King & Kingdom (Psalm 146:1-10)

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Good morning church. You can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Psalm 146. Psalm 146. It’s where we’ll be this morning as we start our series on politics. Now I don’t want to preach on politics. I can think of almost nothing I would like to preach about less than politics for all sorts of reasons. You think I don’t want to preach on politics. My wife really doesn’t want me to preach on politics. She’s been nervous all week long. So if she leaves, you know that’s why anyway. And I think we all understand where this is coming from. Like most pastors that I know, 2020 was by far the hardest year of my ministry. Why it was not the pandemic, I felt equipped in what I know about scripture to deal with the pandemic, because I know that there is not one Maverick molecule in all of God’s universe. So I know what disease is. It wasn’t the pandemic, but it was the politics that came with the pandemic. Do we require masks? What do you think about vaccines? When do we start meeting together again? Did we ever stop meeting in the first place? Oh, and then, in the middle of all that, you may remember in the summer of 2020 a bit of unrest in our country springing from the murder of George Floyd, and then, of course, we wrapped up that year with a really contentious election, some subsequent election denialism and even a riot at the Beginning of the next year. All of this was so fraught politically that those of us who were in leadership of any sort were constantly under attack. I mean, I can remember having people upset with me in 2020 because I wouldn’t immediately preach a series on racial justice. Almost the same week, I had somebody else upset with me because we had linked to articles on racial justice in the pulse. Both left the church, by the way, just to show you how serious these issues were. So we had people, I think, within the same quarter, leave the church because we were too woke on issues of race and then too bigoted on issues of sexuality. I’m not alone in feeling this way. As a pastor, I know Jonathan Lehman in his book How the nations rage, which I’ll be drawing freely in this series, he did a pastor of a church in Washington, DC, Capitol Hill, Baptist, so like right there where everything is happening. So they did a, like, a Sunday school class on politics leading up to the 2016 election. It was right after the election had happened. That kind of last class, they were trying to put the punctuation mark on it. He was talking about unity in the Gospel and the need for unity in the Gospel in the church. When one woman mentioned that she felt completely unsupported by her white friends after the election, and somebody else responded elsewhere in the classroom that all Democrats are evil, and he thought to himself, why am I teaching this class, much as I’m thinking to myself now, why am I preaching this series? Why would I do it? Though I said it last week already, if you were here, I am preaching this series because I am desperately worried that we as the church are being discipled by culture and not scripture when it comes to politics. Tim Perry mentions, I thought this was an insightful question. He says, Why are calls for Christians to forsake either woke or white far outnumbering the calls for Christians to forsake worldliness? That’s the question. The name of his book, by the way, is when politics becomes heresy. And he points out in the introduction, he does not mean that to be hyperbole. That’s often how we use heresy. We don’t really mean heresy like it’s heresy to think that LeBron is better than Michael Jordan. That’s heresy, right? That’s how it gets used. That’s not what the word heresy means. Heresy is serious. Heresy means that you have so completely abandoned truth that you are actually outside the kingdom at this point on the road to damnation. I mean, think about that for a moment. What if? What shipwrecks your faith? It is not a sexual affair and the love of money, luxury, self indulgence. What if it’s politics? What if there’s such deep idolatry in you that it ultimately damns you? That’s why we’re doing this series. Now. In this series, we will not be talking about policies, needless to say, but principles. What it looks like to be a people shaped by the word of God when it comes to our politics. And so to do that, we’re going to start where we need to start, which is with the ultimate government. People often ask me if I’m a Republican or a Democrat, I am neither. I’m politically homeless, but I especially like to answer the question by saying that I am a religious monarchist. God is King. That’s my politics, and we’re going to see what that means exactly and why that matters. In Psalm 146 what it looks like for us to trust that God will build the world we want, and to let that in the Bible shape how we think so. Just as a sign of our reverence before the Lord and our commitment to his word as our ultimate political platform, would you stand for the reading of that word? Here’s Psalm 146 praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. My soul. I will praise the Lord all my life. I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. Do not put your trust in princes and human beings who cannot save when their spirit departs, they return to the ground. On that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. He remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever your God, O Zion for all generations praise the Lord says the word of the Lord. You can have a seat. So let’s start with the king, the king himself. Now Psalm 146 is the first of the so called Hallelu Psalms. Psalms 146 to 150 Hallelu is the Hebrew word. Let us praise yah, short