Liberty, Justice, and Love for All

Well, Summit family and friends, welcome at some of our locations.

I've actually been waiting a long time to be able to say that. We haven't gathered in this way since March. I think we're on our 29th or 30th week even of being in the midst of this, this kind of COVID and lockdown and things that go with that. Unfortunately, I'm not able to say yet at all of our locations, because right now we're only able to do Thursday nights in our permanent locations, but hopefully, Lord willing, we will continue this trajectory and be able to gather again all together.

So for those of you that are joining us at one of our campuses, for those of you that are joining us in your homes or those of you that are sitting kind of by yourself at a computer or watching this, I want to say welcome to all of you and tell you that we are glad that you are part of our church, whether you are a family member with us or whether you are a guest and a friend. Well, I'm not sure if you know this, but our country is headed into an election. Did you know that? Have you heard anything about that?

Any commercials or seen anything? Just as if 2020 was not challenging enough, right? I saw this on Twitter recently, but I thought this actually summed up my year. I don't know how you feel.

I feel like I was prepared for one thing, but then something else has came out of nowhere. And now we have the election, and you all, you understand that there is nothing that foments division in our country like an election. In fact, I'll just go ahead and say it.

I know that some of you are going to be on pins and needles during this entire series that we're even talking about it, so let me just try to set some expectations for you, okay? First is, I'm not going to tell you how to vote. Secondly, I'm not going to tell you how I'm voting. I know that some of you are going to try to read between the lines so that you can try to discern who you think I'm voting for by little subtle hints that you think I throw out there. And if you get even a whiff that I don't see it your way, then you are ready with a pre-written, strongly worded email explaining why I am a compromised Christian and you are ready to look for another church, okay?

Is that true? John, I see you there with your finger hovering over the word sin, so just let me ask you as much as possible that you restrain yourself on that, because that is not my purpose. That's not my purpose in this series, seriously.

I know that many of you have felt shoved around by strong opinions and talking heads. My goal is not to be another talking head pushing you around. I'm not going to try to act neutral while giving you subtle hints about what you really ought to do.

I'm not going to say things like, you know, God's already played the ultimate trump card if you abide in him. And you're supposed to try to decode what I mean by that. What did he mean? Was that a message to us?

That's not the purpose. What I'm going to do, and in a couple of weeks, Pastor Brian is going to join me. I'm going to show you that there is a general mindset that all Christians ought to have when they approach questions like these questions.

A set of, let's call them first principles, a set of first principles that we agree on, and then after that we extend to one another a level of freedom and grace. The church is not supposed to be a place where everybody sees every issue exactly the same. That's called a cult. And what God planted was not a cult. What he planted was a church that was made up of people that were natural enemies in society that found a common unity in Christ that was greater than their divisions.

I will say it plainly, okay? Political questions are important, but the gospel that unites us is more important. The bonds in the body of Christ ought to be stronger than any political affiliation. And the flag that we ultimately pledge allegiance to should compel greater allegiance than the banner of any political party. Ultimately, you've heard me say this, hopefully, oh, ultimately we are not the party of the donkey or the party of the elephant. Ultimately we are the people of the land. Amen? Amen.

Well, this series is called Flags because I want us to rally around a different, I want to call us to rally around a different primary flag this November. In fact, let me teach you a little Hebrew term, okay? Jehovah Nissi. Can you say it with me? Jehovah Nissi, you say it. Jehovah Nissi, what it means is translated, the Lord is my banner. Or in other words, the Lord is the flag which I march under.

That's what I want to be true in this series and beyond it. Friends, you know this, these are toxic waters. These issues cause deep division in the church and they really shouldn't. The good news, the good news if you want to see it this way is that this is not a new problem in the church and the Bible speaks directly to it.

I bet you didn't know that, did you? There are parts of your Bible that address precisely questions like these. And in fact, I'll just go ahead and say it. The reason these things still cause such division in the church among many of us is that when it comes to these questions, many of us are more discipled by CNN and Fox News than we are the scriptures. If we were as immersed in Habakkuk and Matthew as we are in Hannity or Maddow, we probably wouldn't have a lot of these problems.

Let me challenge you going in. Some of you care more about how your neighbor votes than where they're going to spend eternity. And what that shows you is that you have traded your allegiance to Jehovah Nissi and his cause, you've traded that for a political idol. There's just two things that I want to try to show you today. They both come from the Gospel of Luke. So if you've got your Bible, Luke chapter 10 is where I'd love for you to open up or turn it on and find it there. Luke 10 is where we're going to begin.

