Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] All right.
[00:00:18] My name is Brad. I'm one of the pastors at Redemption Hill. Want to welcome you if you're a guest. Grateful to God that you're here. Would love the opportunity to meet you today. So, uh, we encourage this every week, but if you are a guest, it could be a really.
[00:00:31] Man, it's just a temptation to kind of sneak in and sneak out. I get that. I've been there before. Want to encourage you not to do that. I want to encourage you to stick around for a little while, make yourself known, get to know somebody, allow them the opportunity to get to know you. I would love the opportunity to get to know you.
[00:00:45] If you are a guest, whether you're just here for a week or you're here, you know, you live maybe in Fort Worth or South Fort Worth in particular. Would just love the opportunity to connect with you and get to know you. So I'm going to pray for us in just a moment just to give those of you who have not been around over the last several weeks. At Redemption Hill, we believe in what's referred to. It's a big word. And I'll explain what it means in expositional preaching, which just means that we normally take a book of the Bible and we just walk through that book of the Bible, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. And we think that that's the. The. The correct way, that that's the best way to do things, because we just believe that God has better ideas than we do. And if sermons were up to me, coming up with a particular topic or. Or whatever every week, I. I don't think that you would be as served. I would not be as served as well, as opposed to picking a book and walking through it.
[00:01:40] However, over the last several weeks, for eight weeks, we've kind of carved out a chunk of time as a church into the new year and talking about just the most pressing cultural issues of our day and how we as followers of Jesus might think about these issues from a biblical perspective. Because, hey, if the church can't have these conversations, like, if we can't have conversations surrounding gender or surrounding sexuality or surrounding abortion or surrounding race as we're going to talk about today, if the church can't have these conversations in a way in which we can show love and charitability and honor to one another, then who in the world can?
[00:02:18] Right? So we are saved by Jesus. For those who have faith in Jesus, we are saved by Jesus. And we are called by Jesus to love one another. And Jesus says when we do that when we love one another, we are a model community to the world. So if everybody else out there in the world is raging against one another over these specific issues, let it not be so among us, okay? That we would be, by God's grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in light of what Jesus has done, in light of the reality that every single one of us in the room this morning are sinners and sufferers, everybody comes in with sin.
[00:02:56] Welcome. Welcome to the table. I come in with sin. You come in with sin. I come in with various forms of suffering. You come in with various forms of suffering. We're not put together, people. We are a hot mess, okay? All of us are a hot mess. And so we come in together as a hot mess in desperate need of a Savior. And he's come.
[00:03:14] And so we don't. We don't celebrate our own goodness. We don't celebrate our own achievements. We celebrate the goodness of another.
[00:03:21] We don't celebrate our own performance. We don't put our hope in that. We celebrate and rest in the performance of another. And that other is Jesus. He's the reason we're here. He's the reason we lift our hands. He's the reason we celebrate. So welcome if you're here. Okay, Let me pray, and then we're gonna. We're gonna jump in.
[00:03:39] Father, we love you. Thank you for your kindness and giving us your word. Thank you that you have not left us in the dark.
[00:03:47] Thank you, Jesus, that you, as the light of the world, came into the darkness of our world, of the world that you created.
[00:03:55] Thank you that you have come into the darkness of our own hearts and you have shined the light of the good news of the gospel. And so, God, I pray.
[00:04:04] I pray for us as we engage in this conversation, would you please give me wisdom and grace and love. Would you give me humility to know when to speak and when not to speak?
[00:04:15] God, I pray for us collectively as we continue to engage these conversations for our guests who are here this morning, that they would feel welcome and loved and seen as you see us.
[00:04:31] So God help us now open our hearts to hear your word, to submit to your word.
[00:04:39] God, I pray for those, for my friends in the room who maybe don't have a relationship with you this morning.
[00:04:47] That God, you would work in a way that only you can, that I never could with my words, that you would work in a way as to reveal to them their need and reveal to them the work and the person of your son, Father Jesus, that they would trust in you today for the first time.
[00:05:08] And I pray for those of us in the room who do have a relationship with you that today you would only grow our affections for you and that you would grow our love for one another.
