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The Story of Job - His Humility Sermon Series: The Story of Job Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Job 32-37 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone everywhere, whether you're here in one of the other venues or online, everyone said amen. Well, if you're lucky enough to still have a good mom in your life, make sure that you treat her well today, not just treat her well. Why don't you go ahead and take the next step and actually not just give her a gift, but share why she's special to you? Share what you appreciate about her. For so many of us, our moms were the first ones to wipe our little tushies. And therefore a little honor and humility toward them is in order. Okay, I'm gonna about to order a bunch of coffee for everyone here. If you don't start waking up. We are in the story of Job. And you know what? The story of Job is heavy. And if you've been walking with us for the last number of weeks as we walk through the story of Job, you've probably felt some of this weight, which is right. It's right to feel the weight of Job. It's right to feel the weight of someone who is so good and so righteous, yet suffered so much. It's okay. And it's right to be, to have a somber reflection of that. Today, we're going to continue our story of Job and just like how our mothers demonstrate humility towards us, we're going to see Job receive a massive dose of humility this morning, not just in what is told to him, but in who tells it to him. So we are coming off last week where Pastor Nate did a wonderful job of preaching through 29 chapters of Job. And saw during those 29 chapters we saw Job wrestle with his suffering through the advice and counsel and questions of three of his friends. His three friends come and they sit with him and they discuss why Job's suffering so much. But ultimately, we come to see that the conversation ultimately goes nowhere. For 29 chapters of the Bible, Job discusses with these other men. And there's a lot to be gleaned, but it ultimately doesn't go anywhere. But what we're going to find out today in our passage is that for those 29 chapters, for all that discussion between Job and his three friends, there was another person sitting there, observing, watching, listening, processing, waiting for his turn to speak. And this man's name is Elihu. Would you please turn in your Bibles to Job chapter 32? We're gonna sink our teeth into one specific section that Elihu teaches to us, but we're gonna take a moment, we're gonna get to know this guy first. He is an awesome, awesome guy. He is definitely someone that we should be naming our sons after. Elihu is an awesome guy, and what he has to say is phenomenal. But let's first take a moment, let's just meet this man. Here's a painting of him from Arthur Ackland Hunt. So Elihu just kind of emerges in chapter 32 on the heels of this massive conversation, this 29-chapter conversation, Elihu emerges and before we go into what he says, let's just meet this guy and get to know him for a moment. Let's just walk through chapter 32 really briefly together. So if you have your Bibles, we're gonna look at 32 verses one and down. So the Bible says that, so these three men, speaking of Job's friends that we looked at last week, these three men ceased to answer Job because Job was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu, the son of Barakel, the Buzite of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because Job justified himself rather than God. He burned with anger also at Job's three friends because they found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong. Now Elihu waited to speak to Job because they were older than he. And when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, he burned with anger. Did you count how many times it says that Elihu's angry? So what's going on here? So Elihu's been sitting there quietly listening to this conversation that lasted 29 chapters between Job and his friend, a conversation that ultimately got nowhere, and now Elihu is angry. The Bible says he's angry for three reasons. One, he saw that Job was righteous in his own eyes, meaning he's beginning to see the pride in Job emerge in the way that Job was handling his suffering because, here's Job's great fault, Job was focusing on himself rather than God, Elihu identifies that and it makes him angry. Second thing, Elihu is mad at the three friends. Why? Because they kept saying that Job is suffering because of sin in Job's life, but they couldn't provide any proof of Job's sin. And Elihu is basically like, this is the heaviest of all situations of suffering in history and you can't go around accusing someone of sin and then not being able to prove it. That also makes Elihu really angry. And the third thing that makes Elihu angry is that he's mad because their conversation went on and on and on and ultimately got nowhere. We find out that Elihu is the youngest among them. This is important. He's the youngest among Job and Job's three friends. So out of respect, this younger man waits to speak. And let me just stop here real quick and just say, I understand that this is an ancient Near East historical context, cultural context from 4,000 years ago, but I'm going to tell you right now, for those who are younger among us, that's a wise thing to do. Let those who are older go first, let those who are older speak first. You sit and listen, not saying you can't speak, but I think a lie. He was such a great example that he listens first. He listens for a long time. He listens to the point where actually he gets angry, but he lets them speak first. And when they've had their say, that's when he speaks up when he sees that the conversation has ended, but gotten nowhere. That's when he speaks, go to verse six. And then a lie here, the son of Barakel, the Buzite, answered and said, I am young in years, and you are aged. Therefore, I was timid and afraid to declare my opinion to you. I said, let days speak and many years teach wisdom. But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. Look at verse nine. It is not the old who are wise, nor the aged who understand what is right. All right, stop right here for a second. So Elihu, the youngest one there, steps up and challenges them all. He steps up to the plate and basically says, yeah, yes, I'm the youngest one here, but just because you're older than me doesn't make you wiser than me because it's God's spirit in a person that makes them wise, not the number of years that they've lived. And then Elihu, like a boss, says this in verse 10. He says, therefore I say, listen to me. He's saying, it's my turn now. It's my turn to speak. And this is actually reminiscent of something the apostle Paul teaches Timothy in the New Testament. When the apostle Paul tells the younger man, Timothy, this, he says, let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and impurity. So this younger man, Elihu, steps up, and again, for the younger generations among us, this is why we seek the Lord, to gain wisdom. Yes, yes, of course, we listen to those who have gone before us. Our moms set great examples for that. But the Bible tells us that it's the breath of the almighty that gives a person insight. It's the breath of the almighty. It's the spirit of God that makes a person wise. And the Bible says that the word of God is God's breath. The word of God is the Bible. It's God-breathed. So to know wisdom, we must know God's word, the Bible, which has been challenging humanity since it was written yet continues to stand the test of time and continues to be the best seller and most read book in the entire world. The Bible does not say, once you hit 60, then you're wise. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When you know your place before God, that's when you can start to gain insight. And so God uses this younger man Elihu to teach and to humble Job and his friends. In over six chapters, Elihu teaches Job and he teaches us. And there's so much here. There's so much richness. And we're gonna sink our teeth into one specific passage, but if I could just give you a quick broad overview of Elihu's grand speech, it would be something like this. Elihu's speech to Job through these chapters, 32 to 37, is this. Number one, God is not silent in our suffering. We cry out to God, we think He's not answering, God is not silent. God speaks through pain, He speaks through His word. God is not unjust in our suffering. We're going to find that out in a little bit more detail here this morning. God is not unjust in our suffering. Elihu goes on in the next chapter, 35, to say that God is not absent in our suffering. He is present with us. The fourth thing that Elihu shows us is God is not helpless in our suffering. God doesn't stand aside and wish that he could do something, but doesn't. This all feeds into the grand and great mystery of faith. You know, at some point, we're gonna have to come back and do a real study on Elihu. I love this guy, but I think it's really good for us to zero in on chapter 34 here this morning. So again, if you have your Bibles open, I hope you do. Jump over to chapter 34. We're going to look at verses 1 to 15 this morning. Now, as you're turning there, we really have to understand the worldview that these guys were leaning on. And let it challenge your own worldview, but here's what's going on. Now, these guys, they understood the world in a very black and white term, in a very black and white way. See, they believe that God was just, that he was, he was a God of justice. He did what was right. They believe that God is just meaning they believe that good people got blessed by God and bad people got cursed by God. This was their worldview. This is what they believed. And so what happened was you got Job, this righteous man who was suffering, that did not fit into their worldview. And now they had to try to reconcile what they were experiencing with what they knew to be true about God and it leads them to some bad and dark places, which we're going to find out in a second. This is what they believed. That God blessed the good and He cursed the bad, and now they are confronted with a situation that didn't fit into that. Job's friends say, yes, God is just, God is good. Therefore, Job, you must have some sort of secret sin in your life that we don't know about, although they couldn't point to anything. But on the flip, what we see is Job begin to articulate, I'm righteous. I'm righteous before God, and yet I'm suffering, therefore God must be unjust. Both of them came to the wrong conclusion. And Elihu steps up to provide some much-needed correction. And what he says is, you guys, your whole frame of thinking is off. And this is what Elihu begins to articulate and share. And so, with that massively long introduction. Let's read God's Word. Chapter 34 of Job, verses 1 to 15, would you please hear the word of the Lord? Then Elihu answered and said, hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know. Stop right there for a second. It's kind of hard not to read a snarky tone in that. I'll just be honest with you. Hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know. For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Let us choose what is right. Let us know among ourselves what is good. For Job has said, I am in the right, and God has taken away my right. In spite of my right, I am counted as a liar. My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression." Then Elihu picks up and says, What man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, who travels in company with evildoers, who walks with wicked men? For he has said, it profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God. Therefore hear me, you men of understanding, far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and the Almighty that he should do wrong. For according to the work of man he will repay him and according to his ways, he will make it befall him. Of a truth God will not do wickedly and the Almighty will not pervert justice. Who gave him charge over the earth? Who laid on him the whole world? If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust." This is God's word. Let's pray, and we'll continue. Let's pray together. Father God in heaven above, Lord, we thank you on this day for the mothers and the mothers in spirit among us who show us so well, so often, the meaning of humility. But most of all, we thank you for our humble Savior, Jesus. Help us today, Father, by the power and presence of your Holy Spirit, that we would know the power of this passage. Father, would you be with me, that I may bring about your truth well to my friends and family here? And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. And everyone said, Amen. All right, so there's so much that we could glean from Elihu. But from this passage here, I just want to give you one thing. I'm going to warn you, this is a layered, thick main point here today. And here it is. Faith is having the humility in suffering to say that we may never fully understand what we know to be true. I know that sounds paradoxical, but let's listen to it. Let's see it again. Faith is having the humility in suffering to say that we may never fully understand what we know to be true. And as we look at these 15 verses here, here's our breakdown for this morning, here's your outline. When suffering, we need to have the humility to critique your own position, to change your own presuppositions, and to challenge your own pride. When suffering, have the humility to critique your own position, change your own presupposition, and challenge your own pride. And as we get going, I just want to remind ourselves of something here before we start jumping to lessons and application and all this. It took unimaginable suffering for Job to come to a place of humility where he could learn these lessons. And as we talked about before at the beginning of this series, listen here, I know, I know a lot of us, like, suffering is just not part of the equation for our lives. So a sermon like this could feel like a throwaway for you, but I'm telling you, on this side of eternity, you need to be prepared for suffering. This is a sermon, I believe, that you may not feel like you need it right now, but at some point in your life, it's something you need to have in your back pocket to pull out when the time is right. And I know, I fully would submit to you that I know that my words can appear dull and unsharpened by lack of experience. But as Elihu pointed out, it's not age or life experience that makes our words true. It's God breathing life into those words. By the way, what I just said would get me canceled in today's world. But let's see what God's truth says. The first thing that we need to look at is when suffering, we need to have the humility to critique our own position. Let's continue in verse chapter 34. Then Elihu answered and said, hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know. So Elihu continues his rebuke and he places his words before them. He lays his argument before them. He doesn't hide behind his feelings. He doesn't hide behind compassion. He says, listen to what I say. Verse 3, for the ear, tests words as the palate tastes food. He's telling these older men, to take my words to task. Listen to what I say. Debate with me. Taste them. Touch them. Test them. He's telling them to engage. He's not gonna let them off the hook. He wants them to receive his words. This is completely the opposite of what's happening in our world today. In our world, when someone's confronted with an idea that offends them or they don't like, what do they do? They shut down the conversation and they run away. Church, we cannot play that. We cannot be that way. We have to be able to stand our ground, know what we're saying, and engage in the conversation like Elihu is calling us to do. He says, in verse 4, let us choose what is right. Let us know among ourselves what is good. Elihu is saying, let's be objective here. What is the right and good thing to do? He says the right and good thing to do is not a matter of opinion here, gentlemen. He says we don't get to walk away from this situation, just living our own truth he says there's something larger going on at play here we need to determine and figure out what that is listen to me a lot of you is like the anti woke he's not gonna let people think that they can just determine their own reality here he will not respect a thought on the matter if it's not grounded in truth capital T truth he's not running away with the car he's not gonna run away from the conversation. He wants to have an exchange of ideas. He says, test what I'm saying. If I'm wrong, show me. Because remember, here's the whole problem. Here's the tension they're dealing with. Job is righteous, yet he's suffering. So the question on the table is this. Job's suffering makes God unjust. So Elihu shows up and basically says, you have your own thoughts on the matter, but it's now, it's time to put those thoughts to the test. It's time to consider the faults of your own position. Listen to what I say, and let's see where we land. And church, this goes back to the entire theme of this whole series. That the best way to deal with and the best way to prepare for suffering and loss and pain is not by answering why, but by knowing God. Church, I have a question for you. Don't answer this one out loud, because I'm kind of scared of what you'd say, but don't answer this out loud, but what is one thing that is true for all people? If you're in one of the other venues, I ask you the same thing. What is one thing that is true for all people? I can tell you this, with nearly 20 years of ministry under my belt, talking with people on multiple different continents from all over, one thing I know about humans, one of the hardest things for any of us to do is to change our minds. And that goes for everyone who can hear my voice, probably. So many people lack the humility to fully critique their own positions. And here's why, because here's what people do. Here's what humans do. We equate our opinions on the matter with the truth of the matter. We can't differentiate between the two. And in the church, this becomes even more insidious because we've turned our preferences into battles of morality and theological integrity. And, by the way, battles of morality and theological integrity are at stake, but they shouldn't be birthed from our preferences, but God's truth. As we consider our own positions, the next step is to consider from what place those positions are birthed, our presuppositions, which leads to number two. When suffering, have the humility to change your own presuppositions. So, meaning, here's the question, like, from what base truth am I building my worldview? What's the truth that I base my arguments upon? And suffering, when done in humility, can lead to a change in your presuppositions. Listen to this, verse five. For Job has said, I am in the right, and God has taken away my right. Meaning here's what Job's saying, Job is saying, I'm righteous. I am righteous and I have done nothing to deserve this. This is an injustice, what is happening to me. And then Job basically is saying, which shows that God has denied me justice. Meaning, Job is saying that God is being unjust. This is huge. Job is convinced of this as we see in verse six look at verse six in spite of my right I am counted a liar now this is all in poetic form so let's understand what's happening here this is such an insightful verse job says in spite of my right I am counted a liar what job is saying is that God has done this to me without cause but when I say that that this means that God is unjust, people accuse me of speaking falsely. And Job is saying, how am I in the wrong? He goes on to say, my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression. Translation, Job is saying, God is doing an injustice to me, and here's the proof. I am suffering but without cause. So how can I be lying or saying something untruthful? If God is good and I'm good but I'm suffering, that makes God unjust. Right? This all stems from his presupposition of the matter, which is faulty. And Elihu is going to attack that premise. And he challenges us all to do that. What is the reality that you base your worldview upon? And does it lead you to believe things that are not true about God? Job is saying this because he's relying on his presupposition that God would not allow, that God would not allow those who are righteous to suffer. And this is such a key, key lesson for us. People hear me. When we don't understand God, His being, His motive, His justice, his plan. When we don't understand that, then it's our worldview, meaning our moral and theological framework, that's what needs to be challenged first, not God. And Job, rather than believing that God knows more and God knows better than he does, Job is sticking to his presuppositions, which leads to the wrong conclusion that God is unjust. And with that, Elihu lets him have it. Go to verse seven. It says, what man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water? What Elihu is saying is that Job, Job you're too loose with your words right now my friend. You're too quick to judge God without first considering how your thinking could be wrong. And Elihu continues to lay into him, verse eight. He says, speaking of Job, you who travel in the company of evildoers and walks with wicked men. Remember the context. Job's friends are standing right there. Like Elihu was speaking and Job's friends are like, well, this is awkward. Yeah, because they're standing right there. Elihu is bringing the fire because they've been no help either. He's saying if you're all going to stand there and say nothing but spit accusations at God, then you are wicked. Elihu continues, verse 9, for he, meaning Job, for Job has said, it profits a man nothing that he should take the light in God. Job is asking, if God is going to allow this to happen to me, then what is the point of worshiping God? Job is saying, what's the point of trying to enjoy God if life is terrible? Church don't make this mistake. Church do not make this mistake. Rather than questioning his own presuppositions, Job questions God. And here we begin to uncover Job's capacity to sin. This isn't from me, but it was once summarized that Job did not suffer because he sinned, he sinned because he suffered. Elihu is saying we all know God is just, that is true. And so when it seems like God is unjust, it's not because God is wrong, it's because our presuppositions are faulty, they betray us. We are the ones who are wrong, not God. Elihu is saying, we all know it to be true, that we humans think we know it all, especially in today's world. We think we know it all. We think we are people who are more righteous than God. Mankind thinks that we can outsmart God. Do you know what that's called? Pride. And pride is the thing that limits our ability to fully understand what's going on, which is such a dangerous thing because pride is so celebrated. Pride limits our ability to fully understand what's going on. And Elihu's calling that out, which leads to this last thing. When suffering, when suffering, we need to challenge our own pride. Now Elihu, here, he goes for the checkmate. Verse 10 and 11 says, "'Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding. "'Far be it from God that he should do wickedness, "' and from the Almighty that he should do wrong. For according to the work of man, he will repay him, and according to his ways, he will make it befall him. Here's what Elihu says, in verse 12. Of a truth God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. Elihu was saying, God is good. God is just. He's saying, don't think for a second anything other than that. Yes, sin will be held to account. The wrongdoer will be held to account, but it's according to God's timeline, not yours. And to further challenge our pride, Elihu was saying, if you have a complaint, what are you going to do about it? If you have a complaint, what higher authority are you going to appeal to other than God himself? There is only God and there is none higher. He goes on to say, who gave God, verse 13, who gave God charge over the earth? Who laid on him the whole world? The answer of course is no one, no one bequeathed to God, his status on God, or his dominion over the earth. There is only God and none higher. He goes on to say in verses 14 and 15 if God should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together and man would return to dust. Elihu is saying to Job and to us all, remember your place in the universe, Job. You only have breath, you only have breath in your lungs. You only have life because God wills it to be so every moment. And this should give us, especially those of us who know God, perpetual humility. Elihu is not saying that what Job is going through is easy. Elihu doesn't undermine Job's pain. He's not saying that it's easy what Job is going through, he's not dismissing it. Elihu doesn't undermine Job's suffering like this, but it's clear. Elihu is telling us that suffering is not an excuse to sin. It's not an excuse to challenge God's justice. Rather, our suffering is a call for humility because God is not vengeful. God's not vengeful. He's not spiteful. God's not mean. God is good and he is just, and if you are led to think otherwise, it's your presuppositions that need to be challenged. Because when times of suffering come, we must remember that faith is having the humility in suffering to say that we may never fully understand what we know to be true. If we have any questions on this, then let's just take it up a notch and see the suffering of Jesus. If we think that the suffering of Job is troublesome, let's look at the suffering of Jesus. Let's look at the gospel. The gospel is good news. The gospel is that the righteous one, the sinless one, suffered for the unrighteous, for the sinful, so that we could be saved. A plaguing question that mankind has is, how can suffering ever lead to something good? Well, that answer is most clearly and profoundly found in the Gospel of Jesus, that Christ died on the cross in our place for our sins. The theologians would say that's substitutionary atonement. He died in our place for our sins so that we would not face the judgment that is due us for our sins, but rather through our faith in Jesus, what happens is that God gives the righteousness of Jesus to us, and we are seen as more righteous than Job, for we have the righteousness of Christ in us. And this happens, listen to me, not through our suffering, but through the suffering of Jesus. The gospel is the declaration that God is good, that God is holy, and that He will do what is right even when we don't fully understand it. And listen to me, what goes for justice goes for love. God's love for us, we may know it, but we will never fully comprehend it. The love that is described loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Mothers, mothers, could you give your only son? What sort of love is this? This is beyond us, that God would so love the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish, will not die, but have everlasting life so that we would know the love of God. This is the gospel that Jesus, the one who was given, the one who was sinless, suffered for those like us who are sinful. Jesus suffered and died taking our place for us. And the story of Job is definitely a tension that every thinking person and every Christian needs to grapple with. The story of Job is a tension we must face. And the suffering of Job is something we must consider, what he endured. But all of that suffering needs to point us to something even greater, even greater suffering. It should turn us to Jesus and the suffering that He endured for us. Amen. Do me a favor, let's stand up. Let's have a little chat for a second. As we sing this morning, we sing some of the old hymns. I know there are people who deeply love the hymns, but if you sing because you love the hymns. But if you sing because you love the hymns and not firstly because you love God, I'm telling you, you're singing wrongly. We are going to sing of God's great love for us. And there is a world that looks upon the church and wonders, do you even believe what you say? Do you even believe what you sing about? And church, I'm telling you, right now is your chance to respond to that in the way that you sing of God's love. So let's pray. Father, we pray here and now as we come before your holy throne of grace. Father, we know that we are only able to do that because of what Jesus has done for us. So Father, as you sent your spirit, Father, I pray you to continue to do that. Holy Spirit, we pray that you'd fill this place with your presence, that we might be reminded of the goodness of God, the holiness of God, and the love of God, as we are reminded of the suffering of Jesus who suffered in our place. So fill us with your spirit as we sing of this great love. Father, we love you and we thank you and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Father, we love you and we thank you and we pray these things in Jesus' name. And everyone said very loudly. Amen.

