The Idolatry of Power (Rival Gods) // Ty Gibson​

well I want to begin by taking you back to a very serious year in human history 1914 there was a young theologian a pastor of a church in Switzerland by the name of Carl Bart he was 27 years old at this point he would go on to become the most celebrated theologian of the 20th century but at this point in his career in his ministry he was just pastoring a little church but 1914 was a very very serious time in human history as I mentioned because that was when world war 1 was entering into its fever pitch that would take the lives of multiplied millions of people now unless you do a little bit of historical research a lot of people don't know and don't understand that in fact the cradle of this outbreak of human fury world war 1 was in fact the cradle of Christianity so when you think of world war 1 in fact as we're going to discover when you think of world war 2 you have to remember that you're dealing with a Christian culture you're dealing with a Christian context and so here's this 27 year old pastor who's watching this this hatred this hostility reach its fever pitch nation against nation and as World War 1 is launching he decides that he can't sit by and be silent and so he delivers one of the most remarkable sermons in the history of preaching in my opinion carl bart preached a sermon on August in August of 1914 in which he decided to touch the sensitive nerve of nationalism and this is what he had to say to his congregation God shows himself as a master very different perhaps from the one who is prayed to on both sides now that's a complex sentence but but trapped with what he's saying here this is an astounding insight he's saying to us here that that you have two sides in a conflict I mean this could be you and your marriage you know husband and wife it could be you in your community this could be you in your office this could be you in any aspect of your life this could be nation against nation but his point is you have opposing sides right you have two different sides and and both sides are appealing to God for their favor in the conflict are you still tracking with me so in this particular case he's talking about national hostility and conflict and he's saying listen we got two sides that are developing in this conflict right there's the Allied forces and there's the central power as it was known in World War one and nations are banding together and they are becoming an engine of warfare against the opposing side and Bart is saying listen this side is praying to God and assuming that God's on our side and this side over here they're praying to God and assuming no no gods on our side they're both appealing to God to be the master of the conflict in their favor and Bart is saying listen each one is praying to God and God is different a different kind of God entirely than the expectations that these opposite sides have he goes on and it gets more profound he says God's name is now bandied about just thrown around and drawn into sinful impassioned activity of humankind so human beings are you know entering into hostility toward one another and God's name as you would expect in Christian Europe they're all saying God's on our side no God's on our side lord help us to win this victory in this war against and then he says this as if god were one of the old warrior gods to whom our heathen ancestors appealed and there he just touched the sensitive nerve of idolatry he says we're Christians but we've projected on to Christ the image of the ancient heathen warrior gods now he goes a little deeper and he says and this is pretty emphatic and I'm just wondering what you think about this he says it is simply out of the question that God helps the Germans or the French or the English it's just out of the question that God helps the German the French are the English God does not even help us Swiss think wow well where is God in all of this well he tells us where God is God helps justice and love Wow just drink this in just process this allow yourself right now to just enter in to a level of understanding by the guidance of this 27 year old theologian to just grow to just mature in your perception of the world in yourself and God God helps justice and love not the Germans not the French not the English not the Swiss not the put whatever you want there No God helps justice in love God helps the kingdom of heaven and that exists across all national boundaries do you see what he's getting at he's saying listen there are people there are people everywhere in every nation and God is for everyone while simultaneously God is against everything that is unjust God is for justice and love the foolish mixing of patriotism war enthusiasm and Christian faith now this is prophetic could one day lead to the bitterest disappointment this is 1914 he is right now on the cusp of World War one 30 years later these words will come true in ways that human beings could have never imagined with world or two he's essentially saying if we keep imagining that God is for us but not for them we're going to enter into levels of hostility as human beings the likes of which we've never seen and sure enough World War two was the fulfillment of that prophecy and then he says as a follower of Jesus and he's hoping that his congregation so he says we he's hoping this congregation will come along with him he says we will not join in drinking this intoxicating potion what is this intoxicating potion the intoxicating potion of nationalism and hostility against other people groups we want to look steadfastly and unwaveringly here to God who loves everyone equally and who is above all the nations Wow 27 years old and he is right in the middle of the fury of World War one and he understands that God transcends