Faithful Presence (Week 10)

Is Daniel, and I'm one of the pastors here. And on behalf of our entire team, we're so glad that you chose to spend part of your Wednesday with us tonight. I am excited for us to wrap up our series, one nation under God, as we've been talking over the course of the past ten weeks now, really, about what good God's design is for nations, what our places in those nations, and then specifically, the blessing it is to be an inheritor of this nation that we were in, which is built upon the foundation of God's word. And so as we've gone through the last ten weeks, hopefully, we've all discovered, we've learned together, and we've talked about how we can then leave this building and continue building one nation under God because we're not just people who woke up one day and we got this great country handed to us, we got this freedom to worship freely handed to us, and are supposed to do nothing with it. As we're gonna talk about tonight, we're actually called to engage. We're called to be faithful with what God has allowed us to become the heirs of. And so that's what we're gonna get into later tonight. Before we get to that, Lindsay is right. I did want to just mention and talk about briefly our for our kids campaign. If you have opened the door, by the way, over there, over the last week or so, you will have noticed something, which is that it does not look anything like it did just a few weeks ago. Who's excited for the fact that we just started putting some walls in that old auditorium over there? Come on. It's very exciting. That said, we're doing it on faith that you guys are also gonna show up and let us finish. Right? And the contractors for that project are all in the room, so they're also living on a little bit of faith right now. Come on. That's a little funny. You can laugh. We are excited to continue on our for our kids campaign. As a reminder, we need, $75,000 in order for us to complete and finish that portion where we're going to actually close in that old auditorium that used to be the main auditorium for this church. We're gonna get a half auditorium, a big multipurpose space for the kids out of it. We're gonna get three really large excellent classrooms for kids and for Vintage Christian Academy out of it. We're gonna enhance our kids experience tremendously just by doing that. And so my ask is that you guys would just pray and then say, Lord, what would you have us do? I promise you, whether you're a parent in the room or not, it is going to be a blessing for us to be able to welcome new people into the life of our church. The truth is that we've elevated every experience that we can over the last couple of years, and the kids' experience is the next one that is left. When all of you were begging us for a gravel parking lot back there because you were parking in ditches on the side of the road, we came to the church, and we said, this is what it's gonna take to get it done. Well, now we have parents that are showing up on Sunday morning, and they're saying, wow. It feels crowded in here. All the kids are in one big room. Can we get some separation? Can we get those things? And whether you see that or not, it's gonna be a tremendous blessing to every single family that has children in our kids wing right now, that has children in our school right now, and every single family that shows up on a Sunday morning that's able to receive and say, hey, they care about our kids. Right? It's not like we're just giving them the scraps and the leftovers. We're actually investing in the future generation for our kids. And so you can follow that QR code. I would just ask you to pray and say, Lord, what would you have me do? Pastor Steve and I have a conviction. We never tell you what number we think that you should give. We're not, gonna lock the doors until you do something. Right? I've seen that. We're never gonna do that, but we are gonna invite our people to do is to participate in the work that God is doing, and this really does make a massive impact for our kids. Alright. I'll get off my soapbox and get on my other one to talk about the rest of the message tonight. Alright. So as we get into tonight's message, here's the theme tonight. I was praying over the message as I as I looked it over, and, it's just incredible. The stuff that pastor Nate helped put us put together for this series, I think he really has been a huge blessing to our church. It's been a huge blessing, to me personally to see the level of detail that God has has put in here. And as I was praying, I said, Lord, what is the main thing that I need to help our church see tonight? And as I talk as I talk through this, as I prayed through it with the Lord, I really felt like the theme that we're gonna get into tonight as we wrap everything up, we're gonna talk in several different parts. We're gonna go through it all like we always do. But the theme really is faithfulness. The theme is faithfulness. You know, we've talked over the last nine weeks, now ten weeks, about why God designs nations this way. We've talked about, hey. What is my place in a nation? What is a nation's place in relationship to other nations and to God? And what's what's my place as a believer right where I am? And tonight, we're really gonna talk about how we're called to live that out because it's not helpful to you guys if all that we do is we preach to you, and we give you a bunch of principle, and we don't actually equip you to go out in the world and live differently than when you came in here. No. That's actually the role of the church. The role of the church, the the full time members who drive the church forward, the the clergy as they're sometimes called. Our job is not to be the only ones living your Christian life every day. I tell everyone this in our new members class. I say, look. It takes one of our values at this church is personal discipleship. It takes your own investment. I can't knock on every single one of your doors for you every single morning and say, hey. Did you read your Bible? Right? Hey. Have you done everything that you're supposed to do? Hey. Have you sought the Lord's face in every decision that you're making? It's not possible. It's your job to wake up and live out your Christian life. Well, I can equip you to do that, and that's what we're gonna talk about tonight is how we can be equipped, how we can actually go out and live faithfully. Everybody say faithfully. How we can live faithfully in the country that we've been called to steward. And and and here's what I'm gonna do first. I'm gonna define what that means. Because as we're gonna get into, we as believers are called to have a faithful presence in the public square. Now we've talked about that at this church. You may have heard it mentioned a time or two. Right? That we're actually called to engage, that we're called to be faithful in our lives at home, in our workplaces. We're called to be faithful, whether it's here in church serving, or whether it's in the voting booth, or whether it's with your coworkers at lunch, you're called to be faithful, and this is what faithful presence looks like. A faithful presence in your life, being a salt and light, which we're gonna get to here in a second, we have a really good definition, and it basically means that we're called to live apart. We're called to live holy lives. We're called to do all of these things, and we provided this great definition. But I'm gonna sum all of this up in one sentence, which is that we as Christians are called to be twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five day a year Christians no matter whether you're in public or whether you're in private. In other