Bob Hudberg Most Recent Content from Bob Hudberg A Psalm of Asaph Watch Sermon Fit for a King - Our Proclamation; Go Tell It On the Mountain Well, good morning, Peace Church. Oh, that was so bad. Good morning, Peace Church. That was much better. We're so glad. I am PB. I'm the care pastor here. Get the opportunity to preach today, which is really wonderful for me. I hope it is for you, too. But this is the last day of 2023. And for some of you, it's been a really tough year. A lot of disappointments, a lot of anxiety, a lot of things that have happened in your life. For some of you, you've had a life full of joy. There hasn't been a whole lot going on. Watch Sermon

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Be Holy Sermon Series: Hate Speech Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Ephesians 4:15 Transcript Man, I also want to say good morning to you. Isn't it a great morning so far? Isn't it a great morning so far? Let me hear you. Amen. It is. Hey, if you weren't aware today, today, Peace Church became a multi-site church. We launched our first campus over in Wayland today. They're having their first service this morning. Hold on before you clap because I got something even better for you. We were really praying that somewhere between like 150 and 200 people would be there on the first Sunday, just to kind of give some gravity and momentum for it to launch. We just got word that 280 people showed up. Yeah. Pretty awesome. We are thankful to join the other gospel preaching churches in Wayland and make sure that community is well served with the gospel. Hey, if we haven't met yet, my name is Ryan. I'm the lead pastor here at Peace Church. I haven't preached for a few weeks, so it's good to be back. It's good to see you, and I'm eager to get to it. So let's just get to it, shall we? Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said? And everyone said? Amen. Part of Christian history is that Christians have always been accused of being something we are not. This is in a sense part of our heritage. In fact, the early Christians, like those very first Christians, did you know that they were accused of cannibalism? And the reason was because we celebrate this thing called communion. And for us, for Christians, it's a reenactment of the gospel where we take bread and we break it, and we take a drink and we pour it out, and we say, this is symbolic of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross. That is, his body was broken and his blood was poured out. And so what we do is we say, this is, Jesus told us to do this in remembrance of him. That we say, this is his body, this is his blood. And so what we do is we eat the bread and we drink, and we say, this is like receiving what Jesus has done for us. This is like receiving Jesus life into us but the watching world looked at this and they heard us say that we are going to be eating the body and blood of Jesus and they said whoa you guys are practicing cannibalism over there. Did you also know that Christians were accused of incest? Now, Christians and Christianity is couched in family language. God is our Father. Fellow Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ. And the Christian call is for Christians to only get married to other Christians. And so, we talk about brothers and sisters in Christ getting married. But the watching world looked at this and they said, brothers and sisters get married in your church? You guys are practicing incest. Did you also know that Christians were accused of atheism? Atheism. We have one of the most robust theologies. We believe that God came to earth, born that baby boy on Christmas, and yet we were accused of atheism. And the reason is because Christianity was birthed in the Roman world. And the Romans, they did worship, but they worshipped through idols, through statues and figurines. And that's all they knew of worship was when you worshipped your God, you worshipped your God through this idol or through this statue. But they looked at Christians and we don't do that. We worship the invisible God. And they said, you have no idol that you worship. You all must be atheists. And it's because the world judges us only on what they know. They do not look at the true intentions of our actions or our hearts. Christians, being accused of something we are not, unfortunately, is part of our history. And so here's what I'd say to you. You cannot get discouraged by this. It's been happening for 2,000 years. And today, the most recent inception of this is today Christians are being accused of having a message that is hate speech. Hate speech. Because we believe that the Bible is the Word of God and no other religious text is. That we believe Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. That all people on earth are only getting to heaven through what Jesus Christ has done. We believe that God made humans to be male and female, that every person born, whether born or unborn, is made in the image of God. We believe that marriage is meant for one man and for one woman for a lifelong commitment. The world looks at these statements and they say, this is bigotry and hate. And yet again, it's because the world only looks at us based on what they know. This will go down in history as just another instance of the world not knowing truly who we are, what we believe, the foundation or the goal of our message. That's why we're kicking off this fall with a sermon series called Hate Speech. When truth and love is no longer tolerated. Because when truth and love is no longer tolerated, all the world will hear from us is what they interpret as hate speech. And here's the reality, it does not matter how much love you couch the truth in. When the world has bought into lies, when the world hears the truth, they can only hear hate. And as we look at scriptures, it so much speaks to this. But for this series, we're going to zoom in on one chapter of the Bible. Would you please turn to Ephesians chapter 4. That's where we're going to look and spend our time for this entire sermon series. I think Ephesians chapter 4 says some timely and timely, timeless and timely things for us. But here's what I'm going to say to you. This entire sermon series we're going to walk through this entire chapter, but for today we're going to zoom in on one verse. We're going to look at one verse today as we kick off this series, and then for the rest of the message series, we're gonna zoom out and walk through the entire chapter. But this one verse that we're looking at today has a very infamous phrase. Ephesians chapter four talks about truth in love. Ephesians chapter four, verse 15 is where we're gonna look at today. That's on page 1243, if you wanna use the Bible as provided. Now as you're turning there, let's lay some context here. Now when the Apostle Paul wrote this, we call it a book, but it's really a letter. It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. That's why we call it Ephesians. It was written to the Ephesian believers in Ephesus. Now we know that this letter was written right around 60 AD. That's like 30 years after Jesus Christ died and rose again. Now, 30 years, I'll tell you, is not a long time. As odd as it, and hard as it may be for me to swallow, 30 years ago was about when I was in high school. It wasn't that long ago. We're not talking about a great amount of time between the death of Christ and when this letter was written. Paul wrote this letter from prison. Why was he in prison? He was in prison for doing the very thing that I'm doing right now, preaching the gospel. Now, at this time in history, Christianity was still making its way through cities and cultures, and so Paul writes to the Christians in Ephesus, and he writes to clarify some Christian doctrine, and he also talks about our ethic as Christians. And in the middle of chapter 4, in verse 15, he uses this phrase, truth in love. So let's look at this verse and where it comes from, and then we'll dig into it. So with that, would you hear God's word? Ephesians 4:15 "Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ." This is God's Word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father God, we come before you on this fall launch and as we kick off the fall, Lord, we are seeing a world increasingly becoming intolerant to the Christian moral and ethic and message. Father, I pray that you would help us to be people who live according to your standard and your example, not the world's. And so, Lord, we pray these things for your glory. We pray these things for our joy. And Lord, with the deepest sincerity of our hearts, we pray these things for the good of our neighbor. And it's in the power of the Spirit and in the name of Jesus that we pray these things and everyone said amen and amen. So church we're looking at one verse today But one verse with a very profound calling and so if I give you one main idea, here's what it would be: When truth and love is no longer tolerated, we must be holy When truth and love is no longer tolerated, we must be holy. And as we look at this one verse today, here's our outline. Our action is speaking truth. Our approach is loving others. Our aim is becoming holy. So again, Ephesians 4:15, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. 1. Our action is speaking truth So first, our action is speaking truth. Okay, let's just do a quick little Bible study here for a minute, okay? This phrase, speaking the truth, speaking the truth is actually one word in the original language. It's a word that meant to speak reality into a person's life so that they can have a knowledge of what God has deemed true fact or reality, as opposed to personal illusion. We can't really say it like this in English, it's too weird and clunky, but a really good translation might be truthing. We are truthing in love. Now, this is because it's not about your truth, it's not about my truth, it's not about their truth, this is about the truth. In fact, the only other time we see this word in Scripture, in the Bible, is when Paul uses it and he writes to the Galatians and he says to them, he says, have I become your enemy by speaking the truth? Because Paul knew what we all knew, that you cannot speak truth in today's world without creating enemies. That is part of the package. And so here's a question. What is truth? What are we talking about here? Pontius Pilate asked that question to Jesus right before Christ was crucified. What is truth? Well, I'm here to tell you, Jesus Christ is the truth. In fact, he said so much in John 14:6, Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life and with the resurrection of Jesus Christ proving that he was who he said he was, Jesus Christ is the truth and Jesus said that God's Word, Scriptures,The Bible, is God's Word and it's true, and while the Bible does not tell us everything that is true, what it does is it gives us a framework to develop a biblical worldview. That is true. And so God's truth, one of the things I want you to understand is God's truth is meant for our good. It's the way of love. Christians are to share God's truth because God's truth is outside preference, opinion, and culture. So here's the big question: How and when does truth become hate speech? How does it come to this? Well, let me clarify. And I'm just gonna say it right now. I'm hoping there's a Christian in the house who will say amen after this statement. Let me clarify here. Truth is not hate. Like we really gotta be on the same page about that before we move forward. Truth is not hate, but here's the reality. Truth can be given hatefully. Now stick with me here because we're all about to be challenged, about to step on all of our toes, including my own. If we give someone the truth, but they translate it as hate, I am telling you the first right and humble thing that we are to do is to check ourselves. To consider how our words might be translated as hate again. Truth is not hate, so if people are genuinely receiving our truth-telling as hate speech, then maybe it's because we're speaking out of anger or arrogance rather than love. Tell me if you resonate with this. With so much available online, what often happens is that I'll watch something online and I will ultimately agree with the person's base message, but I do not agree with how they're saying it. Anybody know what I'm talking about? One of the great challenges to Christians is that God does care how we speak. Listen, yup, facts don't care about your feelings. It's the truth. But Christians should. Because we are to love others. Proverbs 15:4 says, Proverbs 15:4 "A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit." We can crush a person's heart when our words of truth have the wrong motive. 1 Corinthians 13:1 says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, okay, like if I speak in a heavenly language, if I speak in the language of heaven but do not have love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1 "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Meaning if you speak and you don't have love in your heart towards the person you're speaking to, you're just noise. You're noise and you're not helping the cause. So consider carefully how you speak. The world is bitter and divided already. And here's what I'd say to you Christians in the house. Some of you need to be reminded of this. You cannot expect the love to be given to you that Jesus expects you to give to others. I don't see enough pens writing that down. You need to be reminded of this in today's world. You cannot expect the love to be given to you that Jesus expects you to give to the world. We, in a lot of ways, our love that we give is a one-way street. Listen, you must have love in your heart, especially when your truth is going to be confronting to someone. If you don't have love in your heart towards the person you're speaking to, sit down, be quiet, and let a Christian with the love of Christ do the talking. I'm saying this because I want the kingdom to flourish in this world. Consider carefully how you speak. Church, if your angry, bitter tone is just matching the world's angry, bitter tone, then you are just as weak as the world is. And speaking the truth is not for the weak-willed. It's not for the faint of heart. It's for those who have the love of Christ dominating their heart. Did you hear that? Or did you just hear the plane going by? Devil's trying to distract you right now. I'm telling you, devil's trying to distract you right now. Speaking the truth is not for the weak-willed or the faint of heart. It's for those who have the love of Christ dominating their heart. Some of us just need time in the gospel before we think we can say something of meaning to the world. Truth, even when couched in immense love, truth will continue to be seen as hate speech. How, how, and why does it come to this? I wanna give you three reasons it can come to this. Truth and love is labeled hate speech when: It confronts the culture's prevailing narrative When it challenges a person's preferred sin When it corrodes a ruler's powerful control. Let's look at each of these and how they might be played out. 1. Truth and love is labeled hate speech when it confronts the culture's prevailing narrative. For those of us who are Americans in the house, you have to recognize the type of society that you're living in. You have to have an outside perspective to understand the type of society that you are living within. We do not live in an Eastern or traditional society. We live in a progressive society. And so when it comes to human identity and human sexuality, our culture wants to increasingly progress beyond what was as it seeks to normalize what was once taboo in the name of progress. From homosexuality to transgenderism to open marriages to whatever is next. We are a society that wants to progress away from the old norms. And yet when God's eternal truth comes on the scene, it's going to confront so much of this. And the message of God's good plan for humanity will increasingly be seen as hate speech because while God's plan is good for us, it's not affirming of the culture's prevailing narrative. So let's just dial in, that's what we're doing today. We're dialing in, let's zoom in, let's just talk about one of the hottest issues in our day. People's preferred pronouns among the transgender community. Christians in the house. The loving thing to do is not to scream the pronoun that reflects a person's sex, but we are to, with love in our hearts, explain to them why we as Christians, we must speak truth. And so we cannot ascribe to them something that God has not. And we do not mean to be rude or to offend. And if you do, then sit down and be quiet. We do not mean to be rude or to offend. We mean to speak the truth in love. That's the general principle. Easy for me to say behind a pulpit. A lot different when you're in front of a live human being. So here's what I'd say to you. They can either respect the true intention of our heart or, as what has happened throughout the ages, they can misinterpret our message and call us something we're not and label us as speaking hate. But we know that we are called to speak the truth in love, even when it confronts the culture's prevailing narrative, which leads to the second thing. 2. Truth in love is labeled hate speech when it challenges a person's preferred sin. The fact that Christianity has a morality of right and wrong beyond popular opinion, this will be challenging to people's sin, especially when it's a celebrated sin. Recently, I saw this guy do this experiment, and I was really fascinated by this. He was talking about how you can go online and justify anything. So what he did was he said he went to Google, and Google, in case you didn't know, Google is the great prophet of our day. We go to Google and ask Google the questions for life and all the big things. So Google's our prophet. So he went to the great prophet Google and he asked this great prophet, is drinking coffee good for you? And guess what he came up with? A whole host of websites showing the benefits of drinking coffee. And all God's people said, Amen. And then, and then he Googled is drinking coffee bad for you. And guess what? He came up with a whole host of websites showing how drinking coffee is bad for you. And we rebuke it in Jesus name. In our world, you can find people, professionals, and websites to justify whatever you want. Not just justify it, but support it and even celebrate it. But at the end of the day, I am telling you, the Word of God is what will be proven true. When all of our bones have turned to dust, the Word of God will remain. It will outlast everything else. But people love their sin. And again, in our world, you can find people, professionals and websites to not just justify what you want, not just support what you want, but celebrate what you want. And people and culture get so entrenched in this. I mean, so entrenched in this. And so when you bring God's eternal truth and it confronts a person's sin that they love so much, of course, they're gonna viscerally defend it and they'll find no shortage of people, professionals and websites online to affirm their sin. And in our world, anything less than full affirmation and acceptance will be seen as hate, no matter, no matter how lovingly you try to put it. Which leads to the last part: 3. Truth and love is labeled hate speech when it corrodes a ruler's powerful control. Listen to me, truth undermines those who are deceptive and so much power is attained and retained through deception and fear in our world. But the truth is, if you are an honest ruler or an honest leader, then truth will actually empower you because truth will give you the knowledge to do what's right. If you're a humble ruler or a humble leader then truth will cause you to apologize when you were mistaken. But when was the last time you saw a politician or a pastor apologize for when the truth exposed how they were wrong? The moral of the story is this: If the accusation of hate speech is leveled against you, it's either because you are speaking hatefully, at which point you need to check yourself and repent and conform to the leading of the Spirit. Or it's what we just talked about, that you're confronting the culture's narrative, you're challenging a person's sin, or you're corroding someone's authority. One of the great actions for those who follow Christ is that we are to speak the truth, but we are to speak the truth in love, which leads to our next thing. 2. Our approach is loving others. We are to speak the truth in love. Love is the great ethic for Christians. It's our motive. It's the way that we approach others. Love. God so loved us, we are to love others. Jesus said that the world watching us will know that we are his disciples by the, say it with me, love that we have for one another. The entire Old Testament law is fulfilled by our love for God and our love for others. The scriptures tell us that of faith, hope, and love, the greatest of those three is love. The Bible says that God is love, and yet we live in a world where it seems like culture owns the corner market on love, not the church. Why? Why? It's because love has been redefined by our world, away from what it truthfully is. What the world says is love is not what the Bible says is love. The world has redefined love. The world says love is love. And listen to me, when you give a circular definition to something, then you have no definition, which means you can use it however you want, which means there's no way to oppose it. And if it can mean whatever you want, then those who oppose it are whatever you want them to be, whether ignorant or archaic or hateful. The statement, love is love, is one of the great cultural narratives of our time. And so when we bring a greater reality to this world, when we say that God is love, that threatens the cultural narrative. And our culture's response is only to say, you're speaking hate speech. But again, our motive, church hear me on this, our motive for telling truth to a world opposed to it must be love. Because without love, the Bible says our words are just awful noise. And that goes for your social media posts too. We are to speak truth in love and to speak truth in love means we use our words to confront sin and evil, but we do this by pointing to Jesus because that's love. We point to the resurrection, we point to the forgiveness of sins, we point to the cross. You see, Christians, we are meant to be the light of the world. We are meant to bring the light in a dark world and we do this through our words, through our lives, through our demeanor. This is how we bring light to the world and we're meant to shine the light towards Jesus. So let's, let me do a demonstration here. We live in a dark world, so how are we to shine the light and how can we shine the light hatefully? And so I'm going to need a volunteer. Oh good, Bisham, you wanna come up? Thank you, brother. Can you guys welcome my friend Bisham up to the stage? So, Bisham is going to represent the lost and the dark world. And I'm going to represent a Christian bringing the light of Jesus. But to really just hammer the point home, let's just set the mood. Listen, the world, the world is a dark place. And because it's dark, people think they can do whatever they want whenever they want. But Christians, we bring the light. We're meant to bring the light through our words and through our actions, through our lives, through bearing the fruit of the Spirit. But what do we do with this light? This is what we're supposed to do. We come along, people, and we share the light. And what do we do? What do we ultimately do? We point to Jesus. We point to what He's done for us in His life, death, and resurrection. We bring the life of Christ through our lives, through our words. We bring the truth to a world in darkness. But here's what so often happens. Christians bring this truth, the light. We bring the truth and this is what we end up doing with people. Exactly! Well done. You're not done yet, get up here. Come here, come here. Exactly. People recoil from it. They reject it. They want to get away from it. When we take the light and we shine it in people's face and we call them sinners and we talk about how terrible they are and all the evil things are doing in the world. Exactly. People recoil from it. We're meant to point people to Jesus and then we let the Spirit do the rest in their hearts. All right now you can go. Everyone thanks. Give a round of applause for Bisham. We can shine the light in such a forceful way into people's lives that they recoil from it. We do this with our attitudes. We do this with our social media posts. Because I think here's what happens a lot of times in our world, because everyone has a platform now. We use social media to try to make a point. We're so sick of what's going on in this world, we just want to make a point so that people understand what they're doing. And all you're doing is pointing the light in their eyes and they're going to recoil from it. Don't be trying to make a point. Be trying to point people to Jesus and let the Spirit do the rest. And I'm not saying the light doesn't come upon people's sin and they need to reconcile with that. That is definitely going to happen. But that's not our intent. Our intent is to expose God's good plan for this world as we point people to Jesus. But the truth in love, the world will still hate it. But listen to me, this should be of no surprise to any Christian, why? Because Jesus Christ was the perfect example of truth in love and his culture crucified him. Christians, this is what happens when you bring truth to a world that is opposed to it. So what are we to do? When truth and love is still seen as hate speech, is the answer, is the answer to try to be more loving so that people are never offended? Is the answer to shy away from truth so that they only receive love as defined by them rather than by God? Listen, this past summer was so incredibly and it was unique for me. I got so many, so many contacts from people who were just trying to live out this tension and they didn't know how. Like whether it was Bud Light or Target or Disney, Christians see these companies promoting things that are so opposed to the Christian faith that people, that they can't affirm it. And so, so what, so what do they, so what I've heard, and time again, like so many times, if I had a dollar for every time someone reached out to me about this, I'd be able to retire right now. People said, what am I to do? Here was the essence of their question I heard time and time again. Christians were asking me, how do I take a stand and still be seen as loving? I'll say it again, they asked, how do I take a stand and still be seen as loving. And my response to this is like so many other responses. My response is this, finish the verse. "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." To become more like Christ is our goal. It's to become more holy, that's what it means, to become more like Jesus. Yes, we are commanded by God to love God and to love our neighbor, but becoming more like Jesus is our aim. But too many of us think that our goal is to be seen as loving by the world. That's not the goal. Our aim is to become holy. 3. Our aim is becoming holy. And for those of you who have a cultural or a common notion of what holiness is, let me just clarify. Becoming holy is about being separate from the world. It's about being distinct. Holiness is about being set apart. That's what holiness actually means. To be known as holy is to be known as something other. We are not meant to fit in. In fact, if you fit in with the culture, that's like the opposite of holiness. When we are called to be holy, it's like God is separating us out and making us something different. And when the truth and love is no longer tolerated, we must be holy. So I'm going to tell you plainly, dear brothers and sisters, I'm going to tell you plainly, you cannot worry about whether or not the world will see you as loving. You just have to be loving as Christ was as we speak the truth in love. The first Christians were called atheists because all the world knew of worship was idol worship. But let me ask you, did Christians in response to that, did they build idols so that they could fit in with the culture? Did they? No, they didn't. See, the Romans worshiped, but they didn't know God. And yet we were the ones called atheists. And today, Christians are called hateful because the world doesn't truly know love. Church, we will be rejected by the world because we do not belong to the culture. We are to speak the truth and our response to this isn't to change our message. Church, hear me on this. The question is not, will others see me as being loving? The question is, as I speak the truth in love, will the world see me as being something distinct and unique? Someone who doesn't fit in because I am pointing to Jesus and I belong to Him. Because that's what it means to be holy. Listen to me, not that we're better, but that we're different. 1 Peter 4, 14 says, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed. Because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Like the early Christians, we are going to be called things that are not true. And what's our response to this? To speak the truth in love as people who are growing in holiness, because we're ever becoming more like Jesus. Or as our verse says, we are to grow up in every way into Him, into Christ. People, I really hope that you would join us for the rest of the series as we zoom out and look at this calling in all of its fullness. And when those times of opposition come, how do we respond to those conversations? But remember, when truth and love is no longer tolerated, we must be holy. Amen. Church, we're going to sing about the holiness of God and His call on our lives to be holy. And so here's what I want you to do. Would you please stand? And I make no assumptions that every person in this house is a Christian, but for those of you who are, this is your chance right now to demonstrate to the watching world that you do not belong to them and you do that through worship. And so I'm gonna specifically challenge some men in the house who love the Lord. Would you lead the way for us in your voice and with raising your hands just to demonstrate both audibly and visually? You do not belong to this world, but you belong to our Holy God. Let's pray. Father, I come before you with this church, with these brothers and sisters, people who you have called holy, people that you have redeemed from the pit of hell, because of what your Son has done. And I pray, Father, in Jesus' name, Father, that we lift up praises because you are glorious, because you are holy, and you call us to be holy. So, Father, I pray because of what Jesus has done on the cross for us, because of his resurrection, that we would respond. And I'm just going to challenge the faithful in the house, that they would respond, not just in worship, but they would raise their hands, declaring for all to see that we belong to you.Father, we thank you for the cross. We thank you for the gospel. Father, we thank you for what you're doing in the church and in this world. We love you and we thank you. We love you and we thank you. We pray these things and we worship together in Jesus name and everyone said Amen. Church, let's worship together.

