We'll get started. And of course,
if you haven't figured it out, I've been taking, not liberty,
but expandability. I've been going through this
letter now for however many months, pretty much the whole year, and
going through it in chunks, going through it in bite-sized pieces,
and then taking it out into the little leaks out of the bottom
of the barrel. And there's a reason for that. I think that we need
to realize, like when Peter wrote this letter, I can't remember
when it was, you forget all that kind of stuff after you graduate.
The exact dates and times, or at least I do, I dump that stuff
on a test and then we're done. But when it comes to this letter,
we need to understand that those Jews and the dispersion, this
is pretty much what they had for a long time. It was this
encouragement, it was this divine inspiration. They didn't have
John. Didn't have a lot of Paul's letters.
We don't know exactly what they had when. And so they didn't
just go through this letter, read it, and say, all right,
nice, we learned some stuff. Let's just move around. No, they used
it as a guidepost. They used it as a guardrail. They used it as a filter. to
remember who they were and why they were going through what
they went through, and they were using it as a filter to understand
how to view the world around them and everything that did
not make sense to them. Some people would charge me,
but that's not exegetical. It absolutely is exegetical,
because that is derived out of the text from common sense, from
historical documents. from things that the Bible teaches
very clearly was going on in the lives of these people. How
can you do something like that? Well, because we know what Jewish
life was like because we have all of the other prophets. We
know what Jewish life was like during the expansion of the church
because we have Dr. Luke's writing called the Book
of Acts. We understand how that stuff
is applied, the applied theology, the epistemology of knowing how
to live this stuff out because we have all of the letters of
the New Testament. So we can not just derive, we
can explicitly be empowered in that way. We can come to a place
of knowing that when we read the Bible, we can slow down and
we can be okay with saying, now what difference does this make
in my life today? Because there's an error of theology
in its application that says theology and teaching, aka doctrine,
is just for the information. No. The information needs to
be asked, or of the information, it needs to be asked, now what? So what? And what difference
does it make? And the answer to that could
very well be, just like I read out of Psalms this morning, that
God is mighty and unable to fail. Then we say, now what? So what?
What difference does that make? Then what am I worried about?
So then we know that the command to not be anxious, but in all
things, through prayer and supplication, let your requests be known to
God, makes sense in the context of what's happening. in the Bible.
There is no such thing as a theological truth in a vacuum in the context
of Scripture. It is synergistic and it is synthesized
in such a way that every single reality of life can be filtered
through the teaching of the Bible, not in a way that is just dogmatic,
but in a way that is experiential. Now some people have accused
me of pragmatism. Just go back and listen to the
pulpit stomping dogma of, you know, ten years ago. I haven't
changed my position, but I've just changed my approach. Fragmentism
is not, it intersects with Christian faith, it intersects with a whole
bunch of other isms, like 17 or 18 different things that can
come to mind. Yeah, about that many. And yet,
there is a practical application of the Bible. So what do we see? We see a lot of times where people
go, well, the whole point of life, the way we find truth is
living it out. No, we learn truth. But even
when we learn truth, it doesn't mean that we're alive in the
truth. Because the Bible says that the Holy Spirit of God has
to bring us to life. We can know without any error every single
detail of every theological thing that's outlined in the scripture.
We can memorize systematic theologies. It's not that hard. You read
them enough. I mean, I know people who can quote lines from like
30 years of seasons of 20-episode seasons of sitcoms and dramas. I mean, I know people who can
extrapolate the multiverse of the Marvel universe that didn't
even exist until I was like 35. And it conflicts with what I'm
doing because I grew up with the comic books. Come on, folks.
Stan Lee died because of all this stuff. No, he was old. But the point I'm making is that
we can become very familiar with everything and not know what
we're talking about. Not know as in intimately know. And so
I'm going to do something a little bit today. Last week, I sort
of sounded very political. And some of you even said, that
sounded like a political sermon. Well, it sounded like a political
sermon for several reasons. One is because every person in
every part of the world is a product of politics. And politics is
not just government. Politics is work. Politics is
household. Politics is church. If you don't
think there are politics in the organized church of evangelical
America, You haven't been around long enough. And if you want
to hear some horror stories, you know, like some guys talking
about World War II and Vietnam and all, I got horror stories
at deacons' meetings. And if I didn't tell you that's
where it were, you would think it wasn't a war zone. Yep, guns have come out
before. But the point is that politics,
playing principles, dealing with philosophies, engaging with ideologies,
finding a way to focus on something that's very important to us,
How does it manage the whole? What's best for everybody? I
mean, this is just part of it. And so these Jewish people, as
I begin to just not answer this, but to explain it, is that the
reason it feels political is because for these Jewish people,
it was 90% political. Because who they were was a nation.