form of Yahweh that we just sang a moment ago. Let’s praise the Lord. So it’s these hallelujah psalms that are celebrating God’s worth and glory, the reminder that God deserves our praise. And because he deserves our praise, he also deserves our trust. He deserves our trust, in contrast to, well, everyone else really, including the political class. Verse three, you can understand why I chose this passage for this series. Don’t put your trust in princes in the political class. Now. Why not? Why are politicians unworthy of our trust? Did you notice that here the focus is on their mortality? They die, and so their plans come to naught. They die so they can’t really save, at least not to the uttermost, and so it’s unfair to place ultimate trust and what are decidedly not ultimate beings like they were never meant to bear that burden of your trust, your hope for The Future, which is why they so often disappoint. I notice it doesn’t tell us not to put our trust in princes because they’re wicked, although that’s true. Of course they are. We all are. It’s there in our hearts, but it’s not because they’re wicked, but because they’re mortal, and I think that’s important for us to remember, because many of us want to amend the text, or almost unconsciously amend the text to say, Don’t put your trust in that Prince, because he’s a bad dude. He’s wicked, for sure, but you can place your trust in that guy. He’s okay, he’s our guy. And so we’ve got this foolish belief that our guy can build the kingdom, which, of course, he can’t, she can’t. He will mess up at some point, she’s going to make a wrong decision based on incomplete information, because she’s not, you know, omniscient. The way God is, and eventually it’ll lose an election or die, and that’ll be the end of that. So of course, politicians are going to disappoint us. They’re made out of dust, after all, or maybe even more simply, they’re just plain made. That’s the problem. That’s the difference, right there, and that’s also why I included verse six in this first section. He is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. He remains faithful forever. There’s the difference is that God is creator. He made us. So why would you not trust the maker instead of the made, the eternal instead of the ephemeral, the infinite majesty instead of the finite, mortal? And all the more so when we consider that he actually can save us. Verse three, don’t put your trust in princes and human beings who cannot save okay, but God can save us better still. God did save us if we belong to Him and we see God’s power and wisdom in creation, but we see His goodness and love and righteousness and justice in salvation, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, who came down from heaven, from His throne, to live among us And then to die for us. You’re all familiar with Lord Acton, famous dictum, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I understand that sentiment. It’s not true, because there’s only one person who has absolute power, and he was uncorrupted by it. Quite the opposite. In fact, Jesus didn’t use his position for himself, but for us. And he left his throne. He stooped in love to save, to serve. That’s a king I’m willing to trust. And so right away, we’ve got a choice to make. Will we praise will we trust that perfect king or some perfidious Prince, that’s the king second the kingdom, the kingdom we read verses seven to 10 for us again, he upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever. Your God, O Zion for all generations praise the Lord. I mean, in a nutshell, that’s the king’s political platform. Even just those few verses address just about every issue we fight about today, don’t they? I mean, take a look. You got economics, you got justice, you got oppression, kind of all encompassing oppression. We’re talking about those who are bowed down. I mean, we could certainly point to the unborn as much as we could point to issues like racism. We’ve got immigration, we’ve got corruption with wicked rulers. We’ve even got health care in there. Like this is what we want. This is the kingdom we want built here, one that looks like this. So the big question is, how do we get it? And here’s where the danger of heresy pops up, creeps up, we begin to think that it’s up to us, that we need to build the kingdom, which is an odd thing to think, because we were taught to pray by our Lord Himself, your kingdom. Come not help us build your kingdom. Those are very different prayers. Important. We have that right in our mind. So let’s look at this a little bit. It is English class time, okay, you knew the risks when you hired me. You hire somebody with an English degree, you’re going to get poetry in your sermons. So I want to talk a little bit about William Blake’s poem. Jerusalem. Just some background to it. William Blake is writing during the Industrial Revolution, and he is not a fan of it, and not a fan of the wild income inequality that it is producing. So he writes this poem, Jerusalem. It’s based on part of the holy grail myth, the idea that Jesus visited England as a kid. Like leave it to the English to assume that Jesus had to have gone to their country, right? So he visited the English with his uncle, or great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. And Blake is kind of riffing on that myth, which has no ground. In Scripture, just so we’re clear about that. Okay, and here’s what he says. This is the second stanza of Jerusalem. Will be up there for you, since poetry is hard to follow, and did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among these dark satanic mills? It’s a little chirpy in it, like you can see the question, If Jesus had actually been here, you’d think things would maybe look a