words, the call to contend in the public square, the call to live faithfully in your workplace, the call is really just to be who God has made you to be, a new creation in Jesus Christ no matter where you are, when you are, who you're with, what you're doing. You are called to be one person. You know, you're not supposed to be two people. You're not supposed to leave this building and become somebody else because you're around your family now. You know, that doesn't mean that you're not a little softer with your kids, or maybe you're a little more wise with your coworkers and how you say things, but you're not supposed to hide who you are. In fact, the Bible is very clear about this. Here's a few passages. It says you are the light of the world. You know, pastor, I thought Jesus was the light of the world. He is, but what are you called to do? You're called to be in his image. You're called to reflect his likeness. You're called to be light to the world. It says that we're called to work for the peace and the prosperity of the city where I've sent you. Does that mean that we're supposed to sit at our homes and just watch as passive bystanders as the world passes us by hoping that the good luck will continue while we do nothing to steward it? Esther four fourteen says you were made for such a time as this. Here's the big idea for tonight. Having a faithful presence rejects apathy, and it rejects idolatry. We are positioned for such a time as this. Not not to retreat, but to engage responsibly as salt and light in a world that desperately needs both. And so I'm gonna talk about that first part about rejecting apathy. And here's what I really believe. Apathy has become one of the most dangerous postures in the American church, and it's so easy for us to become apathetic. I know it's easy for me to become apathetic. I'm like, just turn on a show, honey. Look. There's ice cream. The kids are asleep. I don't wanna do anything. I don't wanna do the spiritual work of having conversations with my wife about what she's praying on. Why? Because I'm tired. You know what that makes me? A bad husband. She'll tell you. She won't. She loves me too much. But men, how would your wife feel if you were just always too tired to put in the work? How would they feel? They feel like you were apathetic, and you know what? They would be right, And sometimes we get apathetic. Sometimes we get apathetic not only about things like our marriage. We get apathetic about our spiritual walk. Sometimes we get apathetic about all those things, and when we get apathetic about walking with the Lord, we get apathetic about contending for the truth that he's given to us. We stop saying, lord, what would you have me do? And we start saying, lord, can you make me have an easier life? We stop saying, god, give my hands a plow to push, things to steward, a job to do for the betterment of your kingdom when we start saying, God, I'd really like to be able to just rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest. Now rest is biblical. We did a whole series on that. You can go back and listen to it. It's called twenty four six. Right? We did it here earlier this year on Sunday mornings. I encourage you to. The Sabbath is biblical. Rest is biblical. You know what else is biblical? Run. You were given six days to labor and one day to rest. God hasn't called us to primarily spend our time in rest. Our rest is in him. Our joy is in him. It says that the joy of the lord is our strength. We're supposed to have a relationship with God that's strong enough for us to go out and to contend for the faith, to go out and be a Christian twenty four seven, whether it means difficulty or prosperity. Regardless of our circumstances, we're called to be one person. So why has the church rejected all of this in America and become so apathetic? Why has it become silent? Why has it become the case that we have so many pastors who just say, I look. Politics isn't really for me. You know? We don't need to talk about that here in church. We don't want to be divisive. We don't wanna engage in these issues. Look. To those pastors, let me just say, if you've heard that out of the mouth of a pastor, they are able to do that because pastors uniquely live in a bubble most of the time. I'll just say it's true. A lot of pastors in the country, they live in a bubble. If you're a pastor and you find this and you listen to it, yes, I'm talking to you. You guys, as our congregation, you have to go out and live in a world that's hostile, a world that's antithetical to the values that God creates. What a disservice it would be to you if I didn't tell you how to engage in the culture that hates the word of God, which I ask you and invite you on Sunday morning to build your life upon. What a disgraceful leader I would be if I didn't hand you the words of God in this book and give you a framework to be able to engage and to contend in a culture that's viciously hateful towards the people that call themselves children of the most high God. You know, I would just say to those pastors, pastor, if you say you are above politics, then perhaps you are beneath your pulpit. Perhaps our clergy have become so comfortable because we've been coasting upon a country built by people who fought and bled and died so that we could receive the word of God. Perhaps our prosperity has made us weak. Perhaps we're apathetic. And if we're apathetic to what God has called us to steward, and by the way, we are stewarding this great nation, then we are in active disobedience, and we need to repent. The truth is we've been handed this great nation. Every single one of us that it calls ourself an American, you steward a unique good. And we spent time in the last nine weeks talking about that. And if you're joining us for the first time tonight, I encourage you to go back and listen to the series about when we talk about the greatness of the nation, the the people that believed that this country simply was a gift from God, a miracle that we're called not to waste. But here's what I wanna tell you guys as our church tonight. If we want the blessings of God who wants the blessings of God in their life tonight? I want the blessings of God in my life tonight. You know what that means I have to do? If you want the blessings of God, you must steward the work of God. You have to. And that doesn't stop when it comes to politics or to the church. It doesn't stop when it comes to your workplace, to that person who's kind of a jerk. That person that you don't know how to relate to and you know that they're far from God. You don't get to stop when you come into an environment that you don't want to share the gospel with. That you don't want to be one person. That where you don't want to be the one that's going to say what the word of God says or live how it calls you to live because you might be called out for it by people who are living like the world tells them to live. You know, we don't get to do that and then ask turn around and ask God for his blessing in our life. God gave us a nation under him where we, the people, are sovereign. And so to neglect the public square is to squander our inheritance. I will take it this far. To neglect the public square Christian, let me just help you understand. If we are to neglect the public square, we are no better than the prodigal son who took this great inheritance that had been given to him from his father. The prodigal son goes, and he comes to his father, and he says, father, I want my inheritance early. He then says, god, I want your blessings, but I don't want you. How many of us have said, lord, I want your blessings, but I don't want you in my life? God, I want the