TOLERENCE: IS TRUTH STILL TRUE?

Where we are today is different from where we were 2 -3 decades ago.  And where we will be tomorrow will be a direct product of our choices today.  And…our culture is making massive choices at an unprecedented rate. 

While it might be easier to limit our spiritual maturity to focusing only on perfecting ourselves… God has placed us in the midst of our culture.

Out of responsibility to love the people of the culture we are in, God has given us the responsibility of:

ü  Understanding that culture

ü  Understanding the choices that cultural makes , and

ü  Understanding how those choices play into the grand scheme of things as clarified by our Creator

Here are 2 challenges for you:

1.        You must develop a vibrant, vital relationship with God. If you are going to stand, you must take time with God and you must do it daily.  If you do not take vital/personal/daily time with God, you WILL fail.

2.        You cannot love the God who died for you, and continue to ignore the world and culture He died to save.  Whether we would like to play the fence or play ignorant regarding the trends of society, the world is making it increasingly hard to do so.

There is a new form of tolerance.  New tolerance is not the definition of tolerance as the word was originally defined.  New tolerance is based on the belief that “truth is relative to the community in which a person participates.  And since there are many human communities, there are necessarily many different truths.”  New tolerance opposes absolute truth, requires validating the other’s experiences.  Validate = approve, endorse, legitimize.

As Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler helped clarify in their book The New Tolerance:  In order to be truly tolerant (according to the new tolerance), you must agree that another person’s position is just as valid as your own.  In order to be truly tolerant (they say), you must give your approval, our endorsement, our sincere support to their beliefs and behaviors.

TRUTH IS ALWAYS EXCLUSIVE

Any truth claim, by logic, is at the same time declaring it’s opposite to be false.  Just because people hold passionately to their belief, just because it is “right” to them, does not make their truth claim any more accurate.

Ø  Either God exists, or He does not

Ø  Either he has spoken, or He has not

Ø  Either the Bible is totally accurate, or It is not

Ø  Either Jesus was God, or He was not.

Ø  Either Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him, or He is not

GOAL

v  Aggressively Live in Love.  You are my brother or sister, worthy of my loving acceptance and respect as an unimaginably valuable human being created in the image of God, a priceless soul for whom Christ died.

v  Humbly Stand for the Truth.  Because I love you, I will humbly point to the truth about anything that threatens your happiness, health, and spiritual wellbeing.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE:

LIVED OR LEGISLATED

What place does God play in our society?

We look at religion as we say:

·         Religion in Politics crates a misuse of power (as if removing religion from the political realm has solved that)

·         Religion is too emotional

·         Politics is dirty –God/Christianity shouldn’t be messed up by that (as if God came for what was clean)

·         Politics is opinion & business and religion is spiritual and dogmatic and each ought to stick to what they do best

·         Religious governments always become intolerant and warmongers.  (Other types of governments don’t?  And are we to be judged by our worst moments?)

What does God say about Separation of Church & State?  It was a Hot Topic long before America was the United States of America, long before the Pilgrims left England out of religious persecution.

1.       Biblical Background

Creation

God created the world to have a relationship with Him.  He never designed the world to live a life that was separated and distinct from Him.  He placed within us the image of Himself, told us to rule the earth and to do so in an intimate relationship with Him.

Israel

Israel was very clearly a theocracy.  It was established by God, for God, for the one purpose of declaring the glory of God and being the conduit of the Messiah.  When the Jews thought of the Messiah they assumed that the Messiah would bring the reign of God on earth and they would be the key rulers with Him.  Glorifying themselves in the end was far more important than glorifying God.

Jesus

When Jesus came and showed no indication of intending to conquer the Romans nor setup an earthly kingdom and even worse didn’t look to the reigning religious leaders to be His key confidants they were furious.

Jesus had one focus – His chosen people.  While His death meant the salvation of the world – His purpose as he indicated in Matthew 15:24 “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

Jesus didn’t come to establish an earthly kingdom, not even to come to communicate with the rest of the world outside of Israel.  He did not come with a political agenda.  He came as the Messiah, the ultimate conclusion of the promise to Abraham…that out of the nation of Israel, all the nations of the earth could be blessed.

God’s ultimate plan is not contingent on the governments of this world being in order.  His Kingdom is not of this world.

