[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome, well, good morning, everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to be with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Realize we have the kids in with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I'll just keep preaching until they riot, and then we'll stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now actually we are in week six of our question and Christianity series.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a journey it has been, it's been just incredible to unpack some of these difficult things together.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is our penultimate Sunday, our penultimate week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next week we're finishing up with the topic of hope, what hope do we have for the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we looked at morality, today I want to look at rights and justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the basis for those things, for human rights and for justice, and we're exploring really the question across all of this, whether secularism or Christianity gives you the best framework for grounding these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So last week, it doesn't give you the best framework for grounding morality and for making moral judgments, but deciding what is right and wrong, good or evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then today we're going to be looking at justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you may remember, actually let me just hear the kind of flow so we're weeks six, do humans have inherent rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next week we'll be talking about the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you may remember last week or you might want to forget last week that we mentioned the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously declared that God is dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: which in his view also meant that the kinds of values, the kinds of morals that came with Christianity, with the Christian faith, were also dead, all would eventually die out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he believed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said when one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: By breaking one main concept of it, the faith in God, he said one breaks the whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, he was just one of a number of European philosophers in the 19th century who were rejecting Christianity and kind of styling themselves as rational, in light and scientific free thinkers.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as Tom Holland points out in his book dominion that we looked at last week as well, unlike Nietzsche, most of these philosophers still believed, even without a faith in God, still believed, in the idea of human rights, in the idea of the equal dignity of every person.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the necessity of caring for the poor and for the weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they still believed that love was the greatest of all virtues and that we should forgive our enemies or at least we should treat them with respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they still believe in a sense in moral absolutes, that some things are good and that some things are evil, especially that the oppression of the powerless was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Nietzsche rejected all of those ideas and in his book Beyond Good Naval, he argued instead, and he was mocked for this at the time, that all these ideas are in fact unique to Christianity.
[SPEAKER_00]: not to European Enlightenment or a scientific materialism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore, those things should be rejected along with Christianity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these ideas, he argued, didn't develop either in other Eastern cultures or in Eastern religions, like Buddhism or Hinduism, which, in fact, view misfortune, things like low status or poverty or illness as karma, as a kind of justice
[SPEAKER_00]: which in that framework means that poverty or degradation are deserved and in fact to intervene to alleviate the suffering is itself a kind of unjust act.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and we also said Tom Holland argues this that the ancient Greeks and Romans found these Christian ideas laughable when they first heard them in the ancient world.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were incomprehensible to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Tom Holland says that also that the shame and onocultures of old pagan Europe, like the Vikings, the Franks, the Saxons, you know, when they first encountered Christianity, thought that the Christian ethic of forgiving your enemies and honoring the poor in the week to be an utterly ridiculous basis for society.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, they're all about honour and power and you know, living a life of sacrifice for you know, to make your way to Valhalla or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Holland says that these ideas, universal human rights, universal equality, the importance of love and forgiveness, care of the poor and the weak.
[SPEAKER_00]: These things would never have occurred to anyone unless they believe that the world is in fact the creation of a single loving God who made all human beings in his image.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, if we believe that we live in a kind of meaningless universe that we hear by accident through a process of
[SPEAKER_00]: the survival of the fittest, the strong eating a week, then there are no moral absolutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Morality simply collapses into power, like we go back to the ethic of the strong, that might equals right, that the strong have the right to rule over the week.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Nietzsche declared, if you're willing to admit, that the Christian God does not exist, then all that's left of morality is the will to dominate and only the strong will survive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, truth is now determined, really, by whoever has the biggest gun,
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and as the 20th century rolled along, it seemed that Nietzsche was right in the light of the decline of Christianity in Europe after the disaster of the First World War, both left-wing and right-wing political ideologies rushed into the breach and have soaked the world in blood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no doubt many of you have seen the fall out this week, or these last couple of weeks on social media, following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with people on the left and the right, calling for and justifying political violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all emerging again, and it's been horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hatred being poured out on political opponents is deeply concerning, like we don't seem to have learned anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Nietzsche was right, and I think the history demonstrates this, once you remove the Christian moral framework, it's not at all obvious or common sense that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: To hold that ethic or to sustain it, you need the first commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with all your hearts all mind and strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you own couple the former from the latter, you end up losing both.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as Tim Calis says, even so, liberal secular atheists think is, continue to put forward the narrative that it was only when we moved away from the dominance of the Christian faith and put its superstition and its bigotry behind us that the moral world was able to end things like slavery, discover human rights, develop empirical science, and pursue sexual freedom.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is simply not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his Tom Holland shows definitively over the 524 pages or so of his book.