gifts that you give, but I don't want your authority over me. God, I want the things that you're going to provide for me, but I don't wanna live like you tell me to live in this book. God, I I want every rent check to be paid for without me having to do a thing to work for it. God, how come you're not rescuing me out of this crisis even though I keep making the wrong decision over and over and over again? Lord, man, I really would like everything that you've promised me, but I'm not willing to give up sleeping with my girlfriend. Lord, there's this habit, this addiction that I've chosen not to confide in anyone in the church, and I won't give it up. But God, while I choose not to give that up, can I just turn around and ask you for every single blessing that I've ever wanted? Have we ever treated God like that? We treat like God like that? How about this one? God, I don't wanna have to take the time to know who's running for local office. I don't wanna have to take the time to figure out whether the people who are running to represent me are gonna do right by your word or wrong by your word, whether or not they're gonna vote for killing children in the womb, cutting the breasts off of young girls, whether or not they're gonna call for the seizure of the property of my neighbor. I don't wanna take the time to have to figure that out every time an election rolls around. And so, God, instead, I'm just gonna ask that you would give me all of the blessings of living in a free nation while I do nothing to steward it. Church, if we do that, we are no better than the prodigal son turning to his father and saying, father, I want every gift from you, and I'm gonna take it, and I'm gonna go squander it all on prostitutes and parties. It's the same thing. That's what we do. Now you guys are like, alright, Pastor. Really fun message tonight. But it's true. I told you guys that tonight was gonna be out faithfulness. Do you know what faithfulness is? Faithfulness is an open hand. Getting up each and every morning and saying, lord, what would you have me do? Putting your hand to the plow and not looking back. Jesus says that he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom of God. It's putting your hand to the plow and saying, lord, whatever you would have me do, wherever you would have me do it, and however you would have me do it. Yes. I'm yours today. Jesus doesn't get to just be your savior and not be your lord. He has to be both. He can only be your savior if you will call him Lord. That's a reality. And a lot of times, we look at all these things going on in the world, and we think the problem's too big for me or I don't wanna do it or I've heard I've been given an out, and I've been told I can't engage in in these areas, and so I'm gonna remain silent. We've been cowed into silence by people who have told us things like this. They've said, well what about the separation of church and state? We've all heard that. First of all, history lesson here, that's not in the constitution. Alright? It's not in the constitution anywhere. It's in a letter that Thomas Jefferson writes to the Danbury Baptist Church. You guys as a congregation probably know that better than any congregation in America because we say it, but it's not in the constitution. What are they trying to do? They're trying to use things that you love and believe in, like the Bible and the constitution, to tell you and use your own morals against you so that you will shut up. Do you know what they say when they mean what about separation of church and state? They mean shut up, Christian. You don't have a place in our public square. Shut up, believer. You don't have a place telling us how we should live our life. Shut up, Christian. I don't want your laws that, quote, unquote, legislate morality. Who's ever heard that? I've heard this. I heard this growing up as a kid. They would say, well, laws can't legislate morality. That's all that they do. That's literally the point of them. Laws help to uphold what is right and what is wrong, and yet what they really mean is shut up, Christian. I don't want to hear you speak because when you speak, I hear the words of God. And I don't wanna hear that in my life. I don't want that lordship over my life. And yet, what did our founders say? Well, one of the signers of the declaration, Benjamin Rush said religion and virtue are the only foundations of republicanism and all free government, and then without them, liberty will collapse. Here's what James Garfield said too. He said that the people are responsible for the character of their Congress, and that if it becomes ignorant, reckless, or corrupt, it's because we tolerated it. What does he understand? What's he saying? He's saying, we are the stewards to whom have been given many talents. We have become the heirs of a great nation. What are you going to do with what's been given to you? When the master comes home, will he find that you've given to him an increase or that you've buried his coin in a field and waited for him to return, hoping that you wouldn't lose it? That's what he's saying. But there's been a price to our silence as the church. Here's the price of spot silence. The spiritual price of our silence is this. For more than a century, this has played out in a devastating fashion. The removal of prayer and scripture from our schools, the removal of the 10 commandments from the classroom. Thankfully, we have some of that returning here in the state of Texas. Come on. But it took a fight. And by the way, one of the most discouraging and raging things that I've ever seen in my life was after the 10 commandments were allowed to be back in schools here in the state of Texas, and I saw all these quote unquote pastors who came out, and they said, I'm a pastor, and I would never want that to happen. I'm a pastor, and I can't believe that we would put the 10 commandments back in schools. Then you don't love the word of God. You don't want people to be blessed by knowing the God of the Bible, the commandments that he gives to us that lead us into a saving relationship with him because once you start swimming in the stream of liberty, as our friend pastor Rob says, eventually you will arrive at its source, which is Jesus Christ. They don't want people to be exposed to the word of God. By the way, that's why our school has 250 kids and it's overflowing right now. Because we preach the truth which is the word of God. Every single aspect of it. Now the consequences are told stop there. It was only eleven years ago that here in this country, because of the silence and the apathy of the church, the Supreme Court did something unthinkable, which is that they redefined one of the most fundamental institutions in all of humanity, which is marriage. Not only that, but they started cutting the breasts off of young girls, and the testicles off of young boys and calling it health care. We've seen skyrocketing addiction. We're the most medicated generation in human history, and yet we're still more depressed than ever. We have more people who say that they need to see a psychiatrist than ever, and yet they can't break free. Most of the people who start will never finish their therapy. We have youth that are in direct rebellion against their parents at rates never seen before. There's more fatherless homes in The United States right now than at any other point in our history. We see masculinity attacked. We see femininity attacked. Women who wanna stay home with their children that are told that they're less than anybody else. Men who want to leave their families who are told that they're bullies. We've seen the collapse of public education with schools graduating more