little bit different, like he came to England to build Jerusalem. Then why is London filled with these dark satanic Mills, talking about the factories black with coal smoke at this point, and also the institutional church that is totally unmoved by the poverty that they see around them. So if Jesus came, He didn’t build His kingdom. So what do we do? And he goes on in the next couple of stanzas to say, well, then it’s up to me, I guess. And he says he’s gonna, like, use all of his power to fight against this. He writes this. This is the last stanza. I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. There’s the switch. If we want the kingdom, we need to build it. The heresy here is the Pelagian heresy. You don’t need to remember the word Pelagian, but you probably understand what it’s talking about. Pelagius, he fought with Augustine, and his whole idea was, we don’t really need grace. We have everything we need within ourselves. We almost just kind of need to, like, actualize on our human nature. We can save ourselves. So get to work. Do it like we gave God a chance and he didn’t take it. It’s up to us now, or maybe more charitably, not knocking God. But God has given us this to do. So it’s our responsibility. This is what he wants us to do now, if that’s how we think that it’s up to us to build the kingdom, think what happens to the political process. It becomes exactly what we see in our country today, an existential struggle for the soul of the nation. Because it becomes the question, will we get the kingdom or not? Because if we’re in charge the kingdom, and if they’re in charge hell in a hand basket, so now it matters, it’s up to us to end depression, to feed the hungry, to lift the lowly, and they’re keeping us from doing it. So you know anyone else find it a little ominous that Blake mentioned picking up the sword in this process, especially given the rise of political violence in our country today. This is why we end up investing too much hope in the political process, because it feels like everything depends on it. It is such puny hope. Not only are politicians unworthy of that trust, but the vision is too small. Both the means and the ends are wanting because it’s so narrowly provincial, it’s American at that point, and so it’s about this place and time when God’s vision is cosmic and eternal. That’s a big vision. So it leads to misplaced priorities. Again, about the means and the ends. Can I be clear for a moment here, guys, the hope isn’t the GOP, but the G, O, S, P, E, L, that’s our hope, and that’s what we are called to be, is ambassadors of that kingdom proclaiming the King’s message. That’s the priority. That’s what comes first, and that’s a much bigger vision. And again, the narrowly American, Mark Dever, who again pastors Capitol Hill Baptist Church, right there in DC, says, before and after America, there was and will be the church. The nation is an experiment. The church is a certainty. That’s the difference, you know, amazing grace. It says when we’ve been there 10,000 years, we’re not gonna be singing God bless America. We’ll have forgotten it. We will not care, right? We’ll be so laser focused on the king. The most powerful political word that we have is the gospel, the most powerful political testimony that we have is in being the church serving, for his kingdom’s sake, in the midst of a nation that will one day exit stage left, and remembering that gives perspective. Mean, just think too win an election might change the country for a decade or two, but the work that a faithful church does, week in and week out can change eternal trajectories. So political life should begin in the church. This is where politics begins, proclaiming God’s truth and living out the values of His coming Kingdom. We talk about this often here that what is the local church? The local church is an embassy of God’s coming Kingdom. Only reason we don’t have a US flag anywhere in here, because this is not America. This is the kingdom that is coming. We come together people from every nation to remind ourselves that’s our primary citizenship. So political life begins in the church. I’m not saying it ends there. I don’t want us to hear in this series, don’t vote, don’t get engaged, like anything like that. It’s just we have to have an improper perspective. Like, I am a fan. I support political activism of men like William Wilberforce, who almost single handedly ended the transatlantic slave trade. Like Absolutely, that’s what Christians should be doing politically. So it doesn’t end here, but it starts here. So we’ve got our priorities right. So we’ve got a choice to make, to try to build in our own strength, a tiny, immoral and fading Kingdom ourselves, or to faithfully serve the King who is building His perfect forever kingdom. I don’t know about you, but I am clear on which choice I want to make. If we’re clear on that choice, it will change how we live. And that’s the last section. Then the king’s people, what do we look like? I skipped verse five as I was going through the outline. Here it is, again, blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. Verse Five is at the center of this poetic prayer in Hebrew. Thought that’s the most important part. Like this is the key for us, especially when we think about how we live out politics for the pure in heart, it begins with that word, blessed, blessed. It’s a big word in Hebrew. It’s the sweet spot, really the place where you’ve got peace and joy, like an abiding peace and joy, because your hope and trust are in the right things. You translate it happy. You could translate it flourishing like these, the people who are doing well, those whose hope is in the Lord, their God. That is different from those whose hope is in politics, the