[SPEAKER_00]: That it's in fact the Christian vision of the world and of morality, that's the basis for those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Christian view that every person is an image bearer of God, that the world is actually real and was created purposefully, but it's not an illusion
[SPEAKER_00]: And furthermore, that vulnerable human beings should not be used in any way that the powerful see fit, that God truly cares about the downtrodden and the abuse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we say that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he became one of those himself in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as we've said before through this series, Christianity is the only religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: that celebrates the humiliation of its God, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Christ suffered with us and for us, it shows us that God cares about justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: He thinks that the wrongs we've committed or we've experienced that the pain and injustice of the world actually mean something, that they mean something to him and he wants to do something about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to heal the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was those ideas and many others that were, and are, I think, the real basis for things like the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, the development of science, and the concept of universal human rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Tom Holland argues, for example, that the Me Too movement was in many respects a rejection of the excesses of the sexual revolution, and an insistence by women
[SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, to a uniquely Christian sexual ethic, especially in regards to consent that women have a right not to be the victims of powerful and predatory men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in regards to human rights, the question remains the secularism or discrestianity better support the idea of universal human rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, people have always believed in rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not new.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those rights were not always believed to be universal.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were essentially the rights of certain individuals over others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like historically, it was the right of the powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: or the wealthy, or the citizen, or the male, or the master, over all others.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is new, what is fairly recent, historically, is the idea that such rights should be applied universally, should be available to all people, not just to certain people, but to all people everywhere, by at least in theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where did the idea of human rights come from and what do we mean when we talk about human rights?
[SPEAKER_00]: The philosopher Nicholas Walter Stoff says that a human right is an obligation or a claim that a person has on you when she enters your presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has the right not to be killed, tortured, defrauded or abducted, along with many other rights as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she has these rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not by virtue of being a particular race or gender or being a certain moral character or even being able to contribute to society and the economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has these rights simply because she is a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simply because she is a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now some may be far better human beings than others in a whole bunch of ways, but all are equally human and therefore all humans share these rights equally.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so all people should be treated equally with dignity, regardless of their race, or gender, or religion, or etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: but also regardless of wealth, or income, or education, or talents, or achievements, regardless of a person's apparent usefulness, to society, or even regardless of their behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we believe on this basis that even people who've committed crimes and who are facing legal consequences
[SPEAKER_00]: and not be subjected to cruel or unusual punishments.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is a uniquely Christian concept, and it's simply by virtue of the fact that they are human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that is not an idea that's been universally held throughout all history or in all cultures, even today.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've emerged from a specifically Christian framework in the West.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, it doesn't teach these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, there's an argument I've been hearing lately that the very concept of universal human rights is actually yet just another Western imperialist and colonialist idea being imposed on other cultures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so should be rejected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is that without a Christian framework or a Christian foundation to our idea of human rights, it's hard to argue against that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have something more fundamental that the idea of human rights rests on,
[SPEAKER_00]: Something that says, you know, we didn't just make these things up, they're not just our opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they've been given to us by a higher authority from God, then you can't really claim these things are universal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let alone are really rights, which is why Christians believe it's important that our concept of human rights is grounded in Scripture is grounded in our understanding of the character of God, not just our opinions, not just how we feel about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the opening chapter of the Bible in Genesis chapter one, we're clearly told.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 26, that all people, both male and female, are made in the image and likeness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are image-bearers of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's given, by the way, without qualification, it's all human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's true, then from the best to the worst of us, from the least to the greatest, all people are of equal value and are of infinite worth, because you cannot put a value on God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, you cannot put a value on a human life that bears the image of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just by way of contrast, for example, the UN, you know, the nation's declaration of human rights has no such foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It simply says, these are the human rights that we all hold to and it's given without justification or any kind of basis, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, the question then is who decides that these are universal human rights?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what basis do we say that's a true statement?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or often the response to that question as well, it's obvious, isn't it like any right-thinking person would believe in these things would believe and hold to universal human rights?