Who they were was a promised people. Who they were were people
who had everything they needed in the context of their worship.
That's who they were. And now who were they? Nobody
walking in the sand, doing nothing, going nowhere with nothing. But
who did Peter say they were? Elect exiles. Elect exiles. That's who they
were. They were the beloved of God,
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. That's who
they were. So in all of that, we need to
recognize that sometimes when it feels political, it's because
there was a political element there. And the reason it feels
political to us now is because when we talk about who we are
and subject to Christ and subjection to Christ, it violates our conscience
in some ways, sometimes because Christian nationalism has leaked
in. Somebody told me that didn't exist the other day. I'm like,
okay, great. Neither does Santa Claus, but
those gifts got here. You don't have to believe in
anything. Doesn't make it not real. So, when we come to the
table of feeling these things, one of the main things we need
to understand is it's okay to feel awkward and odd about things
that come from the Bible, even when the Bible doesn't explicitly
teach it, because we have expanded it to apply it to our lives today. Because if we look at a list
of everything that we could experience in culture, or life, or mind,
or philosophy, the Bible is going to be very wanting. Maybe 5%
of everything is in the Bible. But 95% of everything else is
not listed. Why? Because it's not relevant
to the point of the Scripture. The point of the Scripture is
a revelation of God. That is His glory, by the way.
Seeing Him for who He is is His glory. So therefore sin, as I'll
talk about in a minute, is a falling from that which we know God to
be, is missing the mark of His perfection. And so the revelation
of Scripture over 1,500 years with all these different people,
all these different occasions, all these different audiences,
and yet there is a single stream that this is who God is and these
are who God's people are and this is how we ought to Understand
ourselves in relation to him and this is where our identity
rests and there is nothing that comes against us That doesn't
fit in the context of this filter so therefore if we're trying
to decide are we going to buy an electric car or a fuel car
or a hybrid car or just go back to Flintstones with our feet
out the bottom or You might think that's not a spiritual decision,
but politically, it may feel like one. It may feel like something political
in your own family. And you might go, what are you
talking? It's okay, you'll get it. They'll be there one day. You'll understand. But the reality is, some people
would say, well, the Bible doesn't talk about it, it's not important.
Well, it is important if it bothers you. It may not be wise, it may
not be mature, but it's important. Don't ever dismiss the importance
of the things you feel. Jesus would not do that. Jesus
had compassion on the disciples when they had no faith and little
faith. He had compassion on people who
were abused and victimized. He even had compassion on the
knuckleheads that ruled over everybody and run them in the
dirt. But yet then he gave truth in that context. So we give truth
in that context. So last week I focused on our
identity and understanding that in the context of the Bible,
there is no prescription for us to be a country like the United
States that is inherently Christian in every aspect. And I left some
things hanging on purpose because I'd rather the rotted fruit fall
off and hit the ground than have to carry them through and miss
the point. And so today I'm gonna talk about what that freedom
looks like. And I assert this, that there
is no freedom, there is no liberty, there is nothing in Christ that's
in jeopardy. Because if you're honest, you
either have fear about the future, you have concern about the future,
or you have frustration about the future, or you have fear,
concern, frustration, or anger about people who care about the
future. Or the very fact that you're just sick and tired of
even having to contemplate it because it's not important to
you. Or maybe you don't have any idea or feelings or emotions
at all because it's irrelevant to you. That's okay, but it's
not irrelevant to your neighbor. And love indicts us. I like to use that word because
it seems it's judicial. But love indicts us. We're going
to talk about the law of love and the law of grace. Let's just
use legal jargon. Our lawyers aren't here today, but, you know,
sue me. It indicts us to know that the
concerns of our neighbor, as silly as they may be, are valid. And we must answer them with
wisdom and discernment. Which does not mean, discernment
does not mean that we get to say, well that's not how it really
is, so I'm gonna tell you how you're wrong. Or I see that you're
wrong. No, discernment is how you then
can use wisdom to apply the truth to lead, direct, guide, teach,
and walk with somebody toward the truth with peace. Among other
things. So let's talk about this for
a minute. This navigation here. In the scripture here, it talks
about, in chapter 2 of 1 Peter, verse 16. I'm just going to bounce
off of this text. And then next week, we're back
into some theological things, which we're going to talk about
atonement next week. It says, live as people who are
free. Why? Because we are free. They
were free, but yet they were not free. Do not use your freedom as a
cover-up for evil. But live as servants of God. And then the instruction goes
all the way down, and then Christ is the pinnacle example, right?