kids who cannot read than kids who can. We've seen the American church demonized and made out to be an oppressive force in the culture rather than the salt and the light of the world. We've seen a crisis of meaning and purpose that leaves more veterans dead by suicide than by combat. It's devastating, which by the way, that's why we're trying to put a vintage church on Fort Hood, because we care about our soldiers, because we care about you guys. The foundation of all of humanity, the foundation of this country is the word of God. And I don't just mean that metaphorically. It says that God spoke, and he created the world. The The word of God is the foundation of everything that exists. Says that God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into him the breath of life, and that man became a living being. It's by the breath of God that things are made. And because of that, the enemy seeks to silence what? The word of God. Because if you have the word of God, if you have the spirit of God, then you will end up enjoying the blessings of God. But if you strip the word away, the society begins to crumble, and that's what's happened to our country. Our foolish minds have become darkened, and we thought that we could be God. We replaced the truth of God for a lie like it says in Romans. This is what this apathy reveals about us, that our silence has ceded ground to darkness. Apathy has ignored the biblical mandate of the believer to go out and be one person. Everybody say one person. Whether you're in the seat here tonight or wherever you are on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, you are called to be one person in Jesus Christ. And because of that, because the culture has convinced us that that's a lie, Remember what they want us to do. They want you to shut up, Christian. What about the separation of church and state? Shut up, Christian. The laws aren't for you. They should be neutral. Neutral just means it's a morality that doesn't have Christianity in it. Funny how they don't tell that to the Muslims. They don't tell that to the atheists. They don't tell it to anybody else except the people who wanna build the country and build the life of the country and their local communities upon the foundation of God's word. Because they know that if they can get us to disengage, and we just call it disengagement, or we call it neutrality, they know that this is actually surrender. A disengagement from the culture is a surrender to the kingdom of darkness. That's exactly what it is. We have to reject apathy. Right? We have to reject apathy. Disengagement from the culture is a sin for the believer. And I know that you guys are sitting there going, oh, pastor, this is a lot. But it's true. Do you wanna be a faithful believer? Be one person wherever you go. Engage in the evil around you. Push back on it. Refuse to be silent. You go, well, sometimes that's uncomfortable. I know. I do it professionally. But you know what? How much more uncomfortable is it gonna be when we stand in front of the throne of God, and he says, here's what I handed you. And he's gonna say, what can you hand me back? And we're gonna look at him, and we're gonna say, master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping what you didn't sow. And so I took the coin that you gave me, and I went out and I buried in the field so that it couldn't be lost. And look, master, here I have returned it to you. And I will look at my servant, and I'll say, you wicked and foolish servant. You should have at least put it in the bank where you could have returned it to me with interest. And he says take the talent, give it to the man who has 10 talents, and take this foolish and wicked servant, and have him thrown out into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That's what the Lord says is in store for those of us who he's given much to and give nothing back. To whom much is given, much is required. You know what Christians? Church. Vintage church. You guys are my favorite people. And you know what? I would hate you if I didn't tell you that we're called to bring our master a return, whether it's with our finances, whether it's with our family, whether it's with our friends and our relationships in the workplace, or whether it's with our public square. We are called to give a return, and I would hate you. I would have to hate you if I didn't tell you that because I know what lays in store for the servant who returns to the master master nothing other than what he was given and spent their life coasting upon the blessings that they had inherited, squandering it like the prodigal son. I would have to hate you, but I don't. I love you. And so I'm calling you to the return to the what the word of God has to say, and I'm telling us we as a church must be the salt and light. And this is what that looks like. In Matthew chapter 13, this is the command that Jesus gives us because I've laid out what happens when we when we don't engage. This is how Christ calls us to engage. He says, you are the salt of the earth, but what a good is salt if it's lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the light of the world. Like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden, no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see so that everyone will praise your heavenly father. Now you have heard this verse if you have gone to membership you, which if you haven't, you can sign up. We have one coming up this month in August. I'll be there. You should be there too. Why? Because we're called to be a part of the church. We as the church are called to be salt and light to the world, and we're called to do it together. We are called as believers to function in these two ways, salt and light. And here's what salt and light do. In the ancient world, salt was not just what you put on your food, though it did do that. It actually preserved the food from decay. And, yes, it added flavor, and then it also promoted healing. Light also serves three functions. It serves to expose what is hidden, to guide those who walk in the dark, and to bring warmth and clarity. And so both of these metaphors, they demand that we look at them and understand what is being said. Salt that remains in the shaker does nothing. Right? You can't use it. It's it's unusable. It's staying there. It's sitting, and it's not serving its purpose. Light hidden under a basket does nothing. It brings light to no one. It helps no one. It does nothing. It's not living out the purpose that it was intended for. But God didn't create you for purposelessness. He created you for purpose. He gave you a great purpose, and he called him in to the greatest purpose of all, which is to join him in his kingdom. And Jesus says, by the way, if you're not engaging in the purpose that I've called you to, if you're not doing what I've called you to, then you're becoming worthless. Jesus was not just a guy who hung out and petted lambs. Okay? You read the Bible and you think, wow. Sometimes the words that Jesus had were harsh. They were harsh, but they were good. You know what? You guys might have seen I had my little boys in here for worship earlier. It's perfect. I didn't have an illustration, and then they gave me one. And they're jumping up and down. And me and my sweet wife, who it was my idea. She's like, why did you ask me to do this? You know? And I'm just looking at my sons, and I'm looking at my four year old, and he's looking, and he's doing his version of worship. He's jumping up and down. And he's about to run over, like, across the stage, and I know he's gonna do it because that's what he likes to do. He likes to find a worse place and just put himself right