[SPEAKER_00]: But historically, that hasn't been obvious at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And rights haven't been universally applied at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I guess, why we felt we needed a declaration in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: These things are obvious, we'd all just know what they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So contrast Genesis 1, we say the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who famously argued that some people were fit to be masters, and some people were only really fit to be slaves.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then enslaving certain people was in fact the right and just thing to do because that was their natural place in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he wrote, It's not difficult to show that there are natural slaves for such people are as different from others as body is from soul or beast is from human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Aristotle didn't make that argument on the basis of race or skin color necessarily, but what he meant was intelligence and physical ability.
[SPEAKER_00]: So certain kinds of competencies that marked some people out for rule to be masters and some people out for slavery to be subjugated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you thought that idea has died with the ancient world, you'd be wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to see the philosopher, originally in Aussie, Peter Singer, who now teaches at Princeton University a couple of years ago, and he makes, actually, what is effectively a similar kind of argument.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the base, in terms of human rights, he actually says that the basis for human rights shouldn't be that this is just a universal thing applied to all people, but it should actually be based on cognitive ability, on cognitive capacity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why humans have rights that other animals don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if rights and freedoms are determined by cognitive capacity, by our ability to reason, for example, then do the unborn have rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: or do infant children have rights.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the age, maybe someone would dementia, do they have rights, or they're mentally disabled, or the cognitively impaired, do they have rights?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they have the same rights as everybody else?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does someone who's in a coma have any rights?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Peter Singer would say that no, they don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least not the same rights as others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why he doesn't have an issue in theory within fantasize.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If it serves some kind of greater good for the species.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because Christianity, by contrast, grounds our rights in the image of God, not in some other capacity or ability or quality, it's given to us by virtue of the fact that we are human-made in God's image, not by our own any other quality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that means regardless of who you are, or the perceived quality or usefulness of your life, you have the same rights as everybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's worth fighting for.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we should give up an inch of ground on that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And although slavery is tragically still very much with us, it's worth remembering that it was Britain
[SPEAKER_00]: being the first society in the 18th century, the first society ever, ever in human history to outlaw it, to abolish it across the British Empire.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you may know, it was William Wilberforce on the basis of his Christian convictions who led the political campaign to achieve that goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though it was a disaster for Britain economically, they still felt that actually there was something greater than an economic security, and that is the right of every human being to be free because they're made in the image of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, and as the West becomes less and less Christian, then where is this leading us?
[SPEAKER_00]: So Larry Seidantop, a professor at Oxford University, he wrote a book called Inventing the Individual, the Origins of Western Liberalism, because it's just kind of like Tom Holland's dominion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this sweeping historical study.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the key arguments he makes is that human rights, and he's not a Christian, he makes this point that human rights is Christianity's unique gift to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he argues that on the basis, not actually on Genesis 1 so much, but on the basis of the idea, the Christian idea, the uniquely Christian idea that God became a human being in Christ Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the basis of the incarnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says, and I quote, the idea of the incarnation,
[SPEAKER_00]: is the root of Christian egalitarianism, and the Christian vision of equality, because if God was willing to take on human flesh to become an individual human being, then that underpins God's view, that all people, all individuals are created equal and deserve to be treated equally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, he then goes on to argue that that is the basis for democracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't actually maintain a democratic vision of the world without the incarnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he says that without the idea of God coming to us in human flesh, which underpin secular democracy, he says it's actually hard to foresee secular democracy surviving.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I hope this isn't true, but he says eventually what will happen is the West will morph back into some kind of aristocracy, or probably more likely a theocracy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, a technocracy, hopefully not a theocracy, a technocracy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so once again, George, as all will said in Animal Farm, of course all people, all animals, are created equal, it's just that some are more equal than others.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we ended last week with Tom Holland asking, you know, like Larry Sidentop, where the secular democracy or human rights will survive if we lose our Christian morings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Taylor wrote that perseverance in virtue requires self-sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet self-sacrifice generally requires a transcendent justification or a transcendent motivation in order to maintain it, of which, of course, the most common and the most logical in his view is belief in the existence of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But since modern freedom entails the rejection of transcendence,
[SPEAKER_00]: can we be good for long without God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now what Tom Holland says in Dominion is that we're still we're living in the West, kind of on the fumes of the Christian past.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the tank is empty, it's rapidly running out of fuel and we're not quite sure what's going to happen when the car finally comes to a standstill.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, if we remove the foundation, it'll be hard to maintain the edifice of human rights for very long.
