The Kingdom Perspective

Transcript:

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

What is our purpose as human beings? God designed us to glorify and enjoy Him.

We do this by faithfully obeying His commandments. God designed us for Himself and only to the degree we are obeying His commandments are we actually free. Therefore, when we are lovingly obeying the commands of God, we are not only fulfilling our design, but we are also maximizing our freedom.

However, because of sin, this is not the way our minds intuitively think. Rather, we tend to think of “freedom” as not being restrained by a law or a law giver. However, in the gospel nothing could be further from the truth.

So, for example, when I choose to obey the command not to commit adultery, I am not limiting my sexual freedom. Rather, I am fulfilling it. I am living into the freedom of the God-given design of my sexual nature.

When I obey the command not to covet my neighbor’s possessions, I am not limiting my freedom, but I am living into my freedom. I am living in the freedom of not being a slave of envy. I have the freedom to be thankful to God for all that He has given to me.

When I obey the command not to steal, I have the freedom to be in good relationship with my neighbor, to nurture and enjoy unbroken community with him.

And when I obey the command not to lie (i.e. not to bear false witness), I am not limiting my freedom, but rather living into the freedom of truth. Remember, it was Jesus who said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).

The truth of God’s commandments do not constrain my freedom, they define them.

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

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.”

~ John 9:31-38 (NASB)

Transcript:

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

God designed us for love and only to the degree we obey that commandment are we truly free.

But this requires work. Loving God and others does not come naturally to our selfish hearts. To become a loving person will mean perseverance, discipline, and training.

Think of it in terms of a musical instrument. For example, playing the cello does not come naturally. And so, if I want the freedom to effortlessly play the cello, then I must restrict my freedom in other areas, so that I can discipline myself to practice the cello.

The same is true spiritually. If my purpose is to love God with my whole being and love my neighbor as myself, this will require great discipline and sacrifice. The freedom to love God and others is not something that is developed overnight.

This is why there are dozens of “one another” commands in Scripture. All of these are aspects of what it means to love, and all of them must be mastered, in order to love freely. Like the cello, you cannot just whimsically pick up the “love command” and expect to obey it perfectly the first time. Practice is required.

Likewise, the Bible suggests we must work on this in the context of a local church—with one another! Love is faithful and doesn’t just bail out as soon as the going gets tough.

Love bears all things. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13).

However, we do fail…and most miserably, we fail to love.

And so, for us to live into this commandment will require practice and discipline.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

~ Hebrews 12:11 (NASB)

Transcript:

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

What is freedom?

Biblically speaking, freedom is defined by our ability to fulfill our design. In other words, we were made for a specific purpose and to the degree that we are fulfilling that purpose, and only to that degree, we are free. A fish is designed for water and to the degree that it remains in water, it is free to be a fish. However, remove it from the water, and it not only ceases to fulfill its design, but also eventually dies.

You could speak of this as the “law of the fish”. If I were to say to a fish: “Thou shalt remain in the water”, I am only commanding the fish to live according to its design.

So, it is with God’s commandments. They are not just dictates of God’s raw power, but rather statements of our design. After all, the same God who made us is the same God who gave us His law. It is for this reason that the Apostle Paul calls God’s law “holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7)—for it fits with God’s design for us and our world. If we refuse to operate according to that law, we cease to be fully human—and to the degree we begin to die, our lives begin to fall apart.

Is it any surprise, then, that Jesus sums up the law of God with two essential commandments: 1) Love God and 2) Love others? Why? Because without love we are not free to be truly human; our lives shrivel and die. We were made for obedience to God’s law, which is love.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.”

~ Romans 7:12-13 (NASB)

Transcript:

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

As modern Americans we tend to think of freedom in what the philosophers call “negative” terms. By “negative” they mean, the freedom to do what we want without (i.e. negating the presence of) interference from others, especially from some authority (e.g. governmental, parental, cultural, religious, etc.).

However, this is not the most basic way the Bible speaks of freedom. The Bible speaks of freedom more so in what the philosophers would call “positive freedom”—not merely, what are we free from, but what are we free to. The Bible assumes that as human beings, we have a design/purpose. We were made to do something in particular—to fulfill some purpose. And so, we are free to the degree that we are fulfilling that purpose. A train is designed to run on tracks, and only to the degree that it is confined to those tracks is it free.

