sure you’ve got questions, some that you've voiced and some that you’ve just felt and maybe even didn’t have the words of how to ask. Then, I want to wrap up our time looking at what we can do. There is so much that we can’t do, but there are some things that we can do. And, that’s where we’re going to end today.
Before we can address the current situation that we find ourselves in, we’ve got to understand some things from God’s perspective. Some issues that we must consider: the first one is this. If we want to place the foundations of our life on rock, we must build it on the truth. The Truth is actually a Person. The Truth is the Person of Jesus Christ. Listen to Jesus’ own words in John 14:6. He said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Jesus is the Person. He is the Truth. He is the firm foundation that we are to build our lives on. Now unfortunately, we live in a day and age where much of the world is more confused about what Truth is than it’s ever been.
We live in a day and age where people have decided that they are going to operate as if there is no objective truth. Perhaps you have heard someone say the phrase, “Well, this is my truth.” Or, “This is what’s true for me.” What they are actually, really truthfully saying when they say that is, “Here’s my opinion.” But, it’s being presented as truth. I want to show you about a 60 second clip from an online conference that was put on by the Colson Center. The man that you’re going to hear from is named Abdu Murray. Abdu is a former Muslim, who is now a follower of Jesus, and he currently serves as the North American Director of the Ravi Zacharias Ministries. I want you to hear what he has to say about this topic of truth.
(Abdu Murray) “What’s accounted for this? How did we get to the point where we are post-truth? Now, I’m not talking about being relativistic. I’ve used that term throughout my introduction here, but I’m not talking about us being relativists. I think relativism is largely on its way out. We are not postmodern anymore. We are post-truth. In fact, that’s the word of the year in 2016, four years ago now. This is what Oxford-English Dictionary has named its word of the year to be “post-truth.” Anything is post-truth if it elevates feelings and preferences above facts and truth. We don’t deny that facts and truth exist. We simply elevate our feelings and our preferences above them. What that means is when the facts and the truth actually line up with our preferences and our opinions, we love them. We love facts and truth then, and we’ll tout them all day. But the minute that they actually conflict with our preferences and our feelings, that’s when truth becomes inconvenient…”
Did you catch what he was saying? Post-truth—this is why we are so confused right now. We’re confused about the very thing that we’re supposed to be building our lives upon. We’re to build our lives upon the Truth, and what this practically means is that there are many around us who are not building their lives on the Rock, but they are building their lives on the sand because our emotions and our feelings change throughout the day just like the shoreline changes along the sand. Where does this confusion come from? Why are we confused? The truth and the reality is that we live in a world that is not just physical. It’s also spiritual. In addition to the physical world that we live in, the world that we can touch with our senses, there is an unseen spiritual, supernatural realm.
It’s because we are often unaware of this that we don’t really account for it very often. We operate out of what we know not what we are unaware of. If we are unaware of this spiritual realm, then we fail to recognize a very important thing. That is that there is a real supernatural, evil force at work in this world. The Bible is very clear about this. The Bible talks about this real, supernatural opponent that we have. The enemy, the devil, is the ultimate source of confusion that we have today about truth. Let’s look at John 8:44. Jesus says, talking about the devil, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand in the Truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
We have on one hand the devil, the father of lies and a liar, and on the other hand, we have Jesus, who is Truth. If you were to look up the word, “truth,” in the dictionary, you’d find something like “the quality or state of being true,” or “that which is true in accordance with fact or reality.” I think a way that we can simply think about Truth is this. Truth is the way things really are and the way things really work according to how God has set up reality. The truth about Truth is that it has consequences. Let me give you an example. If you're about to step out off the curb and into the street and you feel like there is not a bus coming and you decide to reject the data and the facts that say a bus is coming because of the feelings that you have and you decide to step off of the curb anyway, you’re going to have a bad day regardless of what your feelings or thoughts were before you stepped off the curb.
Here’s the thing I want you to hear. Do you know why the devil wants us to be so confused? Why the father of lies is perpetuating the lies? Why doesn’t he want us to know the truth? This is why. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” It’s as we decide to follow Jesus that we experience real freedom. Each and every one of us is born into this world a sinner. It is in our nature because of the Fall. We are born sinners, and we sin because we are sinners. What that means is that we’re all in this form of spiritual bondage, enslaved to the devil himself. But Jesus is the great Liberator, and it’s because of His death and His resurrection, He defeated sin. If we repent, if we choose to make Him our Savior and our Lord, we can be free. We can experience real freedom.