[SPEAKER_00]: So such rights will become just another contested set of beliefs in the marketplace of ideas, which we're already seeing happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: As more and more folks that hold to other religions, kind of take up residents in the West, the idea of human, universal human rights is rapidly being contested.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the highest value in the West being personal freedom means anything, it means that no one will have the right to tell me what to believe or to tell me what is right and wrong or what is true or false, I'll decide that for myself, thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I want to be racist or sexist or fascist or anything else, now we might disagree disagree about that, but you'll have no right to tell me that I'm wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we're left with then?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we left with then, is the basis for making moral and political decisions as a culture?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just going to be the political majority?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how long will that last?
[SPEAKER_00]: So Taylor goes on to say that he doubts the self-sacrifice is necessary to create a just society will continue to be tolerated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, unless people believe in and feel, he says the overwhelming and infinite demand of love, the sort of demand that Christ made in the sermon on the Mount when he said, love your enemies, right, bless those that curse you, do God do good to those who hate you and pray for them who misuse you and persecute you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're only going to do those things if you hold to a faith in Christ, if you hold to the one who demonstrated what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the things Tim Keller says, and I think he's right, right, how are we going to ask people to make those kinds of self-sacrifices that love demands if we don't have faith?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he then goes on to say, it would be hard to imagine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be hard to imagine the civil rights movement that was led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr., which made its appeal on the basis of faith in Christ and on the command to love your neighbors and to love your enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says it would be hard to imagine that vision or that movement gaining traction in our current cultural moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Kelli says that Dr. King argued that segregation was not simply impractical for the overall good of society, but in fact it was a sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he knew that human rights have no power if they simply created by the majority or imposed by the government.
[SPEAKER_00]: They only have power if they're really there if they actually are true, that they exist on their own independent of human opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to do that, or to hold to that view, you have to believe what Genesis 1 teaches, that every human being is created in the image of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Martin Luther King wrote,
[SPEAKER_00]: that God's image in us gives every person a uniqueness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives them worth, it gives them dignity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we must never forget this is a nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no gradations in the image of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every man from a travel white to a base black is significant on God's keyboard precisely because every person is made in the image of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, famously quoting Amos 524.
[SPEAKER_00]: He called on those who are campaigning for civil rights,
[SPEAKER_00]: not to be satisfied until justice rolls down like the waters and righteousness like a mighty stream, like the fundamental to the civil rights movement was the appeal to Scripture, was the appeal to love your neighbors and your enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it worked because that appeal was being based on the love and justice of God still held deep resonance in the culture at that time, like most people would have said,
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Tim Keller, and I think he's right, that appeal would now likely fall on death years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And increasingly so, which is why Christian societies, even if they do commit injustices in violence and plenty have, of course, not saying they haven't, not trying to just disregard the abuses that Christians have committed throughout history, but one of the unique things about a Christian culture is its ability to self-correct and self-critique.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is something that a lot of other cultures don't have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this a unique feature of a Christian society?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because ultimately, we look to, or we used to look to God as our authority, not to government or laws or political ideologies, but we looked to the example and the teachings of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it seems obvious to me that it's hard to maintain gross injustices and gross human rights abuses for long.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're honestly looking to Christ as your example, as your example of what it means to live a moral life, as your example of what goodness looks like, as an example of what God requires of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why Christian cultures that participated in slavery were not only the first cultures in history that to critique it, which goes all the way back to the fourth century with greater of Nisa, but also the first to abolish it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might also have noticed that as our culture becomes less and less Christian, we therefore seem to be losing the ability to talk to each other across the political divides, right, to engage in respectful political debate.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's free of like hateful rhetoric or hateful actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the last few weeks of protests and political violence have shown us that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're lining up again on camps on the left in the left of the right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're turning our political opponents into our political enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that shift is very dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's one thing to disagree with each other and to debate the issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's another thing to say or to believe that hatred or even violence is justified if you can't get your opponent to agree with your point of view.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it shouldn't need to be said, but let's say it, it's obvious that Christians must not engage in that kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Christ did not engage in that kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so Christ is always our example.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is always the basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is always the model that we're seeking to emulate.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Calus says, the thing that Christianity can uniquely offer to a culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: is the ability to hold on to something that we would say that we would believe is absolute truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that is an absolute truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also don't need to become power hungry oppresses on that basis and turn our opponents into mortal enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And why do we say that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the example of Christ teaches us that this is how we're called to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you look at say Philippians 2,
[SPEAKER_00]: We're Paul says this about Jesus, in your relationships with one another, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the way that you deal with people, okay, in the way that you treat other people, in the way that you extend rights to others, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God, his equality with God, something to be used
[SPEAKER_00]: To his own advantage, he didn't lord it over people, rather he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearances a man, the incarnation he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross, self-sacrificial love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Note what Paul doesn't say is that we're going to force everyone to say this, while he says is that on the basis of Christ's sacrificial self-empting humble love,
[SPEAKER_00]: Then this message that we've preached, the gospel will lead people to acknowledge and to confess the Christ as Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does Paul, and then he goes on to say, therefore, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does this mean for you as a person?