Now, what tracks were we as human beings designed to run on? We were designed to run on the twin tracks of 1) Loving God with our whole being and 2) Loving our neighbor as ourselves. We were designed for love. And only to the degree that our souls are confined to these twin tracks of loving God and loving our neighbor—only to the degree that we obeying these commands—are we actually free.

Are you free?

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

~ Romans 8:1-4 (NASB)

Transcript:

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

The Bible calls us to lean into both our freedom in Christ and our obligation to love.

Now, putting “obligation” and “freedom” together may sound strange, but not if you are thinking in a truly Christian manner.

In Romans 13 St. Paul is explaining our responsibility as Christians to others, particularly to our nonbelieving neighbors and the government. He says, we are to “submit to the governing authorities” and “render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due,…honor to whom honor is due,” etc.

Then, Paul commands:
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10)

Now, as a general rule, barring disobedience to God, this means that we should do everything we can to flex ourselves into the perspective and needs of others, even the perspective of our unbelieving neighbors. Not because we are fearful of what they think of us, as if your identity was bound up in their approval! Good heavens, no!!!

Rather, Paul is saying that true freedom is love. And the obligation of love is to put others above oneself, just as Jesus did for us.

Sadly, in the hardness of our hearts we don’t want our comforts to be inconvenienced for the well-being of others. We don’t want to feel the obligation of love. However, this is precisely what the Law demands, and we are slaves of our selfish desires until we enter the liberty of living for the good of others…just as Jesus has done for us.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

Transcript:

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

The Bible suggests to us that our freedom in Christ is a kind of paradox.

Perhaps, no one articulated this paradox better that the great Martin Luther. In one of his most famous works, “The Freedom of a Christian” (1520), he begins his piece with two seemingly contradictory statements:

• A Christian is an utterly free man, lord of all, subject to none.
• A Christian is an utterly dutiful man, servant of all, subject to all.

Now, how in the world can a person be both subject to none, and subject to all? This can only be understood through the paradox of the gospel.

Biblically speaking (and Luther totally got this), a Christian is not someone who merely follows religious rules. No. A Christian is someone who is “in Christ”—they find their true and full identity in Jesus and what He has done for them.

And who is Jesus? Two central truths:

• First: He is… the sovereign and free Lord of all creation. Jesus is under no obligation to anyone. He’s the judge; we’re the sinners. He could take us out of existence this very second and He’d be no less Lord of all. But also…
• Second: this same sovereign and free Lord became for us… Servant of all by freely choosing to die for our sin.

You see, although Jesus is lord of all, subject to none, yet, out of love, He gladly became our servant that He might win us to Himself.

So it is for those in Christ. We are subject to none but Christ. Yet, for Christ’s sake we gladly make ourselves servants to all that we might win them for Him.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

~ 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (ESV)

For more see:
Martin Luther: Three Treatises (Fortress Press), 1970).

Transcript:

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

It is especially critical at our cultural moment not to be driven by a selfish understanding of freedom, but by how the Bible defines freedom—which is, loving obedience to God’s commandments, especially the command to love one’s neighbor.

Biblically speaking, freedom is not defined by “my rights” (i.e. me getting what I want without inference from others), but by obedience to God’s commandments. Certainly, freedom, as defined by individual rights, may be helpful political ideology. Indeed, as a red-blooded American I certainly think so. However, this is not the most basic biblical understanding of freedom.

Listen to Psalm 119:44-45
“I will always obey your law,
for ever and ever.
I will walk about in freedom,
for I have sought out your precepts.”

Freedom is obedience to God’s commandments. Remember, God commanded Pharaoh to set the Children of Israel free. Why? In order that they might serve the Lord. Submission to God is freedom. And it was after the nation was delivered from slavery in Egypt that God gave them commandments. Why? So that they might fully realize the benefits of that freedom. Freedom is defined not by rights but by responsibility to obey God.

Now, if obedience to God’s commandments is true liberty, then what is the essence of what God commands? Love. The New Testament repeatedly reminds us that the law of God is summed up (or fulfilled) in one commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

That is true freedom.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh's heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed. Thus says the Lord, “By this you shall know that I am the Lord: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.”’” And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’”

~ Exodus 7:14-19 (ESV)

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

I want to let you know about something very exciting coming up for you and your family this Christmas Eve on the Lebanon Green.

