Plainfield Christian Church
08-11-24 | Thinking Like a Christian: About Right and Wrong
Welcome to the Plainfield Christian Church podcast. We hope that this message encourages you today. For additional resources to learn about what it looks like to be fully alive with Jesus, visit our website at plainfieldchristian.com. Enjoy the podcast. Good morning church. My name is Luke. I get to serve as one of the ministers here. Like Brad said, we're kicking off a new sermon series today called Thinking Like a Christian. And for the next three weeks, we're going to be asking the question, how do we think like a Christian about right and wrong, about citizenship, and yes, about politics? Now, some of you just thought, oh no, because you have been inviting your friend to church for months. And of all days, they chose to come today. And you're thinking, oh no, I promise I didn't know he was going to do this. It's not normally like this. But bear with me, because 86 days from now, the polls are going to come in. And you know what's going to happen. Half of the country is going to be outraged no matter what. And part of the reason we're doing this is that that gives us, as followers of Jesus, a unique opportunity to show the world a better way. Don't you think? And it's not my place to tell you who to vote for, but it is my place as your pastor, to tell you how to think like Jesus is king. Now, maybe in the back of your mind, you're still thinking like, really, we have to hear about this everywhere else. Why here? Do we really have to talk about this? Let me give you three reasons why we're doing this series. Here's reason number one. Jesus is Lord over everything. He's Lord over absolutely everything, every square inch. Paul says it like this in Colossians chapter 1. He says, "For in him in Jesus, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things. And in him, all things hold together." You see that? All things all throughout there, right? So like, not just the part of your life that you feel okay talking about in church. Jesus is Lord over all of it. And if it's true that every square inch of the universe is owned by Jesus, sustained by Jesus, ruled by Jesus, and moving toward Jesus, then that means everything you do, everything you care about, every decision you make, absolutely every corner of your life. Jesus looks at it and he says, "mine." He's Lord over all of it. And if that's true, that means that like a couple things, number one, in this season of political chaos, if Jesus is Lord over everything, we don't have to get sucked into the muck raking and the fear mongering that everybody else is doing. And we also have to learn how to think about it under the lordship of Jesus, which is reason number two. Jesus is Lord over everything and He wants us to love Him with our minds. Brad mentioned it earlier in Mark chapter 12, Jesus was asked, "What's the most important command?" And Jesus said, "Of all the commands in the Bible, here's the most important one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart." Cool. We can do the hard part with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. What that means is Jesus doesn't just save you and then let you go keep on living according to your own opinions and preconceived notions like everybody else. Jesus actually wants to transform the way our brains process the world around us. Paul says it like this in Romans chapter 12. He says, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world." Don't be like everybody else, but be transformed. How do we be transformed? He says, "By the renewing of your mind." Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good pleasing and perfect will. Jesus actually wants to change how we think. And if He's Lord over everything and He wants to change how we think, then here's the third reason we're doing this series. Living like Jesus's Lord requires exposing false ideas and replacing them with truth. That's how Jesus changes what we think. Paul describes that process again in Colossians chapter 2. He says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord." Do you remember when you received Christ as Lord? We got to see those three just now. You remember that moment for you? He says, "Just like that, continue to live your lives in Him." Are you living your life in Christ, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness? There's a convicting phrase. Does that describe you? Paul says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy." So expose false ideas, which depend on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ, expose false ideas and replace them with the truth of Jesus. For in Christ, all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. You know this. You're gonna walk out into a world this week where there are so many stories and ideas and opinions and truth claims swirling around and our duty is to sort them out true and false and to bring them in line with the truth we believe about who Jesus is and what He is doing to save the world. Paul describes it elsewhere in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 like this. He says, "We demolish arguments," the strong phrase, "and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God." I love this part. He says, "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." So over the next three weeks we just want to take our thoughts captive for a moment and learn how to think like a Christian. And I'm gonna be operating under a few different assumptions for the next three