[00:05:19] That Redemption Hill, by your grace, might be an imperfect, though loving, model community for our neighbors around us.
[00:05:29] We need you. We love you. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Hey. So I'm going to confess up front that out of all the sermons that I've prepared over this series, this one has felt exceptionally weighty to me and I could go into all the reasons why. I recognize the sensitivity of the topic.
[00:05:53] I recognize the sensitivity of the topic, the heaviness of the topic. Um, I've got friends and, and close, dear loved friends of various minority ethnic groups and have had lots of conversations and heard lots of stories and lots of perspectives and lots of experiences, have wrestled with the Word over these things. So as you listen, please continue to pray for me as I speak. I want to speak truthfully. I also want to speak pastorally as I've listened to different people give different opinions and sermons and perspectives on things. I think sometimes we, within the church, we can fall into one of two camps, right? We're either. We're either really excited about truth, which is a good thing to be excited about because truth exists, right? We're really excited about truth, but sometimes at the expense of compassion, and other times we can be so hyper focused on compassion that somewhere along the way, the truth gets a little bit muddied. And so somehow, by God's grace, though, we're going to do this imperfectly. I'm going to do this imperfectly.
[00:06:53] We want to ask Jesus to help us be about both, okay? Be about both. Truth according to God's Word and compassion. Deep compassion, deep humility for one another, specifically toward those who disagree. Okay, so let me start. Let me start with this before we jump into Luke 10.
[00:07:13] All right? If you are here today and you identify as a follower of Jesus, I want you to consider this idea or this question. Do you know that right now Jesus prays for you?
[00:07:29] Right now Jesus prays for you.
[00:07:32] A pastor once said, if we could audibly hear Jesus himself praying for us by name in the other room, our anxiety would flee.
[00:07:42] Can you imagine listening to Jesus himself, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power, the one who has authority over all things, praying for you by name?
[00:07:56] It's not a hypothetical scenario. That's a biblical reality.
[00:08:01] Jesus prays for you.
[00:08:04] If you are A follower of Jesus.
[00:08:07] What then does he pray?
[00:08:10] I think we have two clues from the Bible. Number one is in the book of Hebrews, chapter seven says this. This is just this. This has blown my mind over the last couple of weeks.
[00:08:20] It says that Jesus lives to make intercession for you.
[00:08:27] That means that Jesus right now, who has lived, died for our sins, risen from the dead, victorious over our sins, one day will return as the ruling and reigning king. He lives to make intercession for you. That means, if we could say it like this. What get what gets Jesus up in the morning? Not saying he goes to sleep, he doesn't. But. But think about the what. What moves Jesus to make intercession for you and for me?
[00:08:57] That means he is our mediator. He's the one mediator between God and man. He is. He is advocating for you when you sin and when you fail, Jesus is advocating for you if you're a follower of Him. So that's one thing. He lives to make intercession. The second thing is in John chapter 17, before Jesus goes to the cross to die for our sins, he prays to the Father on our behalf. What does he pray? He prays for our unity.
[00:09:30] That you and I, as followers of Jesus, would not be divided, but that we would be one.
[00:09:39] One family with one Father, united by one Spirit, forgiven and cleansed by one blood, the blood of Jesus.
[00:09:52] He prays that we would be one. And Jesus says that in our oneness with one another, in our walking out the unity. And we'll talk about this more in a moment that He Himself was going to purchase with his own blood, that in our fighting for and walking out this unity that he's already given us by his blood, we would represent God that when we don't walk out that unity with one another, when we choose divisiveness, when we choose fight and quarreling, when we do all of these things that the world outside of the church does in ways that the world outside of the church treats one another, when we do that, we tell a lie about God.
[00:10:42] So Jesus, Jesus prays for us.
[00:10:49] And if Jesus prays for our unity, and that's a high priority to Jesus, So today, just to kind of segue us into the text, we're going to talk about the word reconciliation.
[00:11:01] Okay?
[00:11:04] So if Jesus is praying, and here's what reconciliation is, this is defined by John Perkins, very well. Respected brother, Father, spiritual Father within the church, also highly respected involvement in the civil rights movement. John Perkins says biblical reconciliation, the removal of tension between parties and the restoration of loving relationship.