Truth is the foundation, but when you read about truth in the Bible, truth is never alone. Truth always has a friend. It has a buddy; it has something else that is with it all the time, and that’s the next issue. That is that truth and love must always go together. We’re called to love but never at the cost of truth. The simple definition of truth is that it’s “reality according to how God set things up.” An equally simple definition of love would be “a willingness to sacrifice for the best interest of others.” Let’s look at Ephesians 4:15. This verse is part of a larger discussion talking about unity among believers and the lordship of Jesus, so picking up in the middle of that discussion with Ephesians 4:15, it says, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him, who is the head, into Christ.”
I love this quote by Warren Wiersbe. He says, “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” Those two, truth and love, must always go together. We can’t separate the two of them, and if we do, we get what Wiersbe talks about. We either get brutality or hypocrisy. But rather, according to 1 Timothy 1:5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Yes, we are called to love, but never love at the cost of truth. Jesus, the One who is Truth, said, “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” How did Jesus love us? The way that Jesus loved us was always in the truth, so that means that we as His followers must tell the truth in a loving manner. And, we must love in the boundaries of truth.
The third issue that we’ve got to look at as Christ-followers is that we must not love the world. We must not love the world, and this is a real tension. This is a real tension that we feel and that we experience each and every day of our lives. The tension seems to be getting greater and greater and greater. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, the Bible tells us that we are citizens of heaven. Because as we are in Christ, we have been adopted into God’s very own family, and we are citizens of heaven. We are not citizens of this planet. Yes, we live in this world, but we are no longer of this world. 1 John 2:15 and 16 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world…” If there were ever a verse that laid it out for us, it says it right there. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
We have this real tension that because we are followers of Jesus, those of us who are, and we live in this world. We experience conflict, and the conflict is between God’s ways and the world’s ways. In fact, here’s another verse for you: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” You ever felt hated? The verse tells us, as followers of Jesus, the world hates us because it hated Jesus. This reality is really hard for us, as Americans. It’s really, really hard because we want so badly to be or at least look cool. The worst, hardest American sin is to not be cool. The younger you are, the harder that is. I went to public junior high and public high school. One of the great things when you hit mid-life is you lose your hair; you put on some weight. You're just not that cool anymore. You don’t have to try to be cool anymore, but deep down inside, all of us want to at least look cool. We want to be cool, but as Christ-followers, we must not love the world.
Yes, we love the people of this world. In fact, they are the very people that Christ died for, just like He died for us. We want the people of the world to be free just like those of us who are Christ-followers are free. We love the people of the world, but we do not love the ways of the world. So, now that we’ve looked at some perspective from the Bible, I want to take a few minutes, and I want to look at the situation we are in as a nation. What I want to do as I look at it is I want to look at it from a Biblical angle. My job as your pastor is to help you see how the Bible, how God’s Word, fits into real life and how we can apply it to the situations that we actually, really, truly find ourselves walking through.
A few weeks ago, I did a message about the root of the fruit. This was back on the first time that we met together here in the building. On that day, I talked about what’s behind ultimately, the root of the root of, all of the problems we’re facing right now, all of the problems that we’ve ever faced, and all of the problems we ever will face. It’s a sin problem that requires a gospel solution. So, that’s all I’m going to say about that today. I’ve already talked about that. We’ve linked to a portion of that message in your handout, if you weren’t here or if you want to watch that again. As a nation today, we are in great turmoil. We’re experiencing the effects of our sin and our brokenness. There is so much sadness, anger, hurt, outrage, confusion, and again, the entire spectrum of emotions going on right now. We are in an incredibly complex situation that has actually been decades in the making.
As I look at this situation and as I look at it through the lens of God’s Word, there are several, huge, complex issues that have gotten rolled up into this one, mega, gigantic, complex situation. But yet, what’s often presented to us in the media is that it’s just a simple, simple problem with an equally simple solution. I want to show you a video, and this is from a group called whatwouldyousay.org. They're going to give you a peek into just one of the incredibly complex issues in play right now that’s balled up into the mega, complex issue of our situation today as a nation. So, take a look at this video.