weeks. I'm gonna be operating number one under the assumption that you are a follower of Jesus. And if you're here right now and you're like, "Yep, that ain't me. Not a follower of Jesus." I am so glad you're here. We're pumped that you're here and I actually hope that we could make a compelling case for you about why life with Jesus is good and it's the life that you were actually made for. But I'm gonna be assuming that most of us in the room right now would call ourselves Christians. And if you call yourself a Christian, let me just remind you what that means. If you say, "Yes, I'm a Christian," that means that you have sworn allegiance to a crucified peasant carpenter from 2,000 years ago who was executed by the Roman Empire. But you say that you believe that now he's actually the risen and reigning king of the universe. You know that's an audacious thing to say, right? And if you're actually saying, "Yes, I believe that," then don't you think that reality should shape the way we view the world? Don't you think we should learn to think like that is true? And so for the next three weeks we're going to be exploring that together and I just got to admit from the get-go that I've had a lot of help from people who are a lot smarter than me along the way and we're not going to have time to quote them every time I use one of their ideas. But I do want to say thank you in advance to people like Tyler McKenzie and W.D. Ross and the National Association of Evangelicals and Randy Harris and Jeff Falk because I've had a lot of help from them and I'm thankful for people with bigger brains than me. But today it's going to be a little different than a normal Sunday. It's probably today going to feel to you a little bit more like teaching and a little less like preaching because my goal for today is to just build some tension. I want to stir some stuff up in you today because our sermons for the next three weeks are going to build on each other and play off of each other a little more than they normally do. So if you get mad at me today after episode one, please don't write me an email until after episodes two and three. Can we make that a deal? Sound good? All right, but today in episode one I just want to stir up some tension. I want to help you think about what you're thinking about. I want to help till up the soil in your mind and then in weeks two and three we'll help kind of work through some of that tension and give us some guardrails for how we navigate it as followers of Jesus. Does that sound good? That all right? You ready to go? Here we go. All right, here's my question for you today. How do you decide the right thing to do? How do you decide the right thing to do? Now remember, I said we're gonna stir up some tension. You ready? Okay, let me hit you with some ethical dilemmas to illustrate this question. Here's dilemma number one. It's the dilemma of Big Bobby. You're going spelunking with a group of nine of your friends and you go explore a cave on the ocean side but once you go into the cave, unbeknownst to you, the tide rises, the entrance to the cave is covered. You're now trapped in the cave with the water rising. What are you gonna do? So you go further into the cave and thankfully you discover another small hole through which you think you might be able to escape the rising water in this cave. The first one in your group to try to make it out of the hole is Big Bobby. Now unfortunately Big Bobby gets himself lodged in the hole and you can't get him unstuck no matter what you try. So Big Bobby's head is outside the hole but his body is stuck and his bottom half is still inside the cave. The water's rising and if this keeps going, the nine of you are going to drown and only Big Bobby is going to live because his head is outside the hole. Now, thankfully, you are a very well-prepared group of spelunkers and you have brought with you a stick of dynamite. Yes and this stick of dynamite, strategically located, can remove Big Bobby from the hole but it's gonna be a little hard on Bobby. Now, if you don't use the dynamite to blow Bobby out of the hole, you got to know there's gonna be nine of you that drown and only him that lives. So would you blow Bobby out of the hole? You don't have to answer that out loud, but I want you to answer it in your mind, okay? What would you do? Now, by the way, in all of these dilemmas, if you're waiting for the fun, happy stories, there are none, okay? It just gets worse from here, okay? Here's dilemma number two. Dilemma number two is the dead millionaire. You're going hiking with a very rich friend of yours. Tragically, she falls and hits her head and you go, you rush down to her side and with her dying breath, she says to you, "You know, I've never trusted banks very much. I have a million dollars buried in my rose garden at home. Would you please make sure it gets to my son?" And you say, "Yes, I promise I will give the million dollars to your son and your friend tragically passes away." Now, you made that promise, but you also know her son and her son is what we would describe back in Missouri as pond scum. Just not a very nice guy and you know that if you give that million dollars to that kid, he's just going to go squander it on something scandalous and waste the whole thing. And, you know, nobody actually heard about the money or heard you make that promise. And so you could go back and you could say, "You know what? With her dying breath." She gave a hundred thousand dollars to cancer research and a hundred thousand