Christ is the poster child of this reality. He was sinless,
guiltless, yet he spoke not a word when people accused him of being
there. They took away his life, they took away his freedom, they
took away his reputation, yet all of that stuff stayed intact
because he came to do the will of the Father. We, in turn, are
doing the will of our Father who is in heaven, Jesus Christ
who is our Lord and Savior, and in the way of understanding the
adoption and the theology therein, our brother. It's a familial metaphor, it's
not a reality, okay? He is our creator. But in the
sense of our redemption, He is the firstborn to be raised from
the dead sinless. Because death no longer had a
grip on Him, because death was not His to bear. Understand that. This is why it's called the Good
Report, that Jesus Christ entered into this world taking on human
flesh, yet not the sinful nature, not the sinful guilt. and He
lived perfectly. Everything that Jesus said, did,
thought, desired, or expressed was absolutely perfect. It did
not fall short of the glory of God. It did not enter into the realm
of sin. So if Jesus wept, if Jesus laughed,
if Jesus ate, if Jesus was sick, none of that sin, it doesn't
fall short of the glory of God. God, His glory, sin is missing
the mark of who God actually is. So what is the possibility
of a person sinless being in the world? And the answer to
that is Jesus Christ. And so yet, He died as a replacement,
as a substitute for His people, so that when He rose from the
dead, that was justice. Him. His death was justice for
us and His resurrection was justification for Him. He is sinless, so death
had no warrant. So He is the firstborn, now we
come after Him in the promise of the power of God in Christ. Sometimes this causes discomfort. Sometimes politics causes discomfort.
Sometimes theology causes discomfort. But we need to understand sin
in the context of life and faith. Because here, live as people
who are free. So we're free from sin, we're
free from the law, we're free from death, we're free from the
consequence of God's righteous justice because of who Christ
is. Then it says, not using your
freedom as a cover-up for evil. Well, that's an easy answer on
the surface. And then we get a little bit
deeper as we read the rest of the text through chapter 2, 3,
and 4. Because it goes into submission,
it goes into mindset, it goes into attitude, it goes into affection.
It talks about the reality of who we are in Christ, who Christ
is. And then it goes on into talking about our familial relationships
as they embody the image, the metaphor of Christ in the church.
And that our humility and our mutual subordination and our
mutual submission to one another, it works. Then we look at suffering
well as a people, because as Christ suffered, we also suffer.
If we're going to suffer with him, we will die with him. If
we die with him, we will re-raise a life with him. But here's the
trouble, and this is where Jewish people of this day were having
a lot of conflict. How do we know? Because we've
got the letter to the Galatians, and we've got the letter to the Romans.
We've got the letter to the Ephesians. And we see specifically in Paul's
first writing to the churches of the region of Galatia, where
the Judaizers had come in and said, all right, you got the
Judaizers, just so you know, were groups of Jewish people
who were extremely devout to their Jewish heritage, yet they
also claimed to be speaking for Messiah. Slightly so those who
really really had come to know Christ needed to come to know
Christ and Judaism And one of the best ways of showing that
you are a devout Jew is to circumcise yourself well, maybe not yourself
but to have yourself circumcised and Then follow the laws and
then follow the precepts and they knew all these other things
so I mean there's a lot there and that's what was going on
in Galatia and Then you go into Rome and you got this on I'm
the adopted child syndrome, and I was adopted at 17, and I've
only got one year to live here. I haven't been here as long as
the others, and I don't really feel part of the family. That's
the syndrome that's going on in Rome. The Romans, who were
polytheistic, you know, whatever theistic, did whatever they wanted
to do. They lived as quasi-Stoics. And so yet, they had this theistic
point of view of life that was very Objectivistic it was almost
self-centered And then all of a sudden now Paul goes on the
scene and they're believers they're in Christ they're adopted they're
grafted in as Israel A lot. Wait a minute. We're not we're
not as you know, I hear what you're saying. So there was this
conflict This is the political conflict the national conflict
identity conflict a social conflict a cultural conflict So the same
thing is true with these Jewish people This was happening and they didn't
know what to do, how to live. Who are we now and what do we
need? Remember those two questions. I ask myself that many times
a day. And when I first started asking
those questions, I didn't know the answer. I ask you those questions today. Because until you can answer
them truthfully every single moment of your life, you don't
know who you are. And you are searching after something
that you probably don't need. Because if you don't know yourself,
you don't know what you need. You certainly don't know what
you want. And sometimes you confuse the two and you do not know where
you are going. So the easy reality of not covering
up evil with our freedoms is Like Paul would say, don't use
our liberty in Romans as a license for doing what we know is obviously
sinful. Okay? That's simple, right? So James
knows it's not okay that it's sinful to kill his neighbor because
they yell at him or killed his dog or whatever in retaliation.
