Today on Summit Life with JD Greer. Our spiritual poverty was brought on us by ourselves and Jesus helped us anyway. 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. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist, JD Greer. I'm your host Molly Vidovitch. Well, in case you've been living under a rock, it's selection season in America. What greater time to divide, argue, disagree, and unfriend, right? Well, thankfully today we're beginning a short teaching series we called flags living as citizens of a better kingdom. Pastor JD Greer shows us that the hope of the gospel unites the most unlikely of people from all tribes, tongues, and nations, and even political parties. As members of Christ's eternal kingdom, we can declare that even in moments of great division, Jesus retains the power to heal, restore, and offer an eternal hope. This is brand new teaching here on the program. So if you want to share it with a friend at this critical time, just visit our website, JD Greer.com.
So grab your Bible and let's join pastor JD now. Our country is headed into an election. Did you know that? Have you heard anything about that?
Any commercials or seen anything? And y'all, you understand that there is nothing that foments division in our country like an election. And 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? 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 the 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, 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, ultimately, we are not the party of the donkey or the party of the elephant. Ultimately, we are the people of the lamb. 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. And 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 hadn'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 recognize 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. 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've taught you 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. Thanks for joining us today for this important teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor Judy Greer. I want to take a moment to make sure you know about our newest featured resource, which we're sending to all of our gospel partners and monthly financial supporters. It's called Exalting Jesus in First and Second Samuel, and it's part of our commentary series called Christ-Centered Exposition. Pastor JD co-wrote it with Heath Thomas, and this book offers a comprehensive explanation of selected passages in First and Second Samuel. Frankly, each chapter in this book is presented like a sermon, making it perfect for preparing a message or a Bible study, but also great for devotional reading and meditation. It also includes a section called Reflect and Discuss to help in both small group or personal devotion settings. We're excited to offer another great resource to help you grow in your understanding of these rich books of the Bible, and we'd love to send it to you today with your gift of $35 or more to support this ministry.
To give, call us now at 866-335-5220 or by giving online at jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. 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 you 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 can just translate as immigrant. Exodus 22 verse 21, you shall not wrong a sojourner, an immigrant or oppress 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 101.
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 and 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 have staked our entire future in this country and 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. 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 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 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 hell fire, regardless of how fervent they are in their religion. There's no question that the political landscape can be extremely messy, but what isn't messy is our God-given call to love others and pursue justice. We hope this new teaching series will help you gain a deeper, richer view of how the gospel impacts our thoughts on politics.
This is Summit Life with JD Greer. Pastor JD, we're only a few weeks out from the general election. To help our listeners process everything happening around us right now, you chose to share your new teaching about the rare topic of politics here on Summit Life this week. Tell us about that.
Yeah. You know, honestly, I think a lot of people, a lot of believers are looking for guidance on what it means to vote Christianly. I certainly have my convictions and opinions on that. And there's a lot of things that are important.
You know, don't let anybody tell you that as Christians, we're just kind of too disconnected and too otherworldly to think about this. I mean, good politics is a way of loving your neighbor. And so making sure that we enthrone justice and righteousness. And I encourage you not to sit on the sidelines, but also wanted to provide you with a nonpartisan biblical way of thinking about issues. It's a, here are the biblical principles that you should carry with you to the ballot box, or if you're a government official that you should carry in with you into the oval office. So that's what the series is about.
I think it'll give you some real practical help about what it means to be faithful. Yeah. One more thing. We are just finishing up our teaching the life of David. This is just a quick reminder that you can still grab the Exalting Christ in first and second Samuel book at JD Greer.com.
If you haven't gotten a copy yet. Thanks JD. We'd love to send you a copy with your gift of $35 or more to support the work of this ministry. You can give right now by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.
Or you can give online at JD Greer.com. I'm Molly Bidevich. Tomorrow we'll continue this brief teaching series called Flags. So don't miss a minute. We'll see you Wednesday for Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