[00:11:33] Okay, it's the removal of tension between parties, or in this specific scenario, ethnic groups, the removal of tension between parties and the restoration of loving relationships. But here's the deal. If we're going to talk about horizontal reconciliation, reconciliation between ethnic groups, nationalities, people groups, if we're going to talk about that reconciliation, first we have to build our lives upon the foundation of vertical reconciliation.
[00:12:08] Does that make sense? There is no horizontal reconciliation without vertical reconciliation, meaning the tension that exists between sinners and God.
[00:12:20] Okay, so first we have to understand the tension between sinners and God, and then we can talk about the implications of horizontal reconciliation. Okay, so what is our greatest enemy to walking in or fighting for this unity, the unity that Jesus has purchased, the unity that Jesus calls us to walk out? I think one of the greatest enemies to this is the sin of pride, which exists in all of our hearts. And specifically that pride being expressed in the sin of partiality, the sin of pride expressing itself and the sin of partiality. James, chapter 2, verse 1. The brother of Jesus says, my brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you hold faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. What James is saying there is. He's saying faith in Jesus and partiality toward people can't go together.
[00:13:17] It's like oil and water.
[00:13:20] If you and I have partiality in our heart and that partiality goes unrepented of willingly, you cannot at the same time say that you have faith in Jesus.
[00:13:30] But we live in Texas.
[00:13:32] Everybody has faith in Jesus in Texas. Everybody's a Christian in Texas. As long as I vote the right way, I've got a relationship with God, I'm good.
[00:13:40] But the New Testament would testify strongly against that reality.
[00:13:46] So it's the sin of pride and the sin of partiality. But here's the thing, y'. All. All of us have this.
[00:13:53] So the litmus test of Christianity is not, do you have pride in your heart? If that were the case, we would all fail.
[00:14:01] But what do we do when we're confronted with this reality in our hearts?
[00:14:11] I want to talk about, and I promise I'm going to get to the text in just a moment. I want. Before we get to the text, I do want to highlight, as I've sought to listen and learn, and I continue to listen and learn. I want to continue to listen and learn over this topic of race and ethnicity and how we as a church, not necessarily Redemption Hill, But I want to start the conversation with us.
[00:14:36] Okay, I want to start the conversation with us, because this is important. So before we do this. I want to talk just about a few things that seem to me biblically and socioeconomically, to talk about a few pitfalls as we have these conversations.
[00:14:53] A few things that I want to encourage us biblically to avoid as we have these conversations. All right, number one is colorblind language.
[00:15:05] I want to encourage us to avoid colorblind language. I don't see color kind of a thing. I'm not racist. I don't see color. I want to encourage us to avoid that.
[00:15:16] Why?
[00:15:17] Three reasons. It's unhelpful, it's dishonest, and it's unbiblical.
[00:15:24] God created Genesis 1, 27, Genesis 2. God created every single human being in his image, every person, in various unique ways, reflects something of the beauty of God himself.
[00:15:39] So why would we kick against that reality? Why not rather embrace that with joy?
[00:15:47] Every single person that you look at in the eyes, every person that you interact with every day is made in the image of God.
[00:15:57] So we need to avoid that and we need to embrace the good gift of ethnic diversity because God created us that way.
[00:16:05] Okay, number two is we need to avoid a denial of the history of racism in the United States. Now, here's the deal. This is not what the sermon is about, but I think this is important for us to talk about. Okay?
[00:16:17] Wherever you land on the spectrum here, whether you're a Fox News person or a CNN person or maybe something in between, if that exists.
[00:16:25] Wherever you land on the spectrum here, we have a tendency to label each other very quickly, don't we?
[00:16:32] Okay, well, you're talking about that you must be woke.
[00:16:36] Or you're talking about that you must be a racist. Stop doing that.
[00:16:42] That's nonsense for us in the church. We can't do.
[00:16:48] Can't do that.
[00:16:50] We ought to be able as Christians to open our Bibles and look at history and say, hey, this existed and it does still exist in various ways.