Do not be vengeful. Or to go online and smear somebody
because they're really mean. Or to scream at my wife or children or to rob somebody, or steal. Oh, but I'm in Christ, you know,
I can just... Or worse, you know, we deal with the sins of the
flesh, the things that we long for. Scripture says don't use our
liberty as a license to cover up evil. And the reality there is that
verses 13, 14, and 15 tell us that if we live righteously in
what? Conduct and in mind amongst a
community who is not God's, amongst a nation who does not belong
to the body, The body comes out of the nations. The nation in
itself is not of God, is not God's people. It's just God's
purpose being fulfilled through government. That's what it says
there. Subject to the Lord's sake for every human institution,
emperor or governors, sent by him to what? To guard civilization,
to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. For
this is the will of God. By doing good, you should put
to silence the ignorance of foolish people. So in the context here, when
Peter says, do not use evil, do not use your freedom as a
cover for evil, he's specifically dealing with the evil of government. He's specifically dealing with
the evil of culture. He's specifically dealing with
the evil of things that would rise up in them to retaliate,
to speak out, to stand their ground, to do things that would
give them back what's rightly theirs. This is the context. And I remember, how old was I
in 08, 07? I don't even know. 32? Is that
about right? 33? I don't know. Do the math. So when I was in
my early 30s, yeah, I remember saying this from the pulpit from
this sentiment. And I was in Romans 13, I was
in 1 Peter 2. I think it was probably July
4th weekend. And I walk in and the entire worship area is bathed
in flags, American flags. I mean bathed. I stood at the
pulpit and I could not see the congregation. There was flag
here, flag, flag, flag, flag, flag. And I'm like, I can't do
this. It violated my conscience so
bad. I just, I can't do this. So I just, in every row, so I
just went through and I took all the flags and I didn't have
anywhere to put them. So I just hurled them in the baptistry,
which was behind me, you know, just, you know, the old traditional
churches, the baptistries behind you. And I just hurled them in
the baptistry. And I took the two flags that
were really big and I put them at the back of the church. And everybody comes in, they
were so proud. I mean, I do banners like an old 1940s. It hurt me, so I'm like, you
know, I'm calling an audible. And I preached on patriotism.
And I got out of my mouth with that sentiment that I just talked
about, that I don't even think that it was righteous to revolt
against the crown, to create the United States to begin with.
Now, see, we can play with that philosophically and theologically.
But ultimately, what's been righteous about this country from the beginning?
The same thing that was righteous about Israel. Nothing. Because it wasn't of faith. So sin is missing God's status,
Himself. Not being like God is sin. That's
what it means. So there are sins that we do,
and there's just sin that we are. And there's sin that we
don't even know about because we're missing. And because we're
not Jesus, everything we do, if it's not of faith, it's sin. And if we were able, if God allowed
us to dig into the inner aspects of our so-called psyche, if we
could get into the soul of our thoughts and just dig and yank
the covers off that thing and see, our heads would pop. I'm vile. Maybe the Puritans
had an inner vision that we didn't. Or maybe they were just scared
of God and didn't understand the gospel of grace like they
should have. You're saying they lost? No, just they didn't understand
how to apply it. They went from oppressiveness to liberty, not
too much, to pushing everybody to California. That's what happened. For all sin and falsehood are
the glory of God. We're all together. So sin is not just about committing
specific wrong things. It's about falling short on the
perfect standard of God's revealed self, His character. It includes
acts and subtle failures to fully trust Him. It includes the reality,
listen, it's not an act, but it's a reality of anxiety, fear,
terror, doubt, frustration, anger. Where are these listed? In the
don't have lists. In the put off lists. In the
take off lists. In the avoid lists. Not in the
fruit of the spirit. We can't help these emotions.
