26 Oct James #7 – How does faith work when you are frustrated?
– Continuing a study of a great book of the Bible, if you’ve got a Bible, go to a book of the Bible called James. It’s written by Jesus’ little brother, we call him the blue collar scholar of the New Testament. His family was rural, not from a big town, he didn’t have a formal education, he was homeschooled by his mother Mary, but when Mary is your mom and Jesus is in your class, you’re bound to pick up a few good things. Amen? And so he grows up to be a pastor writing this book of the Bible bearing his name. So as you find your way into James chapter three, the subject today is how does faith work when you are frustrated? When people, life, things just have you at that point of being annoyed and wanting to respond or make decisions regarding what your future might hold and entail. You’re finding your space and place in James chapter three. Let me start with a story. It was one of the most pivotal moments in my whole life. So I grew up Irish Catholic and didn’t know Jesus, wasn’t opposed, just didn’t quite frankly care. And then I met my wife, Grace in high school, many of you know the story, at the age of 17, and then I went off to college and I was the first man in my family to ever go to college. We tended to be red potato farmers, diesel mechanics, dry wallers. We were more blue collar family. One of my first jobs was as a longshoreman, More of a blue collar family. And off I go to college on a scholarship, academic and leadership. I get there, so the first thing I do, I said, “well, I’m going into college. I guess I’ll do what college guys do.” I joined something called a fraternity, which is Greek word for collection of idiots. And so I joined a fraternity and I joined a fraternity and I thought, well, you know, I’ve never really drank before. Maybe I should try drinking. I’ve not slept around with girls, maybe I should sleep with some girls. I did love Grace at the time, but I wasn’t thinking wiser long-term and she was like 300 miles away, so I joined a fraternity and it was one of our first weekends. They decorated the whole basement, they set up a sound system, DJ, the black lights, and the kegs come rolling in, and the whole thing is set up for the big back to school party. And it’s like, I think it’s Friday night. I never drank, I never partied. I wasn’t that guy. I saw the consequences, so I avoided it. Not because I love Jesus, just because I believe in reality, and when people drink too much, they get themselves in trouble. So it was my time to make my decision, and I’d been living my life with my parents, but now I’m in college. I get to make my own decisions and kind of reinvent myself and decide who I am and what I want to do. And so I’m on the threshold of the doorway going into the first fraternity party. And God spoke to me. I didn’t even know God, but he spoke to me. I don’t know if he’d spoke to me before, maybe I wasn’t listening, and I literally heard from God, you’re not supposed to be here. I was like, “okay, well, I don’t know where I’m supposed to be, but I’m not supposed to be here.” So I never made it into my first frat party. I walked out. And I didn’t know the Lord, so now I don’t know what to do. ‘Cause I don’t have a car and I got no money and I got no friends, so I go to the library with all the international students, and so I found out that’s what they do on Friday night. They go to the library. So I’m sitting there like, “what do I do now?” So I go back to the fraternity and I go to bed, I wake up the next morning, whole house smells like Satan’s breath. It’s just warm beer on everything. Everybody’s hung over. Everything is debauchery. The house is destroyed. I get up early, ’cause I’m the only sober guy in the house, I go out to the living room, there are gals trying to find their shoes and they can’t remember what happened and one gal’s crying, and so I help her to her house. The sun is rising, and I just realize, I don’t want to be a part of this. I don’t want to be taking advantage of gals, and I don’t want to be drinking away my college years. God spoke to me and he said, “you’re not supposed to be here.” I was like, “okay, well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” So I grabbed one of the guys that was like, “I’m leaving, I’m moving.” He’s like, “where are you going?” I was like, “I don’t know.” I said, “I’m not supposed to be here.” He’s like, “where are you supposed to be?” I was like, “I don’t know. I just know it’s not here. I know I’m not supposed to be here.” So I moved into a dorm and I was like, “Lord, I hope this is not where I’m supposed to be. Those guys were just as bad and drunk. They’re just less organized. That’s a dorm. They don’t have a president in the plan. It’s just kind of a prison riot over at the dorm. So I was sitting there and that’s where God saved me. Now, I don’t know when God saved me, but I know when I knew when I was saved, I was sitting on my bed, reading the Bible that Grace gave me, it was in Romans one, it says “and your called to belong to Jesus Christ.” And just as, okay, I’m a Christian now. Okay. So then I had to find a church and I always say the hard part in finding a church is, you don’t know what to look for. I mean, even people that are in a cult, they don’t know they’re in a cult till the last day. That’s always the problem. I love light shoes and Kool-Aid, it’s my favorite! Ruh-roh. So I didn’t know what to look for. By God’s grace, I found a Bible teaching church with a humble, great godly pastor, PhD in Hebrew, great Bible teacher, filled with great families, and I walked in and I remember thinking, “this is where I’m supposed to be.” I wasn’t supposed to be in the fraternity, but I’m supposed to be here. Well now for the rest of my college, I’m living in two worlds. I go to class, and then I go to church. When I go to class, we’re talking about the same things that we’re talking about in church, but I’m getting taught completely different things. So I go to church and they’re like, “God made us.” I go to class, they’re like, “no, you evolved.” I go to class and they say, “hey, gender is on a spectrum.” I go to church and they’re like, “oh, you’re made male and female.” I go to class, and they say, you know, “sex is just for pleasure.” And I go to church, they say, “no, sex is for marriage. And marriage is for a man and a woman.” Crazy stuff. And then I go back to class and they tell me, “well, all religions lead to the same place.” And then at church they say, “yeah, that’s true. They all lead to hell. Except for Jesus.” And so I’m between these two worlds, these two cultures. The values are completely antithetical, and I realized I’m supposed to be in the church. And when I go to class, it’s just to confirm where I’m supposed to be. God in that moment saved me. So what ended up happening was, I married Grace rather than running around on her. I stayed sober rather than becoming just another collegiate drunk. We birthed five children rather than murdering them. 25 years, I’ve been preaching the Bible and I have no regrets, and I’m super grateful that God saved me from myself. And the point is simply this. That when all is said and done, there’s only two cultures, and we may have cultures and subcultures, but ultimately every aspect of every culture is borrowed from one of two places. It either comes down from heaven or the kingdom, or it comes up from hell. But ultimately when all of human history comes to an end, and eternity is ushered in, there will be two cultures. The kingdom of heaven, and