[00:17:02] So we need not deny those realities that in the United States there were laws of the land that did reflect deep seated racism in the human heart, primarily. And this is not all. It's not all black and white, but primarily against African Americans. And. And it does have some continued implications that are very nuanced and difficult. And that's not what the sermon is about. But we cannot deny that that's not helpful.
[00:17:25] It's not loving to do that. It's not right.
[00:17:30] Number three, we need to be quick to speak and slow to listen. I'm sorry, that's what we.
[00:17:37] Oh, my gosh. All Right.
[00:17:39] It's going to happen. I'm glad it happened with that. All right, so that's what we need to avoid. Okay?
[00:17:47] Avoid being quick to speak and slow to listen. Do the opposite of that. Okay?
[00:17:52] Be quick to listen and slow to speak.
[00:17:55] Like, let's just ask one another questions.
[00:17:58] Let's get better at asking one another questions and then listening.
[00:18:03] Like, instead of thinking you have the answer already for what this person needs to hear. I'm bad at this too, man.
[00:18:08] Like, we need to be quicker to listen, slower to speak.
[00:18:15] Your perspective is not the only perspective.
[00:18:18] My perspective is not the only perspective. My experience is not the only experience.
[00:18:25] Okay?
[00:18:26] Don't label each other.
[00:18:28] Don't do what the world does.
[00:18:31] Just listen, ask questions, learn, grow, and love doesn't mean we never speak. There is a time to speak.
[00:18:40] Okay? So that's the third thing.
[00:18:44] The fourth thing.
[00:18:47] Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. The fourth thing is a misprioritization of sociology and sociological theories over the supremacy of God's written word. Got to be careful with that.
[00:18:58] We have to be in all of these conversations. We have to be very, very careful to not put sociology, which has a place in conversation, as does psychology, other social sciences. They have a place, but not the supreme place.
[00:19:16] Does that make sense?
[00:19:17] The supreme thing in these conversations has to be the Bible has to be, okay, this is how we know truth.
[00:19:29] If you're a Christian in the room, if you're not a Christian, but if you're a Christian in the room, you have to. You and I have to submit ourselves to the Bible. Ultimately, what has God said about these issues?
[00:19:44] And then lastly, we need to be careful to not view racial reconciliation or race itself as the point, as has been the case with all of these conversations, like race, ethnicity is not the point.
[00:20:00] Paul says in First Corinthians 15, this is of first importance. What does he say? Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Ethnic reconciliation is a wonderful, beautiful, amazing consequence of the gospel.
[00:20:21] Okay? The gospel is the good news of what Jesus has done for you and done for me.
[00:20:28] That's the gospel.
[00:20:30] And out of that gospel flows all these amazing benefits.
[00:20:35] Horizontal reconciliation being one of those. Does that make sense? All right, so let's avoid those things by God's grace. Let's jump into the text and let's talk about reconciliation. Okay? We're going to start with reconciliation to God. So let me. Let me start with the beginning of the text on one Occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? This is verse 25, what must I do to inherit eternal life? So this man who stood up did not stand up to ask Jesus a curious question. He stood up to test Jesus.
[00:21:15] He wanted to put, this is always happening to Jesus throughout his life in the Gospels, People always wanted to test him. And Jesus is amazing countless ways is also brilliant.
[00:21:26] So Jesus wouldn't feed into the bait. He would ask a follow up question.
[00:21:30] Okay, answer his question with a question. Nonetheless, the teacher of the law, who was a very religious man, stood up to test Jesus and said, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
[00:21:44] That is the question, isn't it?
[00:21:47] If you're here today, the most important pressing need you have is not how do we figure out racial reconciliation?
[00:21:59] The most important, pressing need you have today is answering this question, have you been reconciled to God?
[00:22:09] Have you been reconciled to God?
[00:22:14] What must I do to inherit eternal life? That's an odd question.
[00:22:20] Here's why.
[00:22:21] You know why it's odd. Anybody think about the word inherit?
[00:22:27] Who inherits things?
[00:22:30] Say it again.
[00:22:33] Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, let's just make this small group time. This is great.