Exactly. But don't think that God is sending these things to
us so that we would sin in our anger. Or that we would sit in
our fear. He has not given us a spirit
of fear. These people were very scared
walking around the world wondering where they were going to get
their next meal. Sometimes we're scared of things
that aren't even real. They're assumed, they're perceived. See, even good deeds without
faith can be considered sin. Romans 14, 23, for whoever, whoever,
how does he put it? Whatever does not proceed from
faith, this is sin. I think that's the quote. Probably
two different versions melded together there. So even morally
good actions. If they're done apart from faith,
they're considered missing the mark. Why? Because the only righteous
one is Jesus Christ. The only truly holy righteous
one is God. So we are not going to do these
things saying, hey, look here, I'm holy. Look here, I'm righteous.
Look here, look what I'm doing righteous things. They may be
in and of themselves defined as good deeds, but if they're
not of faith, then they missed the mark of God. Now see, here's
what happens when certain preachers get on this particular teaching
without explanation, then the church gets what? Scared. The
church gets frustrated. The church gets fearful. The
church gets to the place where, oh no, I can't do anything right. So we create new laws for ourselves.
We create new standards. When the whole reality is the
mindset. If I go to serve you, I need
to recognize that the reason that that's good and worthy and
praiseworthy is not because the act in and of itself is good,
not because my heart has been attuned to your need, though
that is good. It's because by faith I stand
in the righteous courts of God, innocent of all things. That I'm able to walk into the
presence of the throne room and say, hey pops, Abba, Father. We have access to the throne
of God. We have access to the Holy of Holies. We don't have
to clean up. We don't have to act away. And then that, because
of who we are and the fact that we need no righteousness of our
own, we are able to approach God in such a way with everything
in life, so that what we do, we do not trying to please Him,
but knowing that we are pleasing to Him already. And man, is that
a different motivator. If you want to know what that
looks like in cognition, it's called a reframe. Just take it,
put this picture in a different frame. Change the decor. Look at it through a different
lens. Reframe it like you would a camera. So we trust in God's righteousness,
Christ's righteousness. Paul talks about it in Philippians
3. A righteousness that I have that is not mine, but that which
comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The righteousness wasn't
granted us because we got it right. The righteousness was
imputed to us because Christ finished the work. And our faith is resting. Then
living out that faith is active. Our moral performance, as important
as it is, is not our righteousness. And we are the children of God.
We are the elect, beloved exiles. For we are not of this world,
but we've been called to live in it with joy. And this very
letter, as a matter of fact, I think it's the next one, that
we are able, 2 Peter, to give a reason for the hope we have
with respect and dignity and patience and love. So we've figured that out. We've
understood that sin is not just doing bad things, but it's anything
that's not a faith. Misses the mark. And we're not
bothered by that because we're resting in Christ. What is that
resting? That's faith. Literally what
it means. Every metaphor of the Old and New Testament related
to faith is not about believing in a set of principles or propositions. It's about resting in the one
to whom they point. Anybody can know all the data,
but only those who are allowed by the Spirit can rest in the
person of whom it speaks. So back to
the second, 1 Peter 2, 16. Live as people are free, not
using your freedom to cover up for evil. So we don't use freedom
as a pretext for sin. And that's easy, like I said
a minute ago, in the things that we know that we shouldn't do
or shouldn't think or shouldn't have or whatever, but sometimes,
We don't ever go further. And see, this is where, think
about this, how many years were these people in the dispersion?
I mean, I don't remember. Most of them never went back. Most of them never had, or they
died. So a lifetime. And so as the, People who helped oversee the
community of these people in all of these different places,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. They carried copies of this letter
around with them as a precious, precious, precious thing. And
they went to it, and they studied it, and they looked at it, and
they studied it, and they looked at it, and they read it, and
they prayed over it, and then they shared it. And they'd come back,
well, what does Peter say about this? I'm having this issue.
And then they work through it. This is what it means to live
as a community. It's not about getting the PhD in theology and
then having all the answers and then saying, all right, who's
next? Let's give you all the answers. No, we live together.
