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Immigration, Israel, and faith in a divided age · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

0:39
Welcome to Faith Is.
0:40
I'm Pastor Rick Stevens, and I'm really glad you joined us today.
0:44
Make yourself comfortable.
0:46
Um, I guess that's a little bit of a warning.
0:48
We're going to talk about what some people think is a very uncomfortable subject for most of our time together today, but do not be afraid.
0:57
Take heart.
0:58
We're going to look at that and we're going to think together about that.
1:02
I guess, in a sense, I'm just going to talk out loud with some ideas and invite you in to consider it for yourselves.
1:09
After all, we're here on America out loud, so we want to think out loud.
1:14
I do that rather frequently, and sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's well, sometimes it's just what it is.
1:20
But today, on faith is, we're going to take a look at some of the dynamics around this immigration discussion.
1:28
And I don't want to get into the deep weeds.
1:30
I want to get into some principles that I think will help us sort out things going forward.
1:36
So that's one of the things we're going to get to.
1:38
We're going to get to a couple of other things.
1:40
We're going to talk a little bit about the choices you have for your child and for their education, particularly K through 12.
1:48
And I want to talk a little bit more about the rise of anti-Semitism in the world.
1:54
But I want to start by giving you some good news.
1:57
I think last week I mentioned that the Florida legislature was considering a bill that would replace in the state's official documents and in teaching materials like textbooks.
2:11
In all of those documents and all of those books, it would replace a reference to what we call the holy land or Israel, that would replace a reference to that area of the world as Palestine with the proper biblical name for it, Judea and Samaria.
2:29
Well, I think that's very significant.
2:31
I think it's more than symbolic.
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I think it recognizes what historically that area of land has been called.
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After all, the name Palestine came from the Romans' attempt to stamp out the influence and even the presence of Jewish people in that area.
2:49
And so I'm really really intrigued and encouraged that this bill is making its way through the Florida legislature.
2:57
Both the House and the Senate will see, I'm hopeful that they will pass this renaming bill to call what is often called the West Bank, sometimes referred to as Palestine, to actually call it what it is, Judea and Samaria, or sometimes it's Judea.
3:15
I'm never sure which way it is, but pronounce it confidently and everybody will think you're right.
3:20
Well, maybe.
3:21
Okay, so that bill is advancing.
3:23
Now, I'm not naive.
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I've had a little experience around the legislature, and I know that if certain, how should I say powerful people, I think that's exactly the best description of it, don't want something to happen, they find ways to stop it, sometimes even at the last minute.
3:42
And sometimes they just lay low, let these things kind of play out, and then maybe they have been getting support, maybe they have been advancing, but they will find a way to stop it, and sometimes they find a way to stop it so that nobody can blame them, but they really were the ones that stopped it.
4:05
So anyway, guardedly optimistic that we'll have Judea and Samaria in Florida very soon.
4:12
Another thing that I want to just remind all us of all of us about, you know, a lot of times certain labels are used to disparage a group of people to actually call them something that the label evokes in the listener's mind.
4:32
It's usually a way to denigrate them, to cast them in an unfavorable light, and so it is with the term Christian Zionism or Christian Zionist.
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Often that label, that term, is used to cast doubt on someone to make them either not believable or not credible or something like that.
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I think that's really unfortunate.
5:03
We use labels like that sometimes because we lack a better argument.
5:07
But in this case, I don't think there's anything that any of us should think is disparaging about being labeled or identified with or identified as a Christian Zionist.
5:20
I totally agree with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who is the United States ambassador to the nation of Israel.
5:27
When he reminds all of us, and I've seen him quoted as doing this more than once, so you can probably find it too if you look, but he's been quoted as saying, if God doesn't keep his promises to his people, what makes us think he will keep any of his promises?
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And he raises a good point and a very important perspective because God did promise Abram, later Abram's name was changed to Abraham.
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God promised Abram that he would have land.
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We call it the holy land.
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It's defined in Genesis when they had these conversations.
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And Abram believed God, that God would keep his promise, and God has been keeping that promise for all these years.