[00:22:36] A child. Okay. Yeah. You have to be a family member to inherit something. You have to be part of a family.
[00:22:42] If you're not a part of the family, you're not inheriting. You got to be a part of the family. Do you do anything to inherit something?
[00:22:49] Can you do things to inherit? No.
[00:22:52] Isn't that interesting?
[00:22:54] Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
[00:23:02] Interesting.
[00:23:04] What does Jesus do?
[00:23:06] He says, what is written in the law.
[00:23:09] He replied, how do you read it? He answered, I'm sorry, how do you read it?
[00:23:15] The man answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:23:24] You have answered correctly. Jesus said, do this and you will live.
[00:23:31] So Jesus answered the man's question with a series of questions.
[00:23:37] And then the man in response to Jesus question regarding what he needs to do to inherit eternal life, quotes from the Bible. The man knew knew his Bible. Deuteronomy 6. 5 says, this is from the Old Testament for those who are not familiar.
[00:23:55] Deuteronomy 6 says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, which implies total devotion to loving and delighting in God.
[00:24:04] Total devotion to loving and delighting in God.
[00:24:10] Leviticus 19:18, another Old Testament book says, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Then he goes on, Leviticus 18:34 in the chapter before, the foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. So the man knew these passages from the Old Testament. And as Jesus asks him a question, he answers with love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus does not disagree with the man. He doesn't say, no, no, no, that's law. That's not what I'm talking about. Jesus affirms and he says, yeah, if you do these things perfectly, you'll live.
[00:24:57] Says the man desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
[00:25:07] So here's the problem the man's in, and it's the same problem that you and I are in today, okay?
[00:25:13] The man I struggle to believe that the man actually wanted the things that he said he wanted because of the way that he asked these questions, okay? So in the man's mind, I'm a pretty good guy, and if I do these things, if I love the Lord with all my heart and I love my neighbor as myself, I could inherit eternal. I could earn eternal life.
[00:25:44] And Jesus asks questions in order to draw out the intent of the man's heart. If the man was really concerned about loving his neighbor, he wouldn't have asked, who is my neighbor?
[00:25:58] But because he wanted to justify himself, he did. So if the man really wanted to love his neighbor, he might have asked something like, how do I love my neighbor?
[00:26:07] But that wasn't necessarily a concern of the man.
[00:26:11] And so Jesus says, if you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself, then you'll live.
[00:26:19] The problem for the man and the problem for us is we just don't. And we can't do it on a show of hands. Anybody in the room, on your own, every moment of every day, love in and delight in God perfectly.
[00:26:33] Anybody?
[00:26:38] Show of hands, anybody in the room, love in and delight in your neighbor perfectly.
[00:26:52] So there's a problem.
[00:26:56] If we don't do these things, how then will we live?
[00:27:03] How will we inherit this eternal life that all of us so desperately need, this reconciliation to God that all of us so, so desperately need? Jesus goes on, and he tells a story in reply. Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So to a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.
[00:27:55] The next day he took out two denarii, that's two days wages, and gave them to the innkeeper.
[00:28:02] Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.
[00:28:08] Which of these three, Jesus says, do you think was the neighbor? To the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
[00:28:14] The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him.
[00:28:19] Jesus told him, you go and do likewise.
[00:28:26] We have a problem in that you and I, on the basis of what we do and how we live, cannot be reconciled to God.
[00:28:35] We do not love the Lord our God perfectly, with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. We do not love our neighbor as ourself. We do not do these things. We are guilty.
[00:28:45] So then the question is, what do we do?
[00:28:49] Well, to know what we do, we have to ask a question prior to that, which is, who is the Good Samaritan?
[00:28:59] Who is the ultimate Good Samaritan?
[00:29:03] Here's what you have to do with the Bible. And this is from DA Carson really helped me think through this.
[00:29:10] You have to read it in its context.
[00:29:14] You got to zoom out of the story a little bit.
[00:29:16] You have to look at the surrounding stories.
[00:29:19] Look at the Gospel of Luke as a whole.
[00:29:22] What's going on here in this storyline in the book of Luke?