then the judgment of hell. And you and I, we live in the middle between these two cultures, and everyday we decide, am I going to invite heaven down or am I going to pull hell up? We call it kingdom down here at Trinity Church. And what I was learning in college as a brand new Christian was, I, every day, had to go to class and pull hell up or go to church and invite heaven down. And I was living between those two cultures. And what happens is that we feel the pressure of those two cultures. And by culture, we’re talking about the environment and the values in which people live that either brings them health in life, or it brings them sickness and death. The reason that I tell you all of this is that the culture that you live in determines the kind of person that you become, and the kind of legacy that you leave. There’s a culture around your life. There’s a culture around your marriage. There’s a culture in your home with your family. There’s a culture in your business or ministry. There is a culture in our church. And the question is, is it coming up from hell or is it coming down from heaven? And that’s exactly what we find in James chapter three. We’re going to read this section. And the frustration is, we’re living between these two cultures, and we feel the pressing of that vice every day. “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.” So you’re going to see this comparison and contrast, culture that comes down or culture that comes up. “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from above. It is earthly, unspiritual, demonic that comes up from hell, not down from heaven. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above coming down from the kingdom is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” Here, what we see, it’s either hell up or kingdom down. That’s it. Hell up or kingdom down. The culture that we live in is by definition hell up. And we need to intentionally invite kingdom down. So let me first deal with culture that is hell up. He calls it earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. That’s a false trinity. Earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. This is the way that most people think. This is the way that most people live. This is the way that most people vote. This is what most people have for their behaviors. This determines the deeds, and the days, and the dollars that they call their life. Ultimately, it’s all just descending down to an eternal pit of nothing but flames of judgment. And some markers of this, he says it is caused by bitter jealousy. That’s where he starts. We’re just going to deal with this section. Bitter jealousy is what is overarching and underlying all of what he calls hell up culture. Now there are two kinds of bitterness. Sometimes there is bitterness where you have a perceived defense. Someone has said or done something that is offended or troubled or bothered or annoyed or frustrated you or some sense of injustice or wrong. So you’re bitter. Let me say this. Bitter is demonic. You traveled here in a car, and Satan and demons will travel with you in bitterness. That’s the vehicle by which they journey with you in your life. They enter in through bitterness. Now there’s a second kind of bitterness that is, and so the way we overcome bitterness is forgiveness. We forgive those who have wronged us. The second kind of bitterness is more pernicious and less pronounced. And that is bitter jealousy. Some of your translations will say bitter envy. How many of you have had this where somebody doesn’t like you and you didn’t do anything. Or somebody hates you and you didn’t say anything. They’re just against you, and you’re sure why. They’re jealous or envious. It’s not that you did something bad, it’s that God did something good, and they’re jealous, they’re envious that God has given to you or done something for you that he did not do for them. So they’re jealous. And let me say that social media exists in large part for the demonic, quote, unquote counterfeit ministry of bitter jealousy. Oh, you got a new car. Oh, you lost 20 pounds. I found them if you’d like them back! Right? We peer into people’s lives, and rather than rejoicing with them and celebrating for them, we get envious and jealous of them. And he already told us that every good and perfect gift comes down from the father. So if the father gave to or did something for them, and we’re not celebrating, but instead we’re envying, the problem is not with them, the problem is with us. See sometimes our bitterness is, there’s a problem between us and them. Bitter envy is, ultimately there’s a problem between us and him. God is like, I did something or gave something and their joy causes your misery. How much of our life is driven and motivated by bitter envy and jealousy? Let me tell you this. You can’t be a good spouse if you’re jealous and envious. You can’t be a good parent or child if you’re bitter or envious or jealous. You can’t be a good friend if you’re a jealous envious person. Some of you know what this is like, ’cause when something good happens, there are a couple people in your life that you’re not going to tell. You’re like, “I got to tell them what happened! Well, not them, because these people will be very excited, and these people will have a very different reaction and response.” In addition, some of these indicators of which culture we are living in, this overarching concept of bitter jealousy, he then moves on to selfish ambition in your hearts. So the heart is the seat sum center of who we are. We even use this language in our day saying, “hey, let’s get to the heart of the matter.” What that is is, let’s get to the bottom line. The Bible speaks of your heart in English translations about 900 times. It’s massive. The Bible says that the words you say come out of your heart, the decisions you make come out of your heart, the emotions you feel come out of your heart. The point is that God needs to change what’s in here before anything can change out there. We live in a world of self-help. Let me just tell you, you can’t help yourself. You need God to help you. You need God not just to help you, but to fix you and to change you. And the Bible says he takes out your old heart and he gives you a brand new heart. That’s how bad it is. The old heart isn’t even a fixer-upper. It’s a complete tear down. So God just takes out the old heart and gives you a new heart. And so what we like to say is the want to precedes the how to. Until you want something in your heart, it doesn’t matter if we tell you how to do that. If you want to love your spouse, we can tell you how to do that. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how many books you read or how many conferences you go to. If you don’t want to, all the how to in the world is of no use to you. And so he talks about the heart. So I would ask you, examine, evaluate your heart right now, and if you had to pick one word to define your own heart, is it bitter, jealous, angry, fearful, sad, broken, joyful, hopeful? Where’s your heart? Because your heart is really the compass for your life. It points out what your future will be. Show me your heart and I’ll show you your destiny. And he says, when we are inviting hell up, we have selfish ambition in our hearts, okay? I’m gonna ask you this. Is ambition in and of itself a bad thing? No, it all depends on who or what you’re ambitious for. If you’re like, I’m really ambitious to love single moms. Great. And all the single moms appreciate that. I’m really ambitious to help children learn about Jesus. Great. Great. Jesus loves the little children. That’s great. The difference between just ambition and selfish ambition is who it’s for. See, godly ambition is what is God’s will and will glorify him and benefit and bless others? Selfish ambition is I don’t care about you and I don’t care about him, all I care about is me. And this is what drives politics, this is what drives media, this is what drives economics. And it is, I don’t care about you, and I don’t care about him, I’m very ambitious, but it’s just for me. How can I win and you lose? How can I gain and you have loss? Selfish ambition. And so what happens is even in the church, let me just tell you how this works in the church. There are people that come in and immediately, they want to get as close to the center and as high up the ladder as they possibly can. Selfish ambition. So what we like to call, and I tell this to the staff all the time is, we call it a heart for the house. You come in, you’re like, my ministry is, it’s like, “wow, your ministry is to stop having ministry and start having some humility,” ’cause at the end of the day in a family, you do what’s best for the family. I got five kids. Grace has got five kids too. It’s weird how that worked out. We got five kids, and as parents, our job is not to look at the kids and say, “this is our calling is X, Y, and Z.” It’s to look at the kids and ask, “what do you need? How do we serve? How do we help you?” Ministry is about service and what that is, it can’t be selfish ambition. It must be unselfish ambition. It can’t be you serve me, you bless me. It needs to be I serve you, I bless you. It’s thinking more like a parent than a child. It’s thinking, how can I give rather than take. How can I bless rather than burden? And so ambition, and let me say this. Some people will think that ambition is a bad thing. A lazy Christian is not a faithful Christian. A passionate Christian is not a faithful Christian, a Christian that has no zeal, no pursuit, no ambition oftentimes when I talk to these guys and they’re usually in their twenties and they’re usually nerds, and they usually say, “well, I just want to be humble.” And my point is, if you’re worrying about what everyone thinks about you, you’re the most proud person in the room. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less so you can think of God and others more. And what some Christians will do, they’re like, “well, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to start a company. I don’t want to start a family. I don’t want to try. I don’t want to take a risk. Well, I just want to be humble.” No, that’s not humble. That’s actually very haughty. Because what you’re saying is that God has nothing for you to do, and you’re worried about what other people will think if you do it. Ambition is great. I want you to start companies. I want you to start families. I want you to plant churches. I want you to do ministry. I want you to be generous. I want you to change the world because it’s a total dumpster fire and needs a firefighter. But at the end of the world, that ambition needs to be tethered to servant hood, not selfishness. Lord, what do you want, and what do they need? That’s how we counteract selfish ambition. The counterbalance of selfish ambition is not no ambition, it’s a servant’s ambition. He then goes on to talk as well about boasting and these all go together. And what we like to do is boast. That’s hell up. We boast of our possessions, here’s what I have. Here’s where, here’s all the stuff that I got, we also boast in our position. I’ve got a title, here’s my place in the org chart, and at the end of the day, we like to boast not only about our possessions and our positions, but our plans. Well, I haven’t made it yet, but I’m gonna. So the people that have made it, they tell us kind of what they have and what they’ve done, and the people that haven’t, they tell us what they’re going to do and what they’re going to have when they’re done. That’s the plan. Lots of time is spent boasting. And when all is said and done, a lot is said and very little is done. Our whole world is boasting. How many of you think that politicians are adorable? Every election they’re like, “I’m going to do this. And I’m going to do that!” I’m like, “no, you’re not. That’s what the last guy said.” And the guy before that. What we don’t need is more boasting, we need more results. Don’t tell me what you’re going to do. Freaking do something. Right? It’s just, there’s a line in the Old Testament, it comes to mind, and verbal process, this is the first service. By the last one you should come back. It’s really polished. This is before we got the varnish on the wood. It’s a little unvarnished. So there’s a line in the Old Testament where a godless guy says that a man who’s putting on his armor should not boast like a man who is taking it off. The point is don’t tell me how tough you are until you’ve gotten back from your battle. Every guy’s tough in bootcamp. Everybody’s going to be a great husband on their wedding day. Every mom is going to be a great mom until they have their first kid, right? You put a little time in battle, tell me how you’re doing. And we live in a world where everybody is making promises and nobody’s making results. And everybody is boasting, and nobody is actually accomplishing. And he’s talking here about all the time and energy that is spent on our boasting. So again, the opposite of ambition or selfish ambition is servant’s ambition. The opposite of boasting is boasting in? The Lord. The Lord. So if you’re like, “well, I don’t want to boast.” Well, you should. Just make sure you know who you’re bragging on. 2 Corinthians 10:19, “let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Friend, this is the difference between what I call a testimony and a biography. A biography is boasting. Here’s what I did. A testimony is what he did. If you’re a Christian and something good happens in your life, feel free to tell everybody. It’s good news. Your job is to tell good news. Tell the good news, tell good news. Hey, god did something. Great. But then make sure that it is a testimony about what God did, not a biography about what you did. So if God heals you, don’t be like, “I prayed and my faith moved God’s hand.” Nope. That’s not how you say that. You say I prayed and God was gracious and healed me, thanks be to God. I was single, and I prayed “Lord, bring me someone with low expectations.” And the Lord heard and answered my prayer happily ever after. You know, we were infertile and I asked the Lord, “open the womb and give us a child.” And here’s the baby! Thank you, Lord! The boasting should be in the Lord. And ultimately, the way we overcome the boasting of the world is boasting in the Lord. And when good things happen, we give him credit. When bad things happen, we take credit. In addition to boasting, which is the culture of hell, it says false to the truth. And what that is that people will take information and they will weaponize it for their use and abuse, not for God’s glory and others’ good. False to the truth is, even if you get something that’s true, you’re going to weaponize it and use it in a way that is absolutely destructive and contrary to God. And this is the world that we live in absolutely, unlike any time in the history of the world. False to the truth. Something happens, and the truth is not told, it is falsely weaponized. I mean, we’re in a day now when even an apology is weaponized. “oh, you said you’re sorry. Great. Well that