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Now, yes, there are disputes about exactly what those boundaries are, and from what I can tell, Israel has never had possession of the totality of the land God promised.
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I don't know all the reasons for that.
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I haven't really looked into that to try to make that uh how should I say more clear in my mind.
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I just understand that they haven't been able to occupy entirely or possess entirely the whole geographic area, God promised.
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But God has promised them that land, and God keeps his promises.
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And so we should not be surprised that Israel has possession of the land, nor should we think that that's wrong.
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That was God's gift to his people through Abram.
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So really, to be a Christian Zionist is simply to recognize that God keeps his promises, and that God has given his people this land.
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So they have a historic, because it goes back thousands of years before anybody else lived there.
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God gave them this land to occupy and take over.
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Yes, there were a few people that lived there that for God's reasons, and some of those are that they were very wicked people.
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They had to be displaced.
7:34
That was part of God's plan to give Israel the land.
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They were in some sense usurpers because God's people had lived there prior to the exodus from Egypt, so it wasn't like this was a new idea.
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So God has given his people that land, both historically and biblically.
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And that's what it means to be a Christian Zionist.
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It's to recognize that God's people, the Jewish people, have a right to exist and a right to live in that land that God gave them.
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That's really no more complicated than that.
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So good news that Judea and Samaria Bill is advancing through the Florida legislature, clarifying information that a Christian Zionist simply recognizes God's promise to his people, and that God will give his people that land to possess.
8:29
They have they are the only people that has a historic and biblical claim to that land.
8:35
Third thing I want to mention is a little bit totally different from those things, and that's about the idea of school choice.
8:43
Most of my life, most of most of our lives, we have understood and accepted, sometimes more happily than others, that our children would attend the school defined by their zip code where they lived, that's where they went to school.
9:03
And for much of my life, that didn't seem to be a problem.
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When I went to school, I didn't think, I still don't think that we were inflicted with all of the unbelievably unbiblical and harmful ideologies that students face in classrooms today.
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However, at the same time, I never imagined in my lifetime that we would see the rise of school choice like it has in recent months.
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I read recently that the National Secretary for Education has suggested that before long, well over half of the students in this country will have opportunity, opportunity related to school choice.
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In other words, they can choose their education.
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Their parents can choose where they want them to go to school, where they want them to be educated.
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What kind of information they want them exposed to?
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That all makes sense to me.
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My reason for mentioning it here is because that is spreading across the country.
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There are people that say, and wouldn't I like to agree with them?
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I just don't know all the details.
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And so I'd like to agree with them that Florida leads the way in school choice.
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There's evidence of that.
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Over half of our students attend a school different from the school defined by where they live, their zip code.
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Different from, as you, as we might say, their assigned district school.
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In other words, their parents have exercised their choice opportunities.
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And there are opportunities for choice in Florida.
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The reason I mention this is because your state may give you more opportunities than you know about.
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And even if you are not able to exercise choice options, it may very well be coming to a state near you.
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And I want to encourage parents to look for a place that will reinforce what you believe at home and not tear it down.
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Find a place that will help your child learn.
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If your child struggles with reading or writing or arithmetic, whatever it might be, find an educational environment that will help them learn.
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It's possible, and in many states, it's encouraged by the state.
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So let's find the best place for our kids.
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And now you have so many more in so many more places.
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Is it perfect?
11:46
No.
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Will it ever be?
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No, I don't think it'll ever be perfect.
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Is it a lot better than it's been ever been?
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Yes.
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And yes, we should take advantage of that.
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And yes, we who are parents are responsible for the education of our children.
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So why wouldn't we be looking for the best places for them to learn?
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I want to encourage you to do that.
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That's really important.
12:11
All right, let's move on to the uh the hot topic of the day.
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Now I wrestle with this sometimes.
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I think every week, particularly as I prepare for my Sunday sermon, uh every week I could address a current events issue and talk about it.
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There's so much going on, and so much of it ignores or or absolutely flaunts biblical principles, and so we could talk about so many things from that way.