[00:29:26] Well, here's what we know. Jesus is on his way to the cross.
[00:29:32] He's on his way to the cross.
[00:29:36] Jesus is about to go sit in the living room with Mary and Martha, where Martha's going to be up frantically running around trying to clean things and get ready for Jesus and serve Jesus and do all these things. And Mary's going to sit at the feet of Jesus.
[00:29:48] She's going to listen to him, she's going to bask in his presence. That's all. She's going to do nothing to offer him, nothing to bring him, just to sit in his presence.
[00:29:58] If the story of the Good Samaritan was only about how you and I live The Christian life.
[00:30:04] Meaning that we need to leave this place and go be the Good Samaritan to people.
[00:30:08] If that was ultimately what it was about, then don't you think Jesus would have corrected Mary?
[00:30:15] Mary sat at the feet of Jesus doing nothing.
[00:30:19] Jesus might have looked at Mary and said, mary, you got to be a better Good Samaritan.
[00:30:27] Who's the ultimate Good Samaritan?
[00:30:29] Jesus.
[00:30:32] Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan.
[00:30:36] Who's the man left out on the side of the road?
[00:30:38] You and I.
[00:30:44] What does a Good Samaritan do?
[00:30:47] You just notice the actions of this particular Samaritan. Samaritan, by the way, was half Jewish.
[00:30:55] So the Samaritans were despised by the Jews.
[00:30:59] Samaritans hated the Jews, the Jews hated the Samaritans. Modern day equivalent of this might be something like if the priest is a, I don't know, famous preacher, pastor, everybody knows something about, passes by the man who's dead or half dead on the side of the road. And then a Levite who might be like a small church Baptist pastor passes by on the side of the road.
[00:31:25] The Samaritan could be seen as maybe like a Muslim.
[00:31:35] But notice the actions of the Good Samaritan says as he traveled, he came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
[00:31:52] Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan. I want you to apply this in the sense of this is what Jesus does with us.
[00:32:02] Jesus stops for us.
[00:32:07] Jesus sees us multiple places in the Gospels. Jesus compassion for people is paired with his seeing of them.
[00:32:22] Think about the eyes of Jesus.
[00:32:24] If his compassion is paired with his seeing of people, then the way that he looked at people must have just been amazing, especially given the people that he looked at in that way.
[00:32:36] The prostitutes, the tax collectors, the destitute, the broken, the beaten, the sinful.
[00:32:43] They were used to being looked to a certain way, looked at a certain way, not the way Jesus looked at them.
[00:32:51] The woman who's caught in the act of adultery in John chapter eight, she was used to being looked to a particular way by men.
[00:32:57] It's not the way Jesus looked at her.
[00:33:02] Jesus sees us. Jesus has compassion on us.
[00:33:08] Jesus heals our wounds.
[00:33:12] Jesus takes care of us as the Good Samaritan did to the man.
[00:33:17] Jesus gives us what is his. The Good Samaritan says, hey, I'll cover the cost of this man's lodging and for him to be healed, I'll cover the cost. Anything else, by the way, that you owe? Credit it to me.
[00:33:34] And then Jesus saves us to the Uttermost Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan. And you and I will never know and learn by God's grace, though imperfectly, what it means to love our neighbor as ourself until we first know what it means to be loved by the Good Samaritan himself.
[00:34:02] It is when and only when we come to know and experience the love of God through Jesus for us that we can truly learn to love one another. Rightly.
[00:34:20] Jesus reconciles sinners to God.
[00:34:27] What's our hope as we read the Law?
[00:34:31] Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength. Nope, didn't do it. Can't do it.
[00:34:36] Love my neighbor as myself. Nope, didn't do it. Can't do it.
[00:34:42] What's my hope then, for life?
[00:34:44] It's in Jesus.
[00:34:48] It's only in Jesus.
[00:34:50] We sang that a few moments ago.
[00:34:54] All who trust in him today will find healing in his sacrifice.
[00:35:00] That's it.
[00:35:02] Will you trust him?
[00:35:05] Will you turn to him?
[00:35:07] Will you embrace him by faith, turning from your sin, trusting in Jesus and being reconciled to God by grace.