national interest do we understand that God transcends national interest well 30 years before Carl Bart preached that sermon 30 years approximately before an author by the name of Ellen White landed with a level of understanding that is just astounding to be achieved in a single sentence Christ in the German believer will recognize Christ in the French believer I mean whoever you are of whatever ethnic background when you are standing face to face with a child of God it is the child of God that you see now she was building of course on the Apostle Paul's theology of the cross now we oftentimes think of the cross merely in terms of Jesus died for me Jesus died for us so that we could be saved and that's a very individual stick equation for us right it's about me and my salvation god getting me out of trouble and I'm not gonna go to hell I'm gonna go to heaven Jesus died for me and that's all good and well but the Apostle Paul sees something happening in Christ at the cross that it's just absolutely astounding and goes way beyond individual interest check this out in Ephesians 2 verses 14 and 15 Christ Himself the Apostle Paul says he is our peace peace here doesn't mean kind of you know internal tranquility alone in a room or in a field of flowers piece here is relational peace it is the biblical idea of Shalom it is the absence of hostility and conflict between peoples Christ is our peace he is he is the end of hostility and conflict who has made the two groups pause right there the two groups who's the two groups well in his local historical context the two groups are Jews and Gentiles which is to say from the Jewish perspective Jews and everybody else in the world they had drawn a line in the sand in the most egregious extreme version of us and them ISM the world had ever seen there's us and then there's the rest of y'all and God's with us and this was the mentality the two groups are Jews and Gentiles and Paul says listen Jesus who is our peace who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of was this wall built out of what's it made of hostility and how did he do this he did it by setting aside in his flesh as he died on the cross the law with its commands and regulations by which in the context Paul specifically mean that the Ten Commandments the law with its regulations in the sense that through poses there were very strict parameters nationally we're Jews you're Gentiles and the only way you could become a part of Israel was through being converted as it were into précised into the Jewish nation and Paul is saying listen all of that aspect of the law that distinguishes the US and the them primarily he means in this context circumcision as the sign that we're in with God and you're not he's saying that's laid aside now this verse is amazing his purpose the purpose of Jesus was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two thus making peace this is so deep so remarkable so beautiful Jesus is the one new corporate human that represents all of us Jesus is the one new human in whom German and French and English and every single person in the world is listen to the language incorporated into Christ and now he is the representative head for all of us and do you know what that means that means that any dispute between you and I think this through any dispute between you and I is individuals he's on my side and simultaneously he's on your side in the conflict are you tracking with me he's always for you and simultaneously for me and always only against the wrongdoing that would injure the relationship Wow Jesus is more amazing than we could have ever imagined now in Carl Bart's context he preached that sermon in 1914 but man fast forward now and we come to that point in European history and world history in 1933 Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933 in 1932 seeing the winds of political movement Christians almost to a man to a woman to a denomination began to sell out to Nazi ideology it is one of the great travesties of Christian history there was an organization that was founded that was created and it existed from 1932 to 1945 and was called the German Christian movement and it was composed pretty much of everybody who named the name of Christ in Germany at this point in history Germany had a population of about 60 million of that 60 million 40 million were Protestants and 20 million were Catholics it was a Christian nation and as Hitler rose to power he did with any brilliant diabolically brilliant but brilliant nonetheless politician would do he began to co-opt and to harness the Christian voting bloc so that he could have the favor I mean he knew he was dealing with a Christian nation he was deeply Darkly pagan in his heart and in some of his writings he indicated that he thought Hitler thought that Jesus was for weaklings not realizing that Jesus in his love and humility set in motion the most powerful force the world has ever known the force the power of non retaliatory violence the power of forgiveness the power of love in the face of evil but he couldn't discern that love was more powerful than force so Hitler secretly on the side was downing Jesus to his colleagues politically but publicly he was the Christian leader of a Christian nation and as Hitler came to power Christianity began to sell its soul to power following the political winds that were blowing and then here comes Carl Bart our guy our 27 year old pastor theologian who now is a couple of decades older and he gets together with some of his theological Christian buddies in the German town of barmen and they formulate what came to be known as the barman declaration it was mostly written by Carl Bart he was the author of the thing and then it was you know edited passed around and everybody's mind got