politically over engaged can be insufferable, so disagreeable to be around. Why? Because they’re always anxious and angry because they’re giving politics a weight that it can’t bear. So their hopes are always disappointed, but blessed are those who look to King Jesus for help and hope they will never be disappointed. Now, this phrase, you know, blessed are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, probably makes us think of the Beatitudes that blessed beginning. Of course, it is a beatitude. The beat is just the Latin word for blessed. So it sounds like the Beatitudes. That’s actually important for us. I called this series politics for the pure in heart, not because I love alliteration, although I do, but because the Beatitudes give us a a portrait of somebody whose politics are kingdom gospel shaped. Think about what Jesus said in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. If you’re with us when we did our sermon on the mount series, you remember that we’re talking about there the poverty and the mourning that’s being done there is for our sin. Says, Blessed are those who acknowledge their sin and idolatry. Blessed are those who look around even at people who vote differently they do and go, I’m not better than they are. Like we are all wicked before God. So that how we view ourselves then changes how we view the Lord. Blessed are the meek? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. So Blessed are those, in other words, who, because of their sin, humble themselves before God come to him and want to be made more. Are like him to embody the values of his kingdom. That then changes how we view other people. Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. By our culture, could use some peacemakers, couldn’t it? So the church is called to be blessed are the merciful, the pure and the peacemakers. That’s the reminder that inward gospel transformation changes how we treat others again. We need this. There’s a head of a DC Think Tank who was mentioning what we all know to be true. He said, politically, we talk to each other with pure contempt. Sums up the discourse in our culture. For sure, we talk to each other with pure contempt. And so he was asked, What’s the solution? Then he said, We need to practice warm heartedness, which sounds right. The problem is, it’s really difficult to practice warm heartedness when you have a cold heart. So what’s going to thaw our heart? It is the gospel of Christ, Jesus, it is the Beatitudes. Blessed are those whose hope is in God? Sure, but how do I know I’m really hoping in God? Well, how do we demonstrate our praise, our trust, our hope our submission to the True King. How do you know if you’re submitting to your king? Are you listening to his decrees? We know our hope is in the Lord when we obey His Word and when his word sets our agenda. So Jonathan Lehman said, your tight gripped principles should come from Scripture not ideology. If you get nothing else from this series, get that your tight gripped principles should come from scripture, not ideology. That’s the stuff you don’t let go of everything else. That’s fine, but scripture from my cold, dead hands. Okay, you’re not taking that from me. Now, the key word there is principles, again, not policies. Your principles should come from Scripture. It’s actually a little bit like the Constitution, because in many ways, the word of God is the constitution for Kingdom people. If you’ve read our Constitution, or even just a preamble, you know that it’s got these lofty ideals in it, in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure tranquility, the defense of the nation, all that. Now you keep reading the rest of the Constitution and you don’t find anything about speed limits, tax codes, building codes, all those will get worked out in light of the founding principles. That’s how scripture works, too. And this is where we so often go wrong, because politically speaking, we start to think that the Bible gives us speed limits and tax rates. Maybe it’s because of Old Testament law, I don’t know. I’m trying to think where this comes from. Like we just did Exodus, and there are some almost kind of speed limiting moments in there. Even then that’s like case law. They’re meant to be examples. But I get that that was also given for the nation of Israel. We we talked a lot about this, we begin to think that the Bible’s got, like, specific policies on every issue, and that’s the great danger. So Robert Benham, in his book, good and bad ways to think about politics and religion distinguishes straight and jagged line issues really important for us, straight and jagged line issues. So straight line issue is one where you can draw a straight line from Scripture to an actual policy position. There are straight line issues. I think abortion is one because scripture is quite clear that God creates life in the womb. Scripture is quite clear that murder is wrong. It’s a straight line issue. Actually think that’s why I remember somebody asked me some time ago why so many white evangelicals are Republicans. I’m not saying this is right necessary. I just said I think the answer is, Because abortion is an easy issue, like economics gets complicated. We go, I don’t know, but I know this one, so I’m going to vote that way. I think that’s where it comes from. Because it’s a straight line issue. The trouble comes though when we begin to think that every issue is a straight line issue, like you can draw a straight line from Scripture to your health care proposal or your tax rates, or creation care and environmental stewardship. Now those are all issues where Scripture speaks in broad principles. So there’s not a Christian position on those, not a Christian position on the carbon