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Um, but I wanted to talk about the immigration problem, shall we say, or maybe you'd want to call it the immigration situation from a little different perspective.
12:57
Now, I have said for a long time, if anybody wants to listen, and maybe a few people do, that the great gift the church has for our world today is the truth and a commitment to the truth.
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We live in a world of deception.
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People are always, it seems, trying to convince us of something, and there's always the problem of spin.
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I don't know if you use that term, but uh people always want to reframe things so that we'll look at them differently.
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Now I understand when you frame something, you're doing it to help people think like you do.
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I do that.
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Everybody that tries to communicate does that.
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The problem we have is not that framing is inappropriate.
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The problem we have is that people are actually using those kinds of things to deceive us, to lie to us.
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I'm just amazed at that.
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Now, I remember when a lot of this started many years ago.
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I remember because I remember the president who was involved in this, and I remember that during President Clinton's term, people in the media out loud, openly began to admit that he lied about some things.
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Well, now some people say all politicians lie.
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I'm not so sure about that.
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Um I'm not so sure that they don't all lie, but I want to have a little bit more optimism.
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But at any rate, the media was pretty honest at that point and recognizing that then President Clinton was lying to us.
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But here's what they did.
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Instead of calling for accountability and saying tell the truth, they just would kind of shake their heads and smile, so to speak, and marvel at at how good he was at lying.
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Well, that's offensive.
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It should be offensive to all of us, but from then on, we have seen, and it may have started before that, uh be sure you I'm allowing for that, but increasingly from then until now, we have seen the emergence of spin, putting a twist or turn or perspective on something to convince us that this is what's true.
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Whether it's true or not, people use things to make it seem true.
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So we in the church now have a challenge.
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We have to sort out what is true from what is deception and focus on and make our decisions on that which is true.
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Not always easy, can be done.
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It's best done if we start with biblical principles.
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So I want to try in the time we have together this weekend to sort through and answer this kind of simple question.
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As Christians, what is our response?
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What is our biblical response to the current immigration situation?
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Many respects, this immigration situation has been manufactured.
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In many respects, it is distorted, all out of shape by all kinds of people.
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That's where this deception comes in.
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And to be sure people all across the spectrum of truth are using other people as pawns to advance their power and sometimes, maybe most of the time, money.
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So how are we going to sort this out?
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How are we as Christians to respond?
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What's our biblical response to this situation?
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Well, since we can't really understand it necessarily 100%, um we feel like we're in 1 Corinthians church 13, where we see through a glass darkly, we can't get the whole picture, and I want to allow for that that we don't always get the whole picture, because people don't always tell us everything that we think would be helpful for us to make a decision.
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But based on what we know and what we can count on, can we formulate some ideas toward a response as Christians?
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Now, in a sense, and I know some people struggle with this, in a sense, Jesus is the answer to that question.
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Now, some people say, well, that's just what you Christians say, that's naive.
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You just kind of fall back on that every time that Jesus is the answer.
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Well, the reason we do that is because we believe it, but we believe it probably in different ways than what people think.
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And so I want us to to sort that out a little bit.
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It reminds me of the story of the kids in Sunday school.
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Now, this story sounds like it could be true.
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I don't know that it is.
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I don't know that it isn't me personally, I doubt that it is, but it is illustrative, and it will help us.
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So the kids were in Sunday school, and as part of the way this particular teacher handled the class, he would ask them questions about the Bible stories and about the gospel and about Jesus and one thing or another, and he would ask serious questions and expect the kids to answer them, but occasionally he would throw in an extra question and uh just try to keep the kids focused and to have a little fun with them.
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So one Sunday he was asking them questions like he had usually done, and he threw in the question, he says, what is gray climbs trees, eats acorns, and has a long bushy tail.
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Now, these were fairly young students, so they were thinking about that, and uh the teacher noticed one boy in deep thought and a whole bunch of others immediately, oh, they knew the answer, and all at once the little guy he had an answer, and so the teacher called on this student who seemed to be really thinking that through.
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And the little guy said to the teacher, well, I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds a lot like a squirrel to me.