involved and it was a series of declarations that were intending to basically to summarize the barman declaration was to say listen while Christianity in the main mainstream Christianity is selling its soul to the Third Reich the barmen declaration said we believe in worship and serve Jesus above all national interest that was the the gist of it they said we are not loyal to Germany above Jesus we are loyal to Jesus above Germany they understood these theologians these pastors these committed believers and followers of Jesus they understood that their calling was a calling into fidelity and faithfulness to certain principles that were embodied in Christ and that Germany was only as good as a nation as its alignment with those principles while the barmen declaration was basically the precursor to revealing the tragic fact of history and that is that what happened with Germany was that the most scientifically educated technologically advanced nation on the earth was swept up in to a demonic idolatry of power this is by the way not a critique on any ethnicity this is a critique on the political and ideological movement that swept the world into a demonic rage that gave us the Holocaust in other words this is not a critique of Germans per se this is a critique of the Third Reich Nazism and nationalism gone terribly wrong well what was happening here was very simple nationalistic pride displaced Christian identity that's what happened it was a gradual process straight up through the 20s and then into the 30s until in 1933 Hitler seized power and he began to lay out his plan and he began to push the psychological and the emotional buttons of nationalistic pride in the collective psyche and he worked the nation up into a sense of a colossal narcissistic sense of us versus them we're great you're not we exist for us not for you in fact we're coming for you this was the mentality about that time CS Lewis also himself living through the tragedies and the horrors of the World War two ERA understood what was happening and he said that the descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power soon end up worshipping evil they don't even know they're going that direction because in the moment it feels euphoric in the moment if like we're it you're not we're great you're not in the moment nationalism is intoxicating and it feels righteous it feels like a righteous cause and it is a slippery slope straight into making the transition from exalting and worshipping nationalistic pride straight into the abyss of evil now there was a younger German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Bonhoeffer was one of the individuals during this time that was a kind of theological protege of Karl Bart Bart being quite a bit older and here comes Bonhoeffer and and he's looking at what's happening in his Christian nation and he's watching Christianity wholesale selling its soul to nationalistic interest by the way parenthetical statement not I had no intentions of communicating this but for those of you who are seventh-day Adventists we were not immune to all of this the fact is that during World War two the seventh-day Adventist Church along with the Lutheran Church in the United Church and all the others sold out to the Nazi regime and the Adventist Church underwent a fracture that gave us two denominations in Germany one called the seventh-day Adventist Church and the other called the Reformed Church that protested seventh-day Adventist leadership getting cozy with the Nazis end of parenthetical statement I won't go into the details there for the sake of time nobody escaped this nationalism is so intoxicating that if you begin to give yourself to it the euphoria that you derive from it sweeps you away well Bon Iver came along and he said listen I need to speak into this and in 1937 when Hitler was reaching the zenith of his power 1937 can you imagine you have to feel the context this young man and published a book in the German by the way it was just called follow and it meant follow Jesus the English translation of the book was titled the cost of discipleship now Bonhoeffer in this book was basically going after nationalism from a theological standpoint and the way he did it was he coined a term that you've probably heard before that it came down it's I mean anybody who's been around Christian circles at all you've heard the term cheap grace well he's the one who coined this term cheap grace and here's what he meant by it bhana versed in his book follow or the cost of discipleship cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheap Jack swears I mean this is you know Jack here is just the average guy on the street corner selling junk for a price and he's saying basically cheap grace in his context in his you know national context in his European context in his world context in history he's saying listen cheap Grace's when Christianity is sold to the highest political bidder and that's what was happening Hitler by giving political favors and prestige and photo-ops and back-slapping and gifts was buying the loyalty of Christian leaders that's what gave him his edge to sink Germany into the horrors of World War two and Bonhoeffer stood up published this book and he said listen this is a form of cheap grace cheap grace means grace that is sold on the market like Jeep Jack checks where's the essence of grace we suppose now he's gonna critique our theology of grace I hope you're tracking with me this is worth getting I know this is heady stuff but this is worth getting so sit up and take it in and try to process this woman he says the essence of grace we suppose is that the account has been paid in advance and because it has been paid air everything everything can be had for nothing do you see what he's saying he's