So as things come up, we apply them by going through the scripture
over and over and over again. It took decades to get to the
place where their mindset was settled in learning how to live
what Peter taught them. Not weeks. Decades. And the wisest of them
would have time sometimes when they would fall apart and some
of the younger ones would have to say, hey, hey Gramps, remember
what you taught me when I was five? Don't forget, out of the
mouth of babes. Because the wisdom of Christ
doesn't matter who speaks it. And sometimes this misusing freedom
to cover up evil as a pretext for sin is so subtle, we don't see it,
we don't recognize it, and then we get caught up in the midst
of doing it, and then we get told that what we're doing in
this pretext is actually righteousness. Let me give you some examples. Publicly supporting and endorsing
things that are wrong. Things that are not to God's
standards. Now see, that's easy, right?
Prohibition, hot dog, get rid of that alcohol. But that's not
against God's standards. Television shall not come into
my house, especially color. Ah, this, is that really it? It was one thing to see that dancing
lady, but now she's got a red dress on, I'm done. I mean, come
on, folks. But these are real statements,
things that I've heard by looking at reels. and old television
programs and hearing radio shows and reading things. When the
bicycle was invented, the church came out in droves in large numbers
to prevent it from being manufactured and brought to their communities.
Because now that young boys could leave town on a bicycle and not
have to feed it and water it and get it back home for the
next farm day, they may never come back. That's almost a direct
quote from a letter written to a What do they call it? A parson of a local community
in the Midwest. And see, that's what we do. We
get caught up in these things. I ain't gonna support that AI. I ain't
gonna support that. I ain't gonna support that. I
ain't gonna support, you know, okay. I'm just using that as a joke
because I hear these things constantly. People ask me questions all the
time. What does the Bible say about tennis shoes? I don't think
it does. But if I were to say there was
a biblical tennis shoe, maybe it would be Nike. Just read the Bible
and do it. But you know Nike, they're not
that very good of a company. Nope, they're not. We have to be careful what we
say is biblical or good. When we do so, we cover up evil.
And when we do so, it aligns us with it. And sometimes that
means we're talking about one evil, but in the way we act,
we're covering up the fact that we're acting evil because we're
doing a good thing over here. It's condemned by scripture.
Sometimes we cover up evil with complacency and silence, right? And see, the other side of that
is that we use that, we use our liberty to cover up the evil
of just being rear ends. I'm going to keep it real. I'm
going to speak the truth in love. Well, if that's love, I want
none of it. Love does not control. Love does
not enforce. Love does not demand. I mean,
go to 1 Corinthians 13. Love does not distrust. So when somebody gets in your
face and said, well, if you're really a Christian, and by God,
if you don't, I'm going to throw you out of my life, and bye,
later, bye, boom, bang, ding, dong, wrong. And then you're
like, well, what is this? None of this stuff is love. Can you spell grace? Warning
here. No. But I know grace, and I rest
in it, and I live in it if I give it to you. So easy, but it's so hard. Take no part in the unfruitful
works of darkness, but instead expose them. Friends, this is
tough. In the context of this, with
what Peter's written here to these people, we should just
mind our own business. Why? Because that was our station
as exiles. But see, here in America we have
a little bit more freedom because we're allowed to speak up. So where is the context there?
First and foremost, inside the church, but not in a judgmental
way, in a way of caring, loving, and hoping. Not that the person
is like, blaspheming God, oh no, we're all gonna die. No,
that's not how God works. He killed Jesus Christ already,
he's not gonna kill us. Because we didn't get it right.
And you know, I had a man tell me that in my high school years.
He said, if you disobey God long enough, he'll kill you. And because I'm still alive,
that was a lie. But I believed it. When I saw grace for what it
was, I'm like, maybe he will. It'd be great to live as Christ,
to die as gain. I'll talk about some of the things
here, just to give an example, sometimes remaining silent, Just keep it in house. I don't
think we should remain silent as Christians in a culture like
this when we see other Christians who openly profess to be Christians
acting like not Christians. And I think until we clean that
up, we ought not to talk about any other evil. Because that's what it means
to love. Justifying personal or cultural
sins. Paul 6.1 of Romans, are we to
continue to sin that grace may abound? Absolutely not. It cannot
be, by no means. Some people say, well, I have
the freedom in Christ to do what I need to do, and it's okay. Well, you may be okay in grace,
but it doesn't mean that it's okay. But who gets to decide
what's okay and what's not okay? We are free. The reason Paul
wrote that is because the reality of the gospel is that we are
so free in the redemption that is ours in Christ Jesus, that
it gives us the mindset that there's nothing we can't do.