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Well, that's a little bit of an illustration of how sometimes Christians and church people are accused of being simplistic when we say everything is answered by the name Jesus.
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Well, everything really is properly understood in that in that regard.
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But today, we um we don't want to fall back on such as such an answer is just to say that the answer is Jesus.
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It is because.
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He represents the way, the truth, and the life.
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Um, and it's true in terms of the foundation of our life.
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But you know, some problems you need different kinds of answers.
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If you have a flat tire and and you need to keep going on your errands or something, then you need air in the tire.
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You know, that's the answer.
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But if you need a foundation that keeps your life moving in the right direction, then yes, the foundation begins and ends with the person of Jesus.
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So let's tackle this idea and and let's wrestle with this a little bit.
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So to begin with, let's can we agree that the answer to the immigration problem.
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And it is a problem.
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There's no no one really that doubts that we have a problem.
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Now, people will doubt what that means.
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They'll doubt why we have a problem.
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You know, they'll question a lot of things.
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But but we do have an immigration problem.
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And at its root, let me suggest that the problem related to immigration is an unbiblical treatment of people.
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People who have power have been and continue to use people for their own benefits on a scale like we never could have imagined.
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People are being used.
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The people that came across the border in recent years have become pawns in the political process.
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As soon as they cross the border, they were pawns in the political process, and people were using them for their own ends.
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That that's totally unacceptable, but we need to we need to admit that at least.
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And now, with the reverse situation going on, we see, even in the midst of trying to get our arms around the problem of criminals in our country.
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We we see people being used as pawns in the whole process.
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So we just kind of have to have to come to grips with that, recognize that that's kind of where we are, and figure it out.
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Now, part of the reality of that is fixing the problem is difficult because of the way people are using people, and fixing it, well, I'm convinced that we could find solutions, can find solutions that in the process will result in hardship and suffering for people who don't deserve hardship and suffering, but they're in a bad spot because people have been using them.
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So to tease that out a little bit further, we could say that the problem is that so many places in the world, people have rejected God, including our country, and they chase power and money.
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You can kind of tease that out some more and keep that in mind as you make your observations and come to your conclusions about all of this stuff related to immigration.
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You can begin to ask yourself all right, if this is what's going on, who's benefiting from this?
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Who has the power and the money that's benefiting from this, or who's going to get money if it goes this way?
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Who's going to retain power if it goes this way?
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Who's going to lose power if it's a different outcome?
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Who's going to lose money if we say no to this particular thing?
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So power and money is huge.
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So if we're going to tease this out as Christians, then I want to suggest there are three things we should talk about.
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And I want to address these one by one.
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The first one is we need to understand how the problem developed.
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What are the roots of the ideology that's driving things today?
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Secondly, once we understand that, we need to ground ourselves in the principles of the Bible.
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We need to make sure that that's where we start when it comes to understanding the issues and of applying solutions.
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And then the third thing is when we see what the Bible says, we need to stand for truth.
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Graciously, of course, but we need to stand firmly for the truth.
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Now, is that an easy uh three-step process?
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Up no, I don't think so.
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Will we get through every detail of that thinking or those ideas or trying to answer those three those three things?
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Um, we'll get that we'll get this part of the way today.
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We won't get through all of it.
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We won't unpack every question you might have, but I hope you will take to heart the things that I do have to say and the things that we are going to talk about, because until we really understand what is driving this immigration situation, we we won't really be able to keep all of the all of the things in mind correctly.
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We'll lose focus, lose perspective.
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Until we ground ourselves in biblical principles, we won't know what we can rely on in terms of our thinking, and in terms of where we take a stand on things.
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So we have to have our our firm grounding in biblical principles, and then finally we have to we have to stand there.
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There's a lot of pressure for people to cave to one perspective or another.
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And and as Christians, the place we stand is with God and with the Bible.
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And we have to have courage and resolve to do that.
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So we'll address all of that, huh?
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Hopefully, I'm Pastor Rick.
25:41
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All right, welcome back.
