I'm on. Great. Okay. Good morning. You start over. It's great to have you. All I have is what's being distributed, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't know how many to copy and the copy ran out of paper, and it's just kind of a bad arrangement. Did the few of them get over this way? There isn't anything on there really other than an outline of the course which I wanted you to see, and I'll make more copies for you so that we have them for next week. You got an extra one. Who needs one? Who's not near one? I would like to look at one. Okay. Let me pray for us, and then we'll get started here. I'll find my passage first. Where am I? Here we go. Okay. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for the kind of way in which you deal with your people. We thank you for delivering us from drawing us from death and darkness, confusion, foolishness, chaos, idiocy into light and life and wisdom, righteousness and sanity by what you have done for us in the Lord Jesus. We ask you that over the course of these next weeks, our hearts would be greatly encouraged as we think about who we are as the church. Help us, Father, and help us to see that we are members of one another because we have been united to the Lord Jesus. Help us to see that we're family. Help us to see that we're a nation. Help us to see that we're a royal priesthood. Help us to see that we are a treasured possession, the people in whom you delight and for whom you are working even now. And may our hearts be greatly encouraged by these things, and may we be encouraged to help one another to remember them. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the full and perfect salvation which you have secured for us. And now bless us by your spirit as we talk together and as we consider your word together. We pray in Jesus name, amen. If you can see one of those outlines and I apologize for not having enough, I will have more next week and will make every effort to have an outline for you so that you can kind of follow my thoughts as we work through this together. But if you look at the outline, I want to tell you just very quickly what it is that we're going to be doing. This week is a bit of an introduction and we'll come back to that in a second. If you look at the next several weeks, well the next three weeks, what we're going to do in the first three weeks is focus upon what God has done with respect to the church. And then in the remaining weeks, we're going to look at what the church is by virtue of what God has done. We're going to look at what God has done, a people gathered for God, two God and by God, and then we're going to look at the nature of the church for the next five weeks. And then in the last three weeks we're going to talk about different aspects of the life of the church. That's the general breakdown. So what God has done for the church, what the church is and then what the church does basically is the outline for the thing. I will tell you unapologetically that the great influence for me and my thinking about this after the scripture is the one who has helped me to understand the scriptures the most with respect to the church is Edmund Clowney. He has published a sort of a magnum opus called the church. And if you want to read something that that does involve some technical discussions, but which I think provides the kind of background information, the kind of biblical and exegetical stuff that I would want very much to be shaping. You're thinking as you think about the church, I would suggest that you get that book. It's not hard to read. It's sort of big. You know, magnum opus is tend to be sort of big, you know. And you will see, if you do get that book, you will see that a lot that there's a great debt. Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun. I'm not going to come here and try to represent to you that this stuff is my insights and new. It's not. There are a lot of people who have shaped how I think about the church, but chief among them, I suppose, is Ed Clowney, who taught at Westminster Seminary for a number of years is now I think retired and has written this. Is he retired? Well, he probably semi retired. You're not his daughter, I know. Okay, so that's what we're going to do and there are many other influences, but Clowney is the principal, I guess, and current influence. Now, here's what I'd like to do to get started. What I want to do is a word association sort of a thing. I'd do this in my classes periodically. And here's how it works. I'm not into Eastern mysticism, so don't, don't misconstrue what I'm about to say. But what I want you to try and do is empty your minds. Okay. Huh? Done. Not hard. Nothing there. Done. Okay. What I'd like you to do is just sort of empty your minds. I'd like you to just kind of flush everything out. Right. The way this works is I'm going to mention a word and when I mention the word because your minds are cleansed and empty, something will probably pop into your minds. And I want you to remember that thing and then we're going to have a little discussion about those things that pop into your minds. Okay. So you got to do this exhale, you know, kind of cleanse everything. Very good. And then I'm going to mention the word and then you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word. Okay. Are you already? Okay. Here we go. Church. What's the first thing that came to mind? God, people, body of Christ, worship, bride, fellowship, steeple.