Video: You’re in a conversation, and someone says, “Since God cares about the oppressed, Christians should embrace critical theory because it’s trying to eliminate oppression, too.” What would you say? Critical theory is one way our culture attempts to explain and confront power structures. Some Christians have embraced it, as well, but what is it? To understand critical theory, we need to understand its two primary claims. First, everyone can be divided into two groups: those who have power and those who don’t. Second, those who have power always oppress those who don’t. But, how do we know who the oppressed and who the oppressors are? According to critical theory, the categories of oppressor and oppressed are based on your group identity. Things like race, gender, religion, immigration status, income, sexual orientation and gender identity determine whether we are oppressed or one of the oppressors. Of course, someone might be part of an oppressed group in one way, but one of the oppressors in another way. That’s where the concept of intersectionality comes in.
Intersectionality seeks to measure someone’s level of oppression based on how many of these groups they identify with. For example, a black man is less oppressed than a black woman who is less oppressed than a black lesbian. In critical theory, the degree to which you are oppressed determines your level of moral authority. The more categories of oppression someone identifies with, the more moral authority they have. As a result, the experience and perspective of a gay, black woman is more valuable than the experience and perspective of a straight, white man, regardless of what they have to say. In the same way, the more oppressed someone is the less moral responsibility they have for their actions.
Those who aren’t part of oppressed groups (straight, white men) gain moral authority by surrendering to those who have it—the oppressed. This is called being “woke.” Some people claim that since Jesus cares about oppression, critical theory and intersectionality should be embraced by Christians. But, critical theory and intersectionality are not consistent with Christianity. Here are three reasons why. First, critical theory offers a different view of humanity than Christianity. Critical theory claims that our identity as human beings is rooted in things, like race, gender—features that differ from person to person. The Bible grounds our identity as human beings and the value every human has, in the fact that we are created in God’s own image. This is something every human being shares, while critical theory pits some groups of people against other groups, based on their status as oppressors or oppressed. The Bible says that we are all equal before God: created equal, equally valuable, equally guilty of sin, equally deserving of punishment, and equally able to find grace and mercy in Jesus, which leads to the second goal.
Critical theory offers a different view of sin than Christianity. The Bible identifies sin as anything that violates God’s design for people, including unjust oppression of other people. But, critical theory identifies sin only as oppression. As a result, advocates of critical theory would see Biblical practices, such as discipleship, correction, leadership, and reproof, as sinful assertions of power if the speaker is among the oppressors. And, they would excuse sins like jealousy, anger, hatred, bitterness, unforgiveness, or envy among the oppressed. The Bible says that we are all guilty before God, regardless of social status, race or economic situation. The Bible condemns oppression as one of, but certainly not the only, way in which humans rebel against God. Because critical theory gets the problem wrong, it also gets the solution wrong, which leads to the third point.
Critical theory offers a different view of salvation than Christianity. According to the Bible because we are all equally guilty of sin, salvation can only be found in Jesus through repentance. Our hope is found in being forgiven of sin. Because critical theory teaches that oppressors are guilty and the oppressed are not, salvation for the oppressed is not found through repentance but in social liberation here and now. Their hope is only in activism. In other words, critical theory has a completely different understanding of who we are, what the problem is, and how to fix it than Christianity. So the next time someone really with good intentions tells you that Christians should embrace critical theory because Jesus also cares about the oppressed, remember these three things.
Critical theory offers a different view of humanity than Christianity. Our identity is in our status as image bearers and children of God, not in our race, gender, income, or immigrant status. Critical theory offers a different view of sin than Christianity. Oppression is wrong, but it is a symptom and not the disease. Critical theory offers a different view of salvation. We cannot solve our biggest problem. Jesus can. Our hope is not in our circumstances on earth but our destiny in eternity. (End of video)
(Pastor Matt) Did you catch all of that? Perhaps you have felt or experienced some of the effects of critical theory, but you didn't know what was going on. You didn’t know how to articulate that. I’ve included a link to this video. It’s from, as I mentioned, whatwouldyousay.org. They have other helpful videos, but you may want to watch this again. I’ve given you that link. Right now, our nation is churning. It’s churning over the role of government and law enforcement, racism, violence, anarchy, and the very definition of truth. If those things were sort of like the kindling, then critical theory and inflaming rhetoric are just adding fuel onto the fire.