there. And I see him about to run out, and I grab him by the arm, and I pick him up, and he's like, daddy, I want down. And I'm like, I know what you want. Trust me. I was not in question. I'm a little hard on him. I said, Teddy, if you keep trying to throw yourself on the ground, I'm a drop you. I'm a let you. He's like, oh, because he knows because I've done it before. No. I'm kidding. Only on the couch. Alright? I'm like, son, stop. And he knows because he's like, dad's serious. Am I being a little harsh on him in the moment? Yes. But what am I doing? I'm training him and calling him to what he needs to be doing. If I never teach him how to behave himself, he's gonna be like that when he's 25 and it's not so cute then. Jesus might correct us, but he's calling us to what is good. And he calls us to be salt and light. Here's really what he's calling us to do. Light produces clarity. We're not just called to walk in the light. We are called to be the light. This means we shine a light of clarity in a confused culture. We are ready in and out of season to give offense for the faith. We're gonna call evil, evil. We're gonna call good, good. You know, C. S. Lewis has this great point about Christ and about what it's like to walk with him. You know, we're supposed to reflect Christ. And he says, you know, Christ is like a lamp in a dark room. He's pulling upon this metaphor that Jesus gives in Matthew chapter 13, and he says, you when you walk into a dark room, and you walk in the room, and it's pitch black, and then someone turns on a light, or they light a candle, and all of a sudden you can see. Well, what's the one thing you can see when one light comes on in a dark room? The light. And you see that light and you go, that is good. I'm so glad that that's there. And that's what it's like to realize Christ for the first time. You come into this relationship with Christ. It says that you're in the dark and you finally are found, and you see it and you're like, yes. That's what I needed. I needed that. I needed the light. And then you go up and you start walking closer and closer and closer to the light. And the closer that you walk to the light, the more that you start to realize that not only do you see the light, but by the light and the power that it has, you see everything else around you. And the things, these shadows begin to take shape, and you're able to see things clearly. And that's what it's like when we draw closer to Christ is that the closer we get to him, the more we're able to see the world clearly. And when we light our candle with his, just like we do on candlelight service, we begin to recognize that we reflect his light back to the rest of the world like the moon reflects the sun. And we're called to reflect that light to other people so that when they draw close to us, we help bring clarity to their life. So that when people walk with you, they say there's something different about them and I want what they have. I can see things more clearly because they have the wisdom of God. Church, that's our call. What better call could there be than to give the light to the world? Salt penetrates the culture. Being salty means actively preserving the moral order. It means you are supposed to help preserve what is good. I tell people this all the time. That these political conversations about what does it mean to be a conservative. Right? And I say, if your definition of what it means to be a conservative isn't that we're conserving Christianity, it ultimately falls short because that's what this nation was founded upon, and this is the truth that's the highest truth in the moral order. And so if you're not ultimately conserving Christianity, you're conserving nothing. It's the truth. That's what we're called to do as Christians. We're called to preserve. That's the last thing is that we're our faithful present engages without conforming. We're called to be in the world, but we're not called to be of the world. Now the next thing I wanna talk about is how we're supposed to contend, how we're supposed to relate in the place that we've been put. You know, everything that I just said is true, but it's true wherever you are from whatever nation you are, it's eternal. But we're also called to be in a specific place in time. We're called to seek the welfare of the city. In fact, this is a mandate that's given to the exiles. So for those of you who did our Bible in a year with us, or maybe you've just read the Bible on your own, to which I applaud you, and I seriously do. If you're coming in and you're a new believer, sometimes you get into Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and you start to go, what is this? Well, a lot of these prophecies are written in the period of what we call the exile, where the nation of Israel gets taken and they get carried off. And it's not an easy time. And so Jeremiah is one of the prophets of the exile, and he gets a prophecy from the Lord where the people are living in exile, and they're living in in really harsh conditions. And this is the word that the Lord gives Jeremiah in that time. He says, and work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare. Now you read that, and if I was in exile, and I got a word from the Lord about the city that I'm in, my hope is the word is I'm a burn that place down. I'm a set you free. Me personally, that's what I'm looking for. But God says seek the welfare of the city. Well, God, that's harder. God, that takes work on my behalf. God, that takes me choosing every day to be faithful to the people around me, and I don't like them. I don't really, they carried me off in exile. And, God, I didn't really like that either. To be quite frank with you, exile was not where I was planning to be this time of year, and yet it's where I found myself. And so whether or not you want to be here, whether or not you think that, you know, Central Texas is the best part of the country or not, I do. But it's because of you guys. Alright? Not because of the heat. It was hot today. I left my shoes in my car. I came to put them on for service. I burned them. I was like, god, I must love you guys a lot. You know, you look around, and you think a lot of the times as believers, we think if we were somewhere else, we would really be able to find God's purpose for us. That's a lie. It's a lie that the enemy will always tell you wherever you are, because if you believe that lie, then it gets you to do what we talked about a minute ago, which is to disengage from the purpose God has called you to right here. And so what he wants you to do is he wants you to disengage, but that's not what we're called to do. We're called to embrace the welfare of the city that we're in. We're called to embrace our place with purpose. God has put you here for a purpose. We're called to be a peacemaker, both through our prayers and through our action. And that's a theme, by the way. Like I said, you're a Christian in public and in private. That means you do lock your door, and you do pray when nobody's looking. And that means you do battle spiritually in a secret place that nobody else sees, nobody else knows, before you walk out into the world. And when you're out in the world, you go out as a warrior of Jesus Christ. Putting on that full armor of Ephesians six, not afraid of the weapons of this world, and you get to say, you know what? God called me here for a purpose today, and I know that because I met him in the secret place. And I asked and I invited the Lord, and I said, Lord, what would you have for me to do? And I said, Lord, what am I living out that I shouldn't be living out right now? God, strip it all away from me and take everything that's