Last year, during the middle of the pandemic, we did something very special. We held our annual Christmas Eve service outdoors on the Lebanon Green. We did this because of the pandemic, but it was such a big hit, we are doing it again this year!

So, this Friday, December 24th at 4:30 pm, we will meet for an outdoor Candlelight Christmas Eve Service on the Green in downtown Lebanon, NH. We will follow all the recommended COVID protocols for outdoor events.

We will gather, sing and celebrate not only our shared community, but also the hope of Christmas—that God sent His only Son into our world of darkness, in order that He might give us the light of His love.

So, make plans for you and your family to join us on Christmas Eve, December 24th at 4:30 pm. And please invite your friends and neighbors. All are welcome! And don’t forget to click on the link below for more details.

Christmas Eve at the Lebanon Green (https://subsplash.com/christredeemerchurch/lb/ev/+29qgyyz)

I look forward to seeing you! And on behalf of our entire congregation at Christ Redeemer Church: “Merry Christmas!”

Transcript:

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

The church by its very nature is a gathered community. We meet regularly, because we are called to be together as one.

The Bible tells us that we are embodied, communal creatures. God made us flesh and bone, and He made us in community with other flesh and bone creatures. At the creation of Adam, God says, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Genesis 2). In the immediate context, this leads to a statement on marriage. But Genesis is just the beginning of the story. You’ve got to look at how this traces out down the sightlines of the Bible. At the end of the biblical story, we see that this is not merely a statement about the meaning of marriage, but more so about the meaning of the church (see Ephesians 5:30 and Revelation).

Why did God design a world with a community of flesh and bone divine image bearers? He did so precisely because He intended His church to worship Him together, in flesh and bone. He actually sent His one and only Son to become flesh and bone with us, quite literally, so that He, like Adam, might sing over us His bride, “Flesh of my flesh! Bone of my bone!” (Genesis 2; Ephesians 5)

Thus, any kind of so-called “virtual worship”, though perhaps necessary for a time, should leave us feeling a bit uncomfortable and unsatisfied, longing for something more. It’s not what God has ultimately intended.

But, for now, we live in a fallen world which is separated by sin. And we experience the effects of that separation from God and from one another to a greater or lesser degree, at various times and places. Yet, our hope is that someday, when the fullness of our salvation comes, all that has been separated will be brought back together before the throne of Christ—in glorious, embodied resurrection!

Nonetheless, in this in-between-time, we believe in the mystical union of the saints—that though we may be scattered to one degree or another, we are still united under the kingly presence of Jesus our Lord, by the abiding power of His Holy Spirit.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.”

~ Ephesians 5:28-32 (NASB)

“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying,

“Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

~ Revelation 7:9-12 (NASB)

Transcript:

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

What is the cure for anxiety? The cure is not necessarily to change our circumstances. Great if you can do that! But you’ll probably then just find something else to worry about. In this world, trouble is unavoidable.

The absolute cure is to fix our mind on the character and promises of God.

Listen to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 26:3-4 ESV):
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Isaiah calls us to fix our minds on God. God gave us a mind to think, and He wants us to use that mind to think about Him. We must not be driven by the endless anxieties of our heart but by accurate thoughts about God. God wants our minds to be “stayed” on Him. This word “stayed” means to rest upon, to be supported by. Just as when you sit down in a chair you are resting your full weight upon the support of that chair, so too, when you direct your anxious thoughts to God’s character and His promises, you are learning to rest your life on Him. He is the support of your soul.

To help you grow in your trust in God, you should consider memorizing and meditating on verses like this one from Isaiah. Doing so takes your minds off your worries and puts them onto the wonder of your Creator.

It gives us security and perspective, like standing on the solid, unmovable top of Mount Washington. You can be confident that God will uphold you, not only now, but also for eternity.

Something about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

‘We have a strong city;
he sets up salvation
as walls and bulwarks.
Open the gates,
that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in.
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
For he has humbled
the inhabitants of the height,
the lofty city.
He lays it low, lays it low to the ground,
casts it to the dust.
The foot tramples it,
the feet of the poor,
the steps of the needy.’”

~ Isaiah 26:1-6 (ESV)

Thank you for listening to and supporting The Kingdom Perspective! The Kingdom Perspective is a ministry of Christ Redeemer Church of Hanover, NH. To hear more episodes you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. To donate or to find out more about the ministry and resources offered by Christ Redeemer Church visit www.christredeemerchurch.org.