You may have watched a few weeks ago, Black Out Tuesday, on instagram, or you’ve seen other churches and organizations quickly come out with statements about what’s going on. You may have wondered why we as Hope Church didn’t put out a statement. Maybe that left you with some questions, or you were confused about some things. I believe that what is being presented in the media and what other organizations, including some churches, are responding to is actually a simplistic response to this very complex situation. Again with critical theory being one of the things at play here, we’re sort of forced into an either/or situation, and it looks like this. Either you fully support the massive outcry against the injustice, or you’re totally, absolutely racist, unkind, unloving, and we actually aren’t even sure if you’re a Christian.
That’s what this has been reduced to because it’s the oppressors and the oppressed, but our concern here at Hope Church is to try to develop a fully, Biblical response to a very complex situation. I want you to know that the staff and I had hours of conversations about what's going on, and we’ve equally spent hours collectively and individually praying, asking God for wisdom and insight throughout the situation. I’ve also had conversations with some church members and church leaders here at Hope. I’ve talked to other pastors in the 17:6 Network, the network of churches that we’re a part of, as everyone is trying to come up with a Biblical response to an incredibly complex situation.
Our response as a church and as individuals must fall in line with God’s Word. However we respond to this, it must fall in line with God’s Word, and here’s what we as a church believe about God’s Word. The Holy Bible is the authoritative, inerrant and infallible revelation from God to man and is the basis of our conduct and our beliefs. That’s what we believe about God’s Word, and our response must be able to be supported and rooted in God’s Word. Also, our response as a church, as an organization, must also be in line with our organizational values. Our organizational values are...we have three main values. The first one is to please God fully, which means we consider God’s desires first and seek to please Him with our thoughts, attitudes, decisions and actions. Our second value is that we love people wisely. We treat people with their God-given value in a way that’s right before Him. Then our third value is that we steward opportunity faithfully, which means that we act with intentionality, integrity, excellence, and effectiveness.
Any response that we have as Hope Church has first got to line up with God’s Word, and then secondly, it’s got to be in line with our values. In the middle of this incredibly complex situation, there are some things that are pretty simple. I want to tell you what those are. There are four of them as I see. The first one is all lives matter, including the unborn. It doesn’t matter the skin color or the ethnicity. All lives matter because we’ve all been created by God, and we’ve all been created in God’s image. The second thing that is pretty simple is that racism is a sin. It’s that simple, and I love a statement that Rick Warren had a number of years ago. You may have heard this. He said, “Racism is a sin issue, not a skin issue.” It’s a matter of the heart. Each and every one of us, because we are all sinners, are capable of being a racist, but the simple thing is it’s wrong. It’s a sin.
The third thing is that murder is a sin. God’s Word is very clear that murder is a sin. Now, it’s important to note that not all killing is murder, but when it comes to murder, that is clearly wrong and is a sin. It’s simple. The fourth thing that’s pretty simple is that injustice is wrong. It’s wrong. However, going back to truth and definition of truth and where we’re confused right now… However, we must define what justice is based on what God says, not on what an oppressed group feels. Justice is for everyone, and as you read the Bible, the entire Bible from cover to cover, you find one of the major themes in there. That is that every human being has the right to life. Every human being has the right to own property. Every human being has the right to make a way for themselves in this world within boundaries of the law. You can find all of that in God’s Word. I’m not going to take the time now to give you all the supporting verses, but you can find it in God’s Word. It’s there.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve felt this in light of what’s going on right now, but there is great cultural pressure right now to join a bandwagon. This is very much part of the critical theory worldview that is in opposition to the gospel. Critical theory—again we saw this in the video, but I want to make sure you understand this. Critical theory says that you’re either the oppressed or you’re the oppressor. Guys, I want you to hear this. To the extent that this worldview has penetrated and is working its way through the evangelical church in America as it is. This is a different gospel. This is not the gospel that we find in the Bible. This is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What’s a worldview? A worldview answers two simple questions: What’s wrong with the world, and how do you fix it? Critical theory says oppression is the problem, and activism to overturn the ideas and equalize the power is the solution. That’s in opposition to the Bible. What the Christian worldview says is that sin is the problem. Rebellion against our Holy God, that is the problem, not oppression. The only way to be redeemed, because redemption is the solution. The only way for redemption is by God Himself through Jesus Christ. A little bit earlier we looked at John 14:6: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Acts 4:12 says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
This is a different gospel. All of a sudden now, we have found it. We have found the sin that Jesus’ blood cannot atone for. That’s not true. That’s not right. It’s in direct opposition to the gospel, and that’s one of the things, one of the major things, that’s all balled up in the middle of this huge situation that we find ourselves in. A passage of Scripture for me that’s been very helpful as I’ve wrestled with this and as I’ve tried to understand how to respond to what’s going on is Exodus 23:1-3. I want to read it quickly and make a few comments. It says, “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be practical to a poor man in his lawsuit.”