31:42
I'm Pastor Rick Stevens, and yes, we are going to take a look at the immigration situation in our country today.
31:49
And yes, we are going to tackle it.
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And yes, we'll leave out some things you would like to have answered.
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But I want to take an approach that will help us think through the problem and get to the root of some of the issues that are driving it, at least the way I think about it.
32:08
And if we can get to the root of some of these things, then we can begin to apply things.
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Now I'm a pastor, pastor of diplomat Wesleyan Church in Cape Coral, Florida.
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So I understand that we have all kinds of people looking at these situations from all kinds of perspectives.
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And I understand that you may be thinking about different things than I am.
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I just want to challenge you to let's start fresh and let's start going through here and thinking about these three things that I mentioned earlier.
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How do we understand how the problem developed?
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We need to understand that.
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We also need to ground ourselves in the principles of the Bible, and I want to talk about what I mean by that.
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And then we need to recognize that some things are not easily resolved.
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And once we're understanding what's going on, once we have a grounding in biblical principles, then it's time for us to stand.
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Stand with God and for God and for truth and all that that might mean in a given situation.
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So let's take a look.
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Where did the problem start?
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We have to understand who and how the problem developed.
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Well, at its root, this started with a with a who with a man, Karl Marx, because it's rooted in Marxist ideology, and it's an attempt, as Marxism has done in other places in the world, it's attempt in our country to take over the country.
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Now, Marxist ideology started as a description of workers against the owners.
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And the claim was these owners, they're getting rich on the backs of the workers, and the workers are being taken advantage of.
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And so we need to fix that problem.
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It was a kind of a haves versus have nots idea, an us versus them idea.
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And it was really, I think you have to recognize this.
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A lot of people don't like this, but you have to recognize that it was rooted in jealousy.
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And yes, probably with a sliver of truth thrown in, because yeah, some people probably were exploited.
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Um that kind of happens, but then once those people are exploited by some people, then sometimes the attempt to unexploit them means they're exploited by others.
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I think that's what the Marxists did.
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We need to remember that because there was this attempt to pit people against each other and to manufacture, or some people might more charitably say surface underlying conflicts.
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Because of that, we need to recognize that that's what's going on.
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Somebody is trying to exploit conflicts and frame this as in this case, immigrants versus citizens, and try to use that against people.
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Now, reminder about Marxism.
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Every place Marxism has been tried.
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It has failed, and resulted in the deaths of millions of people and the oppression of millions of people.
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Some of us remember the Soviet Union and the gulags.
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Well, that started from Marxism that led to communism.
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And essentially what the people in power said is disagree with us and we'll crush you.
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Oh, and by the way, you can't believe you can't leave this paradise.
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It's such a good place to live.
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We're going to erect walls to make sure you stay in the country.
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You can't run away from us.
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Kind of preposterous when we think about it that way, but that is what they said.
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Remember the killing fields of Southeast Asia.
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That's when the same ideology took root, and they began to kill the people that they claimed were the bad ones, the oppressors.
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They killed them in an attempt to raise the level of living for other people.
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But millions died from these attempts.
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Consider the history of China.
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You're probably familiar with that, at least in a big picture sense.
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China is called the People's Republic of China.
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But people cannot leave China.
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They can't leave voluntarily today.
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And if you cross the people in power in China, they will crush you.
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See, it started out by we are a people's revolt, a people's rebellion.
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That's why they call it the People's Republic of China, but it's not for the people.
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It's for the powerful.
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Consider North Korea.
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It's the same.
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You've heard the stories.
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People can't leave North Korea, and North Koreans live in poverty and deprivation.
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They don't have enough of them kind of basic things you and I would think about that we need to survive.
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But yet they call North Korea the democratic people's republic of Korea.
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The idea being to convince all of us that it's for the people's well-being.
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But it turns out it's the powerful that live well in the people suffer.
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The effects of that.
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And it's it's not a good thing when you visit people that live in a government-provided house that has a dirt floor.
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You realize this is not about helping the people.
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And we need to recognize that this is the result of Marxism.