The Beauty of Friendship Sermon Series: Philemon Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Philemon 21-25 Transcript These words today is the day that the Lord has made so let us rejoice and be glad in it and everyone said amen. And everyone said like they mean it. Yeah, see I knew I had you you had it in you all right, so today we're closing up a sermon series looking at friendship and we're on week three the final week and I Know what many of you are thinking? There's no way we can get through a sermon series on friendship without talking about what is possibly the greatest friendship ever depicted in literature. And that's the friendship, you know what I'm talking about, between Frodo and Samwise Gamgee. Right? Where's my fellow geeks at, right? Okay. For those of you who don't know, let me learn you something here. The greatest, I think, the greatest friendship in fiction literature is depicted between Frodo and Sam. I just think it's absolutely amusing, amazing. It comes from the story of the Lord of the Rings. That's a three-part book that was released some time ago, widely popular movies. How long ago were those movies? Don't tell me those like 20 years ago. Are you serious? I'm thinking about my life right now. 20 years ago? Wow. Okay. So, The Lord of the Rings, three-part movie, three-part book. It centers on this fellowship. Now, you guys probably know this, but let me just, for those who don't, what we have here is there's this friendship between the Frodo, between the hobbits, Frodo Baggins of the Shire and his friend Samwise Gamgee. Now they, they were part of a quest, a fellowship of nine that was tasked with traversing the known land of middle earth up and down through thick and thin to go to the wicked and terrible and evil land of Mordor where they were to destroy the one evil ring that they were to hide and carry throughout their journey. Now, near the end of the first book, this fellowship of nine begins to break apart. And Frodo, the littlest among them, realizes that he must go alone for the rest of the journey by himself on his adventure to destroy this evil ring. And so he sneaks away from the group, knowing that he's meant to go on his own. And his friend, Sam, realizes that he's sneaking off to go by himself. And so his friend, Sam, goes to chase him down. And just as Frodo is crossing the river to start the journey, the last part of the journey on his own, Sam calls out to him and wants to be with him. And calls out to him, and the movie's doing a phenomenal job of that scene, if you know what I'm talking about. But I wanna read to you from the book how the scene played out. So Sam goes after his friend Frodo who's trying to leave on his own. And Frodo said to Sam, but I am going to Mordor. I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo, said Sam. Of course you are, and I'm coming with you. Now Sam, said Frodo, don't hinder me. I must go at once. It's the only way. Of course it is, answered Sam, but not alone. I'm coming too. Of course if you know the story, their friendship is just played out in just beautiful and heroic ways. And here's the reality. We all need a friend like Sam. And we all need to be a friend like Sam. We need someone in our life who's going to stand by us no matter where life takes us. And that's kind of what we've been looking at in this sermon series as we've been walking through the book of Philemon. It's a short book we find in the New Testament. Today we're closing up a series looking at that letter, but specifically through the lens of the friendship that the Apostle Paul had who wrote the letter to his friend Philemon. Now if you've been with us through the series, you're probably sick of hearing about the context, but if you haven't been with us, you need to know what's going on behind the story. And so let me just take a step back and share the context. So important for everything that we look at in Scripture. And so if you haven't yet, turn in your Bibles to Philemon. There's only one chapter. We'll look at verses 21 to 25, but here's the context. Paul, who wrote the letter, had led this man Philemon to faith in Jesus. And this letter reveals a lot. But the letter really keys in on this other man named Onesimus. Now Onesimus was a bond servant of Philemon. Now a bond servant was like a slave. They were a slave, but we just don't like to use that term because when Americans hear that term, we think of something very different than what happened in the ancient world. We think of what happened in the 17 and 1800s here in America when we had a chattel race-based slavery that was absolutely demonic and horrendous and evil. Now the ancient world also had slavery. It wasn't exactly or always race-based. Now in the ancient world, when this letter was written, bond servants, some of them at times could even hold high-level jobs, and some of them could even work their way out of slavery. So it was a different setup. I'm not defending either system. Both are horrible, and the Christian faith ultimately corrodes each of them. But here's the story. So Onesimus was a bond servant, was a slave of Philemon, but Onesimus runs away from his master, and he runs to Paul. Paul's in prison at this point About 1,300 miles away in Rome so Onesimus runs away a runaway slave back in that day could have been killed on sight He runs away on this journey to go to see Paul Doesn't exactly say but it's easy to surmise that he probably went to see Paul hoping that Paul would grant him his freedom But while under Paul's care while Paul's in prison by the way, Paul leads Onesimus to a faith in Jesus. Now what's fascinating about this story, and when you read the book of Philemon, is that Paul is clear that he could command Philemon to release Onesimus and to grant him his freedom, but he doesn't. In fact, what he does is Paul, while he's in prison, he leads on this mess to faith in Jesus and then actually sends him back to Philemon with this letter that he's written. Now in this letter, Paul says to Philemon, I could command you to do what's right. You know what the right thing is to do, but I'm not going to command you to do this. I'm not going to make you, I'm not going to make myself a master to you and tell you what to do. I'm just going to remind you of the gospel and let that call you to do the right thing. You've got a faith in the gospel, so you need to follow and do what God has called you to do. He places the burden back on Philemon. It's an incredible story if you actually sit in what's happening here. Paul says, I could command you to go against the grain of the culture and you could just simply release Onesimus. I can command you to do that. But Paul says, I'd rather you do that out of your own faith and out of your own love for God. Paul says, I'd rather you do the right thing because you know it's the right thing, not because I told you to do it. Now you have to understand, you have to understand friends, Philemon was well within what was culturally appropriate if he wanted to keep on this mess as his slave file a man could have appealed to the world system he could have appealed to the culture at large for justification for keeping on this mess as his slave file a man could have tried to find some way to bridge his faith with what was culturally accepted and try to find some sort of middle ground is that what happens? Well, we're going to find out. But Paul, either way, is calling Philemon to a challenge. A challenge to his faith and a challenge to the culture they live in. But what we've been looking at is that Paul was able to bring this challenge to his friend Philemon because of the common faith they shared in Jesus Christ. Because they both believed in the gospel, because they were Christian brothers. And so, we're going to see how this letter actually closes up today. And so with that, would you hear God's word? Philemon verses 21 to 25. Would you hear God's word? Philemon 21-25 21 Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 22 At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping that through your prayers I will be graciously given to you. 23 Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, 24 and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. 25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen, this is God's word, let's pray, and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father in heaven above, Lord by the power and the presence of your Holy Spirit, we would ask that you would be with us today as we close up this series looking at your Holy Word. Please Lord, would you help us to see and to be reminded of the power of good and godly friendships? And not only this, would you help us to find those friends? Would you help us to be that friend? And Father, we do pray these things for your glory and for our good and it's in Jesus name to pray these things and everyone said, amen. Amen. So church, if I give you one thing for you to mull over on this day, as we look at this passage, it would be this. The beauty of friendship is found in how much it embodies the gospel. The beauty of friendship is found in how much it embodies the gospel. Now I'm sure you probably know, and maybe we'll see here today, that there may be some friendships that unwittingly, unknowingly have similarities to the gospel. They're just not maybe rooted in the gospel. But I'm hoping that as we see this play out in our passage, that you will find friendships rooted in the gospel. Because when you do, then you'll be able to see some of the beautiful things about friendship that our passage points out. And here's what we're going to be looking at today. The beauty of friendship is that it makes the world a better place, like the gospel. Second thing we'll look at is the beauty of friendship is that it reminds us that we're not alone, like the gospel. And third thing we'll look at here this morning is that the beauty of friendship is that it brings us someone who cares for us spiritually, say it with me now, like the gospel. The beauty of friendship is... that it makes the world a better place, like the gospel that it reminds us that we're not alone, like the gospel that it brings us someone who cares for us spiritually, like the gospel 1. The beauty of friendship is that it makes the world a better place. So let's jump right into it. The beauty of friendship is that it makes the world a better place. Please keep your Bibles open in front of you. Let's look at verse 21 together. It says, Paul writes and says this, he says, Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. Okay, so the goodness of good friendships, I'm telling you, will spill out into the world. The goodness of good friendships will spill into the world and they will make the world a better place. This is the difference between friendships and cliques. Let's talk about this for a second here. See what cliques do, and it's such human nature to get into cliques, but cliques, what they do is they exclude other people. And then they make you feel bad about not being part of that little group. But a friendship, a friendship is something that is not only to be admired, but friendships make the world a better place. I'm sure you probably guessed that as a youth pastor, I saw this time and time again. You have youth group and youth group gathers. Some kids in They circle up and they form a click. And no one can get in to that little circle because it's inward focused. But every now and again, you get a group of friends and Jesus was at the center. And when Jesus is at the center, he makes you turn around and look outward. He looks, makes you look out to those who are lost and by themselves and to bring them in. And every now and again, that youth group, you'd have a group of friends who weren't inward focused, but they would have eyes to see who was excluded, who was lonely, and they would embrace them and bring them in. That's what a good friendship does. It looks to bring others in. In our passage, in our Bible passage, Paul is saying, he's essentially saying to his friend Philemon, he says, I know that you will free Onesimus. I know that you will do the right thing, but not only this, but I know the blessing that you'll give to Onesimus will expand beyond him. Did you see this in our passage? Paul says to Philemon, look at this key phrase here, you will do even more. What Paul is laying on thick for Philemon to do, Paul even goes on, he doubles down and says, you will do even more than this. Paul knew this about his friend. Church, I could point out to some great friendships that impacted the world. I could point to J.R.R. Tolkien and his friendship with C.S. Lewis or Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. We could talk about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. We could talk about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. We could talk about the Winter Soldier and Captain America. Or we could continue to talk about Frodo and Samwise. And while there have been some great friendships that had massive impact on the world, we don't need to look elsewhere. What we see is a friendship before us that has changed the world throughout the generations. What we have in this passage is a friendship that made the world a better place because God in his infinite wisdom Recorded and kept alive this this letter between Paul and Philemon which has gone on to echo through the ages showing each new generation the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of friendship. The question I think we need to ask ourselves is kind of the obvious question here is - Did Philemon actually release on this. Well, the truth is we don't actually know. The Bible doesn't say there's not really clues elsewhere in Scripture to point to this. Although I'll just say this for my my own thoughts. I will say that the fact that this story is in the Bible is proof enough for me that not only did Philemon release on this, but Philemon did go on to do other amazing things for the kingdom. And actually, if you follow some strains of Christian history and Christian tradition, one Christian tradition says that Onesimus was in fact freed, and not only that, but he went on to be a leader in the early church. See, Paul and Philemon's friendship goes to show us the power of the gospel and how it creates godly friends who go on to do more good in this world. Gospel good. And if you have a good friend, you know that they will make you a better person. Otherwise, are they really a good friend? As opposed to maybe just a good acquaintance? Yes, I have friends and connections who are not Christians, but my closest friends are the ones who are gonna draw me closer to Christ. Not to the exclusion of other people, but I'd say rather to their benefit. Because the more Christ-like I am, when I surround myself with Christ-like men who make me more Christ-like, that's a better friend I will be, that's a greater impact I'll have on the world. And just as an aside, I have a friend who is not a follower of Jesus, and I'm sharing the gospel with him, and I'll just ask you to pray for H, if you don't mind, in my conversations with him. But the beauty of godly friendships is that they make the world a better place, just like the gospel does. The gospel makes the world a better place when Christians get out there, open our mouths, and actually share it. The gospel is that Jesus Christ laid down his life for his friends, so that we would have an example to follow. Do you remember, like, for those of you who went to Sunday school growing up, do you remember this, that story, very famous story in the Bible where Jesus actually gets down on his hands and knees and washes the feet of his disciples, of his friends? You guys know that story? Remember what he said afterwards? Remember what he said? I love this. John 13, verse 15, Jesus says this, after he gets on his hands and knees, the God of all creation bends down, gets his hands dirty, washes the feet, the stinking dirty feet of his friends, he washes their feet, and then he gets up and he says this, he says, I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you. John 13:15 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. This begs the question, Christians in the house, have you ever washed another person's feet? Not symbolically, I mean actually. For those of you who follow Jesus, have you ever washed another person's feet? I will tell you now, I have, and it is an incredibly humbling experience. The more humble you are, the more Christ-like you are. If Jesus did it, we should do it. If you've offended someone, wash their feet. If you love someone, wash their feet. I don't think Jesus was kidding when he actually did that and then got up and told us to do the same. Yes, symbolically do that, of course, but I think we actually have to do it. It's a beautiful thing that our Lord has done. I think we should do the same. This reminds us that the beauty of friendship is that it makes the world a better place when people are humbled and love one another. It makes the world a better place just like the gospel. Because the Bible here, let me tell you, the scriptures, the gospel does not just tell us to do the right thing. It does not just tell us to do the good thing. The gospel tells us to do the godly thing. And that is different than the world's approach. We're called to do the godly thing. The second thing is that the beauty of friendship is that it reminds us that we're not alone. 2. The beauty of friendship is that it reminds us that we're not alone. Like the gospel, Paul goes on to write, please look in your Bibles at verse 22, 22 to 24. Paul writes this. He says at the same time, prepare a guest room for me for. I'm hoping that through your prayers, I will be graciously given to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends his greetings. And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers." You see here, I love this, Paul talks about his friend group. Paul talks about his posse. Paul's talking about his squad here. And what's he called them fellow workers. They are co-labors for the kingdom. They do mission together. We've talked about this here. You want to, you want to have a friendship forged in the gospel, serve together, go on mission together, lead a high school Bible study together. You will see amazing thing happen when you are fellow workers for God's kingdom. Ministry doing ministry together has a way to bind us together that playing sports and video games could never do. This is why I think making and having friends at church is such a value and such a benefit to our lives. Not only do we get to sit on the same preaching and process it together, we get to worship together and we get to serve together. Because having friends in the church community gives us a constant, a weekly reminder that we're not alone. I get it. We're busy people. We're doing everything all the time. How often do you get together with friends? Well, when you're part of a church community and you have friends at church, you're getting together at least once a week. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I happen to think there's great value in seeing people at church and this notion that we quote only see people at church. For me, that does not diminish friendship. Rather, it raises it. It makes a value for going to church and have it part of our life. I've said it before, we know, we know the church is not this building. This building is where the church meets. We fully recognize that. And also God has given us this place here at 6950 Cherry Valley and when you walk into this place and see these people, yes, we want it to feel like home. We want when you walk in, no matter what your life was like the week before, we want this to feel like you can kind of unload. This is a place to be encouraged and loved, challenged, yes, but be reminded of the power of the gospel to overcome. We want you to have family here. We want you to have friends here. Friends in our church community gives us a constant, at least a weekly reminder that we're not alone, and we're not alone just like the gospel reminds us and the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for our sins and in the greatest miracle there ever was Jesus Christ rose again from the grave and for 40 days after that he continued to minister with his friends and he continued to fellowship with them and one of the things he was doing during those 40 days is he was preparing them for a continued mission after he himself returned to heaven and right before Jesus returned to heaven, he said this to his friends. He said, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. What did Jesus just do here? He just told them to do ministry together. He just told them to go on mission together. Why? Well, because we're going to see people come to Jesus. But I think also in some some way underneath, he's also saying, because that's how you'll stay together. That's how you'll continue to be united when you're united around the gospel. And then Jesus says this last thing recorded in the epic gospel of Matthew. It brings me to tears every time I read this. And then Jesus says this, he says, and behold, I am with you always to the very end of the age because our Savior doesn't leave us. He stays with us. We are never alone. This is the gospel that Jesus saves us and he never leaves us. Just like God promised way back in the Old Testament. Go back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 31 says, it's the Lord who goes before you and He will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not be, do not, do not fear or be dismayed. The beauty of friendship is that it reminds us that we're never alone, just like the gospel does. 3. The beauty of friendship is that it brings us someone who cares for us spiritually like like the gospel. And finally, the beauty of friendship is that it brings us someone who cares for us spiritually like like the gospel. And then we're going to look at the very last verse, as we've been journeying through this passage together, this whole book together, the last verse, this is how Paul closes it, he says this, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits. We've been using this as our benediction, we will again today, but let's look at it real quick. Grace, Lord Jesus Christ, your spirit. Firstly, grace. If you are a follower of Jesus, you better have the definition of grace on the tip of your tongue because it is the essence of your salvation. What is grace? Grace is how we are saved. Grace is getting what we do not deserve. You want to know what you deserve? You deserve condemnation. You deserve separation. You deserve eternal damnation for the sins we've committed against an internally holy God. But for those who follow Jesus, that's not because we deserve it, we definitely don't. It's because God is infinitely good and in his mercy and in his justice, he poured out his wrath upon his son, not upon us, who took our place on the cross so that our penalty could be paid for. And then, when we place our faith in Jesus, God, even though he does not have to, even though we do not deserve it, God gives us grace and welcomes us to His table and into our heavenly home to be with Him. Grace is how we are saved. We are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus. When you place your faith in Jesus, that doesn't earn you salvation. It's through grace that we are given it, and it's through the Lord Jesus who stands in the gap who takes our punishment the punishment we deserve to give us the salvation that we don't deserve and that's called grace grace is at the core of the gospel and it's through Jesus so Paul is saying to Philemon and by extension the Holy Spirit saying to us through this word this last line the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, be with your spirits. Church, don't read past your Bible. Read every word. Here's what Paul's saying here. Your spirit is your core being, it's your essence. Meaning the grace that we find only through Jesus needs to totally encapsulate us. It totally envelops our entire spirit, inside and out. Everything about us needs to be about grace. Grace be with your spirit. Not the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you when you're feeling down. Not the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you when you decide to show up for church. Not the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you when you're feeling good about yourself, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with your spirits. It is who you are all the time. You are ever being reminded that every breath you take is an act of grace of God who does not have to give it to you. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with your spirit. It is your identity. It's who you are. It's everything about you all the time. Today we're going to celebrate communion. Communion is a physical reenactment of a spiritual truth that is found only in the gospel, that as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are receiving into our physical bodies a representation of what has happened truly spiritually. And it's this, the grace of the Lord Jesus is with our spirit. When you enact this out physically, understand the amazing spiritual thing that is happening as you sit at the table of the King. And our hope and our encouragement in all this is found in the friend we have in Jesus. So what about our friends? Well, as you know, in each message in this series, we've been ending with a friendship challenge. And so let me give you the last one for this series, and it's this. In an unfriendly world, look to the gospel to find and be a true friend. My prayer is that you have friendships forged by a common faith in the gospel, in Christ Jesus, as we embrace his message together. Friends that encourage your spirit with the grace that's only found through Christ. And I really hope that this church is a place where you can find those friendships. And so I wanna leave you with four things to challenge you on finding friends at church. So making friends in the gospel. 1. Consider Membership Number one, here's what I'd say. Consider membership. If you've been attending peace for a while, make a commitment. In fact, we have membership classes starting next week. You can go to our website, you can go to our welcome booth, Talk with Chelsea, and get some information. Because here's the thing, if you become a member, we want you to know what you're signing up for. So come to our membership class. You can find out more about our philosophy and theology of a church, ask some good questions. Just because you take a membership doesn't mean you have to become a member. But let me just step back and say this, before some of you consider membership, maybe what some of you need to consider is regular, consistent church attendance. Mmm, I heard that. Did you know in our day and age that when people fill out surveys, do you know what qualifies as regular church attendance nowadays? Once a month. You go to church once a month, you're considered a regular church attender. That's pathetic. That's pathetic. Don't sink to that level. Do not sink to that level. I guarantee your faith and the world needs much more than that. So consider regular church attendance or if you're already there I'd say consider membership. Again, we have classes starting next week. I'd love for you to join it. Just find out more about who we are, some of our theological distinctives. 2. Start Serving Second thing, start serving. If you are a Christian, God has given you a gift to use to build his church, to build his kingdom. If you're not using it, try to justify that one before God. If you are a Christian, you are meant to be serving. Because if you are a Christian, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit's given you a gift to be used in service of the common good for one another. So again, let's talk about where you could possibly start serving. Because again, serving together is a great way to forge friendships, especially in our larger setting. 3. Join a Community Group Next, join a community group. These are smaller groups that meet off campus throughout the week, throughout the month. Great way to deepen friendships and connections. Again, you can talk with Chelsea at the Welcome Booth or we've made things really easy for you. You can go to our website, go to peacechurch.cc/connect . Fill out some just real basic information, then we will follow up with you and help you figure out how to take the next step. But here's the thing, I've said this before, we're not a cult, we're not going to make you do anything, but we're going to invite you to do something awesome. And so let me leave you with one more. I said four, there's three up there, let me give you one more. Making friends in the gospel, when you come to church, let's end with this, simply start talking to people. 4. Start talking to people at church A lot of you are real critical of the next generation because they only want to text. Do you talk to people? So guess what we're gonna do now? Y'all got name tags? Who's the rebels in here that put the name tag on the left side of their chest? I just, okay. Oh, a few of you. Okay. So here's what we're gonna do. Hold on, hold on. I ain't giving you permission yet. We are gonna end our time in communion. We're gonna end our time in communion, but here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna talk to those around you. I'm gonna give you a question to start with. Everyone needs to ask this question so no one's embarrassed. How long you been coming to peace? And here's the thing, you don't get to sit down for that. Let's all stand up. Let's all stand up. Take a few moments and talk with people around you.