means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And now just the avalanche of attack begins. And nobody is more guilty of this than church folk who are religious. They will quote verses while they got you. They will quote verses while they attack you. They will call ministry something that is demonic misery. Sometimes it’s the people who quote the verses that are the most dangerous and despicable and damnable. And I’m a Bible guy. I do like the Bible, but Jesus shows up, he says, “I am the way the truth and the life.” He says he is the truth. And those who are most religious oppose him most publicly and violently. They actually murder him because they are false to the truth. Just because you’re quoting verses doesn’t mean you’re serving Jesus. Satan knows the Bible as well. And so at the end of the day, it is not just knowing the truth. It’s loving the truth. It’s submitting to the truth. It’s surrendering to the truth and not being false to the truth. You and I have got to be very discerning in the world we live in. There’s a lot of things that posit themselves as true that is absolutely false to the truth. And then the result is he says is disorder. And so what God wants is order. Everything that God creates, Satan counterfeits. Satan’s counterfeit for order is disorder. His counterfeit for unity is disunity. His counterfeit for vision, which is one vision, is division, which is multiple divisions. And you know that Satan is at work and that the culture of hell is coming up when there’s disorder. There’s factions, us versus them, there’s unholy alliances, there’s betrayal, lots of drama, lots of intrigue, lots of controversy, this happens in a family when there are back channels of communications. “Did you hear what they said? Did you hear what they did? Did you know that this is underway in the church?” When it’s gossip, and it’s behind the scenes, and it’s factions, and it’s us versus them? Disorder. True or false, our world has a little bit of a disorder problem right now. So what that means is that a divided world more than ever really needs a united church. The God’s people need to get along, not just in the church, but between the churches. I had a guy, a pastor, I was dealing with a church conflict. They brought me in kind of as a bit of an overseer and mediator. And one of the guys looks at me, he’s like, “are you for me or against me?” I said, “I’m not for or against anybody. I’m for the kingdom of God, and I’m against anything that’s against the kingdom of God.” I’m not for or against people. I’m for and against kingdoms. I’m for his kingdom. I’m against the other kingdom. So at the end of the day, I’d love to be for you! Just make sure you’re on the side of his kingdom. I’d love to be, but if you’re going to be against his kingdom, I’m against you. You decide. You decide if I’m for or against you and you decide by what you believe and how you behave. Part of the way that we get disorder is we become loyal to people, not to the kingdom, right? I’ve got pastor friends of mine that I love and I care about, but they’ve gone totally apostate. They won’t talk about sin and hell and Jesus and marriage is for a man and a woman and hell is hot and forever is a long time, and Jesus is the most important decision you’ll ever make. It’s like, I’m not against you, but I’m for him, and you’re against him. So I didn’t pick the fight, but I’m not gonna go Judas and change my side of the fight. In fact, I would love for you to be with me so that together we can be with them. But what happens when there is disorder, it’s not about are you on God’s side of the fight or not, it’s who are you aligned with for what political cause or purpose. And that’s where ultimately it just gets false to the truth, and all of this happens. It’s selfish ambition, false to the truth, disorder, and then he says every vile practice. This is like the junk drawer of behavior. It’s et cetera. You and I, if we just feed our flesh, if we just give into the gravitational forces of our inward desires, he’s already told us this in James, that evil comes from the desires within us that are instigated by the forces in the culture around us when we submit, succumb, surrender to those external temptations and those internal desires, literally there is no end to our behavior. We just descend until we find ourselves in the pit of hell. People are capable of the most horrific things when they are untethered from the rulership of the Lord Jesus over their life. We’ve all had moments in our life where we said and done things we’re like, “I can’t believe I did that.” Well, it would be worse if he didn’t intervene. Every vile practice. And it’s interesting that that language for vile, it’s the same, you could reconstitute the words toward evil, ’cause what’s vial is evil. Now we live in a day that calls good evil, evil good, darkness light, light darkness because we live in a day of false prophecy and false prophets. Oh, that’s not vile, that’s alternative. That’s not vile, that’s progress. That’s not vile, that’s diversity. Let me say this. Satan has a thesaurus too. And he knows that the word vial is a little offensive, so he’s got a little more creative with the branding and the marketing, but there are things that people are having parades for that they should be having funerals for, there are hashtags that they are proud of that they should be repentant of. Every vile practice. And oftentimes, this shows itself up sexually. Just completely baseless, unconscionable, animalistic behavior. Hell up. Hell up. Now let me say this. We are living in our culture hell up. True? Does any of this sound familiar? Like you don’t even have to be a Christian. You’re like, “you know, I do have the internet and I’ve seen some of that.” Let me tell you how this works. Satan is all about bitter jealousy. He’s jealous of God. He has selfish ambition in his heart. He boasts a lot. He’s false to the truth. He creates disorder and he encourages every vile practice. Okay? Now you either live hell up or kingdom down. That’s where James 3 is going. Now let me say that hell up has been formalized into a philosophy and ideology that is the equivalent of a secular religion that is overtaken Western culture. This has actually formalized itself. And so what I want to talk about briefly, and then we’re going to get into kingdom down, but when it’s formalized itself as Christian theology, which is kingdom down, and critical theory, which is hell up. And ultimately it is formalized itself into two ideologies that absolutely find their heart and center in James chapter three. And so there’s a difference between what’s called traditional theology and critical theory. Traditional theology is how you build something, how you construct it. This is a man, this is a woman. This is true, and this is a lie. This is God, this is Satan. Here’s how you build a marriage. Here’s how you raise kids. Here’s how you build a business. Here’s how you build a church. Here’s how you create a legacy. Here’s how you rule through law and order. It’s how do you put together a world, a culture in which human life and flourishing can be sustained for generations. Now, everything God creates, Satan counterfeits. The counterfeit is something called critical theory that literally is not construction, it’s deconstruction. It’s not how to build something, it’s how to break something. How do we dismantle Christianity? How do we dismantle gender? How do we dismantle marriage? How do we dismantle family? How do we dismantle law and order? How do we dismantle