tax, there’s a Christian position on environmentalism, like our care. It’s literally the first command in Scripture, take care of creation. Okay, there’s a principle, but again, you can’t go to what the exact carbon tax should be, or something like that. So if there’s not a Christian position. That means there is Christian freedom to think differently from others around us on this and we just take tax rates as an example. Here, just to show you what this looks like, we can draw a straight line from Scripture to paying taxes. Jesus said it that one’s easy, right? Render unto Caesar. What is Caesar’s okay? You’re not paying your taxes. Great. Time repent. Okay, contact the IRS. Deal with that. We get that. So we’re we’re paying our taxes. Straight line. There is a jagged line when it comes to tax rates. Does Scripture support a flat tax or a progressive tax rate? Well, let’s think about it from a there are some scriptural principles here. Let’s argue for a flat tax from Scripture, the seventh commandment You shall not steal affirms the right to private property and the importance of it. We know from Scripture that there is nothing inherently wrong with having more than someone else. As the examples of job Abraham David would would certainly show we know that Scripture warns against envy and jealousy. There are certain approaches to progressive tax rate that sound like state sponsored jealousy. And doesn’t scripture talk about the value of hard work, which brings its own blessings and laziness, which brings its own punishments. Okay, flat tax rate got there. Now let’s do the progressive tax rate, because that same Scripture also calls us to lift the poor, which is an active exercise, that same Scripture gives government the authority to pursue and enforce judgment specifically in light of the image of God. In all people, they’re not degrees of the image of God. Scripture tells the rich to care about the poor over and over and over again and warns them in harsh language about what happens if they do not and Scripture affirms over and over and over again, in Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, 58 throughout the prophets, the Reality of systemic injustice. So which is the biblical view flat tax or progressive tax? I’ll wait. You get the point. There’s a tension in scripture on so many issues, and so we need to hold the tension. And in fact, we have to have that tight grip on the tension, because our principles come from scripture, tight grip on the word, loose on policies. So you got to hold both in mind, like, let me just give you two proverbs. Just to show you how complicated this gets, we know where poverty comes from. It comes from laziness. Proverbs, 10, verse four, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Grip that we know where poverty comes from. It comes from systemic injustice. Proverbs, 29 verse seven, the righteous care about justice, justice for the poor. And the word that’s used there meaning what they’re owed, what is their due? The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. You got to grip that one too. That’s the challenge. So Perry says, When the Bible is used to speak immediately, like that’s that straight line, when the Bible is used to speak immediately to a contemporary issue. We’re in danger of heresy, again, specifically the heresy of simony. One of the earliest heresies comes from Simon magus, Acts Eight, probably somewhere in that realm. You can read the book of Acts, you’ll find him. He’s the one in Samaria, who sees when Peter lays hands on the Samaritans who’ve just received Christ, they receive the Holy Spirit, and sees the works that Peter is able to do, healing, casting out demons, all that stuff. So he goes up to Peter and kind of says, I’d like to buy that if I could. And Simon Says, literally, to hell with you and your money because he recognized the heresy. You don’t want God for God. You want God for what he can do for you. He’s just an instrument in your hands. That’s what’s happening. You don’t want to know what the word of God says about politics. You want the Word of God to be a bludgeon you can use. To beat your political enemies, and it’s heresy. So we don’t get these straight lines on most issues, but scripture instead informs how we think politically, how we vote. When we have a deep knowledge of scripture’s principles. It provides a framework for thoughtful evaluation, thoughtful evaluation, which will become prophetic and sorrowful evaluation as well, if we’re really leaning into Scripture. Esau McCauley says it like this. He’s talking about the two parties in our country, and he says they are both. They’re profoundly mistaken about particular things, each broken in its own way. We’re talking way more about that next week, by the way, but that’s it. So if they’re each broken in its own way, it means you’re going to look at them and go because you’re shaped by the word of God, and so you’re grieving anywhere they’re out of line with scripture. So we have a choice to make, as the king’s people, we can submit to His Word and will and hope and his help, or we can submit to a political platform bring all the choices together, and you’ll get our big idea for today. It’s this, the pure in heart trust the King will build His kingdom and live like it. Live like they trust the King is building his kingdom now, your trust, as we said, will be evident in your choices, and I think that’s where we need to end today. We got more to say, of course, in the next couple of weeks. But what are your choices? Politically? We talk in Journey group and the start of every year about how to identify the idols in our hearts. And one way to identify idolatry is that you are willing to sin to get what you’ve idolized. You’re