Here's the first thing. The first thing is when it comes to pursuing justice, Christians are motivated by love for their neighbor and that affects everything, including how they think politically. Second thing I want to show you is that in practicing justice, Christians can disagree on how it looks like. These things that I'm going to say to you today both come right out of the Gospel of Luke. I hope to show you that and they're going to be challenging, but they really shouldn't be controversial.

They're challenging, but they're not controversial. Okay, so number one, let's talk about pursuing justice. Christians are motivated by love for neighbor. We're going to look very quickly at a very familiar parable, the parable of the good Samaritan. If you've never been in church, usually even if you haven't been in church, you know the parable of the good Samaritan.

Jesus, here's the context. Jesus has just explained to the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the day, that the ultimate expression of the law was to love your neighbor as yourself. Apart from that, Jesus said, all your religiosity, all your religiosity doesn't really amount to much. The Jewish leaders, feeling convicted by this, tried to evade the implications of what Jesus was saying, of loving their neighbor as themselves, and they're like, well yeah, but who actually is my neighbor?

That's in verse 29, if you see it. In response to that, Jesus tells a story. A man, he says, was walking along the road to Jericho, which was a notoriously dangerous road. When he was overtaken by a gang, he was beaten, he was robbed, and he was left for dead. Along by comes a priest who sees him, but passes by on the other side of the road.

After him, a Levite comes along, who's another Jewish leader, who does the exact same thing. Jesus doesn't tell us exactly why they passed by. Maybe they had religious duties to attend to, or maybe it just felt too dangerous, or too inconvenient to get involved. Maybe they thought something like this, I didn't beat that man up. He probably should have known better than to be out here at night alone. It's not my responsibility.

I didn't cause the problem, so why do I have to be the one who feels like he's got to be compelled to fix it? But whatever reason, they excuse themselves of responsibility, and they didn't stop to help. Jesus then says, verse 33, but a Samaritan, which, as you may know, were the political and cultural enemies of the Jews.

Just to bring it up to date, it would be like saying, if you're a Democrat, but a Republican, right? But a Republican, or if you're a Republican saying, but a progressive with a feel the burn shirt on, you know, was the one that was going down the road, right? You tracking with what Jesus is doing here? As he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. Verse 34, he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, which was a decent sized chunk of money, saying, take care of him, watch this, and whatever more you spend, I will repay that when I come back.

He used his own money, he used his own money, even opened up a line of credit and said, whatever he needs, you take care of it and I'll pay it when I get back. Jesus's answer to the question of, who is my neighbor that I'm supposed to love, like I love myself? His answer is, whoever around you is in need. And your responsibility, your responsibility is to regard their needs as important as your own, being willing to do whatever it takes to lift them up, even if it comes to great personal cost to yourself.

The fact that you were not involved in their predicament does not relieve you of your responsibility to do whatever it is that you can to do to help them. You say, what's that got to do with an election? As Americans, as Americans, we love to talk about our rights.

And according to scripture, that is not all wrong. Our founding fathers in the United States recognized correctly from the Bible that God gave to each of us certain rights and dignity, certain freedoms, chief of which is the choice of whether to worship or reject God. It's like my friend David Platt said in a book that I would highly encourage you to read.

It just came out. Seven questions before you vote. He points out these fundamental rights form the essence. They form the essence of who we are as men and women made in God's image. So rights are good, okay? But as followers of Jesus, we are also called to die to our rights. Jesus said, if any man follows me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. You understand in one sense, the priest and Levite had the right to walk on by this man.

They hadn't caused the accident. Yet in another sense, they were profoundly responsible. Insisting on your rights feels very American. Dying to your rights does not, but that's where the call to follow Jesus and the call to follow the American dream diverge.

It was a radical unpopular message in Jesus's day, just as it is in ours. The world tells us to prioritize our needs. It tells us to choose candidates that would prioritize our needs and cater to what is best for us and whatever class of people we think that we're in. Jesus calls us to prioritize the needs of others. The world says only demand your rights. Jesus says also lay down your life.

Let me take this a step deeper. There's a biblical word that Christians often misuse, or at least they don't understand the full implications of it. That word is justice. When we use the word justice, quite often what we mean by that is we only mean that everybody's rights are protected. And it certainly means that.

But biblically, justice also means the obligation of the rich to care for the poor and their responsibility to use whatever resources they have, however they got them, to use those resources to lift them up. The word justice in Hebrew is the word mishpat. I have a touch of two Hebrew words now. You want to say that one? It's kind of mishpat.