PODCAST That's a Good Question Baptism, Homosexuality, and More: Examining Secondary Issues December 12, 2023 Jon Delger & Cheyenne Werner Listen to this Episode Jon Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon, I serve as a pastor at Peace Church and I also get to serve as the weekly host of this show. You can always submit questions to peacechurch.cc/questions . We'd love to hear those questions and we're excited to answer some today. Today I am here with Cheyenne. Cheyenne Hello. Jon Cheyenne is our Women's Ministry Director here at Peace Church, does an awesome job of leading and teaching that ministry and excited to get to talk about some fun topics today. Cheyenne I'm excited to be here. Jon Producer Mitchell, do you have a question for us today? Mitchell Yep, here we go. Mitchell How hard should Christians fight for secondary and non-salvation issues when it comes to someone's salvation or even church unity, such as a stance on homosexuality, ordaining women or evolution or things like that? How hard should Christians fight for secondary and non-salvation issues when it comes to someone's salvation or even church unity, such as a stance on homosexuality, ordaining women or evolution or things like that? Jon Yeah, great question. So I think we have to take that in a couple of pieces. So they bring up that there is this idea of secondary issues. So there's some secondary issues in the church and in theology. So let's maybe start by talking about what the secondary issues are versus first issues. Cheyenne Sure. So first issues, I think they, in the question, already defined it has to do with salvation. Yeah. Beyond that, I mean, it's the essential, right, doctrines that make you a believer or not a believer. So, and then secondary would be still matters of urgent importance that don't necessarily make you saved or unsaved, but that definitely have to do with your sanctification, with our sanctification and walking in holiness and obedience to the Lord has to do with our Bible literacy and how we're reading and interpreting scripture, which can have an effect on all different areas of church life and of our own faith, right? I guess that's where I first go as far as dividing first and second issues. Is that how you would also break it down? Jon Totally. So first issues are things that, that's what makes you a Christian or not a Christian, right? So belief in the gospel, was Jesus the son of God? Did he die on a cross for our sins? Do you have to have faith to be saved? Do you believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as God? Some of those things are things that have just always defined somebody as a Christian or not a Christian. That's kind of first issues thing. And so I think the person asking the question, if I remember right, some of the topics they said I think are rightly categorized as not first issues. You can be a saved, born-again Christian and fall on what you and I might call the wrong side of those issues. But we're not saying you're not a Christian, but we would say that you're maybe not following parts of scripture quite properly. Now, I want to also jump in and say, unfortunately, I've had a lot of people come to me over the years and say, well, Pastor Jon, that's a secondary issue. You know, we shouldn't talk about that. That's not a big deal. And what I want to say is I would call that like biblical minimalism. And that's not what we want. So It's true that somebody can believe the wrong thing about some of these topics and still be a saved Christian We can call them brothers and sisters in Christ and yet our goal isn't to just follow like the minimum of what we can believe From scripture. We want to follow the maximum of what the Bible tells us Mitchell Well the way that I've always heard it was that there's heresy and there's error right when you're on the wrong side of these things, both of them are bad, but one of them is you're no longer a Christian, right? So error is still not good, right? Going along your same idea, we're not going for the minimum, but yeah. Cheyenne So part of what you're saying too is that there's more than two categories even, right? That there's maybe even more of a spectrum somewhat, but that the secondary issues are still that side of the spectrum is worth contending for. And contending for not just so that we're right, but really it's also contending for so that we're not putting ourselves in danger because it has to do with life and godliness. Jon What the Bible says is not just true, but it's good for us. Cheyenne Yes, right, right. And so that is, I think, why it is important to contend for these secondary issues like what were mentioned. So I don't remember, did you specifically name what those issues were that you had in this question? That they rounded up? Jon The listener question did. Mitchell Yep, so they mentioned homosexuality, women in ministry, or ordaining women, evolution, things like that is what they said. Jon So, shall we jump into one of those? Sure. So Cheyenne, I feel like this is a great conversation for us to have. Let's talk about women who serve, lead, or teach in ministry. I don't know if you want me to start or if you want to jump into that, but here at Peace Church, we look at the Bible and we look at passages like Ephesians 4 and 1st Timothy 2 and the beginning of Genesis and other places all throughout scripture, we see this as a not just a couple of texts, but Genesis through Revelation, the picture that scripture paints of men and women that we are equal in value. We're both made in God's image and yet we are distinct in role. God has made men and women different and he's given us different roles in the home and in the church. And so people have different perspectives on that, but that's where we come down. And so that plays out in a few different ways in how we do church also. We believe that women absolutely have the gifts of leading and teaching. And yet we think scripture does speak to where those gifts should play out, how that plays out in relationship to adult men in specific. And so, for example, for us at Peace Church, we would say that the role of pastor and elder is something that God has called men uniquely to. Preaching on a Sunday morning. We'd say that's something that God's called men uniquely to and yet Cheyenne you have an amazing gift and ministry of doing leadership and teaching in our church. Do you want to just talk about your thoughts on that? Cheyenne Yeah. So I mean, I think that men and women are both gifted with the spiritual gifts, which includes teaching and includes leadership and administration. But like you said, there's a created order both for marriages and for the church leadership. And so it's modeled, you know, it's modeled both ways for each other of what that order is. So it doesn't mean that as a woman, I can't use my gifts for teaching or for leadership or that other women in the church shouldn't use theirs. It just means we want to find the right ways to be using those. And so we use those in women's ministry, women teaching women, Titus talks about that, that the older women, and doesn't just mean by age older, but the more mature women who are spiritually more knowledgeable, maybe should be using their gifts to teach and mentor the younger ones. I think a lot of times in churches, it becomes a lot of focus on the negative of what women can't do and how restrictive that is. But we're not making like, we're not making this up just to create a, I don't know, a macho boys club here, right? It's about believing what the Bible says. And like you said, like we were even saying before, as we were talking about secondary issues, it's about believing that the Bible does have what's best in mind for us. So... Jon Right. I've said before that, like, especially when I was in seminary, it would have been easier, it would have been more popular to be on the other side of this issue, but that's not what we do it for. We do it because we look at the Bible and we're trying to be obedient to the scriptures. So, we have what we believe that the Bible clearly teaches as truth. This is God's design for us. We would say that's what's good for us. Personally, as a pastor, I've served in two other denominations where we had, I worked with fellow pastors who were on the other side of this issue who believe differently. And like we've been saying, I would say that they are saved Christians. They believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. You know, he was the son of God. He died for their sins. He rose again. They believe those things. They were saved. And yet, I'd say they were living in disobedience to scripture on this issue. Yeah, that was you would say about that. Cheyenne Yeah, yeah, I would, I would agree with that. There, you know, not every church probably has the opportunities that we do have here for peace. But, I don't know, as a women's ministry director, that's something that I'm really passionate about is trying to create spaces where women can, can use their gifts so that it doesn't feel like they're being excluded from anything. There's, there's all kinds of opportunities for women to use their gifts and teaching and I would hope that that would be something that all churches are looking to and pouring time into also. Yeah Jon So I think to one part of the question was how hard should we fight? Is that right? How should how hard should we fight about an issue like this? Yeah, I was just gonna ask, you know Imagine there's a woman in a congregation in a church situation who says I feel called to this, what would be our response? How hard would we fight against that? Or would we just say, oh, no, let's let this happen? So a woman who feels called to be an elder, maybe, say. Cheyenne OK, well, I think that if we are believing that the Bible says the elders should be men, then I think we should stick to that, not compromising that. Because what does that say about, what does that say about our hermeneutics? What does that say about our belief in the Bible if we let go of that? Now, is it wrong for someone to go to a church where not everybody agrees on that? I don't know, Bob. I don't know. What would you say, Jon? Jon I think that sometimes in certain communities, you might not have as many opportunities or as many options and have to make some concessions as to what church you're going to be a part of and some of the theological beliefs that they take on secondary issues, right? Right. And you're never, I think it's pretty much true that almost no two Christians are ever going to agree 100% on every issue So you do have to choose there are there are issues that you have to be okay with hey We don't see this eye to eye and that's okay Um, there's some that you shouldn't be okay with but you do have to be okay with some so now honestly here at peace we are very Clear about where we're at on important issues. We teach them in our membership class. We do share with people Hey, this is where we're at on this. That's not changing because it's what the Bible says. And so if you're not comfortable with that or if you can't joyfully follow leaders that lead this way, then you really shouldn't be a member of this church. So we say that and we mean that very seriously. Now, like you said, there are some places that maybe just don't have church options that believe the biblical thing on this. So yeah, I mean, I've been a Christian in churches that don't believe the right things on this. Yeah. And so you can do that and you try to lovingly, joyfully submit to the leaders above you and yet also try to share truth wherever you have the opportunity. And so, so yeah, I think you absolutely can do that. It's not ideal. You know, if you have a different choice, that's great. It's definitely not ideal. Cheyenne Yeah. And what would you say are like some of the dangers of compromising on this kind of issue when you're in a situation like that? Jon I think the dangers are, number one, you're drifting away from God's good design. And I think we can't always see all of the negative results of that. I think usually at first you think, wow, I'm just bending a little bit, right? I'm just bending a little bit and it'll be fine. It'll be okay. And you don't notice the consequences right away. But I think over, and we could talk a long time, I think, about some of the effects of egalitarianism on the church at large over the last 50 years, especially. But yeah, I think that's the thing is when you start to bend away from God's good design, it does have consequences, even if you don't realize it just yet. And so I've had this experience before. So a woman comes to me and says, I feel called to preach on a Sunday morning. Now, first of all, no matter what gender you are, if you come and say that to me, I'm going to say, well, you know what, there's some discernment that needs to happen here. We need to there's some maybe some training that needs to happen. It doesn't matter your gender or your age. If you come to me and say you think you should be preaching on Sunday morning, I've got some other questions and things we're going to talk about. But if, but specifically, if a woman says, I feel called to the world elder, or I feel called to teach in a group of men and women together, then I'm going to say, hey, you know what, I would love to sit down with you and talk about a couple of Bible passages. I'd love to do some Bible study with you. I'd love to connect you to some other women in our church who would love to kind of explain and think through what the Bible says about this and where some awesome opportunities to do ministry is. If you are gifted and called to teach or to lead, then great. There are places for you to use those gifts, but it might not be these first couple places that you're thinking of. Cheyenne I feel like, okay, one of the words that I heard you say a lot and that we've been saying a lot is calling. And I feel like a lot of time that word gets used when it comes to things like secondary issues and as a way of trumping what the Bible says and being able to kind of manipulate the interpretation to say, oh, well, this was cultural. I feel called to this. And I mean, this could be a whole nother podcast episode about calling. But where does that come from? That can be so subjective. You could say you're called to anything. And that's not necessarily true. We're called to something objective, and that is to live for Christ and to believe that what he says is true, that it trumps our feelings, even if those feelings might be tied to some kind of faith or spiritual moment or impression that we have. And so I think we got to be careful about that and letting the calling direct how we're interpreting these doctrinal issues. Jon Yeah, there are some, the Bible uses the word calling, there are some objective callings, but then there's also like the subjective sense of, you know, for example, I believe I'm called to be a pastor. So that is a sort of subjective, I don't have a chapter and verse that says Jon is called to be a pastor. It's kind of a subjective thing. It also won't go against Scripture. Correct. Yes. So our subjective calling can never be against what Scripture says. And then also there's some discernment process even beyond that, using Scripture, but then also friends, family, people who know you well, your pastors, your elders, to help you think through a calling. I remember actually I've one time had a young guy come to me and he was in Bible college at the time and he said to me, he said, Jon, I believe I am called to speak to really large crowds of people. I remember saying, interesting. I've heard you teach before. I actually think that you do have the gift of teaching this whole idea of large crowds. And he was saying, I mean, I think he's explicitly said like hundreds of thousands of people. And I said, well, maybe. And that's awesome. The Lord might do that through you. But I don't know. Let's wait and see. You know, why don't you use the teaching that you've got? But that's where calling gets kind of subjective. And it's more like, well, let's wait and discerning and be see. But the most important thing, like you just said, is your subjective calling can never go against what scripture objectively says. Mitchell So can I ask a question? Teeing up off of that? So what's the difference between something like women's ordination and then something like homosexuality? Would we put those in different tiers? How would we address those things? Cheyenne I would put them in different tiers. I think women's ordination is one where there's a little bit more leeway on that one. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be complementarian, but if I was in a community where my only choices were egalitarian churches, I think that I could faithfully be a part of a congregation that believed that. Now, when it comes to homosexuality, I don't. I think that that's a hard line that we draw and that we contend for because that is, you know, you want to give the most priority to the most clarity and the most urgency that Scripture gives it. And Scripture has a lot of pretty, pretty clear, pretty explicit and dangerous, like words of warning when it comes to homosexuality. And we love all of our neighbors, right? No matter what gender identity they would like to choose, no matter what sexual orientation they feel they have. But when it comes to how we are, what we are believing about them as a person, because it comes down to personhood, right? That's an essential doctrine. Jon Well, yeah, and I think it goes to an X, I think the homosexuality issue takes it to a next level because you're explicitly calling not sin what the Bible calls sin. I think that takes things to a different level. You're telling somebody, and just to lay it out, actually, I want to back up and just name a couple of things. So we used a couple of, I think they're probably 10-letter words. So complementarian, by the way, that word means, believes that men and women are complementary to each other. They have complementary skills and abilities and things. So equal in value, distinct in role is usually what that word complementarianism means. We use that real quickly. Egalitarianism is the opposite of that, believing that men and women are essentially interchangeable, that they not only are equal in value, but also equal in role, that there is no distinction in their roles. But to jump back to the homosexuality issue, so let's, let me just kind of fill in some gaps of what we would say the Bible clearly teaches is that homosexual behavior is sin. There are people who live in our world that have same-sex attraction and will have to battle with that throughout the course of their life. So we're not saying that to have certain feelings, to have certain attractions, doesn't make you in a state of perpetual sin that you can never be saved from or anything like that. You have a choice. If you are same-sex attracted, then you get to choose, am I going to live a homosexual lifestyle that the Bible calls sin, or am I going to live a different lifestyle, whether that be celibacy or heterosexuality, that the Bible endorses, embraces? Yeah, so that's kind of just to give a sense of where we're at. And so, yeah, like we're saying, that's a different tier level issue because you're calling sin not sin. The Bible has some pretty strong words about that. Cheyenne And even going as far, you know, with homosexuality and gender identity too, you're also saying that God's design, that his created design for personhood is not correct. And so it's a much bigger, much deeper issue there. But I like what you were saying, too, about just how it relates to whether a person can be redeemed, can be saved, whether they're... So we've talked about some things that the Bible seems to be pretty clear on. What about baptism? Jon That's a great one. I'll start, if that's okay. Yeah, that's fine. So, I'm, as a pastor at Peace Church, we believe in infant baptism. We believe that God has a covenantal design for the family and that babies should be baptized as a part of the covenant family. But I went to a Baptist seminary, and actually, I was baptized as an adult, not a kid. I would say I was Baptist for most of my life, even though I was going to reform churches, probably not most of my life anymore, but up to a certain point, I know, right? Up to a certain point, I was baptistic in my thinking. I thought adult baptism was the only way to go, that babies shouldn't be baptized. Now I'm on the opposite side of that. So just to give you some background, I would say I have probably more Baptist friends than I do infant baptism friends. So just to kind of paint a picture of where I'm at. So I would say that baptism is a much lower down issue. I'd call that third or fourth tier issue. I'd say that there are Christians who are faithful to the Bible on both sides of that issue. I have a very clear sense of what I think the Bible teaches about this, but I also see where the Bible is not as clear as I think it is on these other issues we've talked about as it is about baptism. Cheyenne Yeah, I agree. I, because I both have really strong arguments. It can be, I think that there's a faithful way to read scripture both ways, even though I do fall on one side of it. I was gonna say. I was just gonna say also with baptism, I do think that one of the things with baptism that we just need to hold as important as making God big. And so I think that that is just the one risk there that I think that there is with adult adult baptism is a tendency to make it about us and not to make it about God. But I would agree with you that it's a third or fourth tier issue. So a little story if you don't want to, you don't want to use this, you don't have to, but my little story. So my husband is a fourth grade teacher and they always raise salmon in the classroom. They grow them from eggs. And so they get to like get the eggs in DNR and see the eggs hatch and then see these little salmon grow from. Jon No way, that's awesome. Cheyenne I know. Well, last year, they had one salmon that grew with a weirdly deformed head, and the kids called him Chomper because he had a major overbite and looked a little interesting. One day, one of the kids was like, they're eating Chomper. And my husband was like, no, one of the things about salmon is they are herbivores, that they don't eat meat at all. And so he went over to look up and sure enough, the salmon were eating chomper. And so they were literally biting his head off. The reason that I bring this up is because when it comes to these issues, we can sometimes contend for the faith in a way that we're biting each other's heads off. What a great, great way to make that point. And I just think that we still need to have grace with people. Galatians 5, 13 through 15 says, For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Jon What a great analogy. Cheyenne Think about Chopper. I like that. Jon That's a great way to conclude. We want to hold to the truth with lots of passion and zeal, and yet we also want to passionately love our brothers and sisters in Christ. And so we've got to, it's truth in love, right? That's the Christian life. We're supposed to have truth in love, and both of those things are critical and important. Awesome. Hey, thanks so much for being here, Cheyenne. Cheyenne Thanks for having me. Jon Thanks, everybody, for listening. If you have questions, always peacechurch.cc/questions . Have a great week.