willing to sin in order to get it like just take an easy example. You know, you’ve made money an idol if you’re unwilling to tithe to the church, I guess just a sign, like God clearly commands it, and you’re going but I’d rather have this and the stuff that it can buy. Okay, now you know you got a money problem. Well, what about politics? Are you willing to sin for the sake of your political platform. What might that look like moral compromise, in the broadest possible terms, compromising yourself morally, but also excusing the moral compromise of those you support politically might look like slander, gossip and frankly, just cruel words, usually typed, not spoken, but both, certainly, that might be slander and gossip about political leaders might also just be about the people who vote for them. And James tells us he’s like flabbergasted that with the same tongue, we would bless the Lord and curse those who are made in His image. Any of you guilty of that. Again, maybe that’s just somebody made in the image of God, but maybe that’s more so even a brother or sister in Christ bought by the precious blood of Christ. What about lying? Deception? And maybe it’s you, but maybe it’s just your willingness to excuse lies and deception, to listen to them over and over again. Or how about this one? Here’s where I’m convicted, complaining. Scripture says that’s a sin, ingratitude. I feel that off. I’m confessing publicly to you right now where I struggle self righteousness, judgment, especially of brothers and sisters who vote differently than you, and ultimately even hatred for those who disagree with you. That’s all sin in the service of political idolatry. Are you willing to damage your witness for Christ to win political points, because if so, your priorities are so out of whack. And then the question becomes, because everyone of us felt convicted right there, except for some of the kids who are like, I don’t know what he’s talking about. If only you can. Stay there in your innocence. We’re all feeling convicted right now. The question is, what are we going to do about it? That’s the problem. Every time we hear the word of God, isn’t it? It’s really easy to hear the word. It’s a lot harder to do the word. It has your conscience become seared at this point where you’re going, not, not not going to do anything. Just shut down. Harden my heart against this. Have you made peace with your sin? I am preaching this series because I am zealous for your souls. I think it’s Jude who mentions you know the fact that we need to snatch people back from the fire. That is how I feel so much today, your soul may be in peril. You may be given over to Real heresies. It is not too late. Repent, repent, return to your king and receive the grace that He freely offers in his son, but bear fruit in keeping with repentance like life change needs to be happening here. So invite accountability into your life. That’s why we do community groups and get the other unit to talk about this sermon series. It’d be a fun one for you guys. Some of you are like, wait. Kyle said the community groups might be ending soon. Great. Okay, this is our only hope here. Invite accountability, like talk to each other and go, Yeah, that’s me. I struggle here, for sure, ask forgiveness of people you’ve spoken against or written about. Install guard rails so that you don’t keep doing this, like some of you probably need to go, I’m logging out of Facebook. I’m gonna have my spouse change my password. I want to keep it. I want to see pictures of the cousins and stuff. That’d be great, but I’m not getting on unless she logs me in. He logs me in and watches what I’m doing, because your soul is in peril, and you’re like, Yeah, I’m cut off my hand because I’d rather go into heaven missing one hand than going to hell with both of them. Invite accountability, install guard rails, do something. The King has given you every reason to trust in Him, because He sent His Son to bring and build the kingdom, and Jesus Christ is building and will build not Jerusalem and England, but the New Jerusalem across the whole of the earth when it comes down from heaven. We did revelation last year. We know how this story ends, and it’s such good news. Now, some of you are thinking, if he’s building his kingdom, why does the world look like this? Could he get a move on? We remember what Scripture says there also, God is not slow in keeping his promises. He is patient, not wanting any to perish, but all to have time to repent, because he made repentance possible. In Christ, don’t trust in princes who can’t save. Trust the prince of peace who did save by his blood, by his body, broken by a corrupt political process, condemned to death by men who loved political power more than they loved God, and in So doing, triumphed over our wickedness and the evil powers that still rule in this world. The pure in heart trust the King will build His kingdom. Will you live like you believe that Let’s pray. Lord, You are our King, whether we acknowledge it or not, you are reigning. You will reign forevermore throughout all generations, and you will establish your perfect forever Kingdom. In the end, you are building it here and now, even would you build it in our hearts, even more today we pray as Jesus taught us to pray, your kingdom, come your will be done. May it start in us, in our hearts, here and now, Lord, we confess our sin, we repent, we return and we receive the grace that you offer increase our trust in You. Help us by your Spirit, to put our hope in you, to look to you for help in our time of need, and then to live differently as a result. And God may we. Shine like stars in the blackness of this dark world as we hold firmly to the word of life, we ask in Christ’s name, Amen.