Say it. Mishpat occurs over 200 times in the Old Testament. And usually when you see that word, you're going to see four classes of people that are brought up connected to mishpat, justice, widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor.

It's what one scholar calls the quartet of the vulnerable. The just person, scripture says, is the one who is involved in helping these four groups. Here's one, Deuteronomy chapter 10. God executes justice, mishpat, for the fatherless and the widow. He loves the sojourner, the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. You see how the word justice and then giving food and clothing, it's like they're interchangeable in how God is saying that?

One scholar said it this way. In the Old Testament, justice is not just putting down the oppressor. Justice is also helping to lift up the oppressed.

The just person in the Old Testament is the one who sees his or her resources as belonging to the whole community, a gift they have been given to steward for the benefit of the whole community. Over a hundred times, the Bible talks about the obligation of the rich to care for the poor. Proverbs 31 says, speak up for those who cannot care for themselves and cannot speak for themselves. Speak up for the rights of all who are destitute.

Speak up and judge fairly. Defend the rights of the poor and the needy. The same is true for the oppressed. A simple word search in your Bible will show you that there's over a hundred references to God's concern for the oppressed.

Now, let me be clear. I'm not saying that that help has to come through government programs or government mandated things. I'm just saying that for those of us with means, which I would say based on the stats as a lot of us sitting in here comparatively, that for those of us with means, God considers it our obligation to look after those without means, and he will hold us accountable for whether or not we used our resources that way. Now, I know some of us want to respond. You say, yeah, but why are they poor? And it's true.

I understand. Sometimes people are poor because of their own sin. Drugs, pride, laziness, family breakup. These are often factors in poverty. Sometimes though, it's because of the sin of others. It's because of oppression or abuse or a lack of opportunities. Sometimes it's because of the general curse of sin in the world.

Natural disasters can cause poverty or things like sickness, aging, or mental capacities. So it could be your own sin, could be the sin of others, could be the general curse of sin. And a lot of Christians I know, they say things like, well, if somebody is poor and it's not their fault, then I'll, sure I'll help. But if it's their fault, I'm not helping.

And yeah, I get that there are some things that people can only fix for themselves. But even if, y'all, listen to this, even if somebody is poor through their own fault, doesn't the gospel teach us to help? Our spiritual poverty, isn't this what the gospel teaches us? Our spiritual poverty was brought on us by ourselves and Jesus helped us anyway.

Thank God. Amen. Jesus says the measure of our understanding of the gospel is how we respond to the poor. And I would not want to judge somebody else for why they're in poverty. When Jesus looked at me in a poverty that I brought on myself and said, I'm going to help him anyway.

Here's another vulnerable group. The Bible commands us to care for the sojourners. Deuteronomy 10 18 for the Lord loves the sojourner.

He gives him food and clothing. The Hebrew word for sojourner scholars say you could just translate as immigrant. Exodus 22 verse 21, you shall not wrong a sojourner or an immigrant or repress him for you. You used to be immigrants in the land of Egypt. He says to Israel, of all people, of all people, God says, of all people, you ought to be motivated, motivated to help the immigrant because you were an outsider when I cared for you.

And I made you part of my family. Now that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that there are no immigration laws, right? The Hebrew Bible was full of them, by the way, as a matter of fact, if you want to look at it, right? Just that we recognize that they're made, they are people made in the image of God, just like us, and therefore they are worthy of our respect and our care. As Christians, when we go to the ballot box, like the good Samaritan, if we're followers of Jesus, we ought to be thinking not just about our own rights, right? But all of these, and we ought to make decisions based on what helps others, not just what helps us.

Again, this is just basic discipleship one-on-one. We should be thinking not only of our own children, but others children also, right? We should have no tolerance, I would tell you, for statements or policies that denigrate or harm these groups. In fact, Proverbs says, Proverbs 17 five, whoever mocks the poor insults the creator. In other words, God takes it personally when a group is disparaged or they're mocked.

We ought to take it personally, too. Again, I want you to notice that at this point, I'm not getting into which policies better serve society and what role the government plays and what role private enterprise plays. I'm not trying to dissect that right now.

That's not the point in saying this. I'm just talking about the heart posture that you and I live with and that we carry even into the voting booth is I want to serve and I want to bless, not just me and take care of me, but I want to even lay down rights where I need to be able to benefit, lay down rights and privileges to benefit others. Here's a few other things that Christians who are motivated by love and justice will think about when they go to the ballot box. The unborn.