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Now, in this country, we decided in the Declaration of Independence that government is instituted to secure the rights of the people and serves with the permission of the people.
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Only liberty has made that kind of a nation possible.
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Now, Marxism in this country is an attempt to change all of that.
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And it's attempt to turn things on its head.
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Now they couldn't pit the workers against the owners, saying that the workers were exploited because in this country, the people that worked in the factories were doing so well and prospering, they didn't believe they were being taken advantage of.
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They were happy that their life was improving.
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So the Marxists had to come up with a different way of dividing us.
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Now, don't miss what I said earlier.
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Marxism is essentially intended to create enmity between people.
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It's rooted in pitting groups of people against each other.
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So when they couldn't pit the people that worked in the factories against the owners of the factories because the people that worked in the factories were happy for the jobs and thought they were getting along quite well.
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They had to identify, that is, the Marxists in this country had to identify different oppressed groups and then rally people so they could blame the oppressors, everybody else except the oppressed group.
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Now, what do they use?
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They've used race in our country.
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Sadly, the Marxist influence has undermined the ability of people to get along based on their racial characteristics.
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And it's been devastating.
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It continues to be a point of enmity that has been manufactured.
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I'm convinced a lot of the people of various what we call races.
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I think there's only one race, the human race, but when you talk about that, I think that enmity is uh is manufactured to a great degree.
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There are good hearted people no matter how they look, and of course there are black hearted people no matter how they look.
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But we need to understand that a big part of the racial animosity in this country is based on manufactured racism.
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Now I know people have said, but what about slavery?
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Well, slavery was reprehensible, nothing good about it.
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I wouldn't defend it for a moment.
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But I also know that we have not been told the whole story about slavery.
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There was a lot of slavery in other parts of the world, still is for that matter.
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And in Africa, one person who studied this said that you could make an argument, and I heard them explain some of that, and I was convinced.
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And the utter brutality is unspeakable.
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I mean, they described it.
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It's unspeakable.
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I would not talk about it to you because it's just too horrible for me to bring up in this situation.
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And so we need to recognize that even as bad as slavery was, much of the racial animosity continues to be trying to pit one group against another in a Marxist fashion.
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The same is true for sexual identity.
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They're trying to pit one group of people against another group of people.
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They use religion to try to pit people against each other, and we need to not let that happen.
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We all all too often do allow that to happen.
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Protestants against Catholics and on and on and on.
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But all of those attempts to divide us are rooted in Marxist ideology.
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And now, to the point we're thinking about today, the whole immigration thing is to a great extent an attempt to use Marxist ideology to divide the nation for the benefit of the powerful, the wealthy.
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So when you think about this kind of stuff, remember that foundational understanding that people are trying to divide us, and they're using these various aspects of human experience to do that.
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Now, another way that you can identify what's going on is to notice that the Marxist ideology attempts to reverse control.
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They say that's the solution.
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So if a group has been treated improperly, let's say a racial group has been kept down, then their solution is to put them in charge and to put the other group down.
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Now, when you think about that, that's pretty bizarre.
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You know, why would we elevate one group to put another group down and think that fixes the problem?
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How does that lead to harmony?
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That just is the same problem wearing a different suit of clothes.
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They do that with religion, promote religions that are other than Christianity and attempt to diminish Christian influence.
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And now, how many times have we heard it?
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We have to support immigrants no matter what.
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Well, that's just a way to try to reverse things.
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It's all of this is done in the name of what we use a big catch-all term, social justice.
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We all want justice, yes, but not social justice.
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We we do need to recognize that our desire for justice has been satisfied.
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Remember the Bible says, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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Imagine that.
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Jesus carried all of the sin when he went to the cross.
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Bible reminds us that Jesus did not know sin but became sin for us.
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He took it all to the cross.
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See, we hear the cry, people need to pay for what they've done.
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They need to, they need to suffer like we suffered.
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Well, that's vengeance or retribution or revenge.
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None of us and not all of us together can atone for, make up for the sins that we've seen committed against people.
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Only Jesus could take on himself all the sin, pay the price by his death, and then overcome it all in resurrection.