economics, okay? This is such a big monumental issue, and some of you have heard of critical race theory, which is one particular application of critical theory, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something actually much bigger. It’s the same thing that James 3 is talking about. And that is what happens when we decide that we’re going to do the culture of hell instead of the culture of heaven. And so it’s free, but for those of you that are here, you can get a free print copy on your way out, if you’re online, it’s this month’s premium at Real Faith, “Christian Theology Versus Critical Theory.” This book now I wrote, it has no endorsements because I know that my friends would be attacked. It has no publisher because I know that I would be canceled. It has no price tag because I know that my motives would be questioned. So it’s free. And if you don’t like it, send in an email and we have a ministry of people standing by to delete it. So just let me know what you think. And the point is simply this, that this is the apostasy and this is the issue of our day. And it’s playing itself out in every single area. Again, James says culture either comes down from heaven or it comes up from hell. And we’re feeling that tension in every sphere of culture. So let me explain this to you. This hell up is, ultimately the goal is how do we break Christianity? How do we break gender? How do we break marriage? How do we break children? How do we break education? How do we break the economy? How do we break churches? How do we break families? How do we break legacies? And it starts by critiquing which is the spirit of the critic. The first critic in all of history was Satan. Revelation 12, all this is in the book, God creates angels and other divine beings, God creates his kingdom, God has law and order, God is in throne, God has authority, Satan shows up and says, “this feels like injustice to me. I don’t like the way this is architected. I’m a victim. God has abused and oppressed me. He’s got me down here serving him. I should be up there being served.” He has selfish ambition. He is false to the truth. That ultimately he wants to dethrone God and in-thrown himself, and his sense of justice is that he is God. So there’s a war in heaven. God doesn’t enter into the fray, he lets the angels take care of it, because Satan is not a peer to God. God has creator, Satan is created. All the backdrop of the political, social, ideological, spiritual, and economic conflict that we are feeling is ultimately that which is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. It is spiritual warfare at its core. That’s exactly what James, Jesus’ brother, says, and that’s what history 2000 years later ultimately and definitively proves. And so what Satan decides is I have a better way of doing law. I have a better way of doing spirituality. I have a better way of doing authority. I’m going to critique God and the kingdom that he has made, and then we get one who is called the antichrist, which leads to antichrist, meaning I am against him and I’m going to replace him. Satan’s goal from the beginning as the first critic, let me tell you this. Hear me in this. In the history of creation, there was never a critique or a criticism until Satan started it. Today, all of the critiques and criticisms ultimately begin in heaven. He was anti-Christ, he was against and seeking to replace Christ. He lost that battle, was cast down to the earth. Immediately, he goes after our first parents, Adam, and Eve, and he begins critiquing the world that God made. “God’s in authority. You’re not. It seems like you should have more authority. God told you not to do something. It seems like you should make your own decisions. God wants you to live as a dependent being. I think that you should live as an independent being. You should do you.” Bitter jealousy, selfish ambition in his heart, boasting false to the truth, disorder, results in every vile practice. So Adam and Eve side was Satan. They decide to pull hell up on the earth. The up until that point, all there was was the kingdom of God and heaven coming down. They pull hell up. We’ve been dealing with it ever since. And now what we find ourselves in is this incredibly significant apocyl historical moment. And that is, is the church going to live kingdom down or is the church going to live hell up? It’s the same decision that the angels got to make in heaven, It’s the same decision that our parents got to make in the garden, and it’s the same decision that we need to make. And sadly, there’s a generational apostasy underway and it is driven by this sense that we all share in that is the world is a broken place, something’s gone terribly wrong. Christians and non-Christians just innately intuitively sense that. That’s true. So then the longing is, well, somebody needs to do something. That’s true. Now as the Christian, we need Jesus to be the someone, and we need his death, burial, resurrection, his second coming, our resurrection, and his kingdom to be the something. For those who don’t know God, they instead think that the answer is government. So we need to vote for them that someone needs to be us and the something needs to be criticizing what exists, being against it, replacing it, and this is how we get something called critical theory. Now what happens ultimately is, in critical theory because it is rooted and sourced in atheistic Marxism, there’s economic Marxism, and their social Marxism. The way it works in economic Marxism, there are the oppressors and the oppressed. Well, we’ve seen what happens in economic Marxism. It doesn’t multiply prosperity. It multiplies bankruptcy. Like right now, there are people trying to get into our country and they’re not super excited to stay in Marxist countries. It’s really interesting right now. Even people who hate America aren’t leaving it to go to places that have their ideology. So at the end of the day, what we see then is they have turned this sort of critique and this warfare from the economic to the social sphere. So now we have the oppressor and the oppressed. See in the Bible, there are two categories. The sinners who repent and the sinners who doubt. Those are the two categories in the Bible. If you want to go to heaven, you know that you’re a sinner, repent of your sin, receive Jesus Christ as your savior. The question is not are you a good person or a bad person, the question is are you a forgiven or unforgiven person? Now, according to critical theory, there are oppressors who are bad people and oppressed who are good people. And so the goal is to figure out who the oppressors are and who the oppressed are. In the name of justice, you do the same thing that Satan did in heaven, and that is declare war and burn everything to the ground. And this plays itself out in every single sphere of our culture. Now somebody’s like Pastor Mark, you’re not supposed to be political. I’m not political. I’m in James 3, I’m biblical, I’ve been preaching the Bible verse by verse for 25 years of my life, and I’m telling you that everything is biblical and occasionally it has some political implications. Occasionally. So the way it works now, just give you a few examples since we got nothing else to do. If you don’t have the vaccine, you are an oppressor, and you’re going to be attacked and critiqued by those who are oppressed. If you do not wear a mask, you are an oppressor, and you will be critiqued and attack by those who are the oppressed and wearing their mask. And it’s all this virtue signaling. I’m a good person, you’re a bad person. And we can see it. Where’s your card to prove that you are a good person? If you can’t prove your card, you’re a bad person. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to deconstruct you. We’re going to malign you. We’re going to attack you. You’re going to lose your job. You’re going to lose your career. I don’t care if you get a vaccine or not. That’s between you and your doctor. It’s not between you and your pastor or you and your president. Ultimately, I don’t care if you wear a mask. If you do, praise God. Put a verse on it. Tell people that they’re going to die anyways, and they need Jesus. I don’t care. What I do care about is whether God’s people live kingdom down or hell up. That I very much care about. And so at the end of the day, the assumption is that all the systems are broken and flawed. Is that true? Yes, because they’re all built by broken and flawed people, and even if they were perfect, broken and flawed people would break them. Adam and Eve were given Eden. It’s a great system. Here’s fruit, you’re both naked, what else do you want? Like, I’m good. My bucket list. Naked and fruit salad. And we wrecked and ruined the whole thing. So even if you had a perfect system, if it’s run by a human being, moral of the story is we’re going to make an imperfect very quickly. And so the assumption is if you build something, I can critique it, and I can show all the faults and flaws. Well, that’s easy. That’s why it’s really easy to be the guy with the beer and the nachos up in the stands, but it’s really hard to be the guy on the field. That’s really hard to make a decision during war time, and it’s really easy afterward to second guess those who went to war. It’s very hard to build a business, it’s very easy to critique a decision that was made by a business leader. I’m just telling you doing things is hard, critiquing people who are doing things, that’s not hard. It’s also not impressive. So at the end of the day, we live in this world where everyone is critiquing, oh, I could do it better. I could do it better. I could do it. No, you can’t. Because if you think you can do better, it’s because you have bitter jealousy, selfish ambition in your heart. You’re boasting, that’s false to the truth, you’re going to bring disorder and a bunch of vile practices. Jesus has a little principle called the principle of seven demons. You cast out a demon, and you don’t replace with the holy spirit, you get? Seven more demons, which is different, but not better. And so when you hear words like equity, not equality. Equality is God made us in his image like this, and he loves us all. Equity is we all get the same income. We all get the same outcome. That’s not true. When you hear words like justice or social justice, tolerance, inclusion, diversity, or reconcile. I need to reconcile. Not light and darkness, not heaven and hell, not God and Satan. Some things are just diametrically opposed and we’ll be separated forever. There are some things that are right, some things that are wrong. And I’m just quite frankly, at the point of like, when did we all become, you know, so holy that we get to sit in the seat of Jesus and judge other human beings? And we live in this world now where you got two options. You either get woke or canceled and woke is the counterfeit of being born again, and canceled is the counterfeit of being crucified. See, Christians are born again. Those who are living hell up, they’re woke. Christ got crucified, and those who do not love Christ want to crucify his people by canceling them. This is the world we live in. Now at the end of the day, it’s all hell up. And what we see is that people are now adopting this as what I would call a secular religion. It’s a religion without God. Zealously devoted to it, right? Jihadist. Convert or die. You’re all feeling it. Trying to live heaven down, trying to live hell up, stuck in the middle every day. It seems like the vice is squeezing a little bit tighter. The reason I tell you this is number one, God has drawn a line. There is heaven, there is hell. There is God, there is Satan. There is right, there is wrong. There is truth, there are lies. I tell you this because the lie is that there is no lie or that we have the right to move the line. And I tell you this because I love you. If you believe that the best thing for a human being is to repent of their sin, to receive Jesus Christ as their savior, to before they worry about all the systemic evil in the world, they deal with the personal evil in them. Before they’re addicted to ensuring that the globe gets social justice, that they make sure that they repent of their sin and receive Jesus, so that God gets his cosmic justice. Before they try and fix everything out there, they invite God to fix some things in here. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, if you believe that the Bible is true, if you believe that living according to the principles of the kingdom lead to human life and flourishing, then when you tell someone they’re on the wrong side of the line, it’s not because you hate them, but because you love them, and because you’re begging them to cross that line. That’s the world we live in. Now, as soon as you say that, you get throttled. I got kicked off social media this week for hate speech. The most loving thing in the world is to tell somebody they’re wrong, but now it’s hateful. I would rather have somebody know they’re wrong and then repent, and then cross the line of faith and receive the Lord Jesus and go to heaven then not be offended, but be on fire. God help any doctor’s like, “well, what would you like me to say? He needs to just give you the real diagnosis.” You are a sinner. Jesus is a savior. He died, was crucified, canceled for you, he rose to forgive and change you. Before anything changes out there, he needs to change everything in here. And until you meet Jesus, you are not a citizen of the kingdom. You do not live under the Lordship of the king. Your only alternative is just to live hell up until you find yourself in hell. Is there any option? Yes. Yes. Yes. He gives us an option, kingdom down. He calls this from above. The problem is here. The solution is there. The destruction is here. The restoration is there. The sin is here. The savior is there. I’m not the solution, you’re not the solution, our group is not the solution, our political party is not the solution, our candidate is not the solution, and our interest rate can be helpful, but cannot save. It’s from above. We see Jesus come down, we see the holy spirit come down. So what he’s saying is what does a life look like on the earth between hell and heaven? What does it look like to live kingdom down? He says, well, who is wise and understanding? That’s the big overarching subject. There’s a difference between your intelligence which is just God given, your knowledge, which comes through study, and wisdom, which only comes from God. The problem in our culture, we really value intelligence and information, but we know nothing of wisdom. That’s why some of the dumbest people have more degrees than Fahrenheit. They know nothing of how to live in light of God’s truth. So what he says is you’re going to need wisdom. You’re going to need wisdom to make your decisions. You’re gonna need wisdom to lead your family. You’re going to need wisdom. And right now, let me tell you this. As hell has really come up at an unprecedented scale, you’re gonna need a lot of wisdom to navigate through it. But it comes down from above and he already told