Here's Jason. Steeple. Is that how you spell steeple? Is it three E's? What else? Sanctuary. What? Oh, home. What else? History. I mean like church history. Yeah. We got one. What else? There? Authority. What else? What? We'll leave that one out for Liz. What else? Rest you still got empty minds, huh? You're still waiting. Okay. Okay. Anything else that comes to mind? Anything different that anybody happen to think of that St. Paul's? Okay. Any other ideas? Music? Now, that's two, Larry. You only get one. Yeah. Music? Okay. Okay. Good.
I mean, there are lots of different kinds of things that are here. There are word pictures here describing what the church is. Right? Like bride, okay? Body, people, home. That's interesting. There are word pictures that describe this. There are some personal kinds of things. I suppose that's St. Paul's. It's personal home is kind of personal or individual. Things that we do worship, sanctuary. Lots of different kinds of things that you think of when you hear the word church or when you think of church. Okay. What I want, I guess out of this class, there are lots of ways that we could approach this thing. There's really too much to talk about in 13 Sunday school lessons, 13 one hour kinds of sessions, way too much. I mean, we can talk about how the church is structured, we can talk about church offices, we can talk about, we could spend a lot of time on the functions of the church. We're going to take about three weeks to do that. Focusing on three functions, worship, nurture, and witness. You could spend a lot of time talking about those kinds of things. But here's what I want to do in this. I want us to be asking the question, how should we think about ourselves? I want this to be personalized. What I hope to do in the class is take biblical information, biblical word pictures, if you will, and ask you to allow those things to shape how you think about yourself. Okay. I mean, our language is telling at this point. What do we say to the kids when the kids, you know, are slow or what do we say to our wives when our wives are slow, you know, finishing the makeup or what do we say? Hurry up kids. We have to go to church. We have to go to church. Now, we all say that, right? The language we employ, I don't want to be hard about this and I don't want to press it too far, but I want to suggest that the language we employ does communicate volumes about what we think about something. And when we say, come on kids, we need to go to church. We're not, we're communicating the wrong thing, right? We don't, I mean, I remember saying this a lot when we first got the church started. We don't go to church. We are the church and we go to worship. We don't go to church. We are the church and we go to worship or we go to a Sunday evening thing or we go to a small group or something like that. More than anything else as we look at this, this biblical material, I want for us to be asking the question, how should we think about ourselves? And I don't want for us to be thinking about it theoretically, okay? I don't want to be asking the question, what is the church in some theological or theoretical sense? I want, I want us as we look at this biblical information and as we draw conclusions from it, I want us to be asking the question, what does this mean to me? How does this apply to me? How does this apply to us? When, as we do this class on the church and this is a narrow focus and again, there's a whole lot more that could be done and if you went to a seminary class on the church at RTS, it is a lot of that other stuff that would probably be emphasized. But I want us to be asking questions about us, St. Paul's. When we talk about the church, we're talking about this particular gathering of sinners. This bunch of sinners is the church of Jesus Christ, okay? And I want us to be thinking about all of this stuff very personally and in this very narrow sense. If you look at 1 Corinthians 10, the 6th verse, Paul has just made reference to Moses and the wilderness journey and he says in verse 6, these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted and then down in verse 11. These things happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition or encouragement upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Now that's just, that's a very important verse that I will use as a proof text to support what it is that I want to do. We're going to be looking at several old Testament passages and I want us to be thinking the way Paul thought about those old Testament passages. These things are examples to us and for us and they are to shape how we think about ourselves. And as they shape how we think about ourselves, they will affect our practice. They will affect what we do. Okay? So, you know, this just by way of introduction, all of these kinds of things are things that will come up in the course of our discussions, probably, and many other things as well in the course of the class. But I don't want them to be detached theoretical things. I want you to understand that these words, these pictures, these ideas, and many others have application to us. These things, as you look at them in the scriptures, are there for us to shape our thinking about who we are as individuals and as a body the Church of Jesus Christ. That's what I really want out of this thing. That's some theoretical thing, but something that's intensely personal in which I trust will kind of like 11. It'll end up influencing everything and because it'll influence everything, it'll end up shaping what we do and how we live together, which is one of the ideas that we'll be looking at. To kind of get us off into this, I'd like you to look at Jeremiah 29. This is just, you know, this is a kind of a point of departure, a beginning place for us as we begin this thing. Jeremiah 29, the first several verses, is a letter which Jeremiah sent or which God sent through the prophet Jeremiah to the Israelites in Babylon. Okay, let me read. I'm going to read probably not the first nine verses and then I'm going to go back and make some observations about them. Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the remainder of the elders who were carried away captive to the priests, the prophets, and all the people who Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. This happened after Jack and I of the King, the Queen Mother, the Unix, the princes of Jude and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, the Smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasa, the son of Shaffan, whom Zedekiah King of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and begets sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished, and seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. For in its peace you will have peace. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name, I have not sent them, says the Lord. Let me read a little verse 10. For thus says the Lord, after seventy years are completed Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope. Now, you know where we are historically in the book of Jeremiah. The northern kingdom has already fallen. The ten tribes have been dispersed. That happened in the 8th century, the latter part of the 8th century BC. What this refers to is the exile of the remaining two tribes. What are they? Judah and Benjamin. The remaining two tribes. Okay, the southern kingdom of Judah. This takes place at the time when Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian hordes over ran the city around the beginning end of the 6th century BC, 590s, 580s. And the people are exiled from their homeland and they're carried off to Babylon. Okay, that's where we are historically. So they're away from their homeland. They're away from the Promised Land. They're away from Canaan. Okay, and they live in this other pagan place. They're surrounded by pagans. Okay, here's the first thing. They are a community in exile and why are they a community in exile? Who put them there? According to the text, God put them there. Okay, humanly speaking and looking at the thing historically, Nebuchadnezzar put them there. But thinking about this theologically, understanding that the Lord is the Lord of heaven and earth, they are there by God's design. God has placed them in Babylon. You see it in the 1st 4. Thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. And then at verse 7 the same thing, seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive. Okay, the Israelites dwell in Babylon according to the purpose and design of God. They are an exiled community. Okay, they are a community. They are a distinctive people. They have all of this history behind them, right? It all begins with Abraham. Abraham is called out of darkness into light. He's made all of these promises and a nation emerges from his loins. And that nation has an identity. That nation ends up in the midst of one pagan kingdom, Egypt. It is delivered out of that pagan kingdom. And it walks through the wilderness for those 40 years and finally occupies the promised land. But what is true of them even when they're in the promised land?
Yeah, they're rebellious, but with they're still among the nations. Okay, now the nations cause them great difficulty and great grief. But they are still among the nations. They are a distinct people with a very distinct history. They live in the midst of Egypt. They're delivered from Egypt. They walk in the midst of the wilderness. And even when they occupy the promised land, they're still, it's still a mixed reality. Okay, they're still surrounded by the nations and they have the influences of the nations in their midst. And then here in this particular situation, they've been delivered by God, not delivered. They've been exiled by God from their promised land into Babylon where they are living as an exiled community in the midst of the pagan people. Okay, now here's the first thing. The Old Testament picture of the church is not, is not a triumphalist picture. It is always mixed. Israel always lives in the midst of the nations as a distinct community. And if you look at the history of Israel, here's what you observe about Israel in her relationship to the rest of the nations. There is always tension. There is always tension between Israel and the nations. Now, there is this one period in Israel's history after the days of David and during the reign of Solomon, the reign of peace, that's what Solomon's name means. The reign of peace, the golden age when Israel herself is the dominant power, the key power in the whole region. Now, I want to suggest to you that that little window which doesn't last very long, that little picture of Israel in peace and the reigning kingdom, the dominant kingdom in the region, that is a picture of heaven. That is a picture of what the people of God will be like in the consummation. I mean, it was even mixed because it was populated by sinners and all you have to do is look at the actions of the Solomon and of the various kings to see that. But what God wanted to do in that particular period, that little epoch in history, is to give us a little bit of a window into what the glories of heaven will be like, where there is a reign of peace and there is a blessedness and a prosperity which is a perilous kind of a thing. That's a picture of heaven. But if you look at the rest of Israel's history, whether she's in Egypt or in the wilderness and really arguably in a sense, even in the midst of Canaan or in exile, she is always surrounded by the nations and her history is not a triumphalist history. There is always a tension between Israel and the nations. And there is always and only more or less peace between Israel and the nations. The relationship between Israel and the nations is always and only more or less peaceful. It's never perfect and there are sometimes when the nation is abused and persecuted terribly by the surrounding nations. The first thing you see from Jeremiah as you consider the history of Israel is that there are community in exile. She lives, and this has always been true for her, she always lives side by side with the world. And there is always tension, greater or lesser, you know, to a greater or lesser degree, there is always tension between Israel and the world. And thinking particularly about Israel in Babylon, there is always an internal tension. The nature of the internal tension is what? I raised it, but it's this word here. You know what word is it? The longing to be home. The longing to be home.