saying cheap grace is basically saying okay Jesus died Jesus died and you know he settled all the accounts and right there were speaking theological truth Jesus died and paid it all he paid it all he gave his life he shed his blood he died for our salvation there's nothing we can do to earn or merit salvation and Bonhoeffer agrees with that theological premise but then he says are we then to suppose that the fact that it's free cheapens what it is because it wasn't cheap at all it cost quite a bit in fact and those who receive it it will cost them cheap grace is grace without discipleship in other words this is this is Christianity that basically exists to fill pews on Saturday or Sunday morning and have people go through some religious rigmarole whatever it is some kind of formalism you know pay their dues drop a little money in the offering plate go home and forget all about it until next week this is cheap grace this is grace without discipleship what is discipleship discipleship according to Bonhoeffer is sitting at the feet of Jesus learning his teachings and endeavoring by the grace of God to follow him to do what Jesus teaches this is discipleship well cheap grace is grace without discipleship it's grace without the cross it's grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate and then he transitions into what he calls costly grace and he says costly grace is Grace that is costly but because it calls us to follow to follow to put one foot in front of the other to follow and it is Grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ so his life constant suits a pattern for human existence remember what Paul said in Jesus there has been constituted one new humanity and what's missing from the new humanity in Christ what's missing hostility enmity hatred in my heart against you whoever you are that is the cost of discipleship it is costly because it costs a man his life and it is Grace because it gives a man the only true life man when you begin to experience what it's like to not hate anybody Wow to just love in the light of God's love for us now that's true euphoria that is what it means to have true life Bonhoeffer says it is costly this grace it's costly because it condemns sin now he means in his context the sin of nationalism the sin of national pride the sin of us versus them ISM the the sin of where great your not the sin of we're coming after you to get your stuff because we're more powerful than you are that's the sin grace has to condemn everything that violates the integrity of human relationship and it is Grace because it justifies the sinner above all it is costly because it cost God the life of his son now this raises a question because Bonhoeffer and Carl Bart they're they're operating within a context that we might imagine that will never face I'm going to suggest to you that that we very well could face on some level on some scale at least in principle at least in our own hearts at least in our own marriages at least in our own homes at least in our own place of business that in fact we're always faced with the temptation to whisper about them and to build alliances with a few against the others so we're always in danger but on a national level Bonhoeffer's history Carl Bart's history the history of World War two which swept a Christian nation in to the horrors of World War two in the Holocaust raises the very very provocative question that we won't like to hear and we won't want to answer it and that is should a follower of Jesus be patriotic it's a question that you can't help but ask when you encounter the history of Bonhoeffer and Carl Barton were they patriotic were they the loyal ones or were they disloyal who really was patriotic in World War 2 era Germany who were the faithful patriotic well some of you might be familiar with Alonzo T Jones 80 Jones was a military man he was in the US military and he converted to Christ as he came out of military service and 80 Jones he was a prolific author I have one book by him no kidding it's it's this that called the two republics he was known for specializing in understanding the intersection between politics and religion and he was an expert in matters of religious liberty and righteousness by faith this is Alonzo T Jones now he delivered a sermon in San Francisco that was recorded and then turned into a little booklet that was handed out by the millions around the United States of America and that booklet was titled the title the booklet is what is patriotism in the United States question mark does the name of the booklet that was the name of the sermon what is patriotism what's a good question Joan says this patriotism is usually defined in brief as love of country but then in his sermon he goes on he gets a little funny and he says Wow what does that mean love of country love of the mountains and the rivers and the trees and it's a rhetorical questions no no no when we speak of love of country we're not talking about the love of the land the terra firma under our feet no when we talk about love of country we're talking about something else and this is what we're talking about it's not the land the rivers the trees so thus love of country is really all please get this love of country is really love of the institutions and the principles which make a country what it is and he's talking in the American context the book is titled the booklet is titled what is patriotism in the United States and he's saying listen I'll tell you what patriotism is patriotism is loyalty to the principles that make the nation what it is can we take that on board any forgetting and any ignoring or any degrading of these principles however much those who do so may proclaim their patriotism is in truth the very opposite are you tracking with Jones Jones the