This verse has been very helpful on how we think about and frame a Biblical response to what’s going on in our nation right now. One of the things that’s happening is there’s an overwhelming amount of information coming at us. We are being bombarded on a daily basis, and quite frankly, there is too much information to effectively even process. Some of that information may be true and accurate and factual, but it appears that an increasing amount of the information—there’s actually some question about its validity and truth. What we need to do is be careful of what we accept as fact and then what we pass on to others as fact. That’s one piece of it. Another thing is that when we decide to join in a cause we need to know that it’s something that God is behind, and it’s not something that actually is opposed to God’s ways and opposed to the very message of the gospel.
So although we have affirmed that all lives matter, which includes black lives, we cannot affirm the message of the Black Lives Matter organization; and we, therefore, have not and will not use #BLM or any variation of that. I’m using this as an example because this is one of the things that is in the middle of that mega, complex issue that I talked about. I want to show you a couple of screenshots. This is from Black Lives Matter, the official organization; this is from their website. This is their “what we believe” page. Now, it’s probably too small to really read. This part is not that important. You can go to their website yourself, and you can look at this. All businesses, organizations, churches—we all have “what we believe” pages.
Now I want to show you another screenshot where I’ve enlarged and highlighted a couple of lines. It says, among other things of what they believe, “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.” There’s a whole lot more on the page. Go look at it yourselves, but I wanted you to see just the few sentences that I’ve highlighted of their entire beliefs page.
Because of their philosophy, their belief, their ideologies, they are very much against God and His ways and the message of the gospel. Just like we can’t affirm and support hundreds and thousands of other organizations that exist in our nation, we cannot support this organization. So when it comes to the bandwagons, what we need to know is this—Where is the bandwagon heading, and what does the bandwagon stand for?—before we get on that bandwagon and before we become a champion of it.
Here’s what I believe is ultimately at stake for us now. Two things—one is the future or our nation, and number two and most importantly, is the message of the gospel. Jesus Christ is the only Way. When Christ was on the cross and He said that “It is finished,” what? It is finished. What’s being called into question at this moment is the very message of the gospel. This is an incredibly complex situation. It’s not just a simple situation with a simple solution. I promise you that my goal here today is not to leave you totally depressed and hopeless. As individuals, there are a whole lot of things that we can’t do, but there are things that we can do, so let’s talk about a few things that we can do.
Number one, pray, pray, pray. What have I been telling you? When you don’t know what to do, you can always pray. Here are a couple of things in your handout that you can pray for. Pray for justice; pray for unity. Pray for peace; pray for our governing authorities. For us here, that is our mayor, our county judge, our governor, and our president. There are a whole lot of others, but those are just some of the major categories. Please hear me on this. It doesn’t matter if you voted for them. It doesn’t matter if you like them. They need your prayer. We, as followers of Christ, need to be praying for the leaders that are over us right now, so pray for them.
Pray for spiritual awakening in our city, in our country, in this world. Pray and ask God what He would have you do with the specific situations that He brings along your path throughout the day. One of the problems is as followers of Christ we take the Bible seriously—love God and love people. We love people, and our heart goes out to people. We see these mass groups of these people that we want to love and want to help, but we can’t help necessarily the masses. What we can do is we can help the people who God brings in our path throughout the day. So, pray; ask Him specifically when you get up in the morning, “God, how can I make a difference today? How can I love You and how can I love people today? Show me what to do today.”
A couple of other things on prayer—I want to invite you to join me in what I’m calling the 7/14 Prayer Initiative. Starting today through at least November 3rd, which is the date of our presidential election, I want to invite you to set an alarm on your phone or whatever makes sense for you. Set an alarm for 7:14 AM and 7:14 PM, and spend at least 60 seconds praying for our nation. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” If you're here today and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you are a part of God’s people because you’ve been adopted into God’s family through Christ. Join me in praying twice a day for just 60 seconds. If you feel led to pray longer, by all means, do so. But twice a day for 60 seconds each time, pray for our nation.