PODCAST That's a Good Question Divine Design: How God Saves Us From Hell January 30, 2024 Jon Delger & Nate Harney Listen to this Episode Jon So Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc . That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon. I serve as a pastor at Peace Church and I also get to serve as the weekly host of this show. You can always submit questions at peacechurch.cc/questions . And today I am here with Pastor Nate. Nate Hey-o. Jon Great to have you here. Nate Great to be here. Jon We get to follow up today on an episode that we did together back on November 20th of 2023. So if you want to take a look back at that, you don't have to, you won't need that context for this episode, but if you want to, you can check that out. We got a great question about Arminianism. You can look at that episode to hear more about what that is, but we got a lot of questions following up this whole idea of Calvinism and Arminianism, and we'll talk about those words, and we'll talk about scripture. That'll be our primary focus and how these ideas play out, but we want to come back and answer some of those great questions. So that's where we're going today. Sound good? Sounds great. Let's do it. Producer Mitchell, you want to hit us up? Yep, here we go. Mitchell Here is our first question. How do we respond to people who say that Calvinism means that God doesn't love all people since he chooses some for hell by not electing them for salvation? Is that tied into universalism at all? Jon Yeah, awesome. All right, so real quick, we should try to define these Calvinism, Arminianism, fancy words real quick. So just so everybody knows, those are just kind of categories that people use to talk about different positions as you read the Bible and try to understand some of the tough passages we're going to look at in just a moment. John Calvin is the guy that Calvinism is named after, but really, it's just a way to sort of shorthand refer to an understanding of some different passages of Scripture. Absolutely. Is that what you say? Nate It gives a picture of a high view of the sovereignty of God, His rule and reign, His control over the universe. You brought up John Calvin as one of the original voices that we partner and we characterize this set of beliefs in, even though ultimately we believe it derives originally from the scriptures because we are Calvinist. We want to be clear about that. But in more modern times, someone who popularized it for a new generation via John Piper, you might have heard his name, another John, and I always like, he'll call it big God theology. And that's just the most simple way to say if you're a Calvinist you believe in a big God. And I think that's very simple. I know an Arminian would probably argue that they believe God is big as well, but certainly they would characterize His bigness in smaller ways. And so I think big God theology is a simple, profound way of kind of summing it up. Jon That's a very clever way of saying that. I like that. Yeah, we believe strongly in God's sovereignty, that he's in control, and we believe that when we look at Scripture and see different passages that talk about him planning all things from the beginning, him being in control of all things, all the way into even the human heart, and especially how we think about salvation and how that works is where this comes into play. So the other guy, Jacob Arminius, is the guy who the position Arminianism is named after. So in short, let me tell me if I'm reducing this too much, but to try to summarize each position. An Arminian would say that we have this free will that God does not interfere with, and maybe would say even cannot interfere with, and that we are sort of neutral and get to decide do we trust in Jesus and get saved or not. And as a Calvinist, we would say that actually when somebody preached the gospel to me, this is kind of my shorthand way of just thinking about my own story, is that when the gospel was preached to me and I decided to put my faith in Jesus, it's true that at that moment I decided to put my faith in Jesus, and so I decided to become a Christian and was saved. But really, as I've studied the Bible and as I've reflected and looked back on that moment, I've come to realize, actually, the reason I made that decision was because the Holy Spirit was stirring in my heart even before I decided that. That I was hearing the words of Scripture read or preached, and I was hearing somebody explain them to me, and the Holy Spirit was stirring in my heart, and I was responding to that. And in that way, God was sovereign.He was the one in control. He ultimately moved in my heart before I made some kind of decision. And so, is that too short or is that kind of a... Nate I think that's fair and succinct. Jon Cool. Cool. All right, so with those two things in mind, we want to make this, as always, about the text of Scripture, and so that's where we're going to go. So the question was kind of about how can God love people at the same time be in control of the plan and the execution of the plan for people who end up in hell? How can those two things be true at the same time? So I'd love to start with just a couple of verses, and you guys feel free to add to this, but a couple of verses, just what specific verses are we talking about? I think one that is probably in people's mind is John 3:16, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. So that verse says that God loves the world, he loves his creation, human beings who he created. Another verse that comes to mind is first Timothy 2 verse 4 This says talking about God and it says who desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth Okay, so the Bible says those two things and at the same time they say this other thing that I think at first glance seems To be contradictory to us is John 6:44 says no one can come to me and this Jesus is speaking. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. So sort of clearly saying that the Father, that God must be doing a work in somebody's heart, must be choosing, must be stirring in their heart before they can even put their faith in Jesus. What do you guys want to add to that? Nate I'd just throw the whole chapter of Romans 9 in there. That's the one when you get into this conversation, I think because it's probably the chapter that talks about this at the greatest length. There's times all throughout scripture where I see Calvinist theology, if you think of Ephesians 1, any time where it talks about predestination or election, somehow you got to have a category for that as a Christian. What does that look like then if you believe in a kind of a total free will or like the way you shared how some Armenians would characterize it as we have the choice to choose God or not and he either doesn't interfere with it or he can't interfere with it. Nate But Romans 9, I'll just read a short section of it and if you've never dug into that chapter, it's definitely worth your time. But I'll just jump in at verse 13 because that's where it starts to get really heated and it refers back to the Old Testament and says, "...as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." I think we should talk about that a little bit. What does that mean? It's pretty strong language. NateEsau I hated. Verse 14 then says, "...what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, now this is going back to the time of Moses where right before the exodus when Moses is challenging Pharaoh, think of the plagues in that period of time. The scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth so then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills so you might remember if you've gotten into those stories in Exodus that throughout the time of the plagues there's times where it talks about Pharaoh hardening his own heart and and closing himself off to the Lord. And then there's times where it very clearly says that God hardens Pharaoh's heart so that he rejects what seems like the right or godly choice and instead turns inward to his own sin and selfish desires and keeps the Israelites in slavery when it's becoming more and more clear every day that God desires for them to be released to the promised land. And so then it just continues on and I won't read the whole chapter but I think it's worth just continuing for a little bit longer. Verse 19 and this is in Romans 9 again says, You will say to me then, why does he, God, still find fault? For who can resist his will? Verse 20 is really important it says, But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay, To make out of the same lump One vessel for honourable use, And another for dishonourable use? What if God, desiring to show His wrath, And to make known His power, Has endured with much patience Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory." And we could keep going from there. It gets into some more specifics on Jews and Gentiles, but I think you start to get the picture if you're listening to that and you haven't heard that scripture before and you're just hearing it now for the first time, you might be thinking, whoa, what in the world am I supposed to do with this? So that, because... And you wouldn't be alone. Many theologians have asked that question over the years. Absolutely. And it does seem to make a very clear, logical, progressive case that, well, we're not going to apologize for this, but that Calvinism is a reality that you must reckon with. I mean, in the same way, Jon, you read some of the key verses that challenge a Calvinist saying, okay, how could it be then, if this is the God we're talking about in Romans, how then 1 Timothy, how do we hear that God desires for all men to be saved if Romans 9 is telling us that's not how he is orchestrating everything out? How would you answer somebody who asked that question about God's desire or his will for all men to be saved. And especially if we take it at face value, I think the question alluded to it, then how does that not refer to not just Arminianism, but universalism? If that's God's desire, how does it not end up becoming reality? Jon It's a great question. So I'll share an answer, and then I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts, too. This is an answer that goes back to, actually, John Calvin and the Institutes, and I've heard o ther great Reformed teachers kind of share this answer as well. I think when we look at Scripture, I think we could talk about two distinct sort of wills of God. We talk about God's will, and I think we can talk about that in at least two different aspects. So, it's been called before God's sovereign will and his moral will. So his sovereign will being sort of everything that happens, right? We say that God is in control. God had a plan from, you know, before creation. So everything that happens, it's within God's will, right? To say that something happens and it's outside of God's will would mean that God was surprised by it or that he wasn't in control of it. He was like, whoa, you know that happened and I didn't plan it or I couldn't stop it. So we read scripture and we say, we can't say that. That's just not true. God's sovereign, he's in control. So on the one hand, everything that happens is within God's will. On the other hand, we know that the Bible says things very clearly like, you shall not murder, and yet people murder, which means that things happen that are outside of God's will or against God's will. So we know that those things are both true at the same time. And so I think what we do then is we say, well, I think scripture can be using God's will and sort of two different aspects or perspectives. On the one hand, everything is inside of God's will, because it happened and because God's in control. On the other hand, God has a very clear moral will. He says, you shall not murder along with plenty of other commandments that he gives us. And yet people violate those every day. And those things are both within the reality of God's plan, and yet they're outside of what God desires to happen in the world. Nate Yeah. No, that is, that's really helpful. And that starts to feel kind of complex when you're talking about these two different kinds of wills, of the everything that happens is a part of God's will in one sense, but then there is this aspect of human responsibility on this other sense. For me, as a pastor and as somebody who's wrestled with this throughout my life, because I've had great interactions and ministry partnership with Calvinists, I've encountered in some of my biblical training and just some of my life those who are Wesleyan or Arminian, who I see their heart for the Lord and their desire to follow the Scriptures. But what it comes down to for me is that there's always going to be this tension here between how do we work out these two components of God's sovereignty and human responsibility, which we see both in the Scriptures. And for me, if I have to put it in its most simple terms, coming back to the big God theology, I think honest Calvinists and honest Arminians feel a tension there and don't think, oh yeah, I have no idea how the other side could ever have any sort of a feelings or beliefs that they do. For me, if I'm simplifying it in my own mind, I think it's unavoidable that there's this tension in the scriptures of the clarity of God's total sovereignty, but also this piece of human responsibility that we have to grapple with. And for me, the reason why I'm a Calvinist and I'm not anything else is because I think the clearest lens through which to interpret scripture is that God is big and people are smaller. It doesn't mean that we're not important. It doesn't mean that we don't play a role in all this. It doesn't mean that we're not held responsible and accountable. But I just, I cannot read the scriptures in any place, any book, any chapter, and walk away with people being big and God being small. And that might sound like a gross oversimplification to some, but for me, I've been on this journey and to be honest, there's been a part of my human selfishness where I haven't wanted to admit that Calvinism makes the most sense of the scriptures because in some ways it feels – there's aspects of it in our modern times that feels like a harder position to articulate and hold to because It can be so easily mischaracterized that god is this big mean bully who Makes all of our choices for us and then holds us responsible for something that we didn't even get to decide ourselves And that's that's a really easy mischaracterization of it and in our modern individualistic Western society. I was just going to say that, especially for Americans. We struggle with that. To say, oh, you don't have as much freedom as you might think. And even I've noticed, I grew up in churches that would say that they were Calvinistic and still when the problem with evil would come up in the conversation, how can a sovereign God who's totally in control, all-powerful, all-knowing. How can he allow evil to exist in the world if he's in control and he's good? And even in my very Reformed Calvinistic churches, the answer that was the easiest, most palatable answer was, well, that's human free will. It's just God, you know, God's hands are tied. He would love to step in and make everything good, but he can't because our free will gets in his way. And even in Calvinistic settings, we would kind of use that as an easy conversation ender, just tie up a clean bow on it. The problem is, is that paints a picture of a God who, number one, is not the God we read about in the Bible, so that's problematic. small, weak, God that can't really help you very much. Well, if you have to say God's hands are tied at any point in your argument, that's probably not gonna work. No. Jon We love C.S. Lewis, but I mean, that's the problem of pain, his book, The Problem of Pain. I mean, that's kind of the argument he makes for evil, and I just don't think it works. Nate It can feel good in the short term, but if you really think about it, it's a terrifying thought to think that God, there's something more powerful than God, and that thing is evil. Nate Right. Jon Yes. Yeah, it's one thing to sort of say, oh man, this doesn't feel quite right, that God would be in control while these bad things happened. But what about the alternative? Yeah, you're right. God had no control. The world was out of control, and God couldn't do anything about it. That's a truly terrifying thought. Nate Yeah, absolutely. Jon Mitch, you want to add anything to this? Mitchell Well, I just had a question. You touched on universalism a little bit, but is there a connection between universalism and Arminianism? What is that, like, when they bring up universalism, I guess, what is that? Jon That's probably the better first question. Yeah, good question. So, universalism is the basic idea that everybody goes to heaven, that God is just a loving God. And so, yeah, no matter how much bad you do, God loves everybody, and so universally, everybody's going to heaven. Mitchell So, I guess the question would be, what's the problem with that? Why is that something that we would reject? Jon Yeah, the first clearest answer is that the Bible very much says the opposite of that. God is a loving God, and yet he's also a God of justice and we would in fact say that you can't have love without justice God is a loving and good God Because he punishes evil now the good news of the gospel is that Jesus came and took that Punishment on our behalf so that we could have eternal life, but God is not good. You know, we would look at Human court systems if a judge did not punish evil, that'd be a really bad thing. That'd be unjust, you know, we'd get rid of him, there'd be outcry. You have to punish evil. That's part of the nature of goodness. So for God to be good and loving and just, he has to punish evil.But Jesus came and took that in our place so that we can have eternal life. So universalism lacks justice. It lacks—I think it misses the key attributes that have to be true for God to be good and righteous. Nate Absolutely. And those are the clear theological, biblical reasons. Even just practically, I could hear someone saying, well, what does it hurt? Isn't that a better message to the world? It feels more uplifting, it feels more open and accepting. But it's actually the opposite. If what we believe is actually true, if what the Bible teaches is actually the way reality functions. And I remember having a conversation with a guy who he was trying to explain to me that he was a Christian but not a traditional Christian, and I asked him what he meant by that, and he said, well, I hope the stuff the Bible says is true, but I just don't believe in Jesus and if you haven't received his forgiveness and his grace, then you better hope that it's not true, because the Bible is very clear that not everyone just gets into heaven because God's a nice guy. The Bible's clear about heaven and how salvation plays a role in that and what our faith in Jesus, how that determines that. And so, practically, while universalism might sound nice and friendly, if what the Bible says is true, then it's a very insidious thing to tell somebody who's in danger that they're not. Jon Right. And we can also go down, this could be a long rabbit trail, but I'll just, if you're thinking about this, ask yourself the question, if you're thinking about universalism, if that sounds attractive to you, let me just ask you a question. Would it be good if Hitler were in heaven? Yeah, because that's what you got to, that's part of the practical reality of what you got to grapple with, is you're saying no matter how evil you were on this earth, and whether or not somebody paid for your sins, Jesus on the cross, you get to go to heaven. You know, is that really a good God, and is that really a heaven that you want to be in for eternity? Mitchell Yeah, I guess one more follow-up on Arminianism. Sometimes I think people looking at Calvinism look at it like it's this God that we're painting that's at the gates of heaven like a goalie saying like, nope you can't come in, you can't come in. Do you feel like that's an accurate picture? Or what would you say to someone who says? Jon Yeah, yeah, great question. You're right, you're right. That's the mental image that we tend to get in our minds. But I think a better mental image is more like a bunch of people sort of falling or drowning. And running to a cliff. Or running. Yeah, yeah, that's even better. They're running for their doom and somebody reaches in to save some, because that's the reality, is all of us are running towards hell and God reaches in to save some. It's not as though we're all running towards heaven and he rejects some. All of us are running towards hell and he saves some. Mitchell All right, here's our next question. We've got two questions that are very similar, so I'll read them both. First one is this. Long-time listener, first-time question asker, I've spent most of my time in a Reformed church and have always had lots of questions and doubts about things like Calvinism, God's goodness, hell, and faith in general. I appreciate that Peace Church, this church, is the first church I've attended where questions are allowed and doesn't just pretend like people don't have them. Following the recent episode on Calvinism, I'm curious how someone who is a Calvinist can justify having children due to the fact that they may be responsible for creating a life and a soul that is not predestined to be saved, but instead to eventually be punished eternally in hell. It seems like a risk not worth taking. All right, here's a second question. Why would God create a soul knowing that that soul would go to hell for eternity anyways? What do you guys think? Two really good questions. Yeah, great questions. I think all of us here have kids, so this is a great question for us. Nate Yeah, it's always when you're opening yourself up to the risk of probably the deepest pain you can experience as a parent of seeing your child not follow Jesus and thinking through the implications of that. But we all have kids anyway, and I think one of the reasons why we do that is we know that it's worth it. We know that God deserves the glory. He told us to be fruitful and multiply for a reason. And we have experienced, and I actually can say this as somebody who has, I feel like in various ways, I've kind of struggled through life. And there's been even times where I've wrestled with that kind of depressive state that different Christians, theologians, pastors have written about and wrestled with, going all the way back to the Bible, of saying, I kind of feel like I want to curse the day that I was born. I don't know if I like this whole existence thing. I don't know if life is truly worth it. But the more you grow closer to God and the more you experience the kindness and the grace of Jesus, the more you realize what a blessing life is, even with all the hardships, even with the brokenness of sin. And for me, it's a joy to be able to bring—I have three children—to bring them into the world. I believe it's more of a blessing to be born than to not. aware that there's the possibility that my kids could not follow Jesus. I will say though as a family pastor, and this is where I'm going to get a little reformed here, but I do believe that while God preordains all the ends, He also preordains the means. And I believe if you as a parent, generally, if you follow the wisdom of Scripture and you raise up your child to follow Jesus, I believe more times than not you will see your children become followers of Jesus. That's not a guarantee for every child. We're very clear some of the parenting proverbs that get applied as promises, like if you raise your child up in