[00:35:23] What a wonderful hope. And unfortunately, the man of the law missed this.
[00:35:30] Why? Because he sought to justify himself.
[00:35:37] Don't do it.
[00:35:40] Thinking that you can justify yourself will either lead you to utter arrogance or hopeless despair.
[00:35:50] Stop striving and trust in him and who he is and what he's accomplished. We must be reconciled to God. But here's Here's a wonderful implication of the Gospel.
[00:36:04] Jesus did not just reconcile us to God, he reconciled us to one another.
[00:36:10] Ephesians 2, 13, 16 but now in Christ, you who are once far off talking to Gentiles, have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace. Who has made the two groups, Jew and Gentile, won and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.
[00:36:32] His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace one, one humanity out of the two, and in one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Galatians 3:27, 29 for all of you who are baptized into Christ, who have faith in Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free. There is, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. And then finally, in Matthew 12, I love this. Verses 48 through 50, Jesus says, asks who is my mother?
[00:37:26] Remember when they're calling on Jesus and they're saying, hey, your family's outside. Your mother and your brothers are outside and they're waiting for you. Jesus says, who's my mother? Who are my brothers?
[00:37:34] Then he pointed to his disciples or to his friends and said, look, these are my mother and my brothers.
[00:37:42] Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, which is to believe upon the Son of God, anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, my sister and my mother.
[00:37:56] Jesus has reconciled us to God for those who put their faith in him, and he has reconciled us to one another.
[00:38:05] There is no room, zero room, emphatically zero room for any and every form of partiality, prejudice and racism in the body of Christ from any people group to another, from any ethnicity to another.
[00:38:26] He's made us one body. This is. I've thought about this this week as positional horizontal reconciliation.
[00:38:35] So there is an element of this that Christ has already accomplished positionally.
[00:38:42] For those who trust in Jesus and follow Jesus, we are family.
[00:38:48] You're my brothers and sisters. I am your brother. We are family. Regardless of what your ethnicity is, regardless of what your nationality is, regardless of where you're from, all of those things matter, and they're all beautiful, and they need to be embraced and accepted by us together.
[00:39:04] Diverse family. Praise God.
[00:39:10] So we don't. We're thinking about this idea of oneness. We don't lose our ethnicity. That's not what we're talking about.
[00:39:17] We embrace with joy the various and different ethnicities that God has created in his image.
[00:39:24] But we recognize that on a more foundational level, what is most true about you and what is most true about me is not our ethnicity, but it's our oneness. In the Gospel, God has made us family, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, family.
[00:39:47] Just in closing, I want to kind of ask three questions and I'm going to pray for us. So if this is our positional reconciliation, that we've been reconciled to God and we've been reconciled to one another through the cross as brothers and sisters, how might we learn to walk out this positional reconciliation that we've been given in Jesus in order to cultivate experiential ethnic reconciliation?
[00:40:13] You see the two differences in those two things. We have positional reconciliation, which we have already been reconciled to God and with one another. But there's this reality that we live in the already and the not yet, like we're not there yet. So how do we continue to fight for the unity that We've already been given so that we would be a model community to those outside of the church.
[00:40:35] How do we become this model community that Jesus has saved us to be? We do it by modeling the Good Samaritan Jesus.
[00:40:43] When Jesus says, you go and do likewise, he speaks those words to you and I as well as he's done to us. So we are to do with one another as he's done to us and with us.
[00:40:57] So are we to do to our non Christian neighbors specifically, and especially not only, but especially those non Christian neighbors who are ethnically different from you and I.
[00:41:14] How are we to do this? We are to model Jesus.
[00:41:19] We learn to stop talking as much and we learn to listen.
[00:41:25] We learn to see people as people and not as objects for our discussions and theoretical debates.
[00:41:35] We choose to move toward others and not away from them.
[00:41:43] Like study.
[00:41:45] Study the touch of Jesus through the Gospels.
[00:41:49] Like how Jesus would. He would physically move toward people in order to not give them dignity and worth, but to show and communicate the dignity and worth that they already had as human beings.