Then I would ask that you would please pray for me. I got an interesting phone call the other day that came to the office. The Fort Worth City Council called and asked if one of our pastors would come this Tuesday on June 23rd and pray and do the invocation, which is the opening prayer of the City Council meeting. Now, we’re in a rotation, and we get a call every so often. But I see that in the middle of this, God has allowed the call to come here and be given the opportunity to go pray for our city council, which has some big things that they’re thinking about and some big things that they’re working on. So, I would ask you to please pray for me that God would give me the words to pray that would be helpful and that would be encouraging to our city council with all that they have. I don’t know what to do to fix all the problems of our nation or even of our city, but I know the One who does, and I know how to talk to Him. So, that’s what I’m going to go do on Tuesday. It will probably be somewhere between 7:00 and 7:05. It’s right at the beginning, so maybe set another alarm on Tuesday evening and please pray for me.
Another thing we can do is this. We can love our neighbors. God’s Word says to love God and love people. We can love our neighbors. I want to read you Matthew 7:12 from The Message paraphrase. This passage is often referred to as “The Golden Rule.” It says this: “Here’s a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets, and this is what you get.” Can you just imagine for a moment what each of our families, individually, look like? What would our city look like? What would our country look like? What would the entire world look like if everybody simply did this? Just treat people how you want to be treated, because we all want to be treated with respect, with dignity. You know how you want to be treated. Love your neighbor.
Another thing we can do is vote. Vote! Vote! Vote for candidates whose positions align closest with God’s ways. This is an opinion of mine that I’m going to share with you. You know, there’s times when Paul says, “God says…” Then, he says, “Paul says,” so this is a “Matt says.” An opinion of mine now that I’m going to tell you is that for too many years too many followers of Jesus have simply not liked the options available to them when it comes to voting, and they’ve decided not to vote. Now, they're complaining that they don’t like the situation that they’re in. Again, we live in an incredibly complex time. Get educated on what God’s Word says. Get educated on the issues. Get educated on where the candidates stand, and then, go vote for the ones who are most in line with God’s Word and God’s Ways.
The final think you can do is intelligently approach social media engagement. We’re getting real now, right? What I have observed is most social media debates result in two things—higher blood pressure and a fewer number of friends. It’s usually not the place to engage an intelligent, rational conversation, so I would encourage you to think before you post. Don’t just respond in the moment, especially if you’re tired or hungry or something like that. And, you happen to read something you disagree with; just think before you post. We’ll be talking further about some of these issues in the weeks to come, but I really felt like we need to address them now at a very broad level because many of the things that are happening in our nation.
I want to thank you for your patience today and for your attention. I know that this message was a little bit longer than last week. I know some of you were caught off guard, like “Wow, that was quick last week.” I promise you that the next two weeks, because the videos have already been recorded, and I know how long they are. The next two weeks will be shorter. I basically had about a four-hour sermon that I think I was able to trim down to less than an hour. But these are important things that are happening in the world that we live in, and we’ve got to know how to think about them Biblically. So, I want to close with this.
Today is Father’s Day. I haven’t said a word about Father’s Day up until this point. This was not a typical Father’s Day message, but as I thought about it, I think that this really fits. Because one of the things that we see in God’s Word if you look in Deuteronomy chapter six, God told His people in ancient Israel to teach His Word to their children. So as your pastor and as a father, I want to call all the rest of the men in the congregation whether you are a father or not. As men, I want to call you to join me in a few things. Join me in building our own lives on the Rock. Join me in building our families on the Rock. Join me in modeling what Truth in love looks like for all of those that we lead, and join me in teaching what Truth in love looks like to our children.
Would you join me in prayer? Father, thank You that You are God. Thank You that in the middle of the mess You are in control. You are a God of righteousness, a God of justice, a God of love, a God of peace, and a God of mercy. We admit that we need Your help. We need Your help, Father, and we ask for Your help. Please, show us what we can do. Show us how we can best love You and best love our neighbors in the middle of these difficult days. It’s in the name of Jesus Christ, the name of the One whose blood was shed for each and every one of us, the name of the One whose blood is the redemption that we need, the One who sets us free. It’s in Jesus Christ’s name that I pray. Amen.