dollars to help end a world hunger in Africa and a hundred thousand dollars to the church and another hundred thousand to the children's hospital. What a wonderful woman. And nobody would ever have to know, "Would you keep your word and give that million dollars to her bum of a son or would you do something else?" Here's dilemma number three, the terrorist son. There's a terrorist who has planted a nuclear bomb that is set to detonate and it will kill a hundred thousand people when it does. You've tried everything you can think of and you cannot find the bomb. Would you be willing to torture that terrorist to try to find the location of the bomb and save a hundred thousand lives? Let's say you do, but he's a tough nut to crack and he's still not breaking, but you manage to get your hands on his seven-year-old son. Would you be willing to torture that boy in front of his father in order to find the bomb and save those people? Here's the next dilemma, the runaway train. You're driving a train that is hurtling down the tracks and you see there are three children playing on the tracks right in front of you. If you do nothing, your train will hit those three children, but you have the power to hit a button and to get the train onto another track where down the track there are five adult workers. If you do nothing, you'll hit the children. If you switch track, you'll hit those five adults. Would you switch tracks or would you let the train keep going? Here's the next dilemma, the Jehovah's Witness. You're a doctor and you're working hard to save the life of a 12-year-old little girl who is seriously ill. In fact, she's so sick that if she doesn't receive a blood transfusion, she's going to die very soon. The problem is this little 12-year-old girl is a Jehovah's Witness and so is her family. Now Jehovah's Witnesses are religiously opposed to blood transfusions. They believe that if you get a blood transfusion, that is a one-way ticket to hell. Then so this little girl is refusing the blood transfusion and her parents are agreeing with her. No, we don't want her to get the blood. If you go along with their wishes, the little girl will die, but if you act against their wishes, she will live. What do you do? Here's the last dilemma, the Jewish neighbor. It's 1942 in Europe. You are hiding your Jewish neighbors behind your secret bookshelf and the Nazis come knocking on the door. You open the door and the soldier says to you, "Do you know where your Jewish neighbor is?" You can either say, "Yes I do or no I don't." What would you do? It's hard, isn't it? Can you feel the tension a little bit? And I actually think there's a lot of different faithful ways you can answer these questions, so I'm less worried today about the specific thing you said you do, and I'm more interested in why you thought that. I'm interested in how you decided the right thing to do. So how do you decide the right thing to do? There's several different ethical frameworks that you can use to help navigate these unfortunate dilemmas. Let's look at three particular ethical frameworks that you could use though. Here's number one, utilitarianism. This is an ethical framework that's based on outcomes. If you are an ethical utilitarian, it just means you're concerned with doing the most good. Whatever does the most amount of good for the most amount of people, that is the right thing to do. So let's walk back through our scenarios. What would a utilitarian do with Big Bobby? Yeah, boom, you blow him up, right? Because nine living people and one dead person is better than one living person and nine dead people, right? If you are an ethical utilitarian, what would you do with the millionaire's money? You'd tell a lie, wouldn't you? You'd break your promise, spread it around because you could do more good for more people than letting that bum go wasted in Vegas. If you're a utilitarian, you're probably also willing to torture that terrorist because it could allow you to save a hundred thousand lives. And some of you, in your mind, you just said yes, that's what I would do to all three of those things. But my guess is, unless you are a really committed, true, blue, utilitarian, most of you probably felt a check in your spirit when I mentioned torturing the terrorist's son. Something about that probably rubbed you the wrong way. Why is that? Let's move on to framework number two you could use. It's called deontology, just doing the right thing. Maybe the idea of torturing a seven-year-old boy rubbed you the wrong way because, you know, there's some scenarios where the ends do not justify the means that sometimes something is right and something is wrong no matter what the consequences are. Torturing a kid is wrong no matter what, even if it leads to really painful results. That's called deontology. Now, I know these are nerd words, some of you are like half asleep already, but go with me because listen, if you can learn to order a drink at Starbucks, we can talk about big words in church, right? I have full confidence in your ability to keep up, right? We're gonna keep going, okay? Here we go. If you believe in deontology, if you're a deontologist that some things are right and some things are wrong no matter what, then you probably would not lie to the millionaire. You would probably give that million dollars to her son. Why would you do that? Because even if that kid squanders the money, you grew up hearing that honesty is the best policy. You heard the story of George Washington in the cherry tree. I