So there's attention at this external level between Israel and the nations, and there's attention internally for the people of God, the longing to be home. I'm going to jump down to a last point. The last point is in verse 9, verses 8 and 9, Jeremiah says, don't listen to the false prophets. Don't listen to them. What was it that the false prophets were always saying? What did Jeremiah abuse them of because they were always saying? Peace, peace, when there is no peace. The false prophets are always saying, look, let's have these let's have these alliances between Israel and the nations. Let's forge these economic relationships. Let's forge these political relationships. And if you do that, then they'll be peace and it will be well for you and it will be well for your children. God says through Jeremiah, don't listen to those people. Don't forge the alliances. There will always be tension between you, the people of God, and the nations around you. And you simply cannot afford to forge alliances with the nations around you because what happens when you do? They end up worshipping their gods. They end up compromising. Folks, I mean, there are three other things I want to say. I got number one and I got number five. There are community in exile and don't listen to the false prophets. The triumphalists who would say, there can be peace. Folks, I hate to be the bear of bad news at this point, but as long as you live in this world, your life will be filled with tension and your relationship to this world will be characterized to a greater or lesser extent, always and only, by tension. And your internal stuff will always and only be characterized by tension. And I'll suggest, I mean, there are folks in the streams, I look around, there are folks who have been Christians for a very short period of time and there are folks here who have been Christians for a longer period of time. But let me suggest to those of you who are younger Christians and remind those of you who are older Christians of something you know in your experience, the more you make progress in the Christian life, the greater the tension becomes, right? The greater the tension becomes. And the greater is the longing to be at home. There's lots of good stuff here, but there is always this tension. Israel was a community in exile and Jeremiah warned them about the false prophets and their tendency to build alliances, their tendency to be at home in the world. If you're a Christian, you are not at home here. This is not your home. And we ought not be surprised at the tension, okay? Now, second thing, we've already alluded to this, I guess. Second thing, we are here as a congregation of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, for the same reason that Israel was in Babylon. We are here as a congregation in the worldwide church of Christ. We are here because God has caused us to be here as a particular congregation. God has us here where he wants us to be at this particular moment, in this particular culture and geographic location, okay? Israel was there by God's design, and as you think about yourselves as members of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, as those who are regularly involved in the life of this church, we need to think of ourselves in this way. We're a community in exile living here by the design of God, by the purpose of God, okay? God has us here, and he's got stuff for us to do, okay? That's number three. Number four, look at what Israel is admonished to do while she's in Babylon. She's to build houses, dwell in them, plant gardens, and eat their fruit. Take wives, forget sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished, okay? What's God saying when he says that to Israel? You're going to be there for a while. You're going to be there for a while. Don't get your hopes up. You're not going home anytime soon. You're going to be there for a while. And what God admonishes Israel to do in the midst of Babylon is be engaged in those things which are part and parcel of our humanity. God admonishes them to do those things which are just part and parcel of who we are as human beings, okay? But now think about it for just a minute. There to do those things as a distinct community in the midst of Babylon. There to do those things recognizing that distinctiveness. So how does that touch marriage, for example? You marry within. You don't marry outside. Why? Because if you marry outside the community of faith, you're engaged in idolatry, okay? You take husbands and wives from within. Now I'm not suggesting that we can only give our sons and daughters to one another's sons and daughters here at St. Paul's, okay? I'm not suggesting that, okay? But this community in exile lived by a different standard, didn't it? It lived by a different code. And when it came to marrying, giving and taking, having, you know, husbands and wives, they lived by a different standard. That's all throughout the Old Testament scriptures. See, all that stuff shaped how they lived their lives as an exiled community in the midst of Babylon, okay? How does it shape, how does it shape their thinking about time? Okay? There to be engaged in human activities and human beings can't escape involvement. I