Every day in our country, more than 3,000 children are aborted in the womb with the blessing of the state. Every single one of these is made in the image of God. Every single one possesses a soul and is loved by him. God says in Psalm 139 that he knows each of these children by name in the womb. He knows them as individuals, as people.

He knows them as people. This is not, I just need to be very clear, this is not a debatable issue. The biblical clarity on this is overwhelming. Abortion is an affront to God's authority.

It is an assault on his glorious work in creation. And for that reason, Christians work to save children in the womb. Of course, we say, we mean, we love them from the womb to the tomb. Of course, Christians have established literally thousands of crisis pregnancy centers all over the nation, all over the nation in order to do that. Looking into these spaces where mothers are making the difficult choice to keep their children, sometimes difficult choice.

What you're going to find is you're going to find their spaces are glutted with evangelical Christians. A lot of our church members are involved in this and we need even more. And so that's something, yes, we care about if we love our neighbor.

Here's another one. Public righteousness. Public righteousness.

It is loving to want to see righteousness upheld in our society. Proverbs 14, 34 says, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. It means it's a burden to people. It degrades, it causes harm to. Sin is like a cancer that rots out the soul of a nation, celebrating the deterioration of things like marriage or gender, sexuality.

That has devastating effects, as does glorifying bigotry or prejudice. We understand, of course, that we live in a free pluralistic society where people can make their own choices, but we also know that what God declares as good is not arbitrary. He declares it good because it's good for creation and it leads to good in people's lives. So as much as it's possible, we want to see our society align with what God declares to be good. So we rightly should desire to see elected those who both promote and exemplify righteousness. I think what John Adams, one of our founding fathers, famously said, he said, we've staked our entire future in this country on our ability to follow the 10 commandments.

He said, if Americans ever depart from that, our constitution will be like a fishnet trying to restrain a whale, right? So we can be motivated by that when we go in there. There are other things that love can motivate us to care about, too. Of course, I'm not trying to give you an exhaustive list, religious freedom, international affairs. My point is simply that all followers of Jesus going into the ballot box ought to be thinking not just about their own interests but what is best for the society at large.

Again, that might be challenging for us. That really shouldn't be controversial. That's just the posture that all Christians live with. But that leads me to season number two, the second thing I want to point out from Luke. And that is in practicing justice, Christians can disagree on how it looks.

In pursuing justice, we're united on what we want. In practicing it, we can disagree on how it looks. Jump over two chapters of Luke chapter 12. I want to take you to a moment in Jesus's life that I've talked about recently, but I really want to press in on this.

And I'm going to lay out a case from it, a very brief one, for why the church, the institutional church, what I and our staff and pastors represent, why we on the whole should avoid getting entangled in the political specifics in the practice of justice. Here's the situation in Luke 12. Jesus is asked, look at it there, verse 13, he's asked to adjudicate a particular social justice complaint.

There's a younger brother who is accusing the older brother of leveraging his older brother privilege to cheat him out of his rightful inheritance. And let me just say, scholars tell us that was a legitimate problem in ancient Israel. This is a legitimate social justice complaint. Now, if you know anything about the life and ministry of Jesus, you know that Jesus cares about injustice. Like I told you over 200 times in the Old Testament, it tells us that God cares about this. And Jesus being the son of God, he cares about it. In his sermon, Jesus frequently condemned greedy exploitation, which would certainly be at work here, particularly by the powerful against the weak. In fact, Luke goes on to say, point out that Jesus, in a couple chapters, chapter 16, points out that those in positions of power who do not use their positions of power to lift up others who are less privileged than them, Jesus says in Luke 16, their danger of hellfire, regardless of how fervent they are in their religion. We just saw this in the parable in Luke 12 or Luke 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan, that Jesus says that his followers are responsible to address injustice, even if they had no part in the injustice. So can we suffice it to say Jesus cares about injustice?

That's not in question here. But what you see, watch this, instead of giving, instead of giving a specific, you might even say political answer to this question, Jesus withholds his opinion. He says rather starkly, verse 14, man, who appointed me a judge or arbiter over you in this situation? Instead, what Jesus does, you read on the verses after it, you'll see he preaches a little mini sermon that warns both brothers about the idolatry of money. You see, had Jesus adjudicated this case, he would have caught off half of his audience. And Jesus had been sent to seek and save the lost on all sides of these issues. So Jesus showed restraint in adjudicating the particulars of this case so that he could preach the gospel to both of them, to all of them. Following him, the institutional church shows restraint in adjudicating the particulars of political and social questions.