not from you away and instead replace it with what you have for me. And, Lord, there's these people in my workplace, and, Lord, they're far from you. And, Lord, would you please meet them? And then not only do I pray that they would meet the Lord, but when I show up, I represent the Lord as the salt and the light. And I show them exactly what it means to be a believer. You see, as Christians, we're called to contend in the public square in public and in private. We're called to be the same person in public and in private. We're called to do what God has commanded in public and in private. We're called to have compassion for people in public and in private. And if you neglect the private and you only do the public, then you turn into a Pharisee who stands praying on the street corner saying, oh, sovereign Lord. Thank you that I'm not like these other people. You become pious. You become self righteous. We meet the power of God in the secret place, and then we carry it to the world. And remember this. You are called to build. You're called to build. We're not called to just destroy the lies of the world. We're called to build upon the foundation of God's word. Here's what I wanna talk about next. It's one of my favorite passages in all of scripture, which is that we are called for such a time as this. For those of you who are looking around and you're going, pastor, I don't know that I really have a purpose here. I don't know that I have a place here. You know, you said I have a place, but how can I know that? How can I for sure know that I have a purpose? There's this scene that plays out in the book of Esther. And with eight minutes left, I don't have time to get to all of it. But the time's a suggestion, I think. So no? Oh, alright. I'll hurry up then. You know, Esther is this Jewish girl, and the Persian king decides he doesn't really like his wife very much. And so he exiles her, which is, you know, as you do, I guess, as the king of Persia back in the day. And the king of Persia decides, I don't wanna have anything to do with my wife, queen Vashti. She disrespected me, and so he starts to put on this parade. And, the VeggieTales version is not really what happened. He begins to round up all the beautiful young women in the kingdom, and he tells his advisers, I want you to bring them to me one by one. And they would come to him in the palace, and he would evaluate them. And he would strip them naked, and he would sleep with each of them, and he would decide which of them he wanted to be queen next, which of them pleased him the most. And he would come, and he would bring these women in this very brutal ritual into his household. And there's this young Jewish girl named Esther, and she's afraid not only because of what this is going to be and what might happen if he if she too displeases the king who just threw out his last queen, but because the king is a vicious man, Artaxerxes was known as a brutal murderer of all of those who opposed him. You read the historical accounts outside of scripture, and Artaxerxes would cut out people's tongues when they displeased him and nail them to the backs of their heads and of their hands and send them back to where they came from. If he didn't like the messenger, then a messenger would bring him. He's brutal. He was an evil man. And so as he goes as Esther goes, she had comes and she has a conversation with her cousin Mordecai, and she's afraid. And she begins to hear of this plot from one of Artaxerxes advisors, this man named Haman, who's come to kill the Jews specifically because Mordecai made him angry. And it's the same anti Semitism that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about some of this, all of it, when we get into our series on Israel. It's gonna be great. And Mordecai turns to Esther and she's like, I don't I don't know what to do. I'm afraid. What would you do? And Mordecai doesn't in that moment do what we're all normally thinking you do, which is, you know, somebody comes to you with a really hard problem and you hug them and you pat them on the shoulder and you say, they're there. I'm really sorry that happened to you. I hope it works out. Which is, like, so unhelpful. Ladies, I know that's what you want. Sometimes your husband's solutions are good. Sometimes husbands, you just need to listen. That's a different problem. But Mordecai doesn't offer her that in that moment. He doesn't offer her the comfort that you might think a family member does in a moment of crisis. He offers her something that she really needs. He says, if you keep quiet at a time like this with this plot, he says deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place. Now why does he say that? How does he know? Because he knows the promises of God. He knows the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He read the word of God, and he said, God's gonna deliver us. He promised us that he would through his word and through his prophets. And so he looks at her, and he says, look. Deliverance and relief for the Jews will come from somewhere else, but you and your relatives will die. What is he saying? He's saying you will be forsaking God's purpose in your life. He's saying what Jesus said when he said the salt's gonna be thrown out and trampled by men. He said you're gonna be forsaking God's purpose in your life, and you're gonna miss it. Don't miss out on God's purpose in your life, Christian. But then he says this. He says, who knows if perhaps you were made queen for such a time as this? Maybe, Esther, you endured everything that you've endured simply because God had a plan for your life, simply because he had a purpose for your life. He's raised you up in this moment. You went through that ritual in the palace, and you've been put here a poor orphan girl raised by your cousin of a people that aren't even Persian made queen, a Jewish girl made queen in the greatest empire on earth. Perhaps Esther, God knew what he was doing. Perhaps he put you here for such a time as this. I just wanna ask you a question. If God put Esther in the palace with a murderer to save her people, if God put David in a cave on the run from Saul, who he had done no wrong to, who was possessed by a demon, hunting him down after he's been anointed the king of Israel, if God put David in a cave with his persecutor, if he put Daniel in the court with his captors who had carried him off into exile, if he put Esther in the palace, David in the cave, and Daniel in the king's court, all for his good, all for his glory, all for the purposes of his kingdom, and all for the good of those who he placed in these tremendously difficult times. But for a great purpose, what makes you think that he neglected to give a time and a place and a purpose for you? How dare we question the promises and the purposes of God in our life? To look at the stories that he's given us of so many great men and women who came before us and to say, God, in this moment, I don't believe you have a purpose for me. Let me just tell you. If you're sitting in here tonight and you're not knowing, not believing that God has a purpose for your life, command that away in Jesus' name. God has a plan for you. He has a purpose for you. It involves his kingdom. It involves his work. It involves his people, and you will only receive the best life that you've ever known when you stop just calling Jesus your buddy and instead you say, lord, what would you have me do? And no matter what the circumstances are around it, you look around and you say, God, you have my yes come hell or high water today. I choose to lean in because you've put me here for such a time as this. That's what we're called to. But we neglect that, and