the way you should go, he will not depart from it. That's a proverb. It's not a promise from from the Lord. And yet, what we see is that through generations of Christian heritage, those children who are raised, not just and told to follow Jesus, but get to see the example of mom and dad, faithfully following Jesus and enjoying the fruit of getting to be a disciple of the Lord, more times than not, they will follow in those steps and the legacy of faith that their parents set forth to them. Again, that's not a guarantee, that's not a promise, but in the Reformed view of how covenant children come into the church, come into the faith, so I would say there's a lot of things right there, but if I'm going to sum it up for that person, I believe God's original call to be fruitful and multiply stands. It's not our job to try to protect our future children from the potential of eternal damnation and thus try to preventatively keep them from existing in the first place. That's not our role. Our role is to multiply and bring more worshipers of God into the world, and I think we can can do that with confidence, knowing that even if the worst possible thing for, in most parents' minds, of my child not following Jesus, even if that were to happen, you can know that God is still good and God is in control. Jon Yeah. Yeah, I think this is one of those instances where people can try to take the concepts of Calvinism and take them beyond what Scripture actually says. They take them to what they think would be the logical conclusions of them but it's not what Scripture says. I mean like you said, Scripture very clearly says be fruitful and multiply. God gave us a mandate to fill the earth with people who follow him and worship him. And so that is in no way contradictory to what God also says about His sovereignty and choosing and things like that. So yeah, we are responsible to fill the earth with kids who worship Jesus. And yeah, it does terribly sadly happen sometimes that there are kids who go astray and don't walk with the Lord. That does happen even to faithful Christian parents. But scripture nowhere says, hey, so don't take the risk. And actually, I mean, even just to play that out practically, I mean, that would be, you know, that's the end of the human race, right? If we stop having children, you know, there's a lot of ways in which I don't think that adds up. So , yeah, so the meta question, right, is how, why does, you know, the second question that was asked is why does God even allow human beings to come into existence that will ultimately end up in hell? And that is a really important big picture question. Nate The way that I reconcile that in my mind, and I always do fall back on scripture's promises that we will not understand things in the exact same way that a completely omniscient, perfect God will. So his ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. But for me, at the end of the day, ultimately, I interpret both of those questions as, how can you really live with being a Calvinist? How can you really live knowing at the end of the day that God created everything, knowing how it would go so wrong in so many ways? How can you really believe in that kind of a God and sleep at night. And for me, the way I sum it up succinctly, and this is gonna get a little bit philosophical and theological, but follow with me here. I can't explain why comprehensively, but I can sufficiently for my own self. And I believe that somehow, some way, that we'll see with total clarity that a history of redemption brings more glory to God than a history of perfection. I don't know how that exactly works in a lot of ways to my Western mind that thinks in modern terms with modern categories and very limited. I can't explain how that could be the case, but somehow the falling away of humanity and God's redemption back in some way brings more glory to God than all the other alternatives. And although I can't fully explain it, what I do know is this. I do know that in all of our art, in our movies and our TV shows and every work of literature you read, there is a beauty to the story of falling away and a good God coming back. Of course, in a lot of our art, I think in some ways that reflects the truth of the gospel and the truth of the biblical story, but there's something in the human heart that sees this beauty of redemption. And we even see in the scripture that some of these pictures of kind of the angelic beings looking at with longing and the sense of there's a special relationship of humanity to the Lord, not just because everything was perfect, but because it wasn't. Nate Now, this is getting, that's getting really philosophical, and there's a reason why we didn't get here on our first episode about Calvinism, but we had enough follow-up questions, and you wanted to dig a little deeper. So, Pastor Jon, what do you think about that? Jon The history of redemption, history of perfection? I think that's a great answer, yeah. It's one of those things where we're searching back into sort of the mind of God at a very meta level and we do have to accept our limitations at some point. Yeah I think that's it is that you know for we don't fully understand why but God saw a redemption as the best story rather than Adam and Eve living in perfection and ultimately ending up that way. He could have created a different story. He didn't and that's how it happened. Another aspect I'd add to that is that, you know, we read the Bible itself in its own narrative account of this. Scripture in Genesis 3 is very clear that sin coming into the world is actually the fault of human beings. It doesn't say, well, it's this way because God wrote it this way. Now, we know ultimately that is true, that God allowed that to happen, that that happened. It was part of God's plan. But we do have to remember also just that we live in a sinful broken world. Punishment, justice, hell, those things are reality because we chose sin. Because Adam and Eve chose sin and so would all of us. So we have to kind of, I think, remember that part of the storyline as well. And to go back to another thing that we've been talking about, we've been talking about this difficult tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. And I just want to highlight that one more time, because it's so important to remember, both of those things are true. This is what Calvinists believe, but both of those things are true, even though we don't know exactly how they go together. So it's true that God is sovereign, God wrote the story, God's in control, and yet God still holds us accountable for our actions. We see that especially in the story of Jesus, that the Jews, the Romans, it says in different parts of Acts that they are the ones who are responsible for crucifying Jesus and yet at the same time it was a part of God's foreknown predestined plan and so God wrote the plan and yet human beings are held responsible for their role in it. Nate Absolutely. If we don't have all the answers I hope no one listening to this thinks well there's still some things left open-ended or some questions that don't have exact answers. We're not trying to hide that fact. If anything, I hope you heard some humility from both of us just to say there are things that there are answers that we trust are in the mind of God that we might not comprehensively understand but he has sufficiently revealed to us in the scriptures what we need to know for all of life and godliness and what it takes to follow him and enjoy the life he's given us and to worship him every day. But I'll just say one last thing, if you meet someone who does have every single answer for you, then that person by definition would be God themselves and you should follow them. But I would also be skeptical before you do that. So, good call. I like that. Jon It's good wisdom. Nate Food for thought. Jon Well, hey, this is a big topic. Like you said, a place for more resources on this, resoundmedia.cc . And maybe I'll mention this somewhere on Resound Media in the near future. But I think John Piper's five-part series called Tulip on the doctrines of Calvinism is probably the best lecture series I've seen on the topic. Just great stuff, great explanation. So I encourage you to check that out. Awesome, well hey, thanks everybody for listening. Thanks Pastor Nate, thanks Mitch. Have a great week. You can find That's a Good Question at resoundmedia.cc or wherever you listen to podcasts.

How to Surrender Control and Trust God with Your Child’s Salvation Christian Life Shannon Popkin Author & Podcast Host Live Like It's True Podcast Published On: When my kids were little, I wasn’t the mom who insisted on bike helmets and sunscreen. I fed my kids plenty of junk food and let them loose on our trampoline, which had no net. While I didn’t obsess over their health and safety, there was one concern that kept me up at night: my kids’ salvation. I didn’t worry about undertows, kidnapping, and allergic reactions; I worried about the words of Jesus who said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” ( Matt. 10:28 ). Nothing terrified me more than the thought of one of my kids traipsing down the wide path that leads to destruction. I wanted each of them to choose the narrow path that leads to life ( Matt. 7:13 )! But unfortunately, I thought it was my job to get them there. My kids still vividly remember the day I demonstrated the discomfort of hell using a candle. I had gathered them for Bible time and was talking somberly about their need for salvation—which was not out of the ordinary. But this time as I talked about sin, Jesus, and the cross, Cade (who was four at the time) was being silly and playing with our dog, Theo. In frustration, I turned out the lights, lit a candle, and held Cade’s chubby hand over the flame until it grew uncomfortably hot. As you can imagine, I succeeded in getting everyone’s attention. I talked forcefully about hell’s lake of fire and outer darkness and gnashing of teeth ( Rev. 19:20 ; Luke 13:28 ). My kids also claim that I called Theo a “messenger of Satan” who was distracting them from truth ( 2 Cor. 12:7 ). All of this made quite an impression, but not the one I was going for. My kids thought I was crazy! They were more scared of me than of hell. Theo just wagged his tail. I promise you that I’m not completely crazy. My kids survived, and thankfully—in spite of the candle event and others like it—they each love Jesus and follow Him. But perhaps you’re wondering what might possibly prompt a mom of littles to turn off the lights and hold her preschooler’s hand over an open flame? I know what. Fear. Anger. But most of all a desire for control. Craving Control With the candle casting a dramatic glow to my face, I realized that I was driven by fear. Fear that they wouldn’t listen. Fear that they might not respond. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to persuade them. And I was also aware of my anger. Anger over the dog distracting them. Anger because I couldn’t get them to be serious. Anger that my plans to share truth were being upturned. My sinful anger and fear were obvious, but I was naively unaware of my underlying problem with control. As someone who relishes God’s sovereignty, I find my struggle with control ironic. I’m quick to argue that God is free to do all that He pleases. I’m also quick to affirm that salvation is held firmly in His hands. So why was I lighting candles? Apparently, I felt it necessary to squeeze my kids’ hearts with shame over their sin. It seemed good and right to take responsibility for their repentance. Commandeering my kids’ destinies not only felt possible, it seemed honorable, as if good moms were the ones who found a way to convince their kids to repent and be saved. Yet lunging for control—even over something as critical as my kids’ salvation—never produces the security, peace, and joy that I imagine it will. When I heap the burden of control up onto my own shoulders, I not only stagger under its weight, I also become the worst (angry, fretting, rattled, obsessed, hand-wringing, perfectionist, anxious, flame-lighting) version of myself. Rebekah’s Prophecy Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau, had the same struggle. Like me, Rebekah enthusiastically believed that God had sealed her sons’ destinies. But also like me, Rebekah mistakenly thought it was right and good to stand in for God and take control. Now Rebekah did have a special circumstance. Before her twins were born, God had prophesied, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided ; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.” ( Gen. 25:23 , emphasis added) This was an extension of the prophecy given to Abraham about God making him a great nation, but the “divided” part was new. No doubt Rebekah found it troubling to learn that her family tree would be split in two. Jacob (the younger twin) would be the father to God’s people, and his older brother would become God’s enemy. But then came something even more troubling. When the twins were grown, Rebekah’s husband made plans to bless Esau—which was customary, since he was older—and name him as the leader of God’s people. He was completely disregarding a prophecy from God. So what did Rebekah do? She sabotaged her husband’s plans. I’m sure Rebekah was convinced that it was good and right to dress Jacob up in Esau’s clothes and put a steaming plate in his hand like a prop. I’m sure it seemed necessary to direct this charade so that she could trick her husband into blessing the rightful son—the one God had chosen ( Gen. 27 ). But as Rebekah stood in for God, she did not act in faith. As she manipulated the details and took control, she did not rejoice in God’s sovereignty. She did not trust God or anticipate the way He would make good on his promises. Instead, she revealed how much she doubted Him. She trusted herself to take control, not God. This same thing could be said of me the day I lit that candle—and on many other days like it. Rebekah’s story issued a stern warning against believing the façade that I can and should take control. But it also offers some strangely soothing comfort. A Comforting Truth When I read that before Rebekah’s twins were even born, God singled out one branch of the family tree to bless, it stirred up a whole bunch of salvation questions and concerns for my own children—and all the other people I want God to save. The possibility of our destinies being split like Rebekah’s family tree is horrifying! Yet tucked inside Rebekah’s prophecy is a striking truth which is helpful for Control Girl mamas like me. Here it is: your salvation is not based on who your mom is. Both Jacob and Esau had the same mom. Rebekah was neither the reason that Jacob followed God nor the reason that Esau didn’t. To find this comfort, you have to consider the alternative. What if, rather than a prophecy, Rebekah had been given a command? What if God had placed the responsibility for her sons’ destinies squarely on her shoulders? What if He expected Rebekah to produce God-honoring faith in the hearts of her two twin boys? And what if God expected this of me? What if it was my job to corral my kids onto the narrow path? What if their eternal destiny hinged on my ability to get them to listen and understand and repent and follow the Lord? How terrifying! How exhausting. I can only imagine what sort of candle-burning, fit-throwing, tactic-forming Control Girl mama I would become. And what if I could dress my child up and poke and prod him into winning God’s blessing? What would this say about God? He wouldn’t be in control; I would. And how comforting would that be? God Is in Control There is no relief or security in presuming that I can command my child’s destiny. None! Rebekah’s frantic manipulation demonstrates this well. As parents, we do have the privilege of laying out the jewels of the gospel and showing our kids how they sparkle, but that’s where our work ends. Salvation is God’s work, not ours, and oh, what comfort this brings. Rebekah’s prophecy was given so that we—as moms, dads, neighbors, and friends—might not become confused and assume that we can control anyone’s destiny. Romans 9:16 says, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” My child’s destiny is held in the wise, merciful hands of God, not my faltering, candle-lighting ones. God is in control, which means I don’t have to be! Check out Shannon’s Book on this topic: Control Girl: Lessons on Surrendering Your Burden of Control from Seven Women of the Bible . More Blogs You'll Like Is Prioritizing Love Un-Christian? What Does The Bible Say? Read More More Than Meets the Eye Discovering God’s Purposes for Motherhood Read More Mom Guilt and How to Fight It Read More

PODCAST That's a Good Question Love, Rainbow Flags, and the Nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit September 12, 2023 Jon Delger & Ryan DB Kimmel Listen to this Episode Jon Hey, everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church. This is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Jon. I get to serve as one of the pastors at Peace Church, and I get to serve also as the weekly host of this show. We're excited to launch a new year, a new season of That's a Good Question, and we want to reach people and help them grow in their knowledge of the Bible and their walk with the Lord. We think a great way to do that is by answering people's questions about the faith. So you can always send questions to peacechurch.cc/question. We'd love to hear your questions about the faith and be able to talk about them here on the show. We also think the best medium for doing this is on a podcast. So you can listen to it on your way to work or while you're working or whatever the best place is for you so that you can hear us talk about what the Bible says and about how you can walk with Jesus in everyday life. You can also find video clips on YouTube of different parts of this, but the primary place you can find this is as a podcast. And today, I'm excited to be here with Pastor Ryan, our lead pastor at Peace Church. Ryan Yes, hello. Jon Excited to get to talk about the questions people have sent in. We've got some good stuff. Ryan Yeah. Jon All right, here we go. First one, big one here. Question #1: What is love? Ryan Isn't that the question? What is love? So, I think there's a couple ways you can think about it, but I think primarily you gotta go right to probably the Bible's definition that God is love. So, when I think about what is love, I first think of God, who he is, but then also we're seeing that played out through primarily the flesh and blood of Jesus through his life, death, resurrection, through his teachings. So I think for me, when we talk about what love is, it's going to stem all the way back to God. It's going to stem back to who God is and what he's done and what he's done for us. And so there's, man, this is like the age-old question, right? I mean, how many poets have spilt so much ink? How many songs have been written about what is love and what love is and how do we know it and how do we see it, how do we recognize it. I think, you know, when I talk like this, the cynic in me, the person who wants to question everything is, I want to immediately snap back at my own question and say something to the effect of like, so we can only know what love is if we know the Christian God. Does that mean that atheists can't know love or show love to one another or people from another religion? And my response to that is to say, no, absolutely, we can know and show love because we are made in God's image. And because of that, we have a capacity to love that comes from being made in God's image. And so I'd say is that yes, other religions and atheists and anyone who's a human can know and show love. We just may not recognize it as being connected to Yahweh or Jesus Christ or what we see in scriptures. That's kind of ways I'd begin to try to like say that we know what love is. And even if you don't know God, you can still know love. You just may not recognize that that love is coming from our Creator. Jon It's coming from God, whether you know it's coming from God or not. That's how it got there. I was just thinking it came from Pepsi. Those little Pepsi commercials. Ryan As manifested through Mountain Dew? Jon Yes. Ryan Wait, was there a commercial with Pepsi and Love? The What is Love? with Pastor Ryan. You really don't know that commercial? Ryan Man, uh... Wait, is it from the, is it from the SNL skit? Jon I don't know. Ryan Okay, I don't know what we're talking about. I've always been a cult guy. Jon Oh man, okay, I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you. I'll play the, I'll play a clip later. Yeah, yeah, us young folks in the room. That's who it's from. Yeah. Okay, so if it is, so if God is love, God is the ultimate definition of love, but just running down kind of the trail you were going of, if you're an unbeliever, if you adhere to another religion, and you don't know God, but you do know love, how do we, what are some words we could put that even describe what love is like? Ryan Yep, yep. So I think again, all that's going to look, we're going to get that from the pictures of Jesus. I think we'd say things like love is not selfish, love is sacrificial. Jesus said, a greater love has no one in this than he who would lay down his life for his friend. Right, so right there we see in an aspect that love is not selfish, love is sacrificial. And so as people recognize love in their life, I think it's always going to have some sort of sacrificial aspect to it. That love is something that you give out without expecting anything in return.What about you? Jon Yeah, yeah, totally. I think that makes sense. So selfless sacrifice. Selfless, sacrificial, yeah.Yeah, the selfless line was what I was going to think down of just putting others before yourself. Ryan Yep. Jon But love is usually characterized as... Ryan Yeah, I mean it's giving. For God so loved the world that he gave. So love is selfless, it's sacrificial, it's giving. Again, it's an outpouring without expecting something in return. Jon Yeah, which is why I like in the movies. You know, there's a reason that the movie heroes actually look a little bit like Jesus in the sense of the selfless sacrifice, right? Usually the best movie hero or story hero is the hero who lays down his life for everybody else or at least risks his life for everybody else. That's because there's a there's a universal aspect to what a hero is what love is because God is love and he's in us. Yeah, and that's universal across cultures, right? We're always going to recognize that in the hero. Ryan And that's why, you know, guys like Tolkien and Lewis will talk about how Christ is the true myth. Right? I mean, all the things that we long for in the stories are fulfilled fully and really and truly in Jesus. Jesus is the true myth. He's the one who all the stories of what a great hero, of what great love is, is all truly found in the real person of Jesus Christ. And so when we talk about love, I think one of the questions I want to get to is, okay, so we know what love is from Scripture and through God and through the demonstration of Jesus coming to earth and in the gospel. So what are ways that the world misinterprets love or what are the ways that the world defines love that's actually wrong? How would you begin to think about that? Question #2: What are the ways the world misinterprets love? Jon Yeah, well the main one we're hearing right now is love is love, right? The circular definition of love, that love is love. And I think what people are trying to say by that circular definition is that love is whatever you want it to be. I think that's the point of the circular definition. It's