mean, time is one of the, that's one of the environments that we live in, okay? So how did they view time differently? How did they use time differently? They didn't have clocks, yeah. The Sabbath, right? They had, don't understand the use of the word, word. They had cultic practices. They had religious practices which were different from the religious practices of those around them, okay? People in Babylon had religious practices, lots of them, but Israel's religious practices were observably different than the religious practices, the cultic practices of the Babylonians around them. Okay? I mean, you know, read the history of the church. You must know from, in the early centuries of the church, that because Christians behaved themselves differently with respect to their use of time, there were points, there were times when they were severely persecuted, severely persecuted. They, they could not worship the way the Romans worshipped. They couldn't do it. They couldn't observe the use of time and religious practice and stuff. It was all different for them. See? There's attention. You know, what are other things that you can imagine these Israelites being engaged in? They would be engaged in education, wouldn't they? Wouldn't they instruct their children differently than Babylonian parents who were instructing their children? I mean, wouldn't they, wouldn't they teach a different view of the world from the, from the Babylonians? Now, let me, let me make this observation. Daniel is one of those guys who's living in exile. Where's Daniel educated? And by whom? Huh? Babylon University. He's educated in Babylon University. Look, I'm, now this is where this, it, it gets tough sometimes. There are real tensions here. I'm not suggesting, because I look at the practice of Daniel and see, well, Daniel went to state schools. Daniel went to Babylon University. I'm not suggesting by this, that the exiles in Babylon had their own school system that as a system became a line of demarcation between them as a community and the rest of the world around them. I'm not suggesting that. But what I am suggesting, you can be sure that these Jewish kids were raised in an environment where a different view of the world dominated. And they were steeped in that different view of the world. And when Daniel went to Babylon University, you can bet that because he looked at the world differently, there would be conflict. As you read the book of Daniel, was there conflict for Daniel? Absolutely. He wouldn't bow before the statue because he had a different view of the world. That's the key thing about the community in exile. It sees the world differently and it raises generations of people who will see the world differently from the surrounding nations. Okay? So their religious practices are different. There's a completely different view of the world, which means that children are educated differently. They're raised differently in that regard. Their practices and marriage are different and family and all of that. Okay? The point is, God admonishes them to be involved in these human activities. And as they're involved in those human activities, you know, the sort of the subliminal kind of a thought, you're not going anywhere. You're going to be there for a while. Okay? There are points all over the place where their distinctiveness is evident to the surrounding world. And those become points where to a greater or lesser extent, there is going to be tension. Okay? All right. So they're a community in exile. They're there by God's design. They're warned to be careful about the false prophets whose habit it was repeatedly to encourage them into these false alliances. And to say, peace, peace, they're warned about that. Then the fourth, or fifth thing, verse seven, seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. For in its peace, you will have peace. Okay? So here's this community in exile. They get all these weird practices, funny practices, all of these points at which they're going to come in conflict with the world, with the state, with Babylon. And yet the one of the things that God says to them is seek the peace of Babylon. Seek the peace of Babylon and pray for Babylon. For as it has peace, you will have peace. You will benefit from its peace. Okay? Now the prayer part of the thing is probably pretty easy. It's much easier probably for us to get our arms around. The exiled community is to pray for the community in which it finds itself, for the nation in which it finds itself. Okay? Paul in his admonitions is the Timothy and through Timothy to us, tells us to pray for whom? The king. Pray for the king. It is the same sort of thing. Why do we pray for the king? We pray for the king whose heart is in the hands of the Lord, who is able to turn it, whichever direction he wishes. We pray for the king, really appealing to the Lord, that the Lord will rule and overrule in the heart of the king, in our case, the three branches of government. We pray that God will rule and overrule so that we might live in peace and quietness. Now what's the goal there? Whether you consider it here or you consider it from first Timothy. What's the object here? Is it so that we can live in peace and quietness? Period? No. It's