The Kingdom Perspective

Transcript:

Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!

What is humility? Increasingly in our historical moment, we confuse humility with a relativistic view of truth. We falsely think anyone who believes that there is objective truth or is too confident in what they believe about the truth, by definition, cannot be humble. We assume that the truly humble person would speak like this: “For me, 2 x 2 = 4. But that’s just my personal truth. Far be from me, to impose my viewpoint on others. I’m a humble person.” My friends, this is not humility; it’s the essence of irrationality.

Humility is not taking truth less seriously, but taking ourselves less seriously. Humility is not relativizing the truth. No, humility is recognizing and submitting to it.

Listen to the witty G.K. Chesterton:

“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from…ambition [and] settled upon…conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed….

“We are on the road to producing…[people] too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”

~G.K. Chesterton in the third chapter of Orthodoxy (1908)

Well put!

This false humility is increasingly everywhere. If we are not aware how this enemy has invaded the spirit of our cultural moment, we will unwittingly be sucked in by it.

And that’s something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

~ Mathew 23:8-12 (ESV)

“He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?”

~ Micah 6:8 (ESV)

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Fear is a monster that must be confronted.

In the Psalms King David is constantly confronting his fear by bringing it into the presence of God. Listen to his prayer in Psalm 27:

Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet I will be confident.

I think it is safe to say that David is not suggesting that he never experienced fear. Rather, the context would seem to suggest that whenever he is afraid, he takes that fear to God. He confronts it head on. He walks into it and not away from it.

Interestingly, studies suggest that children who learn to face their fear (even real danger) and walk through it, grow in their confidence to process future difficulties and dangers.

For example, who is more controlled by fear? The child who broke his arm falling off the monkey bars or the one who one who’s never taken the risk to climb the monkey bars for fear of getting hurt? One might assume that it is the one with the broken arm; after all he’s experienced the pain. However, research shows the opposite. The one that was hurt on the monkey bars has worked through the fear. Indeed, he has emotionally processed it, and come out on the other side. Where the one that has never taken the risk becomes more locked down in fear.

Fear only grows more ferocious when we do not face it. It controls us to the degree that we do not confront it.

Remember, David developed the courage to face Goliath because, as a young shepherd, he had so often fended off lions and bears (1 Samuel 17). You see, there is a paradox with fear. It is one of the few things in life that actually grows smaller the closer we get to it.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

When the words which David spoke were heard, they told them to Saul, and he sent for him. David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail on account of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” Then Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant was tending his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and may the Lord be with you.”
~ 1 Samuel 17:31-37 (NASB)

Transcript:

Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!

Many are shocked to learn that infanticide, the killing of unwanted children, was considered perfectly acceptable in the ancient world. The most common means of carrying this out was the practice of “exposure”, leaving a child exposed to the elements, usually on the city dump, until they died. Since male children were considered more valuable than female, infant girls were usually the target of this practice. Generally, after a family had given birth to one girl, any further female offspring had a high likelihood of being tossed.

Archaeologists have uncovered a chilling letter sent by an otherwise “loving” husband and father to his pregnant wife. Listen to the strange callousness with which he speaks of ordering the murder of their child:

“Know that I am still in Alexandria [away on business]. And do not worry if they all come back and I remain in Alexandria. I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I receive payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered of a child [before I come home], if it is a boy, keep it, if a girl discard it. You have sent me word, ‘Don’t forget me.’ How can I forget you. I beg you not to worry.”

~A letter written in 1 BC, cited in Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, 97-98

Note well, “if it is a girl, discard it”—just throw it away!

Now, Christians operated with a completely different ethos. Why? Because Holy Scripture informed them that the lives of little girls matter. All human lives matter because we are all made in the image of God.

Christians not only rejected the practice of infanticide, they would also go to the city trash heaps and rescue these discarded children. Since most of these infants were girls, historians tell us this helps explain the unusually high number of women in the early church.

The Christians of Rome valued all lives. Do you?

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

   So God created man in his own image,

   in the image of God he created him;

   male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

~ Genesis 1-26-28 (ESV)

Sources to consider:

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (

Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home by Glenn S. Sunshine (Zondervan 2009).

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Fear is a very interesting emotion. Unlike other emotions it actually grows larger the farther we run from it, but smaller the closer we move towards it.

But how are we as believers to move towards our fear? Well, we must do so with faith in the God who is bigger than any of our fears.