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to willing to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is Paul saying here?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying that Christ, even though he was God, did not use his status as God for his own benefit.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he emptied himself, he laid down his life by becoming a mortal human being, died on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now he has the name that's above every other name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see what this means?
[SPEAKER_00]: When we think about rights, we think about justice, we think about politics, we think about creating a good and just society?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you believe that this is what God is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is what we're there for call to emulate, which is where Paul goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the light of this, you work out your own salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, figure out how you're going to live this story for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So with great humility, judge and examine your own motivations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Judging examine what's going on in your heart, judging examine your desire to dominate or control others, judging examine how you use power, judging examine how you treat other people, judging examine whether you truly love other people as yourself, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are all the implications.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all the consequences of believing that God became flesh came among us and laid down His life in self-sacrificial love for His enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's our ultimate example, and if that's the way we're then seeking to live in the world, that will change the world, not from the top down by using power and control and domination as Nietzsche believed we should all be engaging in, but instead from the bottom up, by laying down our lives, by caring for the weak and the dispossessed and the powerless.
[SPEAKER_00]: by not throwing our way to round, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So some people will say, you know, this model of life is completely impractical when it comes to governing a society, but actually it's very practical and it has huge implications for the kind of culture that we create.
[SPEAKER_00]: So number one, we're going to land finished with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're saying on this basis,
[SPEAKER_00]: that there is a place for everyone in this kind of world, the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, even wrongdoers, even sinners, not just the good and powerful and intelligent people, as Peter Singer would have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just the people who have cognitive capacities that are better than others, but everyone has a right to belong and to contribute and to be considered equal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, because if at the heart of your vision of life,
[SPEAKER_00]: is a man who gave his life for the sake of the world, who says, I will use my divine power by going to the cross, and I'm going to pay the debt that everyone owes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then that means if we are all sinners in the eyes of God and all equally in need of salvation,
[SPEAKER_00]: If we all equal, you know, if we all equally need to be saved, that means we are all equal in the side of God, and then that means we should all be equal in the side of one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no hierarchy of human worth.
[SPEAKER_00]: For all worth the same cost that Christ was willing to pay, then we all have infinite value.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no one can be better than or less than we are equal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, if the heart of your vision of life is a God who lays aside power in order to serve and love other people, if your absolute picture of love is a man who we believe was God, dying on the cross for his enemies,
[SPEAKER_00]: who even said at the moment of his death, Father forgive them for they don't know what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's your moral absolute, or if that's the basis for your understanding of human rights, of human value and dignity, if that's your absolute truth, capital T, then to the degree to which you understand that and I prepared to live according to it, as Paul says in verse 12, then you simply cannot be an oppressor or a tyrant who is gonna seek to use your power to dominate other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can, in fact, engage in what child's tailor said are willingness to offer our lives in self-sacrificial love, which then becomes the basis for maintaining democracy, without that our culture will fall apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can reject, for example, what parts to rich of a lot is posted yesterday on Instagram?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is deeply insightful, how to know if you're a Christian trapped in culture
[SPEAKER_00]: We carry a God as with us, but not with them in pulse.