us in James 1:5, if any of you lacks wisdom, ask God. As things get darker, you’re going to need to go deeper. You need more Bible. You need more prayer. You need more worship. You need more Christian fellowship. You need more time in God’s presence. You need more power of the holy spirit. Don’t just try and ask others what they’re doing. Ask God what you are supposed to do. The result he says then will be good conduct, which is the counter, is the counterbalance to vile practice. This is not perfect people, but you’re looking for people that have wisdom, are under the lordship of king Jesus, living kingdom down, and they have good conduct. They’re not perfect, but they’re getting better because God made them new. And let me just honor the men. These are our men. Wednesday night at Real Men, I see men seeking wisdom from God so that they can have good conduct. I see hundreds of men walking in saying, “I want to be a better son to the father. I want to be a better husband to my wife. I want to be a better dad to my kids. I want generations to be blessed and not cursed.” And I’ll tell you what. We got more guys than the casino and the strip clubs, so I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. So wisdom says, find the people who have good conduct. The people that you’re like, those are my people. I like kind of where they’re going. I want to do life with them. And then he talks about works in the meekness of wisdom, which is the counterbalance of boasting. Meekness is not weakness. It’s not cowardice. It’s strength. It’s courage. It’s passion. When I raise my voice, I’m not angry. I’m passionate. I am all, my life doesn’t have a dimmer switch. I’m on or off. I’m very passionate. But at the end of the day, meekness is not weakness. It’s like, “I don’t like conflict! I don’t do controversy! Somebody on Twitter called me a four letter word! Oh no!” You’re going to need to increase your pain tolerance. Meekness and weakness are not the same. What meekness is, it is power under control for the purposes of God. I got a buddy of mine, he’s the picture to me of meekness. He was special forces in the military. I’d ask him, “hey what did you do?” ‘Cause he’d come back from deployment. He’d be like, “I can’t tell you.” So it was awesome. Okay. He kills bad guys. And so now he’s in law enforcement and he’s dealing with drug cartels. He’s the guy who literally will fly over in a chopper, shoot the guys at the meth lab, or come down the ladder and grab the captive gal who was taken hostage for trafficking. He’s that guy. Strong, true or false? Oh yeah. If he comes to your house, you’re having a bad day. He’s that guy. And then he goes home and he has tea parties with his daughter, reads the Jesus storybook Bible with her, and tucks her in bed. He’s strong, but only when he has to be. He’s a lion only on occasion. Most of the time, he’s just a lamb. Jesus is lion and lamb. There are times that he gets angry and shows force, but most of the time he’s just got kids hanging out with him. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is power and control that is surrendered to the will of God. Then he talks about wisdom from above. Let me say this. Wisdom isn’t out there. The world in its wisdom does not know God. Do not be conformed to the pattern of the world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ultimately Jesus comes down, and he says, “one wiser than Solomon is here.” Now Solomon was asking, he was asked by God, what do you want? One thing. The genie in the bottle question. One thing. He asked for wisdom. The Bible says that wisdom is more precious than gold, silver, and jewels. That would be, today, it’s more precious than stocks, commodities, and real estate, because you can give money to a fool and they’re going to lose it. You can give nothing to someone who is wise and later they will have something. See, our world worries a lot about distributing income and needs to learn about distributing wisdom. And so he says that wisdom comes down from above. As soon as Jesus goes up, who comes down? The holy spirit. The Bible calls him the spirit of wisdom. There is no wisdom without the holy spirit. There is no navigating life in a hellish earth without the holy spirit giving you wisdom to navigate through it. Are you asking God. Are you praying to God? Are you spending time in God’s word? If so he says, “then you will be pure.” So wisdom from above is the counterbalance of earthly. Pure is the counterbalance of vile. All of a sudden, because God has changed you from the inside out, the outside is starting to change. My sexuality now belongs to the Lord. My dollars belong to the Lord. My words belong to the Lord. My career matters to the Lord. My marriage belongs to the Lord. My children belong to the Lord. My grandchildren belong to the Lord. My reputation belongs to the Lord. And I don’t care about what they say. I care about what he says. And Lord, is this pure or impure? Is this right or wrong? And God, when I’m impure and I’m wrong, thank you that Jesus died for me to forgive me and to cleanse me and thank you for sending wisdom from the spirit from above so that that behavior can change. Because you’ve made me clean, I want to live clean. Because you’ve made me new, I get to live new. In addition, he talks about a marker of peaceable and the opposite of this, the people were just contentious and always arguing and fighting. Every day, they get up. Who or what are we against today? What is the rage of the day? Who or what are we going to attack or oppose or blame today? Jesus is the prince of peace. And when the prince of peace rules over your life, you get to be a more peaceable person. It doesn’t mean that you never disagree, but you disagree in an agreeable way. It doesn’t mean that what you say is never offensive, but it does mean the way that you say it is not offensive. Just trying to love and help. Your person who puts water on fires, not logs on fires. You’re trying to bring heaven down and not just keep the flames burning. That is the opposite of disorder. He says gentle. This is a kind, loving, there are two ways to lead, friend. Let me give you the two. Control. Influence. Control is literally seeking to replace God in someone’s life. Influence is, I love you, I care about you, I’m gentle, I’m here to help, so please open your ears so I can serve you. That’s influence. Most of our world leadership is based on control. The kingdom of God is based on influence because our God is gentle. You know what? Our father is a loving father. He’s a kind father. He’s a patient father. He’s gentle. He’s already told us earlier in James, he’s slow to anger. You’re going to be all right. He’s there to help. Open to reason? We’ve forgotten this. If somebody disagrees with you, can you talk about it? Can you disagree about it? Like, can we have a civil conversation? No. We can do hell. We can just set it on fire. Open to reason. There are people that you’re like, “well, let me just tell you the facts.” They’re like, “I don’t care about those.” “Well would you just at least consider?” “No.” I’m good. You’re bad. And if you don’t agree with me, I’ll set you on fire. That is not open to reason. A reasonable person, you can have a reasonable conversation. You know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Let me hear. Let me consider the other side. Give me the facts. Full of mercy and good fruits. This is the opposite of unspiritual. You look at their life. You’re like, mercy, they put grace on people. They help. They’re generous. And good