we forsake it because we've done the first thing we talked about tonight, which is that we've chosen to live in apathy. We've chosen to live in fear. We've chosen to believe that God's promises aren't for us. But you know what? God positions his people for a purpose. Silence in those moments is our own failure, but God has invited us into his story. You and I get to be a part of the kingdom of God. You guys might not know this. It does not bother me at all. It bothers me 0% when I get a fear period, and I start talking about things like for our kids campaign. Sometimes people are like, pastor, does it ever bother you to talk about that? No. You know why? Because I know how my life changed when I stopped seeing something like giving as I give because I have to check a box and started viewing it as I get to participate with God and his purpose. And I know that when I give to his kingdom, I get to take part in what he has going on that's bigger than me. I get to be a part of something bigger than myself. Does it ever bother me when I tell people that membership you or here in the pulpit on Sunday, you guys should give of your own time to serve his kingdom? No. Why? Because I was a young boy carrying chairs and tables in a church knowing that I was serving something greater than myself for people, many of whom I don't even know today, who have gone to be with the Lord, to benefit those who I would be called away from years later in my life to come be with all of you. I did that not for each and every one of those people alone, but for the kingdom of God. And I don't regret a single moment of it. I know that that's how God used what God used in my life to form me into the believer I was called to be. God uses serving. I I don't regret that. I don't regret serving. I don't regret giving. I don't regret waking up every day. Have you ever woken up and said, Lord, what would you have me do? You've gone out and you've done it and then you turned around and you regretted it later? I haven't. Most of the time when I finally end up in obedience because I am stubborn. Alright? There's a beautiful brunette girl on the front row who will tell you that that is true. And in my stubbornness, I normally don't get it the first time, but when I finally find obedience, I say, Your word is true. Taste and see that the Lord is good. God calls you into his purposes. He gives you a plan. He gives you hope. He gives you a future, and we get to do it. I get to be a part of what's happening. I get to watch as all of the lives in this church get changed when we say yes to the Lord. I get to watch as we choose to not live in this place where, oh, Lord, I have to check the box, but we choose to embrace God. I get to be a part of your church. My children get to grow up hearing the word of the Lord, the promises of God that have been preserved for me by the blood of saints and patriots so that I could have it here in this country today. I get that. It's my joy to be in the house of God. It's my joy to worship him. It's my joy to put my trust in him. And you know, that's the final word I would give us. We've talked a lot in this series. We've talked about politics. We've talked about culture. We've talked about all sorts of stuff. Sometimes there's a trap. And this is my final warning to us because we've talked a lot about engage, engage, engage, engage, and nothing I'm about to say negates that. I don't take back a single word, but sometimes there's a danger when we engage, engage, engage, especially when we do what I talked about a minute ago, which is when we negate the secret place. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you don't have a secret place in your life, if there's not a place that you go that nobody else is looking, that you're alone with the Lord, not even your spouse knows, You need to fix that in your life today. You wanna know what your step is? It's that. You need to have a relationship with the Lord where you're seeking him in prayer. Yes. You need to pray with your spouse. Yes. You need to pray with your children, but you also need to pray when nobody else is looking. But this thing happens when we negate that, and we get into this place where we start engaging with the culture for the truth, and oftentimes, it starts in a good and healthy place. But the devil then sees that we're being faithful, how God has called us to be faithful, and so he wants to lay a trap for us. And here's another trap that he lays for us, which is that he says, you start to put your faith in the people who are elected, the people who are in office, and you stop putting it in him. And you start to make an idol out of some of these people. Your favorite podcaster. What happens when your favorite podcaster goes crazy? Candace. And they begin to fall away from the word of God, what happens if you've made an idol out of that person? What happens when your favorite politician does something that you don't like? That's why your faith can't be built upon them or even upon people who are doing what's good. We partner with those people. We even platform some of those people. And, yes, I know that the people that we platform aren't perfect either, but guess what? I'm standing here, and I'm not perfect either. The question is, are we faithful? Are we faithful to what God has called us to do? And are we forsaking the idolatry of putting these people in positions they shouldn't be? Psalm 27 says this. It says, some trust in chariots, some trust in horses. I trust in the name of the Lord our God. Where is your trust tonight? Where's your faith tonight? Is our trust and is our faith put in the people that God has allowed us to elevate and platform the people who are in politics? They're in the public square or is in the one who made the stars in the sky and calls them each by name. You know, we should platform those people. We should know what our nonnegotiables are. We should engage locally. We have a organization that we partner with called for liberty and justice. We have a chapter here for that. We have all sorts of ways that we engage. We should support allies, not our perfection, by the way. That means, yes, you vote for the best of the two options. I know Jesus is never gonna be on the ticket. But you don't worship those people. We worship one king, one savior who gave us one word from him, which is this book. And when we do that, we lay for ourselves a foundation that will lead us into more prosperity, more blessing than anything we could have ever known. We have to reject the apathy. We have to reject this idea that politics has no place. Remember what I said? It's a disobedience to God for you to live in apathy with the things that he's given you to steward. You have to give him a return. You have to give him more than what he gave you to steward. We have to let our light shine before all men so that everyone who sees will praise our heavenly father. That's what we're called to do. We have to give him our whole heart. Whatever we say or do, we have to do as a representative of the Lord Jesus. Why? Because that's who we're called to be. I told you that this message was about faithfulness, and I meant it. Faithfulness is getting up in the secret place. Faithfulness is going out. Faithfulness is each and every day saying, Lord, what would you have me do? Faithfulness is giving God your yes. Faithfulness is choosing to engage in the public process. We were made the sovereigns of this nation. Pastor Steven reminded us last week, there's no king in this nation. In this nation, we are sovereign, The people. What are you gonna do what God has given you? Are you gonna give him the first thing that he gave to you, which is your heart? You