I mean, which policies or which candidates best get the job done, which strategies work best? Because our commission in the local church is to preach the gospel to everybody. Perhaps it might be helpful here to recognize a distinction between what I call is the church's organization and the church's organism, because the calling on each of those dimensions of the church is different. As an organism, members of the church ought to infiltrate every dimension of society, bringing God's wisdom and shalom into that dimension of society.

It's like Abraham Kuyper said, there's not one square inch of the entire universe over which Jesus does not declare mine. It's part of the creation mandate. That's the role of church members. You are to infiltrate every part of society and bring your understanding of kingdom principles into those areas.

That's organism. As organization, we the church have a limited platform, reflecting an extension of the earthly ministry of Jesus. As such, our focus is on proclaiming the gospel message and teaching all things that Jesus commanded, the words that came out of his mouth. Those principles, in other words, explicitly stated in scripture. That's the role of church officers and staff. Whereas members, you can and should bring your perception of God's wisdom into your respective sphere, church leaders, we ought to limit our platforms to what the Bible clearly says, because we're responsible to disciple people in what Jesus directly commanded. Which policies or which candidates work best in accomplishing societal goods is almost always an indirect application of scriptural principles.

In places, in places where there's a direct line between what the Bible teaches and an application, then we speak clearly as a church. Where there's more of what I would call a dotted line. Which candidate does it best? Which issues should take priority over the others?

What strategies are best? I call that a dotted line. When there's a dotted line, then we usually refer to it as a refrained. As an organization, we preach righteousness. We preach justice. We preach compassion and love. As members of the organization, you, the members, you ought to apply that in government, education, and business.

The roles are complementary, but in most cases, you understand, they are distinct. Tim Keller says that it's helpful if you think about this in a non-controversial area, right? So, as a pastor, I preach and a lot of people are members, are there in financial planning, okay?

And they need to learn to apply kingdom principles and financial planning. When it comes to what it means to be ethical and kingdom-driven and stock trading, I'm probably not the best guy to give all the advice on that. I can preach the principle of justice, but what counts as insider trading? What counts as unethical trading?

When is a loan, when does it become predatory and what's the difference in that and just healthy, you know, healthy loans? I can preach the principle, but I'm probably not the best one to jump in and give the specifics. That needs to be a conversation between me, the pastor, and then the one who's been called to work in that area. Well, see, the same conversation ought to take place between pastors and politicians, where pastors advocate principles and the electorate applies. But the church's organization, you see, we refrain from attaching our authority to particular strategies and what I call the dotted line round. Now, I do want to add, all right, there can be exceptions and there are exceptions.

There are places, y'all, where the application is so clear that we can connect the dots. For example, if you're a German pastor in 1940, you need not only to speak about the value of Jewish lives, you need to oppose Nazism, right? Tragically, I will tell you that a lot of the evangelical church sat on the sideline in the civil rights movement, when that's a very clear issue that there's no dotted line. That's a straight line and we ought to have been more present than a lot of our forefathers were.

Today, I would add into that list pro-life legislation, anti-discrimination laws, religious freedom protections. Those are clear enough that we can advocate directly, like Paul did on certain occasions if you read the Book of Acts, but they really should be the exceptions. By the way, we see this restraint in the early church. You understand that there were plenty of societal and political reforms that were needed in the first century Roman Empire. I would dare say even more than we need in ours.

We got a lot, but they had even more. Yet, we don't see the apostles prescribe political solutions to any of them, not because they weren't smart enough to think of answers. I mean, I don't know about you, but I for one would love to see a letter from the apostle Paul outlining his planned reforms of the Roman Empire. I mean, he did a great job with that, but in an incredible act of discipline, he chose not to so that he could preach the gospel to all. Of course, the gospel that they preach planted the seeds that would ultimately lead to these societal reforms, but the church as an organization and the apostles as its representatives, they kept themselves focused on preaching the gospel and proclaiming those things that Jesus explicitly commanded. Christians must care about poverty relief, but is the state mandated living wage?

Is that the answer? I know some Christians that say yes, that that's ultimately fair. Others say no, that ultimately would hurt the poor, right?

It would lower the wage for everybody. That's a great discussion. You ought to have it, but should the church tie its authority and its message to one of those positions? Christians have got to care about healing the sick. Is universalized healthcare or private enterprise the best way to help that? That's another great discussion. Christians should care about education. Is school choice the right answer? A voucher system, is that helpful? Christians rightly care about protection of voting rights.