so that we can be a light in the midst of the nations, proclaiming the gospel of Christ so that the nations are gathered at the feet of Jesus. Okay? When Israel is admonished to seek the peace of the city and to pray for it, what the Lord is admonishing them to do is labor and pray in such a way that Babylon is influenced by them as they're a leaven in the midst of the city, and as that leaven permeates the society because they are a people of peace, Babylon will to some extent become a place of peace, and insofar as Babylon becomes a place of peace, Babylon doesn't persecute Israel, and run roughshod over Israel, and Israel can be the light shining in the midst of the darkness that draws the nations to the one true God. That's the calculus of this thing. Okay? Now think for a minute, how do Israelites living in Babylon seek the peace of Babylon? How do they do that? They're told to pray for it, but how do they seek the peace of Babylon? Okay? All right, in their conduct, what are some, I mean, what are some examples of conduct? You're a businessman. Productive work? What? Productive work? What else? Integrity? Compassion? Okay, okay, mercy. Okay? These are synonyms, so we'll just put mercy up here. Okay? Obeying the laws. You remember what Augustine said in responding to the accusations that Christians, that Christians were bad citizens? You know what he said? Augustine, Christians at the time of Augustine were, and really for centuries, had been accused of being bad citizens because they didn't bow before Caesar. They wouldn't, they wouldn't give allegiance to Caesar. They would give allegiance only to God. And Augustine said, you have to worry about Christians being bad citizens. Christians will be the best citizens of the kingdom because they're under a higher authority, and that authority requires of them that they be good citizens, and be in submission to the state. Right? Obeying the government. Okay? Conduct? What else? Peaceful homes? Okay? All right, those are examples of conduct. I mean, I guess everything is sort of conduct, you know, but what are some other ways in which people in which the Israelites would have sought the peace of the city, would have worked for the peace of the city? Bring it up, bring it up to today. What are ways in which people can seek the peace of the city? Okay? Hold public office. Help educate? Okay? In what ways? Teachers, okay? Okay? Be in their midst. Oh, I mean, I think this is real important stuff. Obviously, I wouldn't be talking about it. I wouldn't be trying to get you to think about it. What about in the laws that are made? Right? Vote. And if you're not in the midst, right? Right? Right? It's hard. It's hard. It's real hard. Okay? Yeah, share us. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah.
I think the law is the law that wants us to depend upon the people that are there. Sure.
Right. Right. Right. Right. There's somebody, there's somebody else who will help you, too. Me. Me. It's when people get too far away from the community in exile that they start running into trouble. I'm convinced of that. You know, the community in exile is as close to home as you're ever going to get until you get home. And the farther away you get from home, I believe the more like the world, you become. Yeah. Ed? And how are we to respond to that? Looking for trouble? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. It's almost time to quit. But let me, yeah, go ahead. There are some who think they were. Yeah. At what points do you overthrow the government? Do you resist the government? Those are questions that have been asked for centuries. But I mean, I think Ed, seeking the peace of the city does mean seeking just laws, seeking to have just laws implemented. We've got a bad law on the books and it's costing hundreds of thousands of lives every year. We got a bad law on the books. How do we change that? Do we change it by overthrowing the government? Or do we try to change the law? I mean, you know, those are tough questions. People come to different conclusions about that. But I think at the very least it can be said is that it is, it is an example of seeking the peace of the city to seek just legislation to seek that
right? Right. Right. Well, you know what I, now this is a fight kind of a fine distinction Ed. I mean, when I think about something like that, I don't think, I think about it this way. I put it in the form of a question. Is abortion wrong because God says it is wrong? Where is abortion wrong because it is, or does God say abortion is wrong because abortion is wrong? I think it's the latter. I think it is in the nature of things to say that abortion is wrong. It is, you know, it is in the nature of things as they are under God and as God has created them. So, you know, when we appeal, make these appeals, we're appealing to something that I think is in the nature of things. And we're simply asking people to think clearly and to be just in the way that they think about human life. Now, ultimately God is the authority behind that and all of that.
If there's something in the nature of things that says Saturday is the day that we ought to quit working, then we ought to work for that. Mark and then, right.