saying listen listen it doesn't matter how much somebody says you know I'm patriotic I'm loyal to the country if they're suppose to the country involves a degrading of and ignoring of a disregarding of the principles of liberty and justice for all that lay at the foundation of the thing then no matter what they say about the patriotism it's a lie who were the true patriots in Germany world war ii era Bonhoeffer was the true patriot he was the one faithful to the principles that lie at the foundation of German society prior to that world war he was the one who was saying no to the Third Reich so he was faithful and he lost his life for it carl bart was faithful and was a true patriot at that time in history because he was true to the principles so you and i have to ask a question you know i'm an american you're in American we would do well to pause once in a while and say okay okay I'm an American what is it that I'm loyal to a my loyal to any particular politician or political party am I even loyal to the nation itself with all of its political institutions regardless of what those politicians parties or institutions do or am i loyal am i patriotic to the principles of love and justice and freedom for all I need to ask myself that question lest I slip into the idolatry of power and end up as Carl Bart warned worshipping Jesus in name but transposing over him what did Carl Bart call them those old he then warrior gods we used to worship so I'd like to suggest to you that you consider the possibility of a hierarchy a hierarchy of identity this is a hierarchy of identity for easy remembrance the acronym chat so you can just chat about this later on today all right so my identity my hierarchy of identity I'm gonna sit I'm gonna testify I'm gonna tell you how I view myself as a human being okay how I view myself you can identify or not it's up to you but my hierarchy of identity is the pinnacle of my identity I'm a follower of Jesus I'm a Christian that's the see I am a Christ follower that is the thing above all things that defines Who I am I follow Christ Jesus that's at the pinnacle of my hard work of identity and then I'm human you say well aren't you human before you're Christian well kind of sort of maybe it depends on how you slice the pizza but I think that my humanity is sanctified and transformed and modified and made a better humanity with Christ at the top do you understand what I'm saying so for me my humanity can be completely drained of empathy compassion and kindness unless I am centered on the one who is the source of all good things the best of all things love and then and then the a I'm an American I am an American I like being an American I'm a proud American I'm patriotic I've read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence many times I'm committed to the what is it called in the history books I am committed to the American experiment an experiment in liberty and justice for all an experiment that has been successful and could fail if we lose track of the principle I am an American in that I am patriotic and I am loyal I am loyal to the founding documents the principles articulated in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence I believe that all men are created equal literally all of them and the Thirteenth Amendment was a slow backsliding in one sense that I don't have time to explain but go on Netflix and just watch the Netflix documentary thirteen will blow your mind so I'm a Christian I'm a human I'm an American I'm praising God for all three but that's not much of an acronym so I'm also you can never guess what that one is I'm also a taco connoisseur I had to put something there I wanted actually to put triathlete there but I couldn't you know in all honesty but I do eat a lot of tacos and I love tacos and wherever I go in the world I land and I pull out my phone and I what are the best tacos in Dallas and then that's where I go so what will it be for you are you are you a Christian are you committed to Christ in the sense that you are following his teachings in his ways are you a human are you finding yourself in danger because I'm going to suggest to you that idolatry nation idolatry of nation is the most dangerous force in the world in world history and the most serious threat to the church in its mission so much so that Gregory Boyd one of the the most astounding theologians contemporary to us right now who's who's writing I think I've read pretty much everything he's written he's a friend of mine and Gregory Boyd says something that's going to make all of us including me uncomfortable for a minute I'm uncomfortable with it he says to get Christianity into someone you first have to get America out of them now he himself as a patriot he himself is a loyal American he's not suggesting that you become hostile toward your country he's saying that Christianity as it is in Christ stands against all national hostility and the father of Jesus is commanded by Christ to love all and he's saying the only way to really follow Jesus is to create a hierarchy in which your Christianity your Christianity transcends and defines your nationalism if you flip the script and you're first in American and then a Christian you will find yourself in a heap of trouble idolatry by definition is the act of making God in our own ethno image in the image of our ethnicity whatever that is and imagining that God is like us and not like them or also that God favors us and not them the moment you and I finders of sinking into the us-and-them pipe that's all over talk radio and is news news anymore are there journalists that exist on planet Earth is anybody just analyzing the facts and with no passion at all Who am I to talk look at all this passion is there in but he was just reporting the