[00:42:08] So we're to move toward people, not away from them.
[00:42:13] We're to learn to ask truly curious questions, not leading ones.
[00:42:20] Can you share your story with me?
[00:42:23] Can you share your experiences with me so that we can learn together?
[00:42:33] Like, this is not on my notes, but Sydney's not in the room, so she can't give me the look of like, don't go down that road. So I'm going to do it.
[00:42:42] Like, man, chill out on the news cycle stuff, okay?
[00:42:50] Like, it's only producing more rage in you than you think.
[00:42:55] And in me.
[00:42:57] It's not good for you.
[00:43:00] It's like.
[00:43:01] I mean, it's like eating McDonald's every day.
[00:43:06] It kind of tastes good because we typically go to the news channels that meet our echo chambers of thought and perspective.
[00:43:14] Kind of feels good to talk about the other person that way, but that's not the way of the church.
[00:43:23] It's not the way.
[00:43:26] If a Republican and a Democrat can't come together within the church and come to the table and have civil, loving discourse, nobody can.
[00:43:38] If an African American and an Anglo and a Latino and an Asian person can't come to the table and talk about race and talk about reconciliation and hash through and listen to experiences and stories and all of those kinds of things and do so in a loving way, then no, nobody can.
[00:44:04] All right, why. Why is fighting to live.
[00:44:10] Why is fighting to live in ethnic unity so important? Okay, so why is us fighting for unity with one another?
[00:44:19] So important.
[00:44:20] Jesus prayed for it. John 17 could have prayed for a lot of things. Jesus prayed for this. Father, let them be one even as we are one. Number two. Jesus purchased it with his own blood. That's very, very important. Jesus died for this.
[00:44:38] That we would be reconciled to God, reconciled to one another. He died for that.
[00:44:44] And then lastly, because by it, by us fighting to walk out that unity, as Paul talks about in Ephesians 4:1:6, by it, the world around us will see the true and beautiful nature of God himself.
[00:44:56] God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, distinct in person, united in nature.
[00:45:08] Lastly, what is our hope as we stumble forward together in fighting to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace that we have already been given? What's our hope as we stumble forward? We're not going to get it perfect. We're to going. Going to mess up. We're going to say things that offend. We're going to. We're just. We're just not. We're not going to do it perfectly. But, man, one of my hopes behind this series is I'm like.
[00:45:31] And I've been nervous about every sermon I've preached. But like, we just. Let's just get it started.
[00:45:37] Let's get the conversation started, okay? Keeping the main thing, the main thing which is the gospel and talking about these issues and learning to do so in love and civility.
[00:45:48] Okay? Not going to do it perfectly. So what's our hope as we fail forward, so to speak?
[00:45:55] Our hope is in Revelation 7, verses 9 through 17. And I want to read it and then I want to pray. Okay, this is where we're going. This is where God is taking us.
[00:46:09] This is where God's taking the world.
[00:46:14] So if you're in here today and you're not a Christian, so grateful to God that you're here, what an honor it is that you're here.
[00:46:20] Your only hope for eternal life will not and does not come through you doing better.
[00:46:28] It comes by you repenting of your sin and believing upon Jesus.
[00:46:32] And for those of us in the room who have been reconciled to God by grace, through faith in Jesus and have been reconciled to one another. We have to keep this hope in mind as we continue to fight for the unity that Jesus has purchased on our behalf in order to be a model community to the world.
[00:46:50] Here's what Revelation 7, 9, 17 says. After this I looked, and there.
[00:46:55] After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count. Listen to this. From every nation tribe, people and language.
[00:47:08] Standing before the throne and before the Lamb. That's Jesus.
[00:47:13] They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. All angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne throne and worshiped God saying, amen. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen.
[00:47:42] Then one of the elders asked me, these in white robes, who are they and where'd they come from?
[00:47:47] I answered, sir, you know.
[00:47:50] And he said, these are they who have come out of the great tribulation.
[00:47:54] They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
[00:47:59] Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
[00:48:08] Never again will they hunger. Never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. He will lead them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. This is heaven and it's coming. And let's pray.
[00:48:55] Sa.