I can't see where there's an answer, because eventually, you know, you're going to cross the line and compromise before, you're going to stay back and not have any impact or, yeah, well,
which would be equivalent to our evangelism. That's right. And that's a way to seek the peace of the city.
For me to share the gospel with people in my neighborhood is seeking the peace and well-being of the city. Right? Sure. Right. Right. Right. Now, there's one student who's got the picture. Yeah. Did we do all of those things? Human activities, but we do them differently. We seek the peace of the community differently than the community would seek peace. We recognize that our weapons are not weapons that the community would actually use. We do them in a different way, and we find peace in a different way. Maybe, maybe not. Yeah. But I'm going to take one more. It's 10-15, and then I just want to summarize this. Just a diagram for a reflection of a blind side, and there's a reflection of our society as it currently stands right now. And the thing that I keep hearing when I listen to him, if he's driving, is before we can be effective in reforming, talking about prison reform, social reform all across the board, the real success is going to be it's going to lie within changing individual hearts and minds. It's one part that is not before those laws can change. It worked all to take a stand because of what is right. Right. But the battle really is as there's much more grassroots level. Let me just summarize this. I mean, this is, these are great comments. And just the nature of the questions that are asked reflects the tension that I alluded to and mentioned at the very beginning. There is always this tension. We see things differently. We care about things. I'm not going to say that we always care about different things. It's surprising when you get out into the world how many pagans will care about the same kinds of things that you care about. Paul Bennett down at New City walks the streets of that community and he asks people, you know, what do you worry about? Well, I worry about my kids. I worry about crime. I worry about drugs. Okay. Let's lock arms. So there can be many, many points of contact as we live in the midst of Babylon. Many shared concerns. But just the nature of the observations and questions really does illustrate the tension that is there. Just to review this, we are a community in exile. And I don't want to live with tension, whether external or internal, but until I get home, that tension's not going to go away. To a greater or lesser extent, it's always going to be there. Now what's interesting is I think I'm convinced at, now almost 46 years of age in having read lots of church history and having read a fair amount of modern American church history, I think we have to be just as careful and arguably more careful when the tension is at its least. When the tension is at its least, the 1950s were probably the most damaging time for the American church in all of American history. And in the 1950s, there were more people in churches than at any time in the history of the country. And the ministers were using very familiar language, but were meaning very, very different things when they employed that language. Everybody looked around. The churches were full. The economy was pumping out stuff, you know. We had a balanced budget as recently as the 50s. Did you know that? As recently as the 1950s, we had a balanced budget because the economy was just pumping out gross national product. It's at times like that where the church, you know, because it has to be so sensitive and so careful, it sounds like sour grapes. It's easy for the church to sound like sour grapes and everybody sounds like sour grapes. But at the time when the tension is the least, the church needs to be the most careful. That's first thing. It's always the tension, community, and exile. We're here by God's design. We're to live in the midst of Babylon. This is third. I'm taking them in order on my paper now. We're to live in the midst of Babylon doing ordinary human things, doing ordinary human things, marriage, education, that kind of thing. Those are going to be points of tension. We're to seek the peace of the city that we find ourselves in. We're not to live in isolation, but we're to take the realities of the truth into the city, into every area of life, like 11 that goes into society. And that does. That does mean that our conduct is different. Our yes is yes and our no is no in our dealings with people. It means that some of us will hold public office. Some of us will teach pagan teachers. Some of us will be involved in enacting legislation.
And then last, if somebody says to you, peace, peace, stonem, stonem because there is always an only attention between the church and exile of the world. Now that's one picture. That's one way for you to be thinking about yourself as the church. What we're going to do in the next three weeks is look at what God has done to constitute the church as the church, which is really great stuff. All right, let's pray. Lord, I thank you. I thank you so much that today is coming when we will all be together and all the tensions will be gone. We won't be surrounded by nations. There won't be wolves in sheep's clothing in our midst, and the tension in our hearts will be gone for we will be before you. We will behold you in your glory and we will glory in that glory. Please, Lord, hold out before us always that prospect that there is a homeland that we are headed toward and there is a Savior who will receive us into that homeland where we will know great joy. Be with us now as we come to worship. I pray that you give us a taste of that future glory in Jesus' name. Amen.