cannot tell a lie. And my guess is some of you are even trying to think from a Christian worldview. And you remember that Jesus says, "Let your yes be yes and your no be no." And that God wants us to be people who will tell the truth no matter what and do hard things even when it's painful and the consequences might hurt. But here's the catch. Some of you who said you would not lie to the millionaire said you would lie to the Nazis. Why? More on that later. Hold on to that thought. Here's the third framework. Relativism. Just do what's right for you. This is increasingly popular in our world. The idea of an absolute right and an absolute wrong is increasingly fading into the background and that's called relativism. It just means that Mary has to do what's right for Mary and look for her truth deep inside herself. And Jim has to do what's right for Jim based on his scenario. And Mary doesn't get to tell Jim what's right for him. And there is no action in and of itself that is inherently right or wrong. Now the problem with relativism is if we all actually live like that society would cave in on itself wouldn't. So you see these three options here. What are you thinking? My hope is my guess is maybe some of you are starting to lean where I'm leaning toward the deontology route that there's some things that are right and there's some things that are wrong no matter what the consequences are. But there also have to be certain principles to our deontology right. There have to be certain principles that guide us to know what are those things that are absolutely right that we can't compromise on. And I'd like to present the case to you today that if we're going to have a principled deontology that the principles that shape your ethics have actually come from Jesus whether or not you know it. That at a really basic level in our society whether you believe the Bible or not your ethical worldview has been so shaped by the pages of Scripture that you don't even recognize it anymore. But that the teaching of Jesus has been so profoundly effective on our world that you are shaped by the ethical vision of the New Testament whether or not you even know it. Because when Jesus introduced these principles to the world they were absolutely radical. But I'm about to walk you through seven ethical principles that are always right. And I think I can guess what your reaction is going to be. It's going to be a big shrug. Yeah, because you just think these things are going to be universally assumed because they are in our world. Whether you follow Jesus or not none of these are going to seem earth-shattering even though they were when they were first introduced. These are just kind of assumed now as the basic minimum ethical standard of what we owe each other as humans in society. But it actually came from God. Seven ethical principles that are always right. Ready? Principle number one is do no harm. Do no harm. If you go back and you read the ten commandments in the Old Testament a lot of them are just about doing no harm. This is our most basic ethical duty. Don't steal. Don't commit adultery. Don't murder. Do no harm means if I'm driving to church early this morning and I see you pulled over on the side of the road with a flat tire I'm not necessarily obligated to pull over and help you out but I'm at least obligated not to try to swerve and pick you off. Right? Because we know you have a moral duty to do no harm. Okay? That's principle number one. Except it actually gets a little more complicated than that. Seems simple on the surface but as our world gets increasingly global and international and connected it gets tricky because then you have to start asking questions like well where did my shoes come from and what about this coffee that I'm drinking because we have a responsibility as much as we can to live a life that doesn't actively harm other people. That's principle number one here's principle number two. Do good. Do good. It's pretty simple and again it's all over God's law. God is the one who introduced this to the world because it wasn't assumed in ancient times but all of a sudden God hardwired into the law for the Jewish people these things like hey you should help the poor and you should leave a little bit of grain around the edges of your field for the people who are hungry and you know what if there's travelers coming through town you should show hospitality to them even if they're foreigners who don't worship the same gods that you do. The Bible gave this concept to the world that you know what you should do good to other people when you can but here's the thing an ethicist would tell you and I'm not one but an ethicist would tell you that your moral obligation to do good is not as strong as your obligation to do no harm. Here's what I mean if you spent your whole life going around doing every good thing you could possibly think of to every single person everywhere you went you would never get anything done in life and so there has to be some principles about when we are required to do good because even a person who's not a follower of Jesus in our world would say there are sometimes where you should do good and it's based on the potential cost to you and the potential benefit to the other person. Here's what I mean. Let's say you're on a cruise and you happen to witness a very intoxicated man fall off of the cruise ship into shark infested waters. Do you have a moral duty to dive off of the boat and try to save that man's life? No not necessarily if you did we think