Listen to David in Psalm 27:
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evildoers assail me
to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
it is they who stumble and fall.
3 Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet I will be confident.

David did not avoid his fears; rather he confronted them by bringing them before the face of God.

Such courage or lack thereof is very contagious. Indeed, we should be very careful about the vibe we give off with our children. Certainly, we want to be gentle and empathetic with their fears. Certainly, we want to teach them not to be foolish in the choices they make. But above all, we want them to walk in faith, trusting in God. We want them to learn how to take calculated risks, to move beyond their fears and towards obedience to God and love of others. This requires us to model such faith in front of our children. It requires us not only to empathize with their experience of fear, but also to nudge them out of the nest. We need to direct them to trust in God for themselves, so that they might find Him faithful in their own experience.

Confronting our fears builds confidence, but not confronting them destroys it.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the defense of my life;
Whom shall I dread?
When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,
My adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host encamp against me,
My heart will not fear;
Though war arise against me,
In spite of this I shall be confident.

One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord
And to meditate in His temple.
For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle;
In the secret place of His tent He will hide me;
He will lift me up on a rock.
And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me,
And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.
~ Psalm 27:1-6 (NASB)

Transcript:

Hello! This is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!

Have you ever considered that the act of public worship is a political act? No! Not a partisan political act in the way our division-prone society sees it, but a political act, nonetheless. What is the outrageously bold political act that we partake in every Sunday? Well, we gather, publicly, and declare that Jesus Christ (the anointed King) is Lord (the absolute ruler) of heaven and earth! Furthermore, we declare that He is coming back to judge the living and the dead—that the citizens of planet earth and their would-be rulers are all accountable to one political figure alone…a King who was brutally executed on a bloody Roman cross…for us.

How this fact has escaped our notice can only be explained by how the modern mind has neutered historic Christianity. Our contemporary notion of Jesus is way too innocuous, way too harmless. When you begin to ponder the implications of this assertion, it is shocking and, perhaps, a bit confusing. But one thing is for certain: it must change the way that we think about our engagement in this world.

The central claim of Christianity does not remove us from the affairs of life on earth; we are still citizens of the United States (or whatever land we call our own). However, it does affect the way we imagine our engagement in the affairs of this world. As Christians, we know that the kingdoms of this world (whether they are capitalist or communist, Democrat or Republican) are not ultimate kingdoms. All the kingdoms of this world will come and go, but His kingdom is forever.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice;

 let the many coastlands be glad!

 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;

 righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

 Fire goes before him

 and burns up his adversaries all around.

  His lightnings light up the world;

 the earth sees and trembles.

  The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,

 before the Lord of all the earth.”

~ Psalm 97:1-5 (ESV)

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Fear wants to control us, so that we are unable to obey God and love others.

Therefore, fear must be confronted. The only way you can defeat fear is to fight it. You must push against it.

We all want safety and security. However, this is not a safe world. The truth is that God doesn’t promise safety in this world. As a matter of fact, Romans 8 suggests quite the opposite. It assures us that in this world we will have trouble, distress, persecution, famine, poverty, danger and violence (Romans 8:35).

Rather, God promises that IN all these awful things, we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. These trials work to make us like Jesus. In other words, in one sense God doesn’t promise us salvation in this life; He promises that this life will make us ready for our salvation (Romans 8:18-25). And so, it is precisely IN and THROUGH these trials that we experience the triumph of God’s love.

This shouldn’t surprise us. The football player doesn’t experience triumph on the sidelines. No! He experiences it on the field, getting banged up and banged around. Victory comes through the conflict, not apart from it. There is no victory if you don’t play the game.

But this requires risk. It requires you to put your faith onto the field and run with the ball. It is those who do that, who take the risk of obedience and act upon the promise of God, that feel the fullness of Christ’s triumph.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written,

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”
~ Romans 8:28-37 (NASB)

Transcript:

Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Does it really matter whether we know God or not? Does it really matter whether we have an accurate understanding of Him and have a true and genuine relationship with Him? Isn’t it good enough to just try hard to be a “good person”? Is it enough to just be “nice” and “sincere”? It doesn’t really matter whether we know God personally, right? God doesn’t expect our relationship with Him to be our highest priority, does He?