know, if you give God all of your action, you give God all of your obedience, but you do it out of a legalism, out of a sense that is just what you have to do in order to earn your own way, you're gonna miss out. The first thing that God calls you to give him is your heart. And if you look at this message that I gave you tonight, and you do all of the things, but you neglect the love of the father, the compassion for his kingdom, for his people, you're gonna miss out. You're gonna miss out on his purpose for your life. Why? Because you're gonna miss out on the first commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. You're gonna miss out if you don't choose to wake up and love the Lord today. You can't be faithful to a God that you do not love. You can't be faithful to a mission that you don't care about. You can't be faithful to a people that you don't belong to, which are the people of God. And you can't have a compassion for the lost if you yourself are not found. And it all starts by giving God a faithful yes and choosing to be one person, one step at a time, every single day waking up and say, father, what would you have me do? And then when he calls you to do it, you walk it out in courage. Courage, which we know is the chief virtue, because it's the testing point of all of the other virtues. Do you want to have love? What about when that love will cost you something? You must have courage. Do you want to be gentle? What will happen when that gentleness will come at the cost of a sharp rebuke? You must have courage. Do you want to have joy? What comes when that joy must be in the midst of suffering? You must have courage. If you don't have courage, you have nothing because your virtues will be put to the testing point, and they will be found wanting because you cannot live them out when they're under attack. And so, yes, Christian, we're called to start from a place where we say, Lord, I love you, and I'm gonna walk out your word each and every day in the secret place, in the public place, in whatever place you've called me because I know you have a purpose for my life. I am here for such a time as this, and I have the courage to step out and obey, to give you my yes regardless of what comes next. Pray with me tonight. Father, we love you. We're grateful for the power of your word, Lord. We're grateful that you give us the ability to be courageous. You give us the ability to go out and contend in the public square. You give us the ability to be faithful. You call us into a relationship with you. You pick us up. You take the broken, and you place them in families. Lord, you love us so much that you call us into the purpose for your kingdom. You tell us what happens when we don't steward what you've given us. God, we love you and we're grateful. We're just grateful tonight. And I pray right here, right now, that nobody would leave here tonight before they've gotten right with you if they haven't before. God, I pray that every single one of us that's here, that you would put a conviction on our heart, so that we would know which next step you have for us to take, and that we would take it regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the consequence that what you call us to do, we would just say yes because we love you and because you're good. Church, I'm gonna ask you to remain in an apostrophe prayer tonight. If you're sitting in the room here right now and you're hearing me talk about all of this and you're realizing that your heart never got right with God. Maybe you're sitting in here and you're saying, I've been checking every single box. I've been doing every single thing, and my heart has no compassion for the Lord. It has no love for the Lord. I'm just doing what he says because I I I thought it was what I had to do. Maybe you're in here tonight, and it's your first time, and you're saying I've never I've never given my life to the Lord. Maybe you're in here and you're saying I've been faking it. I don't know. I don't know your story. But if you're in here and you feel that tug on your heart and on your spirit that says you need to get right with God, I don't know your story. I don't know where you come from. I don't know where you've been. I don't know what you've done, but you know what? I know that the blood of Jesus Christ was enough. I know that the blood of the lamb is enough for me. It's enough for you, and it's enough for every single one of you that's sitting in here right now, and you think you're under condemnation. Maybe you are under condemnation because you're not in Christ. But you know what? The Bible tells us in Romans ten nine and ten that you can free yourself from that condemnation right here, right now, that Jesus will free you because he paid for you in blood on a cross and he rose from the grave. It says, If you declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You will be saved. It's a promise from God and you know what I know about God's promises is that they're good. And so if you're in here tonight and you're saying, Pastor, that's me. I'm far from God. I don't want to be. I'm not gonna call you up or out, force you, coerce you, ask you to do anything weird. It's not what God does. God invites you. It has to be a decision that you make. He won't force you. He's not a bully. He's not a tyrant, but he loves you, and he wants you to come home. And so if you're in here and you know that you've been messing around with God and you haven't gotten right with him, whatever your story is, I'm gonna invite you to choose to believe tonight that the blood of Jesus is enough. And with every head bowed and every eye closed, we're gonna pray a prayer here in just a second. It's the power of God to change your life, to take what's broken, and make it new, but you have to say yes. And without anybody looking around, we're gonna pray this prayer. We're gonna pray it all out loud together to encourage your faith. But if that's you and you're saying, pastor, that's me. I'm far from God, and I don't wanna be. Every head bowed, every eye closed. I just wanna know who we're praying for. And so if you're in the room tonight and that's you, will you raise your hand right up and right right down so we can know what you're praying for tonight? Is there anybody like that? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. Thank you, ma'am. Church, the truth is the devil likes to lie. He tells you you're the only one. He says nobody else here needs to get right with God, And he'll accuse you. He'll say, you don't need to get right with him. And then the moment you walk out the door, his accusations are gonna come back, and he's gonna say, why didn't you get right with God? You fool. He hates you. He wants to accuse you, but you know what? The devil is a liar. And so before we change the order of service, is there anybody else in here say, pastor, that's me. Will you pray for me? I'm far from God, and I don't wanna be. Is there anybody else in the room like that tonight? You say that's me. Lord, I wanna be right with you. I see you, buddy. Church, we're gonna pray this prayer all out loud to encourage their faith. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you for coming to this earth for living a perfect life, for dying on the cross for my sin. I believe that you're God, and I believe you're good. I believe that after you're killed on the cross, you were resurrected from the dead once and for all to give me life once and for all. So today, of my own free will, I choose to make you my Lord, my savior, and my king. Lead me and guide me. Show me what's next. And all God's people said, amen. Church, give it up for everyone who made that decision tonight.