wow that's a really heroic thing of you to do but we also wouldn't think you're a total loser if you didn't because the captain saw it happen and he's kind of slowing the ship down to and turn on that and so you don't have to dive off because the potential cost to you is really high and the potential benefit to the other guy is really low but conversely let's say you're walking the trails here in playing field and you hear a noise and you look over and down there in white lick creek is a little one-year-old girl nobody else around she's fallen in the creek she's splashing face down in the water struggling for air do you have a duty to help in that scenario if you looked at her and you thought you know what got my good shoes on today just not really feel like getting wet like we would say no you have to act in that situation because the cost to you is relatively low and the potential benefit to that little girl is relatively high and so even if you're not a follower of Jesus society will tell you sometimes you are obligated to do good okay here's principle number three tell the truth and again this is going to sound like not revolutionary to you but it absolutely was revolutionary in the ancient world because in the ancient world there were a whole lot of cultures that actually being dishonest and deceptive was a well respected trait like if you could pull one over on somebody and trick him that elevated your status in society if you go read ancient mythology about the groups of gods and stuff even the gods would lie to each other and try to trick one another to climb up the divine hierarchy and so the Israelites absolutely flipped the entire script when they stepped on the scene with God's word and they said you know what actually our God is a God of truth and when he says something you can trust it and if you keep reading in Scripture Jesus says that actually one of the primary traits of the evil one is that the devil is a liar and the father of lies and so Jesus would say telling the truth is really serious business so it raises that question again that we talked about is it ever okay to lie and the reason you felt tension in some of those ethical dilemmas earlier is that sometimes these principles come in conflict with one another don't they when that Nazi knocks on your door you have a moral duty to tell the truth but you also have a moral duty to do no harm so which one of those takes precedence and every time you felt that tension that's where the tension comes from these principles in conflict with one another and I think you can faithfully choose either direction now you know this from experience when it comes to telling the truth there's three basic kinds of lying number one there is lying to harm someone else to slander them to drag them through the mud to ruin their reputation and that is always wrong number two there's the lie to protect yourself and this is the most common kind of lie that we do it's like you know the dog ate my homework a reason I was late is got cotton traffic you know that that kind of thing and that is also always wrong the third type of lying though is where it gets a little tricky it's the lie to protect someone else where is your Jewish neighbor do you know where they are and and even the Bible gives us a little bit of a gray area here on this because we have this story of Rahab in the Old Testament she's this lady who tells a lie to protect and save the lives of these two spies for God's people and God actually commends Rahab's faith he doesn't necessarily commend her lie but he commends her faith and so when it's a lie to protect someone else we're we're in a little bit of a gray area but I think all of us would admit that even if there might be a scenario where you would think it's okay to lie none of us like being lied to do we know and especially in the day we're living in where there's you know big news everywhere in a truth-telling crisis and how do you even know what to believe anymore so Jesus would say it's really important that we be people who let our yes be yes and our know be know because relationships have to be built on a foundation of trust here's principle number four keep your promises now keeping your promises and telling the truth are similar but they're not quite the exact same because not only does God tell the truth God actually makes a whole bunch of promises in the Bible and he keeps them you and I can live confidently as followers of Jesus because we know beyond the shadow of a doubt when God says he's going to do something when he makes a promise he keeps it every single time and the Bible word for that is a covenant that we are in a promise-based covenant relationship with God and there's some earthly relationships like that too a marriage is a promise-based covenant relationship now the difference between keeping your promises and telling the truth is that keeping your promises means you have created some obligations for yourself that you did not previously have here's what I mean let's say that you need a kidney transplant and I happen to be a match and I like you so yeah sure I'll give you my kidney no problem we fill out the paperwork start going through the process like did I have to give you my kidney no I didn't absolutely not but let's say next week you and I are getting wheeled down the hallway in the hospital we're heading toward the operating room and we've already filed out all the paperwork they've got it all prepped ready to go and I thought ah I forgot I'm scared of needles and