Well, don’t count on it. Jesus said that many will come to Him on that final judgment day and say “Lord, Lord, look at all these good and wonderful things that we have done. Look at what good and sincere people we are!” (the gist of Matthew 7:21-22). However, listen to Jesus’s reply to their false confidence: “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:23).

Now, the implication is quite clear: Whether you really know God in Jesus Christ—whether you’re in a personal and loving relationship with Him—has eternal consequences. 

The Apostle Paul makes quite clear in is his second letter to the Thessalonians: “[Jesus] will punish those who do not know God…with everlasting destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). Knowing God is a matter of heaven and hell. You cannot push this off to a more “convenient time.” It is a matter of life and death. Nothing could be more important. 

Is there anything more important to you?

Something to think about from the “Kingdom Perspective”.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

~ Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Sometimes we misunderstand the shorthand formula of our salvation, namely that we are “saved by faith”. The truth is we are not saved “by faith”. Rather we are saved by grace…on account of Christ… through faith. Faith is but the instrument that God uses to attach us to Himself and all His riches for us in Christ Jesus.

Faith merely connects us to the thing that saves us. And so, it is not the strength of our faith that saves us but the strength of God’s grace in Christ. It is not the quantity or quality of our faith that saves us but the fact of it.

The old Puritan pastor Thomas Watson put it this way:
“The promises are not made to strong faith, but to true. The promise does not say, he who has a giant faith, who can believe God’s love through a frown, who can rejoice in affliction, who can work wonders, remove mountains, stop the mouth of lions, shall be saved, but whosoever believes, be his faith never so small. A reed is but weak, especially when it is bruised; yet a promise is made to it. ‘A bruised reed shall he not break.’ Matt 12: 20.”
~Thomas Watson (1620-1686), Cambridge (Emmanuel College) graduate and Puritan pastor in his work The Ten Commandments

You may feel that your faith is weak. You may feel that your faith is not strong enough to save you. Nonsense! Look, my friend, not to your faith but to your faithful Savior. He is not weak. He is strong.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
~ Ephesians 2:4-10 (ESV)

Transcript:

Hello. This is Pastor Don Willeman of Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

If a stranger were to approach you on the street and ask you to describe yourself, what would you say? What is the most important thing about you? What is your most defining characteristic?

Well, the late author and pastor A.W. Tozer (1897-1963) suggested that the most important thing about a person is what they think about God. I think he is right. Your view, your conception, your idea about your Creator is more critical to who you are than anything else. In other words, how you answer the questions: “What do you think about God? Who do you think God is? And what do you think God is like?” says more about you than anything else. It reveals more of your soul, who you really are, than any other factor.

In similar fashion, it was the great theologian John Calvin who suggested in the opening lines of his most famous work (The Institutes of the Christian Religion) that truly knowing ourselves and truly knowing God are totally intertwined. We cannot know ourselves without knowing God and we cannot know God without having an accurate knowledge of ourselves. This only stands to reason, for, after all, we are made in the divine image.

So, have you thought lately about your understanding of God? Upon what do you base your ideas of Him? How well do you understand the One who made you and the One you claim to worship? Do you really know God?

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters….

Then God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

~ Genesis 1:1-2, 26-28 (NASB)

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Fear is a very powerful and controlling emotion.

That’s why many use fear to control others. For example, if an advertiser can make people fearful, they can drive them to purchase their product. “You don’t want bad breath, do you? Then, use our mouth wash and you’ll have nothing to fear.” The mob uses fear to control individuals and communities. “You might want to think about doing what we say; I’d hate to see anything bad happen to you or your family.”

You see, fear can make you do things or keep you from doing things. Fear constrains us.

Thus, if we are controlled by a fear other than the fear of God, that fear becomes our functional god and keeps us from obeying the one true God.

So, for example, God commands us to love Him and others. But love requires vulnerability—opening yourself up to possible hurt or misunderstanding—risking your comfort to connect with God and others. Such loss of control can be terrifying. And so, it is at that very point that worldly fear steps in and promises an alternate path: “You can keep your life safe and intact if you just put up enough barriers. Keep up your guard. Widen your margins.”

Such fear operates on a lie that says it’s possible to preserve your life by protecting it. It promises control by controlling you.

Jesus interrupts such foolish thinking by saying, “…whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Fearing your life imprisons your life. Fearing Jesus liberates it.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“And He summoned the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it benefit a person to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?’”
~ Mark 8:34-36 (NASB)