fruit. You know what I see around them? I see the fruit of the spirit. It looks like their spouse is happy, it looks like their kids are doing okay, they seem to be joyful. When they’re wrong, they apologize. When they’re right, they hold the line. I see good fruit. You can only see good fruit if you’re in relationship with somebody. You need to get to know somebody to really take a look. In addition, the kingdom of God he says is impartial. It’s the opposite of demonic. Impartial is, you know what? Let me just hear both sides. Oh, that someone on earth would do this. The Bible says that everyone seems right until the other side is heard. Impartiality is, well, okay, that’s one side. Let me look at the other side. Impartiality is I just want to be true to the truth, not false to the truth. I want to have God’s verdict on this, not just rush to my own. Open to reason. Impartial. Full of mercy and good fruits and sincere. Not a flatterer, not a people pleaser, sincere. Meaning I’m trying to do what’s best for the Lord, and I’m trying to do what’s best for you, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m sincere. I’m not here to take advantage, manipulate, benefit myself, but instead to honor him, and he says a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So we make a decision today, friends. First question. What’s the culture of your heart? Where’s your heart today? If you had to pick one word, joyful or sad? Broken or healed? Bitter or forgiving? Angry or joyful? What’s the culture of your heart? Next question. If you’re married, what’s the culture of your marriage? Is it kingdom down or hell up? You’re like, man, it is a lot of conflict and strife at my house. Okay, well then maybe both of you need to get on your knees and invite the wisdom that comes down from above to put out the fire that’s come up from below. What’s the culture in your home with your kids? Is it a culture of life and flourishing and joy? Does it feel like hell? Does it feel like heaven? And then what is the culture of our church? I’m gonna bring the band up, and we’ll transition for a time of worship, but I’ll tell you a story. And ultimately, when it says that wisdom comes down from above, when we worship what we’re doing, we’re inviting the holy spirit to come down from above. Now, let me just be honest with you. Not that I’ve been lying for an hour, but let me just be honest with you. How many of you, this kingdom down or hell up, and you look out at the culture and the world and you go, “I see that.” You see that? You see that? Okay? And it can be frustrating. It can be terrifying. It can be annoying. It can be exhausting. Or it can be clarifying. So I told you at the beginning of this story, that in college God saved me, put me in a great church, I’d like to revisit that story. In addition to my pastor I love with my whole heart, he’s a great man of God, and I’m glad that when I was in class and I also had a church, I got to pick between those cultures. And so there was another pastor who I knew at that time, and I called him this week. I just felt inclined to call them. And he was kind enough to take my call. And he’s a little controversial, he’s a little brash, he’s a little loud, he’s a little spicy. I think he’s doing a good job. He was getting backlash and there was some hit pieces and he was getting attacked and his family and his church. So I called him to check in and I’ve known him for around 30 years, and so I was just checking in. I said, “how’s it going?” He said, “great.” I said, “what do you mean it’s going great? Like, it seems like, you know, the fires of hell have come up around you this week.” He’s like, “yeah, but my wife and I love each other more than ever. We get along great.” He said, “my house is filled with laughter.” He said, “all my kids love Jesus and they serve him, and they’ve all married believers that love Jesus, and now I got 17 grandkids who all love and serve Jesus.” He said, “so, yeah, it’s horrible out there.” He said, “but it’s wonderful in here.” He said, “I just feel like the kingdom of God lives in our family and lives at our house.” He said, “and I don’t get upset so much,” I’m paraphrasing, “people that don’t understand, ’cause if they don’t know Jesus and they’ve not met our king and they’ve not tasted his kingdom, and they don’t have a spirit and they’ve not read his word, they don’t even know what we’re talking about. So why would we expect them to?” And he said, “we’ve had hundreds of people that have moved to our town from cities up and down the west coast where, they’re God’s people, and they’re like, ‘we just want to go to church. We would like to keep our job. We would like to educate our children without them getting brainwashed. We would like to just do life according to our convictions.” And they’re moving to his town and they’re joining his church. And he said they’re wonderful church people. They just want to live kingdom down. They’re tired of living hell up, so they find us. And it got me thinking, friends, what an incredible day we live in. We’re in the fastest growing city and county in America. That most of the cities on the west coast are on fire. Not just metaphorically. It’s crime. It’s control. It’s fear. It’s death. God’s people are suffering. Churches are hurting. Families are fleeing. You know what they’re looking for? A place that tastes like the kingdom of God. So that’s why we’re here. We can’t change what’s out there, but we can determine what kind of culture we have in here. I am asking you to join me in this great experiment and you’ve already begun it. He asked me, he’s like, “how are you doing?” I said, “I actually feel the same.” I wake up every day and I live with the most incredible person I’ve ever met in my whole life. I met a lot of people I can live with, but I’m married to the one I can’t live without. I said, “I have kids that love the Lord and they love each other, and I love them and they love me.” And I said, “I have the most wonderful people in our church family.” And I said, “I just walk in from the week and the world, and I walk into the church and I’m like, ‘oh, here’s the family.’ Oh, we all got the same king. And we just invite the kingdom down so that we can be encouraged and refreshed, and then we’re going to go out there and we’re going to say, ‘you know, why don’t you come to my home? Why did he come to our church? Why don’t you come to our life group? Why don’t you come and taste and see that the Lord is good? If you don’t think that that’s a parched world, come in and get some fresh water. If you don’t think that that’s failing, come into a place where we are flourishing.’ I love you. I thank you for being an incredible people. And when I come here, I’m reminded of who our king is, and I enjoy being with the family and it’s going to be that way forever in his kingdom. We’re going to spend some time in worship because we have someone to be excited about. We’re going to spend some time in worship because heaven does come down to those who belong to the king. Father, thank you for an opportunity to teach your word and have a little fun, and holy spirit, the only way for thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, is for the holy spirit to come down and to bring the kingdom of God. So holy spirit, we invite you now in our time of worship to come down, to bring wisdom, to bring forgiveness, to bring revelation, to bring healing, to bring life and joy and peace to your people as we go through a little bit of hell until we get to the kingdom. In Jesus’ good name. Amen.