never mind I'm out now it would not have been wrong for me in the first place to say no I'm gonna keep my kidney but after I've already agreed and made a promise to you it would be morally wrong for me to back out and to break that promise here's principle number five be fair this is the whole idea of justice and again it seems like it's a given to us but it's actually a gift that God gave to the world in the ancient world being fair was not something they thought about in the ancient world people were ruthlessly ranked and subjugated whoever was the most powerful the law worked to benefit them whoever was richest and strongest got what they wanted but all of a sudden the people of God stepped in with the Jewish law and they said no even the poor even the sick even the disabled even the elderly even women and children and foreigners and widows deserve to have their day in court because they are made in the image of the living God just like everybody else and that means there is no room for favoritism and discrimination on God's planet man if you want a picture of what justice looks like go flip through the pages of the Old Testament where God speaks through the prophet God God speaks through the prophet Amos and Amos chapter five and he says to his people to the religious people he says I cannot stand your stinking worship services quit play in your church games I'm sick of all your religious activities knock it off what I want is fairness God says I want justice to roll down like a river and righteousness like an ever flowing stream which is why if you flip back in your history textbook every great liberation movement in world history has been based on the idea of justice that God gave to the world principle number six respect autonomy basically just the idea of freedom and respecting autonomy means that as much as I can it is right for me to allow you to make the decisions for your own life even if I think you're making bad decisions because you get to make that choice for yourself and that's what God does for us isn't it God does not force us to follow him he invites us to follow him God did not make a world full of robots God made a world full of human beings with the capacity for free will and he has given us the heartbreaking ability to choose whether or not we will accept or reject him now we too should respect people's autonomy but there are limits to how far we will respect somebody's autonomy if you're using your freedom to infringe on other people's rights or if you don't have the rationality or the maturity to make that decision for yourself then we will limit your autonomy meaning if your five-year-old comes up to you and says mommy can I go play on the highway at that moment you are going to override their autonomy and say no because they are not rational or mature enough to understand the consequences of that decision so like if you're a parent or grandparent this raises some questions about kids right yeah of course we want to respect our autonomy we want them to freedom give them the freedom to choose even to learn from their mistakes but how far do we respect their autonomy should you let your nine-year-old choose to stay home from church should you let your 12-year-old choose to do whatever they want to do online should you let your 16-year-old date whoever they want are they really rational and mature enough to understand the consequences of those decisions respect autonomy here's principle number seven fix what you break this is the concept of reparations that you broke it so you fix it and that is a huge theme all throughout scripture because scripture says that you and I we are people who break things we are sinners you have broken yourself you've broken the relationships around you you broken your relationship with God and so the Bible is full of wisdom on how we how we own that how we confess that how we move on from that how we fix what it is that we broke and the American judicial system spends the vast majority of its time right down here at number seven asking who broke it and what do they have to do to fix it and sometimes it's really simple if you hit my car out there in the parking lot you are going to have to pay to fix my car it gets tricky though when you can't repay in kind meaning if the hospital amputates the wrong leg well how much was that leg gonna be worth to that person or it gets tricky when you don't know exactly how far the line of responsibility goes if you get hit by a drunk driver are you allowed to sue the bartender does the line of responsibility go that far back this stuff's tricky isn't it if you're anything like me like you feel the tension in this there's a whole lot of tension there's a whole lot of gray and there's not a lot of easy answers but I want to just till up the soil and ask the question how do you decide the right thing to do I want to lay this foundation of right and wrong because I also want you to know that whether you believe the Bible or not today whether you are not a follower of Jesus you can see that the way that God has designed the world to work is good that if we all lived according to this the world would be pretty good and that's just a sneak preview of how good life is with Jesus it's the life that he made you for there's more more more to come and you can also see me within these principles like there's a lot of wiggle room for faithful people with good intentions to come to different ethical conclusions not a lot of easy answers but of course because we are Christians we also