Because we shouldn't be fearful of doing anything, but yet the
call and the command to love as God has loved us then confronts
that. The greatest of all the commandments,
to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself,
these two. These two, not this one and this one separately,
but these two are the epitome of the entirety of all righteousness.
And when we do the second, we're literally doing the first. We don't justify our personal
or cultural sins. That's okay, God forgives. I
mean, have you ever heard that? I've heard it. I hear it all
the time. That's good, but it's not loving.
See, we're not even going to talk about private things we
do in our own bodies, in our own flesh, in our own minds,
in our own closets, in our own darkness, and the things that
we frustrate ourselves with. I'm talking about the things
that we do out. And if it's not love first and last, it's not
of God. And when we find ourselves not
loving, we don't need to worry, we need to rejoice. I think, ah, I put my eyes on
someone else and their issues rather than where I am in Christ
so that I can filter my look to them through the way I am. Another way we cover up evil
is that we foster division. Well, two more ways. We support
unjust systems or practices. or we foster division instead
of unity. Through love, serve one another,
Paul says in Galatians 5. But if you bite and devour one
another, watch out that you are not consumed. When we use our freedom to speak,
whether in the church or in the culture, and we do in order that
we may show and create division, We are devouring one another. I had my day in the sun in polemics
and ridiculous apologetics, not exegetical apologetics or linguistics. And it feels really right. It
feels really right. Because you're making something
known that needs to be known. But don't look over there, that's
bad. Matter of fact, look over there,
that's bad. I've literally indoctrinated
you in what's bad, rather than just taught you what was good. So now, what do we do? What is
the right use of freedom? This is the context of this. Because it's easy to say what
we're not supposed to do, but what are we supposed to do in
kind? Because we can just pray and go home and everybody can
worry about what they're not doing right. Or we can learn
from the Scripture that we've already seen already over the
last five or six weeks of how we are to have a mind that is
Christ's. Loving, honoring, serving, being
quiet. We couple that with other places
like Thessalonica and writings that we see in the other letters.
We see that we have a high calling that's greater than anything
the world can understand. And it's not about avoiding or
being so separate that we just look weird. It's about being
a people who are real, authentic people who have a power about
them and a settledness about them and a peace about them that
surpasses common sense. And when people look at us and
go, how are you? whatever, we can say, because there is a God
who is my Lord, who loves me, and gave Himself for me, and
His peace is mighty. And that shuts everything out.
When John says that the light has come into the darkness, but
the darkness has not overcome it, that's it. It's like, boom,
light's on. The darkness is gone. Immediately. And then what we do is we bring
it back in the flesh and go, now what? What have I got to do? Rest there and then live in wisdom. Live by faith. And it's a work. You know how long it takes our
mindset to get there? It takes practice and discipline
and failure. If you see people who are standing,
you know, if you see somebody standing up like on this stool,
and they're standing high, and you're like, man, look how they
are spiritually. You know what's under their feet? All their failures. That's the mountain on which
they stand, not the mountain of glory, the mountain of grossness.
But they didn't stay. They climbed up. How do we do
that? By resting in the gospel. So the rights, we have a right
to use our Christian freedom. We have a freedom. This is a
long list. I won't get through all these.
I just kept going. We have the freedom to love. Doesn't make any sense. Yes,
it does Let me tell you by this all people will know that you
are my followers because you have love for one another There
is nowhere else in the there's no other place in the Bible that
says that we will be known By anything else except our love
for others Love is long-suffering love does not fail love keeps
no record of wrongs. Do you take score? Yes, we do We have the freedom to love.
We have the freedom to arrest the flesh that says retaliate,
that says ghost, that says leave, that says avoid, that says dismiss,
that says bite back, that says get even. and we have the freedom,
we're not bound by that law anymore, we're not bound by that death,
we are free now to love and go, I see it. It's almost to the
point where when we see it and we begin to live and embody it
and we begin to grow and mature in it, that we will literally
giggle out loud when we see ourselves being triggered by the things
that our flesh used to be triggered by and we'll go, our response
is love and compassion and we will laugh and people will think
we're even more crazy. Why are you laughing? I just
cussed you out because, you know, five years ago. Never mind. I
love you, man. You need me to do anything for
you? Don't even tell them who you used to be. Five years ago,
I'd have karate chopped your throat and laughed. And now I'm
laughing because I don't want to do that anymore. I get one a year, right? We have a freedom to love. We
have a freedom to serve. We have a freedom to serve one another.