facts and leaving it with you to think it through it's all entertainment now it's all ideology and LaMotte said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God just happens to hate all the same people that you do yeah that gets to the core of the thing now I'm going to suggest to you that we should tune in to the biblical narrative in one of the threads in the biblical narrative this is gonna take another couple of minutes I hope you're still with me okay by the way you should get the storyline app all these messages are uploaded you can listen again you can watch again video or audio whatever you prefer to recover some of these ideas the biblical storyline follows a trajectory now if we track with me I hope you're still with me now the biblical storyline it follows a narrative arc okay it starts and then it goes somewhere it follows a trajectory from violence to exponential violence to mitigated violence to non-violence this is one of the narrative arcs of scription one of the narrative threads in scripture and it goes something like this first we have the biblical narrative introducing to us this fallen angel figure Lucifer Ezekiel 28 it has many characteristics of him but one of the characteristics is it says that God saw in Lucifer's heart watch this before he even acted it out that God saw violence in his heart later on he would engineer Lucifer pushing all the political and religious buttons of the time Lucifer engineered the crucifixion of Christ because there was violence in his heart jesus said that he was a murderer from the beginning but nobody knew it he had to come out of the shadows and reveal who he was and the cross of Calvary revealed that all along there was violence seething right beneath the surface and then Adam and Eve engaged in hostility one another blaming rather than taking responsibility the fall of Adam and Eve was a manifestation of what we might call psychological or emotional violence toward one another the blame game going back and forth Jesus later on would say yeah yeah even if you think you don't have to commit an act of violence you don't have to commit murder but you've already committed murder in your heart Adam murdered Eve Eve murdered Adam psychologically and emotionally they killed their relationship with one another they ended the relationship on the premise of hostility one toward the other and their collective hostility toward God and then it went vertical because the emotional and psychological violence that we witness in the story with Adam and Eve then manifests itself in the actual physical and get this religious violence of Cain against Abel it was a religious dispute just like world war one was by the way and Cain killed murdered his brother Abel and then there's this character that comes in the lineage of Cain the murderer called Lamech and this is known in theology as lamb X Revenge chapter 4 of Genesis 23 and 24 this is lameee expand he says I have killed a man for wounding me and a young man for striking me if Cain's revenge is Sevenfold then lay mix is seventy seven fold what is he saying here he's saying listen somebody just hit me and I killed him someone someone wounded me and I took their life this is a great inequity in working out the EM of the ramifications of justice you hit me I'll kill you that's what he's saying he's saying that he's full of rage and we have this language this mathematical language of exponential violence and then of course we have the pre-flood in Chapter six of Genesis that is described as violence and violence that threatens the very existence of the human race God says the end of all flesh after six of Genesis the end of all flesh the extinction of the human race has come up before me because of their violence quote unquote violence is threatening the very continuation of humanity God intervenes with the flood to save the human race after the flood we encountered this crazy man named Nimrod who is the founder of tribalism and nationalism he is the founder of the kingdom of Babel which is on the premise that which is built on the premise of violence and nationalism and tribalism and nationalism becomes the definition of all human affairs this is the beginning of the biblical narrative is a story of violence exponential violence and the whole thing is going out of control but then came the law of Moses in the story and the law of Moses was designed get this to mitigate Rotella to rate violence now this is something that a lot of people need to pause to process because when somebody does something wrong to us either individually or nationally we sometimes quote the Bible and we say well you know you did that so I'm gonna do this tit for tat an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth you get what you deserve and we think we're operating at the highest levels of morality and justice well it is biblical under Moses now you remember Lamech laman it Lamech what was Lamech said you wound me I'll kill you there's not an equity of justice there so Moses comes along and he says what you've no doubt heard or read in Leviticus 24 if anyone injures his neighbor if anyone injures his neighbor watch what Moses does as he has done it shall as he has done it shall be done to him do you see what's happening here leymah cos like you touch me I'll kill you Moses is like no somebody injures is his neighbor well as he has done it she'll be done to him fracture for fracture you break my arm I'll break your arm I for eye tooth for tooth whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him and now we have what might at first glance appear to be the highest moral standard I think okay there's an equality here of justice you get what you deserve you hit me I'm not gonna murder you you hit me I'll hit you back now Gandhi came