know there's a lot at stake here this isn't just you do what you think is right and I'll do what I think is right because there is real good and there is real evil and there's real heaven and there is real hell that lies beneath all of this and so discerning right from wrong really matters and if you're anything like me I get to the end of this and I just think man I need wisdom which is why I'm really thankful that God promises every time we ask for wisdom and faith he'll give it and so I'm really thankful he's given us a book and every ounce of wisdom you will ever need is found right here on these pages and so yeah week one here I hope I just stirred up some tension and tilled some soil I hope you'll come back for two and three and maybe we'll start to figure out how exactly we weighed through this tension by diving into the pages of this book and seeing what does the Bible say about citizenship and about politics because Jesus would walk on the scene and he'd say you know what this ethical framework right here it's fine for the world it's an okay way to keep you all from killing each other in society from caving in on itself it's okay as a basic minimal standard of ethical decency but if you're a follower of Jesus we're actually called to an ethic that is so much higher and deeper than this remember how we started today we started by saying that Jesus is Lord over everything which means that he wants to make you and me into the kind of people who will go out there into this kind of a world and show the world just how good and how strong he is and so Jesus shows up on the scene and says yes that's fine for everybody else but if you say I'm your Lord Jesus would say if you say I'm your King then you pick up your cross then you deny yourself Jesus would say if you want to be one of my people how many times do you forgive somebody who hurt you seven times no 70 times seven Jesus would say you you take the side of the week you defend those who can't defend themselves you love your neighbor every bit as much if not more than you love yourself you overcome evil with good when somebody hits you you turn the other cheek when somebody curses you you bless them and you pray for them if somebody takes your coat you offer him your shirt - if somebody says go one mile you go with them two miles you sell all you have and you give it to the poor I mean the ethic of Jesus the ethic of the cross makes absolutely no sense unless of course you follow a crucified King in an upside-down kingdom but more on that next week in the meantime would you pull out the communion you got when you walked in if you're anything like me you look at this list and I read all seven of these things and the first thing I think of is the ways that I have broken them all of them like today and I look at this standard and I think man if that's if that's what it takes I can't hit that and so the good news for you and me this morning is that you are not saved by how ethical you are and that God's not gonna ask for your resume of good choices versus bad choices when you stand before him someday the good news is that Jesus didn't just come to crush us with this standard that we could never live up to the good news is that while you and I broke ourselves and this thing so bad so far beyond our ability to fix it Romans chapter 5 says while we were still sinners Christ died for us and he came to fix everything in your life that you can't fix you came to heal and repair the things that you broke and so we come to this moment today and I'm thankful that God's highest good for your life is not for you to be an ethical person and God's dream for your mind is not for you to just be really good at telling right from wrong and hopefully make you into a little bit nicer version of yourself God's dream for you is to become fully alive in his son Jesus and he's made a way for it to happen so I'm gonna give you a few moments now to just draw your heart into awareness of God's presence and as you do would you read through this list of these seven things and ask God to show you where you've fallen short even this week and when he does say God I'm sorry but thank you for making a way to fix what I broke when you're ready you can receive the bread on your own that represents the body of Jesus that was nailed to the cross for you and for me then I'll read some scripture and pray and we'll receive the cup together you (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) [Music] In Romans 5 Paul says, "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. And so God we say thank you. Now we've fallen so far short, but we thank you, that you have a good, good vision for the world. And we do ask for your wisdom as we are faced with choices, help us know the right thing to do, because we want to do what's right, we want to do what's good. And yet you know as well as we do, we fall so far short. So thank you Jesus for making a way. We love you. It's in your powerful name we pray, and all God's people said, "Amen, this is the blood of Christ." Thank you for listening to the podcast today. It is our deepest desire here at Plainfield Christian Church that you would experience the joy of being fully alive in Jesus. If you have any questions about our church or would like a plan to visit with us, go to PlainfieldChristian.com. If you'd like to receive our podcast every week, we encourage you to subscribe to the Plainfield Christian Church Podcast on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Have a great week. [Music]