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See, that's the that's the Bible's answer to this.
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That yes, when you recognize something that's wrong, also recognize that Jesus paid the price for that.
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Every grievance, every injustice, every betrayal, and everything else you can think of was handled at the cross.
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He paid the price.
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And it's time to remind ourselves that only God can heal our hurts, restore our losses, and one day he will make all the wrongs right.
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And you can get in on that today.
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Turn to God, repent, turn to God, and allow him to make your life new.
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That's the Bible's solution.
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It doesn't minimize the damage, it doesn't minimize the hurt, not even close, but it helps us recognize that God does have a solution, and he has it for you.
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So we understand, based on what I've said, that the problem comes from Marxist ideology and desires that flow from that whole idea of pitting people against each other and saying somebody needs to pay.
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Final problem with Marxism is that it's impossible to find a solution, and they don't really want to find a solution.
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They just want to cause a bigger problem.
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And Jesus stepped into history and solved the problem, atoned for the sin, and allows you in on that.
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That's biblical justice that he took it on himself.
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Now, the second thing we need to do is ground our selves in the principles of the Bible, and particularly the idea of love your neighbor.
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Now, in Mark chapter 12, verse 30 and 31, Jesus said, and I'm going to sum this up not exactly the way you'll read it in your English translation, but words all from another English translation.
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Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
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Love your neighbor as yourself.
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So there we go.
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Love God and love neighbor.
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That's the principle that the Bible says we can ground our life on.
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All of the law of God is summed up in that.
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And it's true, many good-hearted Christians today have a heart for people and they want to help people.
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Their heart goes out to people in need.
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But sometimes they forget that Jesus said, Yes, you need to love God and neighbor with your heart, but don't forget you have a mind and strength.
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So good-hearted people feeling the pain of their neighbors, they want to help no matter what they think they need to help.
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But in that process, they forget sometimes that their help needs to be rooted in truth and the strength of character to stand up for that truth and to apply those solutions that are grounded in truth.
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So the foundational truth is love God and love neighbor.
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It reminds us we love God by doing what he commands.
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That's a high bar, of course, but it's what God calls us to.
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It is, how should I say, well, we don't say to God, my heart is right or I think it's right, or I'm a good person, or God understands when I can't do what he wants me to do.
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No, we recognize that we need to live up to God's call.
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Now, love for neighbor is difficult.
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How do we how do we define love?
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Well, a few months ago I put out a notice on social media asking for a response to a proposed definition of love because I've struggled with that.
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And I said that love is an understanding and practice of life that puts the well-being of others ahead of my own self-interest.
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Now I borrowed that definition from another one, but I think it's pretty good.
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You see, we have to understand that our goal is not to make the other person happy with us, is not to make them feel good.
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It's to look out for their well-being.
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And if we don't understand that, we'll fall into a ditch.
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So that's important.
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And we do that ahead of advancing our own self-interest.
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So we we understand that we have to give people what they need, not always what they want.
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It risks being understood, but it also requires us not to affirm something that's wrong, not to affirm them when they're wrong.
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So, for example, we can love a bank robber without aiding and abetting their robbery.
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We can love a thief, but we never go along with and affirm their thievery.
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If they're involved in sinful behavior, we cannot ever affirm what God says is wrong, but we can love people.
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See, the challenge is we have to learn how to love people.
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We love a toddler differently than we love a senior adult.
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You know, we have to answer the question how do we love a thief?
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Well.
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How do you love a thief?
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It isn't easy, is it?
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But one of the ways that we love our neighbors is to keep the thief away from our neighbors so our neighbors don't suffer loss.
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So we have to have to figure that out.
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How do we love someone who is intent in harming someone else?
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So how do we how do we love a violent neighbor and protect the neighborhood from their violence?
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See, those are the kinds of questions that are difficult, and they have to be arrested or answered forthrightly and honestly.
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They can't be overlooked or ignored.
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And sometimes we are just admonished to love people without thinking about some of these other important aspects of that.
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How do you love a violent person living in your neighborhood?