[SPEAKER_00]: We no longer see image-bearers to be engaged with, but threats to be eliminated.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that we're fighting for truth, so our hatred is justified.
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that political power is necessary to make the most of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: that fear is the primary lens through which we see the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you see that if you would have compared that list with Philippians 2, how you simply cannot hold to that kind of political vision and also believe in Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why there is absolutely no place for Christian nationalism in our preaching of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: No place for it at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if we truly believe in the message of the gospel, then we should be working on the basis of Christ and of Christian values for the betterment of all people, not just the people who belong to our tribe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we agree with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it means we can also be realistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that we can hold to the gospel and live without fear, trusting that ultimately,
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever our political vision might be, whatever our political ideology might be, we know in our heart of hearts that that is not gonna save the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Political ideologies do not save the world, Christ saves the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his kingdom is the only hope for our future.
[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore we can engage the world with love and with justice and mercy and kindness and forgiveness
[SPEAKER_00]: Laying down our lives because our ultimate hope is not in what we can achieve through our political power, but in showing others what Christ truly looks like so that they might put their hope in him and trust in his kingdom, which will come one day to set everything right and to heal the world completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we truly believe in that, and if we're going to talk about that next week, then we can live sacrificially by faith now, not grasping off the power, but offering our power in self-giving love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense or hope so?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we should work then, believing that our ultimate salvation belongs to Christ in His kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something we can produce for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then we can live in the tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, there is an inherent tension in the Christian life between both power and humility.
[SPEAKER_00]: between both justice and grace, between both truth and love.
[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, we say that those things come together, not in our political vision, not in our political ideologies, nothing other than in Christ himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is the great reconciler who came to offer his life for the sake of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the basis of the incarnation, we can say of Christ as John says in John chapter one, that Christ became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son, who came from the father, who were alone, who alone is full of grace and truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, I think that is the only basis for a just and healthy and flourishing society that enables us to uphold the value of every human life.
[SPEAKER_00]: but also work realistically understanding that we're a world full of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a world full of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we work, we do so on the hope in the hope that Christ Jesus will one day fully and finally and completely redeem and renew and restore all things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We invite the band to come on up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we do that, let's stand as the band comes, let's stand and we'll pray together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus, we acknowledge that it is hard for us to live in the tension that being a Christian in this world presents us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see around us a hurting and broken world and yet we have a vision of what is coming in your kingdom or what has already come in your kingdom, which we know is so beautiful and so healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do long for the world to look like that, but we have to take the world as we find
[SPEAKER_00]: And we do long Lord Jesus to be good examples to the world and to those around us of who you are and what you look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet we find ourselves falling short time and time again, over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or just for a moment we want to confess that if we have been putting our hope in some kind of political ideology,
[SPEAKER_00]: to save the world, to fix the world that is not your kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we need to lay that down and renew our trust in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And renew our trust in your Lordship.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we've maybe given into fear, this world is falling apart and what are we going to do and everything's going to be horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we lay that fear down and we say, Lord, we trust you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our hope is in you.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we don't put our hope in the things of this world but in your coming kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: So help us not to be overcome with fear, but instead, Lord, to be filled with love, to be filled with your love which drives out all fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that we can love our neighbors and we can love our enemies and we can work in this world to see that there is justice for all people.
[SPEAKER_00]: that all people have their rights protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to live in a world where there are some who are better than and others who are less than.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to live in a world where some get to rule and others are subjugated.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to live in a world where there are people with all the power who dominate over the powerless.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jesus helped us to keep on looking to you as our example, time and time again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you had all the power and yet you laid it all down.
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't use it for your own advantage, but you made it so yourself nothing and you used your power for the advantage of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to be like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, I pray that we would keep on praying for our leaders for those in government.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even though we don't want the Christian religion to be enshrined as the thing that is in power over everybody, what we do want, though, is the love of Christ to be burning in every heart, and that our nation, our culture, and this whole world, to operate on the principles that you demonstrated in your life,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we pray for our leaders, Lord, where they're going wrong, may you correct them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where they're participating in injustice, may you draw them back into what is right and good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, I pray that all of us would be willing to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, get involved in the life of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: not for our own sake, but for the sake of our neighbors, and even for the sake of our enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we pray all these things in Jesus' name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.