you make up your own, create your own adventure, you make up your own meaning to what love is. Ryan So I'd say that's definitely part of it. We'd say love has a definition. In a lot of ways, the world would say it doesn't. Love is whatever you want it to be. We'd also say, and again, when I say we, I mean a representative of the biblical worldview. Love is a sacrificial, selfless thing that you give up, versus the world is love is you affirming me. Love takes. Love is receiving something, versus giving. We put the emphasis on love as the action of one towards another. I think the world would say love is the action of someone else towards me, that they make themselves the center of the story. And so I think, you know, those two dichotomies, love has a definition, with the world to say it necessarily doesn't, or at least they would say every generation and culture has its freedom to develop their own, which essentially is just saying that there's no definition. So we'd say there's definition, the world says there's not definition. We would say, again, we from the biblical worldview, we would say that love is selfless and sacrificial versus the world, which is saying no, love is receiving and affirming something that you get. And we can definitely be the object of love, but we don't start there. We start with the Lord, we start with the gospel. Jon Yeah, so it really goes back to one of those core things of, core worldview things of is truth objective or is it subjective? And as Christians, we're saying truth is objective. There is an objective reality. It comes from God, it's in the Bible. And so things like love, things like beauty, there is an objective standard for these things. Ryan And yeah, there's an objective standard for love. You can't make it up. It's just what you said. I mean, this comes down to a battle of worldviews. Which worldview makes the most logical sense? Which worldview makes the most sense universally? Which worldview will stand the test of time? I think every great battle of thought is ultimately a battle of worldviews. It's where does it actually come from? Where does it stem from? Where does it find its grounding and its rooting? And for us, the eternal question of what is love. We're going to root that in the most eternal thing there is and that's that's God himself. Jon So to go down a little bit of a practical road of another question that came in the question was this: Question #3: What do we do with businesses that have rainbow flags in front of them? Yeah. Are we to go in there and is that showing them love or we to not go there is that yeah. The Christian loving thing to do. How do you do love the business? It's got a rainbow flag in front of it? Ryan So that's a, I'd say that's a, there's a number of ways you can begin to think about that question. And for me, when I think about this, because we've, I'm sure you have too, I've had people at numerous times, and that's putting it lightly, contact me about that very question. And I think at some point you have to leave space for Christian conscience. You know, as you seek the Lord with a mind renewed by the gospel, what are you led to do? So I think you can look at it two ways. One is, I think something you're gonna find a lot, at least around in our culture, like our specific context, is people say, I don't want to support businesses that don't hold true to the values that I wanna see permeated in our culture. So when I go and support businesses with rainbow flags or supporting values that I don't adhere to, people feel like, okay, well, I'm supporting the spread of those ideas into my culture, and I don't want to do that. That's one way that I think you could honestly approach that, but I think other people look at it, other Christians, I would say, other Christians look at it and they say, well, I want to reach these people. I want to share the love of Jesus with these people. And so we should be going into these businesses and making connections and showing the love and letting them know that we love them as people and that we we want you know we want good things to come from them and you know I have pushbacks and critiques on both sides of that on the one hand you can't just stand against so going back to that first group of people you can't just stand against something okay how are you actually promoting then the values you want to see in this world you know if you're willing to take a stand and not go to these businesses, then what in your life are you actually doing that's going to be promoting the values that you want to see in this world? I think a lot of times that can't point to a lot, can't point to much. On the flip, for those who say, no, we need to go into those businesses, we need to share the love and support them as people and look them in the eye and let them know that we love them. A lot of times they'll talk about building bridges, we want to build bridges with these people. And I'd say that I can understand that, that's great, but what are you going to do with that bridge and when are you going to actually walk across it and share the gospel? Like, say, you are a sinner, but the good news is that Jesus died for our sins. You want to build these connections and let these people know they're loved. I appreciate that. I can support that. But you need to at some point walk across the bridge that you say that you're building, which leads to a confrontation in the sense of you're presenting the gospel, which is going to be confronting to their sin. So I think a lot of times people aren't willing to actually do that. They will couch their intentions in this nicety of showing love and building bridges. And it's like, okay, but what are you actually going to do with that? Are you actually going to walk across that bridge and share the gospel at one point. So, again, the cynic in me wants to critique both sides. And so, those are just some ways I'm going to think about it. What about you, Pastor Jon? Jon Yeah, there's one answer that you didn't list in there, and it's because you listed the valid options that Christians can hold in tension, right? Two options that they can both do. There's a third option, which would be to say, well, I'm going to support the rainbow flag and all that it means because I'm a loving person. And that goes back to some of what we were saying just a minute ago, which is that we believe in the truth, objective truth, God and the Bible, God telling us objective truth and what reality is like through the Bible. And therefore, that means that that option is off the table, that scripture is very clear with us, that that lifestyle, LGBTQ lifestyle is contrary to God's word. And so that's one of the options, one of the non-options, is to say that I support all that does and means because I'm a loving person. Actually, to be a loving person would be to share what's true, what's objectively true and real, and what God says leads to eternal life. You want other people to experience eternal life, then you've got to share the truth of the gospel with them. They can turn from their sin, receive Jesus as Savior, and experience life. That'd be the most loving thing you could do for them. Ryan Yeah, this is, I think this is the one of the great tensions people feel because we want to be seen as loving and the world has said, okay, well, to be loving means to affirm everything that the rainbow flag stands for. And there's people who buy into that and people who will go and support because they're trying to fit in. And, you know, I just preached a message about this and where I kind of brought up in the whole notion of holiness is like the more you fit into culture the more that's the antithesis of holiness. Like holiness is being set apart. It's being set apart from this world. It's belonging to God not belonging to this world. And so when we have a pursuit that is leading us to be more affirmed and embraced by our culture, I think we're becoming less holy. And so we get that it's totally unpopular, we get that it's countercultural, we get it's not the way that the world is turning, at least in our society, but for those who want to hold true to the biblical truths of the Christian faith, we can't affirm that as being ordained by God as a flourishing, fruitful life. God has something better for us. And that's the message of Christians, that we want to share that with the world, that we have a God who has something better for us. Even though we are all, all of us trapped in our sin, Christ has made a way to save us from that through his own life and death and resurrection. Yeah, I'd say that's not a valid option. I think you need to either just say, I'm not going to support this because it doesn't promote the values I want to see in my culture at which point I'd say okay well then how are you actually promoting the values? You want you to see in your culture and then on the flip you could say well No, I think we need to go in there and show the love of Christ and build bridges and build relationships to which I'd say Great, that's what you're called to do go do that But what's your plan of action for actually sharing the gospel for actually walking across that bridge once it's built. Jon Yeah, so you brought up your sermon yesterday Which is awesome by the way. But thinking about those two options that you just laid out, I can imagine a Christian being in a conversation where they are asked or are confronted with this choice about what they do with a business with a rainbow flag. And either way they take, they could find themselves in this conversation where somebody's saying to them, okay, you decided not to go to those businesses. How is that, how does that not make you a hateful person? Or you could be sitting in a situation where you say, well, I do go to these businesses, but then I tell the people who are there to repent and turn to Jesus, and they say, well, that's hateful that you tell them they should repent and turn to your God. So, in either way, they could find themselves in this position where they're being accused of being hateful. So, if you're a Christian sitting in that spot where you're doing one of these options that aligns with the vocal worldview and a Christian conscience, and yet the world is saying to you, you're a hateful person because you've made that choice. Yeah. What should Christians say when they are accused of being hateful? Ryan What should a Christian say? Well, I'd say, number one, the first thing I'd say is that just shows the clash of worldviews. Because the truth is, is that unless you're going to affirm and celebrate what they affirm and celebrate, they're going to see you as hateful. It's a zero-sum game in our culture. And this is the whole point I was making yesterday, this is the whole intro, and I wove this throughout the entire sermon, that Christians have always been accused of being something that we're not. That's been the case since day one for Christians. And it's because the world judges us only by their own standard, and they don't look to see the true intention of the Christian heart and message. You can very much expect you will be called the things you don't want to be called. You will be called the things that are not true because you're not doing what the world wants. And so I would say to the Christian, you can expect to not be ultimately welcomed when the rubber meets the road of sharing the message. Now, that's a worst case scenario. I think what we pray for is that God will work and the Spirit will move and people will turn to Jesus and we'll welcome them as brothers and sisters and we'll see him in heaven and we'll join forces and do some great mission and ministry here. But this is part of the package of being a gospel sharer in our world. People are going to reject it and part of that rejection is calling you things that are not true. Yeah. Well, and it's it's kind of getting uh I hesitate to say this but it's getting harder or at least it feels like it's us you know the generations of Christians past might agree or disagree with the statement but it's getting harder and harder to have the conversation because in our world there's so much there's so much there's a such a lack of common ground in our worldviews that it's hard to talk about. Or at least like the yeah, like the moral framework is competing is getting more and more divorced. Jon Yeah. Well, and even it, yeah, and the blending in obviously was Christians. We don't want to blend in. So there's that side of it. So that's good that on the one hand, we're caused to stand out more. On the other hand, I'm saying, I guess one thing that's just even harder is just our lack of shared values or language. Even, you know, when we say love, we mean two different things now. That's just, I think that's harder now than it was five or ten years ago. Ryan Well, and that's it's like there's there's the aspect of no definition and redefinition. I saw this I have this very liberal Progressive Facebook friend who went on this rant about pride and there you know the whole thing was like if you don't understand what we mean By pride then you you know you're a bigot or you're archaic or you're ignorant. You know, pride doesn't mean bride. Pride means celebration of yourself. And it's like, well, at some point, we have to like use the same dictionary. Otherwise, we're never gonna move forward and with any sort of commonality or to any sort of agreement on anything. And it was like, if you don't automatically know what we mean when we use words that we've always used, but now use in a different way, then you're the one who's on the outside, you're the one who is the trouble to society or the ignorant one or the bigot and it's just that whole notion of losing our shared values, we're losing our shared language with that. I mean again we should know what love is love, what that actually means. Okay, I think we do. It's what we're saying is like love between two people of opposite sex. It's like, okay, but it means more than that, right? That's what you're saying. And so when they kind of concede that, then it's like, okay, but what does it actually mean? Well, so if we have two different sets of words, it's like we have two different languages, right? It is like a language barrier. It's like you're talking, one person's talking English, one person's talking Spanish. It's sort of feels like that way sometimes. Which is just an aspect of a culture barrier, right? I mean, part of the culture barrier is language. And that's just where it kind of shows that we are becoming two distinct cultures. Because we're developing different languages. Yeah, totally, totally. So as I think about my own question, the question that I asked, if you're standing in front of somebody and they accuse you of hate speech for sharing a biblical perspective, I'm sort of imagining how I would try to, so if you're trying to cross that culture barrier, that language barrier in a few short sentences, I think I would probably say something like, okay, well, I understand what you're saying, I understand why you're telling me that, that you think that I'm hateful for saying this or for believing this, but actually see it from my side, see it from my perspective. From my perspective, I'm actually the most, this is as loving as I can be because what I believe is that if you don't turn to Jesus, then you will go to hell and spend eternity in punishment instead of eternity in life with Jesus. And so the most loving thing I can do is to point out your sin and ask you to repent of it and to turn to Jesus. Now, I know you don't see it that way, but that's how I see it because that's what the Bible says. And so that exactly it's at some point, right? You not some point you want to start here, but when things get heated, you kind of want to go back to that base level human to human and just be like, listen, you, you understand like you, I understand how, like you're saying, I understand how, why you think this is hateful, but do you understand from my perspective, like, hear me, I do not hate you. Yeah. I do not mean to be hateful to you. That's not my intent. That's not my heart. I'm, I, I, I'm sorry that you receiving it like that way. But the true intention of my heart is to share with you something that's good and pure and right and better. And at some point, if the conversation still crumbles, you did your due diligence. Jon Right. Yeah. The victory, the outcome is not in your hands. It's in the Lord's hands. But I think that's a good way to try to explain yourself. And then ultimately, you go home and you pray. Ryan And also, the other thing is, I think we often get trapped into like, maybe like a YouTube wormhole, or rabbit trail, and we nd up seeing all these videos of these two groups on the street starting to hash it out and go screaming at each other. For me, it's like, the more you can do this one-on-one, I think in the American culture, that's a better way to do it. Sure. I'm not saying there's not a place for street preaching. I'm saying you have to be wise to your times and understand the dynamics of your culture. And I just think there's a group thinking group mentality that is so overbearing. It's almost unproductive to try and have two groups like that. The best, the more that you can move to those is one-on-one conversation or correspondences. I think they're more beneficial and fruitful. I had some conversations this past week with, or not this past week, I had some conversations this past summer with some people on the opposite side of this culture. And we actually had some really great conversations, just me and them, one-on-one, talking about these things, because we're not trying to get likes, we're not trying to show off in front of our buddies, we're having two conversations with between two real people, just with very different perspectives on things. And I felt like it's, they know where I stand, I know where they stand, and it wasn't shrouded in a heated conversation with a bunch of witnesses. And so I think the more you can move those two over a cup of coffee, or through some sort of electronic exchange, I think that's a better approach by and large in our culture. Again, I don't want to diminish the effectiveness or the place of street preaching. I've actually done it myself. I'm not opposed to it. I just think when in my time, I've been way more kingdom productive when I go one-on-one and then on a street corner or with a group of people. So that was a little bit of a rabbit trail, but. No, that was great. Jon Alright, hey, one last question for us here before we go. Somebody sent in this question. It's a great question. They asked this. They asked if Jesus always was or if he came to be when he was sent to Earth. And they're asking the same question about the Holy Spirit. Was the Holy Spirit always there or did the Holy Spirit come when Jesus gave him as a gift after he left the Earth? Question #4: Did Jesus always exist or was He created when He came to earth? Ryan You know, just before we get into the finer points of that, I really appreciate when people just ask straight up theological questions. Yeah, it's awesome. Not the practical questions dealing with all the relevant cultural issues, but just these good old fashioned theological questions. So I can't say for certain, but I wonder if this stems from something I said in the message when I talked about how Christians are called atheists. Christians at one point were called atheists, but I said, it's really odd because we have like the most robust theology of all the religions because we believe that God came to earth as the man born in that manger on Christmas. So I wonder if that sparked it, maybe, maybe not, or it could just be, that's a great age-old question. Jon Yeah, right. People have been asking that question for a couple thousand years now. Ryan They certainly have. They certainly have. So, the answer to that question is that Jesus always existed. He received the name Jesus at his birth, but God the Son, the second member of the Trinity, has existed from all eternity. That's the Orthodox Christian stance. That's what the Bible teaches. That's what we believe and preach here at Peace Church. Pastor Jon, you want to dial in on that a little bit? Jon Yeah, a few passages that come to mind. Think of John 17, when Jesus is praying his high priestly prayer. He's talking to the Father, and he says, he talks about going back to the glory that he had before he had come to the earth, the glory that he had at the Father's side. So, talking about his existence before becoming a man. Think of John chapter 1, the Gospel of John chapter 1, and talking about being the Word, being one with God, talk about his existing since eternity past. John 1:2-3 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. I think of Colossians chapter one, talks about Jesus' preeminence, think of passages like in Romans 8 that talk about Jesus being the firstborn among many brothers. Those passages could be easily kind of, I could see, you know, it'd be, those are kind of tricky, that language, firstborn, but what Jesus is talking about is actually his higher standing or his being the highest among the brothers. Also just that he's the first of the resurrected ones. So it's not saying that he didn't exist before he was born as a man. Jesus always was. Ryan Yeah, we, I know that you had this professor too. We weren't in college, Professor Dr. Doug Felch. He talked about this because this is an age-old controversy that the early church dealt with. It's called the Arian Controversy where people would argue, was there a time when Jesus did not exist? Or was there not a time when Jesus did not exist? And like literally people would gather in groups on the sides of the on different sides of the street and they'll and you know two thousand years ago and scream at each other and professor felch would like reenact this in front of it was amazing you know people would raise their fist in the air and they'd say there was a time when he was not and then the people on the other side of the street would say there was not a time when he was not and then you go back and forth and was when he was not was not when he was not was not when he was not that's right it's a tongue twister, but he was doing it perfectly every time. Jon He did, yeah. Ryan And never forget it. Never forget it. So, no, Jesus pre-existed. His time went before, I mean, Jesus was always existed with the Father. The Father, Son, and Spirit. Paternally existed. One in essence, three in persons. The second member of the Trinity came to earth, born, took on humanity, was given the name Jesus, Jesus Christ, forever wedded with his humanities. He's perfectly, he's 100% human, 100% divine, but Jesus came from heaven to earth and he's returned to heaven to earth and we will be with him one day when we leave this mortal plane. And so that's a great question. Real quick, the Holy Spirit too. Jon Should we talk about the Holy Spirit as well? Ryan Yep, so I mean, I think that's less confusing, or at least produces less questions. I hear that one way less. And I think a lot of times you just go back to Genesis 1, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep. I mean, the Spirit was there in the very beginning before creation. And so, Father, Son, Spirit, first, second, third persons of the Trinity, eternally existing. Jon God has always been one in essence, three in persons. Always was the case, always will be the case. Didn't just start on earth in human history. Always been the case. Great question. Awesome stuff. Thanks for asking. Thanks everybody. Great questions. Thanks for sending them in. And thanks for spending some time with us. And thanks for spending some time with us. We'll catch you later.