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How do you love your neighbor when the violent person is nearby?
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Well, you have to get rid of the violent person to protect your neighbor and to correct the violent behavior.
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Now, the violent person is not going to like that.
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They're not going to see it as love.
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But your neighbor will.
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See, those are the kind of challenging things we have to wrestle with.
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And finally, and this may be the most difficult for Christians.
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We have to stand for truth.
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Graciously to be sure, but we have to stand for truth.
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Truth doesn't go away just because issues and circumstances make it challenging.
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It's a very common temptation.
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I see it and have seen it around the church for years.
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That people just want us to put the hard challenges, the wrestling with truth aside so that we can have peace.
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I have sometimes said that too many church people want to keep the peace more than they want to keep the faith.
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Well, that's not what the Bible calls us to.
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It calls us to keep the faith.
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We don't go along to get along.
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Now I recognize I've said this before many times to people that it's difficult to handle conflicting ideas in the church because people are allergic to conflict.
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It makes them uncomfortable.
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We've got to get more comfortable with resolving those kinds of important challenges.
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Remember, Jesus said in Matthew 10, I did not come to bring peace but a sword.
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Now that should get our attention.
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It's quite a statement.
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It's particularly quite a statement when we think about Jesus bringing shalom or peace when he is just described, identified as the prince of peace.
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When the angel said in announcing his birth that peace on earth, good will toward men should come about because of Jesus.
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Well, uh, Jesus himself said it, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
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How do you wrestle with that when the Prince of Peace made that statement?
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Well, in the context of Matthew, what they're talking about of peace is the idea of harmonious relationships or freedom from disputes.
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Well, Jesus did not come to deliver us into tranquil environments.
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Now, one day there will be.
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Yes, we understand the Bible talks about that.
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But now Jesus is pretty honest that it won't always be free of disputes.
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And you're going to have to stand up for me, because in that same passage, he goes on to describe how challenging that is, even with our own family members.
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Now, he also says a sword.
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I did not come to bring peace but a sword.
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Now, here that word does mean sword, but it's used in the sense that the sword is conflict.
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Jesus came to bring conflict.
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Now, words are defined by the dictionary, and that's why I can say that word is sword in the original language.
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But more words are defined by the author's use of them and by the context.
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So here Jesus means strife or discord.
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Maybe you prefer conflict.
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I use that word quite a bit myself.
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So when we read, I did not come to bring tranquility, but conflict, we would be correct.
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That's what Jesus is talking about.
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And we have to get used to believing Jesus and comfortable with what he says.
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So, you know, we shouldn't be surprised by conflict.
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No, we shouldn't.
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We shouldn't avoid conflict at all cost.
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And I'll say it again, too many church people, including far too many church leaders want to keep the peace rather than keep the faith.
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And Jesus says, sometimes you can't have both.
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And when you read that context, and he challenges us, he's saying to us, we need to stand strong for the truth.
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And of course, we see that plenty of other places in the Bible.
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So we've got to expect that people won't always like or appreciate what Jesus says, and that's going to result in conflict.
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Now we can have honest discussions about our understandings of what Jesus said, but we at some point have to have scripture-based convictions and know how to explain our convictions.
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We have seen, I've lived long enough to have seen a huge, uh can I say that again?
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A huge shift.
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We once, and I remember those days, we once had people who had convictions.
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It was mostly about their behavior.
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They did this for the sake of Jesus, or they refused to do that for the sake of Jesus.
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I'll give you one that few people wrestle with these days, but there were people that said, I won't go to a movie because I don't believe I can support that out of faithfulness to Jesus.
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Now you can argue whether they should do that, whether anybody should do that today.
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Okay, we can do that.
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I don't know of any place in the Bible it talks about movies, but they had convictions.
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And today, almost no one has convictions.
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If you're going to manage these challenging times with all of the pressing issues, you're going to have to have convictions.
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You're going to have to stand for truth.
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You're going to have to know why you believe, and you're going to have to live it out.
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And I want to encourage you to stand.
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I'm Pastor Rick.