Let me go back to love. We have a freedom to love ourselves
as Christ loves us so that we can serve out of that. We have
a freedom to serve love by serving one another. We should serve
each other in humility in such a way that it is a response to
who we really are, not as a way of trying to prove who we really
are. Not as a way of having people to see us for who we really are,
but it's because of who we are. We have the freedom to advocate
for people. When people ask me what I do,
I've said for years and years and years, I'm an advocate. But
you know how much failed advocacy I've had? A lot. Because I used to think advocacy
meant fixing instead of just being. You know the greatest,
there's a lot of great phrases that I love to hear, but the
people that love me, when they come up and say, I'm here, I'm
here. That's more powerful than anything
you could do. Because if you're here and you're praying, nothing
can stop me. We can advocate. We can advocate
for justice. Because if that was wrong, those
people were hurt. This isn't correct. No matter
what the politics say, I won't get into politics, or the political
issues of the Middle East, but one seemingly act of righteousness
doesn't justify an act of gross evil. No matter who does it. The same thing is true within
the church. For those of you who don't follow the Christian
church news, wherever it is, whatever social media platform
you see it on, whatever echo chamber that you happen to fall
into and you can't get out of, it's a mess. I don't think there's
an institution now in any denominational sector that doesn't have a mess
somewhere. There's some dumpster on fire somewhere in a dumpster
on fire somewhere. It's bad. and a field of manure
on fire with some tires. It's bad. And it's always gonna
be bad. And it's always been bad. But it doesn't mean that we don't
have the freedom to say, that's abuse. If you've sat under my teaching
long enough, you've been abused by me with this Bible, without
even my knowledge. I've said something or got on
my toes or I've done something because of the way I feel. And
I put it out there and then you left here discombobulated. Recapitulating this idea over
and over and over. And some of you, most of you,
you call me later and I go, oh my gosh, what was I thinking?
That was terrible. That's not what I meant, but that's what
I said. It's going to happen again. and then we're going to work
through it. It's not a big deal when we are in love with each
other. It's a big deal when we hold animosity. But we can advocate
for justice. We can speak the truth in love. We are to speak the truth in
a world where truth is compromised. Truth is compromised often by
Christians who are living lives, and I'm not talking about in
the frivolity or the fleshliness, I'm talking about in the hatred,
who are living lives of retribution. Wanting something done because
of an injustice that's not an injustice. There's a difference. It's not
wrong to want justice. It's a very godly desire. The
problem is, is when we think we are justice. And we think
our bullhorn is justice. Or that we think we rally enough
people around us and then we all stand together and start
some problems that that's justice. We have the freedom to speak
truth. We have the freedom to hold public office, beloved. Believe it or not, a Christian
can hold public office to the highest rank of any place. When the righteous increase,
the people rejoice. The problem is that if we hold
public office and we think that our job is to reform society
to become Christian, rather than be Christian in society. However,
we should, as Christians, when we hold office, engage in good
governance that's informed by our faith, but that doesn't violate
the law and doesn't impart the idea that I'm going to make Claxton
a Christian city. No, I'm going to live as a Christian
and vote my convictions as a believer in this city. There's a difference.
There's a difference in motivation. There's a difference in motivation.
One goes off the rails, the other makes positive change. I think we should be engaged
in public life. Why? Because we can promote the
common good. We can promote justice. We can promote advocacy. We can
promote public service to those who are less fortunate. And those
reflect the value of the kingdom of God. Those reflect the value
of Christ. Those reflect the value of the
gospel. Christ says, I didn't come for
the righteous. I came for the sinners. So all you religious
folks, oh yeah, you're fine. I came for the blind. Oh, you
can see? Well, you get romance. I didn't come for the well. I
came for the sick. I make the joke, they didn't
have, you know, I think I made it last week to somebody, I said
they didn't have, in Jesus' day, the maintenance well checkups.
You only went to the doctor when you were sick, back in that day,
maybe. We have a freedom to share the
gospel. And not only do we have the freedom to share the gospel
in Christ without consequence, we have the freedom to share
gospel nationally without consequence. The gospel. Not a cultural philosophy
or ideology that's confrontational to other people's civil liberties
under the law. I'll say it this way again. Most
evangelicals would rather have a moral standard of life rather
than seeing people have eternal life. And they think evangelizing the
people that they see in this world is an attempt to get them
to change their life rather than having life. And that's nothing but Phariseeism.
That's nothing but law. That's nothing but works. And
it's not good news. We have the freedom to forgive. Yeah.