Are voter ID laws, is that a helpful protection against voter fraud or are those things inherently discriminatory? Christians have got to care about immigrants and refugees, but does the Bible give us the exact number that God wants our nation to allow? Are there verses in the Bible that tell us that?

Is the answer whatever number is higher, that's God's number and the one that's lower is mean-spirited? We got to be careful to differentiate between what is clear in God's word and between applications that are less clear, right? Because our commission to preach the gospel is so much more important, you understand? So we take things of secondary importance and we say those are important, but the gospel is even more important. Let me tell you one place where I got it wrong.

Hopefully you won't get too much pleasure in this. In 2003, I was on the what they call the Southern Baptist Resolutions Committee, which is once a year they select about 10 representatives and they come and you make statements on behalf of all the 50,000 churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. And we were asked to make a public statement in support of the Iraq War. Again, I don't know if you remember 2003, some of you were like two years old at that point, but nearly everybody in our country in 2003 was in support of the Iraq War. I mean, it was like bipartisan. Hillary Clinton was for it and it seemed like everybody was for it, you know, like that.

And so personally, I'll tell you, I was for it. Like I thought it seemed to me like a a legitimate and just war. Well, we were asked to, and I'm in that committee, I was like, I just don't feel like, why would the, why is the convention of churches endorsing a war? I was like, wouldn't it be better for us to like outline the principles of just war, call our government leaders to investigate them and say that we will pray for them in doing that. Wouldn't that be a better approach?

The other members of the committee thought that, no, we need to actually put some teeth in this. And so we came out in 2003 and officially as a group of churches endorsed the Iraq War, only to watch over the next six or seven months as all these things kind of came unraveled and everybody changed their opinion. And you know what? That's okay because people are fallible and we get things wrong. But the question is, why did we tie the church's reputation and authority to something, listen, that we were neither called nor competent to jump into? You understand that policies always look so clear in the moment, right?

They always look so obvious and you're like, well, this is obviously what you need. But what happens is, right, when I as a church leader tie the church's reputation to something that I'm not called or competent to adjudicate, I hinder the gospel that I am, I am called to proclaim. That's why we show as a church that kind of restraint.

So we're going to refrain from endorsing particular candidates or particular approaches. I just tell you as believers, you ought to have patience with one another and patience when people who see things differently from you, because you got to differentiate between what is clear in God's word that we must agree on and practical applications that we don't. What unites us is not our politics here. What unites us is our identity in Christ and our permission to preach the gospel, commission to preach the gospel. That's what's of first importance. That is what is above all. I'll just tell you in conclusion, I quote my friend David Platt again here. He says, there are certain issues on which every Christian should agree, but there's no political method for resolving these issues upon which every Christian has to agree.

However, there is, listen, a clear spiritual method for resolving these issues upon which every Christian should agree, and that is faith in Jesus. You're going to have a flag that's going to wave on the top of your heart. It should not be Republican. It should not be Democrat. I hope that what you will fly highest will be the gospel flag.

I hope that you will pledge your highest allegiance to Jehovah Nissi. Like I said, we are not the party of the elephant. We're not the party of the donkey. We're the people of the land. And that's because we understand from this book that ultimately our salvation did not come riding in on the wings of Air Force One.

It was born in a manger 2,000 years ago. Our true king, our true king doesn't sit behind the resolute desk. He reigns from the right hand of God. So the question I want you to ask as we go into this series is very simply, is he your flag? Is that the flag flying at the top of your heart? Is his cause your highest cause? In fact, let me just close this in a word of prayer.

If I could get you everywhere, campuses and homes, just bow your heads with me for just a moment here. I want to tell you that whatever king you trust in is going to let you down unless it's Jesus. And even in a message like this one, are you being compelled to say, Lord Jesus, I need to be reunited to you. I don't want to be enemies to you.

I don't want to be in a different party than you. And so I just surrender to you right now. Friend, the gospel is that Jesus Christ died to save you because you couldn't save yourself, but he offers it as a gift. You have to receive it.

If you've never done that, I want you to receive it right now. See Jesus, I surrender and I receive. If you're already a believer, maybe you would say, hey God, I would just acknowledge that I have cared more about where my neighbor vote, how my neighbor votes than where he or she spends eternity. And God, I want to be clearer about the gospel than I am about politics. Father, I pray that the summit church would not be characterized by a political party or even by a political leaning. We'd be characterized by the gospel, a gospel that compels justice and righteousness and a gospel that saves people. God, I pray that all these other secondary things would fade in light of the most important thing in Jesus name. Amen.