On The Cross (Part 2) Sermon Series: It Had To Be Said Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Luke 23:39-43 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it and everyone everywhere, including the venue and the chapel and those online that we all said together, amen. Amen. So church, we do live in a world where there is no shortage of words. English, they say is the most wordy language of all time. And thanks to this thing, for those listening on a podcast later, this is a phone, our phone. Thanks to this thing, we have way too much access to far too much of what's being said in our world. Our world has no shortage of words or opinions. We live in a world where feelings are seen as just as valid as facts. In this world, we have to ask ourselves, when we have access to so much, where can we turn to for words that will cut through the noise? Where can we turn to to find words that are comforting, challenging, and true? Where can we turn to find words that are both timely and timeless? Words that were as much needed as when they were spoken as they are needed now? I'll tell you, there's one place, and that's the scriptures. And we've been doing that this summer as we look at words that cut through the noise, words of Jesus Christ. Again this series has been looking at words simply from Jesus, what's often called the red letter words. Words not just from anyone, but words from Jesus Christ. Words, quotes, that changed the world. And I'll just tell you right now, the words of Jesus that we're going to look at today, they most certainly change the world, but I will tell you right now, they are words that specifically changed me. Coming back from sabbatical, I wanted to preach a message that was deeply personal to me to share some things. As we look at, I think, the words that the Holy Spirit used to cut through my heart,to call me to faith in Jesus. And so if you have your Bibles, would you please turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23. We'll be looking at verse 34 today. If you want to use the Bibles we've provided, happy for you to do that, that's on page 1124. Again, these are words that Jesus Christ spoke from the cross, and they're words that the Holy Spirit used, as much as I can say this, to cut into my heart and call me to faith in Jesus Christ. They are words that Jesus said after his torture, during his crucifixion. Now, if you know anything about the physiology of a crucifixion, to even speak during crucifixion was extremely painful. And Jesus finds the strength to say the words that we're going to look at today. Jesus said these words as he was looking upon the people, the very people that were doing this to Him. And this is what He said. And so, would you hear the word of the Lord, the words of Jesus? Luke, chapter 23, verse 34. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This is God's holy word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father, we come to you in prayer. We come to you in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, asking that you would be with us today, helping us to know the truth of your word, timeless and timely words that we might know salvation in Jesus' name, that we might, by the blood of Jesus, be brought back into a relationship with you, our good and glorious God and we do pray these things for your glory for our joy and for the good of our neighbor we do pray these things and everyone said all together amen so father forgive them for they do not know what they do Jesus Christ prayed this for the people who were killing him as they were killing him while he hung on the cross. When I first read these words as an 18-year-old, and I understood what was happening in this moment when Jesus said this, it was like I was on the road of life. And when I read these words, it was like God brought this enormous roadblock and set it right in front of me, and said, this is your path no longer. I have a new path for you to follow the way of my son. Has it been perfect since then? Nope, it's been pretty bumpy and rocky at times. But since that time, confessing my faith in Jesus, I've walked the path of the way, the way of Christ. When I read these words as a high school kid, I will tell you, I lost. My defenses failed me. I couldn't get around these words. Every argument that I had against the Christian faith suddenly became very brittle and hollow. And it was like God said to me, you're mine now, and I have a better plan for you. Now listen, Jesus Christ, as you've heard all summer long, he said some powerful words, he said comforting words, he said challenging words, at times Jesus even said some condemning words, but you know what these are for me? You know what sort of words these are? These are confirming words for me. These words, when you understand what's happening and you understand the moment that Jesus was in when he said this, they are like confirming words. They reveal who he is and what he's come to do. And it shows us why Jesus is so amazing. So as we begin to look at the end of the summer, rather than three points today, I'll keep it easy on you, we'll just do two points today as we look at this wonderful, powerful verse. Two things today. On the cross we see firstly that Jesus prays for sinners, and secondly on the cross we see that Jesus provides for salvation. All right, so let's get into it. First point. Jesus prays for sinners. Keep your Bibles open here today. Verse 34. In these words, Father forgive them for they do not know what they do, we see Jesus doing something remarkable. I've said it before, I'll say it again because you cannot forget this. Jesus was praying this for the people who were killing him as they were killing him. Say what you want about Jesus Christ, but you cannot deny that this man lived everything he taught. Jesus prays for sinners. This is a prayer. So let's talk about prayer for a second. Bump your neighbor and say we're talking about prayer because we're talking about prayer right now. Now I've always said there's two types of Christians. There's those who pray and those who say they pray. And I looked at my life and for a long time I thought to myself, I don't pray enough to really qualify myself as a praying man. There was this one time a number of years back that I was I was leading a mission trip to a place called Switzer West Virginia. Now you people who are West Michiganders, you have no idea where Switzer West Virginia is and there's no reason for you to know where that is. It's in the middle of nowhere Appalachia. Like when you go to the middle of Appalachia and you're lost, keep going and maybe you'll find Switzer. This is where we were at as a group. Now I brought a group down there to help out this little church. Then what happened during the week was there's these three little old ladies who would come to the church every single day and they would make us lunch. And one day we got our morning project done early. So I thought, you know, I'm gonna go help these little ladies get ready for lunch. So I go into their little church and I'm walking down the stairs and I get to their basement and I start walking towards the little kitchenette that they have and one of the women was on the phone and she says, Oh my goodness, yes, we'll pray for that. And then she hung up the phone. Now I know some of you don't know what I mean when I say hung up the phone. See, you know, back in the olden days, in the 1900s, there was this thing, phones were actually attached to a wall and were connected by a cord. And you knew the people who were extremely talkative, because their cord was a lot longer than other people's cord. If you remember, some cords were like 35 feet long, and that's so mom or grandma could talk throughout the entire house and still be connected to the wall. Let me see, who here had a mom or a grandma like that? Who here was a mom or grandma like that? Yeah, okay. So I get down and I'm walking to this kitchenette and she says, Oh my goodness, yes, I'll pray for that. She hangs up the phone. She turns to her friends and she says, so-and-so is going in for emergency emergency surgery right now. And I'm walking up to these three little old ladies and they say, would you like to pray with us? And do you know what went through my head? That Eminem song. This looks like a job for me. Like I was like, I'm here. This is why I'm here. I'm the highest ranking person here. So yes, I will pray. And in my mind, I thought for just a second, I was outlining how the prayer was gonna go. You know how this works around here. We got this really unique way of doing prayer where someone says, okay, why don't you start, and if anyone feels like they are led to pray, go ahead and pray, and then I'll close it up at the end. You know how we do that around here, right? Yeah, okay, so apparently not everyone does it like that. So I'm walking up and they say, would you like to pray with us? And I say yes, thinking this is how it's gonna go. But no sooner did I say yes, than did these three women all start praying at the same time out loud. And I realized in a fraction of a second, I am seriously outgunned here. I've just entered something new. I don't pray like that. The pastors I know, we don't pray like that. I am telling you, it was a deep prayer. It was devoted. It was desperate. It was a prayer pouring out their hearts. It was a prayer that they fully believed that God could heal. It was unashamed because they were all talking at the same time and they didn't care what anyone thought of their prayers. They were crying out to their God. It was a beautiful thing. You know, what makes someone brave is not just what they're willing to do, but what they're willing to do in front of other people. And so let me just throw a challenge out to the Christian men in the house. Pray out loud. Pray out loud with your wife, with your family, with your kids. Jesus Christ was on the cross. You want to talk about an inconvenient time to pray? He is on the cross and he still prays. So when I was in that little prayer circle with these women, I'll be honest with you, I walked away from that prayer time really discouraged. And I was really discouraged for a long time. It troubled me. Because you want to know what I did? I made that the gold standard for prayer. For a long time I was discouraged about my prayer life because I didn't pray like that. Nobody I knew really prayed like that. And I was really discouraged for a long time. Until my understanding of prayer, look to the scripture. When you get to the scriptures, you see something drastically different. See, when I was growing up, I thought prayer was that time that you carved out at some point in the day, and you folded your hands, and you got on your knees, and you closed your eyes, and then you started praying like you were writing a letter. Dear God, how are you today? That's how I thought prayer was. I thought it was simple and like writing a letter and then I experienced these ladies and then I was like, oh wait, wait, no, it must be really big and broad. But then when I started searching more and more of the scriptures, you see something, all that and more. See, when you look at the prayers of the scriptures, you see raw, honest prayers. You see honest prayers. And what I mean is that sometimes people who are praying in the Bible, they're confused about what God is doing or what God is allowing. When you look at some prayers in the scriptures, there's not many of them that are very elaborate or even deeply religious sounding. And yet Christ shows us something beautiful that you can pray even through excruciating pain. Prayer is not a letter to God. Prayer is talking to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit and then listening. See, I once thought prayer was patient and on your knees, and I thought it was powerful and out loud. Then I realized it's all that and more. Those ladies will always be champions of the faith in my book, but I'll tell you now, they're no longer the gold standard of prayer for me. You want to know what is? It's this prayer of Jesus that we're looking at today. This is a prayer, mind you. Father, forgive them. This prayer from Jesus on the cross, this is the epitome of grit. It's selfless, it's short, it's faithful. For many of us, we don't pray, we just say we do. And I'm telling you, we are missing out on so much. This is the prayer of our Savior as He was dying. This is what he's praying as he's dying, as they are killing him. It's this prayer, Jesus pleading with God the Father for the forgiveness of the people who are killing him. He's praying this as they are killing him. What sort of man is this? Can you imagine a woman praying for the forgiveness of her husband as he is cheating on her? Can you imagine a 68 year old man praying for the forgiveness of his accountant as his accountant is draining his retirement dry? What sort of man is this? There is something else going on here with Jesus. Jesus is praying for the forgiveness of the people who are killing him as they're killing him. But listen here, it does not end there. It gets even more powerful. See, Jesus Christ, yes, He does die on that cross. He is killed on that cross. He does not come off alive. They take His dead body off the cross and they lay it in a tomb where it lays stone-cold dead for three days. But then, in this little thing we call the resurrection, the Son of God rose again. The resurrection is what makes or breaks the Christian faith. Jesus Christ rose again. And then for 40 days, he continued to minister, and then he returned to heaven. So here's the question, what's Jesus doing now in heaven? Well, aside from ruling and reigning, did you know that Jesus is also praying for you? He prays for us still. Romans chapter 8, verse 34. Jesus Christ, who died more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. This is take a moment, listen to the rain, embrace it, it's beautiful. Notice here it says, he's at the right hand of God, interceding for us. It doesn't say praying, it uses a special word, interceding, intercession. Now listen, if you're like me and you come from a pretty conservative background, that's probably not a word you hear a lot, but it's a biblical scriptural word that is a way to pray. Now what is intercession? Intercession is praying where we stand in the gap for someone else and we intervene in on their behalf in prayer. And so, when Jesus says, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do, I would tell you that is the greatest in a sensory prayer in all of the Bible. Ten words in English, it was actually only eight words in Greek, and it is a prayer that still changes hearts. Jesus still intercedes for us. Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25 says, Therefore Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Christians, listen to me. Jesus is praying for you right now. Right now in heaven, Jesus is speaking your name to God the Father, and he's praying for you. But this here, right now, this is the point where you ask me, so what? Because here's one of the things I really want us to do as a church, I want us to be able to ask really big, hard questions. We need to be able to express our doubts and have our questions and ask them. And you can ask any question you want here without judgment. We want to have conversations. We want you to bring your questions. In fact, I want you to think about your hardest possible question and then send it to Pastor John. That's what I want you to do. So Jesus is praying for us. Okay, I invite you to ask the question, so what? My friend, here's the so what. Knowing that Jesus is praying for you, I want you to remember this because whatever life throws at you, whatever people do to you, whatever your boss is like, whatever your marriage is like, however hurtful your friends can be, I want you to remember at all times that the Savior of the world is praying for you by name in heaven right now. And let that wash over you and remind you how deeply cared for and loved you are by God. Now, before we get to our second point, I just want to call out something that many of you probably have noticed if you have your Bibles open. If you have your Bibles open, you'll notice that we're not actually looking at one verse today. We're looking at half of a verse today. Verse 34 continues. It goes on to say this, and Jesus said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do and they cast lots to divide his garments. So not only were they killing him, but as they were killing him, they were gambling to see who gets his stuff. They were slaughtering him and stealing from him at the same time. And listen to me, not just his stuff, his garments, that means his clothes. For us in the modern age, it's very hard for us to understand how absolutely horrible crucifixion was. It was designed to bring about the most intense, horrendous possible physical pain, while also making you go through the most horrendous psychological torture imaginable. Because one thing you need to know about Romans is when they crucified people, they stripped them naked first, and they crucified them naked. Jesus Christ was naked on the cross, praying for the forgiveness of people who were killing him as they were killing him, as they were stealing his clothes right in front of him. Bring me any other religious leader, because they've got nothing on Jesus. My friend, do not delay. Cast your sin aside, cast your pride aside, and lay it all before the cross, because there is no one like Him. There is no one who has done for you apart from what Christ has done for you. There is no one who will call you like Jesus will, who loves you like He does. What He did for those men is a shadow of what He's done for the entire world, what He's done for you. So do not delay. The cast lots to divide his garments and yet he still prays for them. This is how amazing of a Savior we have in Jesus Christ. Jesus prays for sinners, for you and for me, and he also provides for salvation. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. They do not know what they're doing. Okay, so what were they doing? If they don't know, what were they actually doing? Let's talk about that. See, here's what so many people get wrong about the death of Jesus. So many people, especially in our culture, so many people have this understanding that Jesus was simply this nice guy who was wrongfully murdered and it's so sad what happened to this nice guy by these evil people. Now think about it from their perspective for a second. Think about it from the authority's perspective for a moment, because it's not just what Jesus did that got him killed, it's what he said that got him killed. Let's look at some of these things. Mark 11, verse 26, Jesus said that unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven. Jesus said in John 10 30, Jesus said that he and God the Father were one. They were the same. They were one in essence. Matthew chapter 5 verse 40, Jesus said that someone asks for your coat, you are to give them your shirt as well. Wasn't Jesus living that one out here? John chapter 14 verse 6, Jesus said that He was the only way to heaven, that He was the only way to God the Father. My friends, you don't get to say the things that Jesus said unless you are who Jesus said He was. Church, I will tell you now, it was realizing this that God turned my heart and made me become a Christian. If Jesus isn't Emmanuel, if Jesus isn't God with us, if Jesus isn't the Savior of the world, if the things that Jesus said were not true, then listen to me, then he got what he deserved. You don't get to say the things that Jesus said if they're not true. You don't get to say the things that Jesus said if you weren't who Jesus said he was. If Jesus wasn't who he said he was, then do not call him a great moral teacher. Rather, he was the greatest liar the world has ever known, and he should not be venerated. He should be demonized or at least forgotten. If Jesus wasn't who he said he was, if Jesus was lying, he got what he deserved. But what's beautiful about this is that Jesus took everything he said and he went all the way with it, all the way even to his death. Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do. Jesus knew in this moment that his death on the cross was a pivotal moment in all of human history, but he knew that they didn't realize it. See, they thought they were killing a rebel against Rome. They thought they were killing another common criminal. They didn't realize that they were killing the one who is providing them salvation. What were they doing? They were killing the Savior of the world. But what was Jesus doing? He was the perfect Son of God, and in this moment He is dying for the sins of the world. He is paying the penalty that your sins and my sins deserve. He was taking the punishment that was for us to bear. The world that is around us does not realize this. Some of you sitting here right now, you do not realize what happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross. It was five long years that my wife and I were in the adoption process. But when the time finally came for us to fly to Ethiopia and to adopt our son, we sat nervously in that Ethiopian courthouse and we waited our turn to meet the judge. Now listen, this was one of the greatest moments of our lives. And it was also one of the greatest moments of our son's life, but he had no idea what was happening. But I don't think that negates how monumental of a moment it was for him. Our son did nothing to contribute to the adoption process aside from being born. Yet the adoption, becoming finalized, was one of the biggest moments of his life, and he doesn't remember it. It's like this, Christ dying on the cross is one of the biggest moments of your life, and some of you don't realize it yet. But realizing this and accepting this truth will change everything. It changes hearts. Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do. What were they doing? They were killing the Savior of the world. They were fulfilling prophecy. They were witnessing firsthand the righteous judgment of God being poured out on His Son for the sins of the world. Jesus in this moment is providing salvation for all who will place their faith in Him. Because this is what happened. This is what happened on the cross. Jesus took your sin and took the punishment you deserve so you don't have to. They don't know what they do. Jesus is reminding us how lost the world is. The world doesn't know. The world, back then, those soldiers had Jesus right in front of them. They had the crucifixion live happening right before them, and they didn't realize what was happening. Many people can look upon Jesus, many people can come to church many people can hear the gospel proclaimed and not realize their need for a Savior and It's because we are lost. It's because our hearts are hardened The world is lost and they don't realize who Christ is or what he's done The world is lost and they don't know what they do This is why Christians should be the most empathetic and compassionate people on the planets. Listen, if someone is lost in the woods and they're trying to find their way home and they're going in the wrong direction, do you hate them for it? No, of course not. Likewise, in this world, when people promote sin, we should not hate them for it. On the flip, we should be empathetic because they are lost, they're going in the wrong direction. Or even more, like Jesus, we should be pleading with God for their forgiveness because they don't know what they are doing. When I see people choose the desires of sin rather than the joy of Jesus, it's not pity I feel, it's not hatred I feel, it's empathy, it's compassion. In some ways it's sadness because I wish they knew that what Christ offers is infinitely better. When I first read this verse as an 18 year old, you want to know what I thought? I was thinking to myself, if I was in Jesus' shoes, if I was on the cross, after a lifetime of pouring out love to these people, and this is what they were doing to me, if I was in that moment, you want to know what? This is where I'd show my cards. This is where I'd show my cards. I'd be sitting there from the cross. I'd take every ounce and I'd say I can't believe you people everything I've done for you I Served you I taught you I've done all these wonderful things for you. And this is what you do for me That's what you do to me. You all can go to hell That's what I would say because I would show my cards as the sinful wretch that I am but you want to know something Jesus does show His cards here. He's showing the world exactly who He is. Jesus shows His cards and it's amazing. When I first read this verse at that moment, I realized what I was doing. I was spiritually blind, living a life of sin, putting myself before God, putting myself before others, wanting to be accepted by the world rather than wanting to be accepted by the creator of the world. This verse spoke deep into my heart. I don't know if you've noticed this, my friends, but it seems like, especially in the last generation, that people in our world have graduated from celebrating sin to finding identity in it. But they do this because they don't know what they do. They're lost. They give themselves to sin. And what we need to know, what we need to be reminded of is that sin is what put Jesus on the cross, my sin and your sin. And it was in reading this that my spirit was broken. It was in reading this that I realized that Jesus was the one worth giving my life to, that He was who He said He was. And so when we repent of our sin on Christ and Christ pays the penalty for us. And because our sin has been punished and not just ignored, this is why we can rightly say and rightly sing as we did in the beginning that justice has been satisfied and all Christians should say amen at this. And not only this, but our sin is taken away as if that wasn't enough, we are given abundant life, and if that wasn't enough, we're given eternal life, and if that wasn't enough, you know what also we get? We get brought back into the family of God. We get reconciled to God and we get to have a relationship with our Creator again, and this is because of what Jesus has done for us. And so, church, when you read these words, many of your Bibles will have these words in red, and it's very appropriate because these truly are blood-stained words, as we see how these words cut through all the noise. Church today we read a quote from Christ that changed the world. My prayer is that it will change you, and that the Spirit will call you into a faith in Jesus. But for those of us who have faith, let me remind you, Jesus prays for us, He provides salvation. And for those of you who are walking with the Lord, is there any, let me ask you, is there any better response to this any, let me ask you, is there any better response to this than to worship? If you agree with that, say Amen. Amen. Would you please stand?

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