along and he said unless this is modified and eye for an eye will make the whole world blind Gandhi said and toothless the whole world broken down under Rotella Tory violence even when it's equalized now watch this I hope you're still with me because this is theological this is the theological heights of Scripture when we come to the person of Jesus Christ okay so what's happening here is in Moses what we're witnessing I for an eye tooth for tooth right not an ideal law but rather a transitional law the story's going somewhere Lamech is like you wound me I kill you Society was defined by over the top revenge and Moses dialed it down he said no no no eye for eye so we look at Moses and we think Moses is saying it more like yeah somebody takes your eye take their eye but Moses is really saying hey somebody takes your eye only take their eye that's the point only it's mitigating he's dialing it down we're going somewhere where are we going Oh allow your heart to be beautified by Jesus Matthew chapter 5 the Sermon on the Mount which by the way is what the cost of discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer is all about it's a book that is a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus comes along and he says this you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth okay question who said that Moses he's quoting what he's quoting the Bible he's quoting the Bible you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye tooth for a tooth in fact I'm not time to get into this but he's quoting himself because he's the one that inspired Moses to write what Moses wrote okay you have heard that it was said the Bible says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but qualification I tell you do not resist an evil person but whoever slaps you on the right cheek turn the other cheek to him also you should be really uncomfortable about now if you're not uncomfortable at this point you're not tracking you're not processing this is not glib this isn't light this is this yet Jesus is challenging the entire edifice of the human justice system Jesus is saying everything you thought was the pinnacle of moral standard we're going higher you thought retaliation with equality equal tit for tat eye for eye I'm asking you to let people off the hook I'm asking you to forgive and you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy he's quoting Moses again partly Moses is the one who said love your enemy well love your neighbor now watch this you guys Moses said love your neighbor to hate your enemy part the Jewish scholars derived from other passages of the Old Testament that said God give me vengeance against my enemies and dashed their babies heads on rocks Psalm 107 so they constructed this latter part Jesus is quoting partly Moses and partly the extrapolation of vengeful human beings who interpreted scripture to their ends you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy now watch this but I say to you your enemies bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven the implication this is what God is like for he makes his Sun Rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the just and the unjust the Germans and the French and the English and the Russians and the Chinese and the Americans or since we would like to hear from Chris Martin from Coldplay no I don't want a battle from beginning to end fighting on and on and on I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge I don't want to follow death and all his friends listen Jesus died to break the cycle of recycled revenge when Jesus said the words you have heard that was said quoting Moses love your neighbor and then what did Jesus say I'm telling you love your enemy now who's he quoting he's quoting himself in the moment there is no Old Testament passage in Moses or any other prophet that says love your enemies Jesus is following the trajectory the narrative arc all the way through to his conclusion it begins with violence violence goes exponential and violence is then mitigated by the writings of Moses and then Jesus comes along and he says how about no violence at all how about forgiveness how about we allow love to break down all the barriers between us individually and nationally can you imagine if world leaders got together and just read the Sermon on the Mount together and prayed that God would give them the grace to implement the principles of enemy love Jesus came and died to break the cycle of recycled revenge the question is will you allow that cycle to be broken in your heart will I allow that cycle to be broken in my heart on my own personal individual level am I willing to forgive rather than to require retaliation as my do the idolatry of power is a very very very slippery slope we need to stand on the solid ground of the love of God in Christ with our loyalties placed higher than any nationalistic interests our loyalty centered in Christ and His Sermon on the Mount is our political manifesto as the body of Christ hey thanks so much for watching we hope that message was a blessing to you God's Word is powerful it penetrates into our minds into our hearts brings about transformation in every aspect of our lives listen we don't want you to miss any content so again we want to encourage you to click on subscribe and track with the content that's going to be coming out week after week and if you'd like to partner with us in this global Ministry of taking the gospel of Christ to the whole world we want to invite you to become a partner in this ministry click give and join with us you

Channel: Storyline Church

Views: 7,606

Rating: 4.8297873 out of 5

Keywords: storylinechurch, rivalgods, tygibson

Id: CzVx8G5syh8

Length: 54min 44sec (3284 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019