Paul

Paul relates what he was told by God, Acts 27:23-24.  Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul.  You must stand trial before Caesar….’God’s intent for Paul and for the early church was to take the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world…including the Roman government.  Paul not only stood before Caesar, he also stood and spoke before Felix, Porcius Festus, and King Agrippa (Acts 23-26).

There is a constant interaction with government, but never a sense of a need to establish an earthly kingdom.

This leads us to our present situation.

2.       Present Government

The phrase “Separation of Church & State” is not found in the constitution or its amendments.  It has its origins with Thomas Jefferson.

In his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, then-President Jefferson used this phrase.  He said: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, [the people, in the 1^st Amendment,] declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building [as Jefferson put it] a wall of separation between church and state.

There is no question that early America was both Christian in its morals and committed to avoiding what they ran from in England – a national church which suppressed people’s ability to worship God in anything but the sanctioned Denomination of the government.  They were clearly Christian.  John Quincy Adams said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was, it connected in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” 

There is a desperate need for a final authority.  If as a nation we no longer believe or live out the ultimate authority of a Judeo-Christian value system…the future is guaranteed to not look like the present.  We will stray.   There is no question that our beliefs are being challenged and attacked.

The Power of Now

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil if for good men to do nothing.”  Edmund Burke (1729 -1797) Irish philosopher, statesman.

USE IT OR LOSE IT.  If we do not use what God-given and nation allowed freedoms we have, we will someday soon lose them.

Impact your culture.  Life change is critical.  Doing nothing is not an option.

Abortion

Last week, we talked about what was at stake in the issue of marriage and the desire of the enemy to tarnish and destroy the incredible image of the relationship of Christ with the Church. 

The same is true here…Childbirth is not only the most incredible creative opportunity God gives us as finite human beings…it is the very image of Himself.

The key is to go back to the original creative intent.  What was God doing when He created us?  What was his intent?  Genesis 1:26-28

Just as same-sex marriage is an attack on the image of the beauty of the relationship of Christ with the church, so abortion is an attack on the very image of God in us.  

1. God orders the penalty of life for life when the life of an unborn child is taken.  Exodus 21:22-25
2. God honors those who refuse to follow the laws of the land when they prescribe the killing of innocence.  Exodus 1:15-21
3. God sees life as beginning in the womb.  We are fully known and fully knowable at this point.  Psalm 139:1, 13-16

Apart from a final source of authority, people will choose based on what they think instinctively, and the results (as with Israel, so with us) are consistently and predictably foolish.  Romans 1:18-22

What can we do?

1. Vote
2. Lobby/Petition Your Leaders
3. Be Changed   (from www.AbortionFacts.com)
4. Be a Catalyst to Others

Not just with Abortion but with so many other issues in our culture, real change will never happen on a national scale until change happens in the hearts of the individuals who make up this nation.

Choices like legalizing abortion and prohibiting the restriction of it are made by leaders who make laws and by nations who will both elect and follow such leaders.

Passages to read related to this message:  Leviticus 18:21, Jeremiah 32:30-35, Luke 1:35-36, 39-44, Jeremiah 1:5, Galations 1:15, Isaiah 49:1, 5

Same-Sex Marriage

Marriage is the best human image of the intimacy of God’s relationship with us, the Church, which He has planned for eternity.  Marriage is the picture He gave us of the relationship He is building between the Church (His redeemed people) and His Son (who died for them).

We have a certain percentage of people living in the USA who are choosing to build a same-sex physical relationship.  Many believe that is how they were made – and in a nation of tolerance – the only “kind” thing seems to be to give them the right to legitimize their relationship by making it official in marriage…OR IS IT?

At the core of creation was the creation of man.  And central to that was man’s ability to relate in something we call marriage.   Read these two key declarations of the centrality of relationships – especially this most core relationship of marriage.  Genesis 2:8, 15, 18-25, Genesis 1:27.  Ephesians 5:21-32.

When the greatest source of ethical and life value is set aside (the Bible), it is only a matter of time until lesser sources of ethics and life values go with it (like the constitution).  And while we do not trust in government as our ultimate trust – as Paul made in clear in 1 Timothy 2 and Romans 13 – the way our government goes drastically affects our ability to live our life as God intended it.

Homosexuality:  We Are Asking and Telling

We are about to step into several hot topics in a row that you may want to get out of.  As the logo says: “Guaranteed to make you uncomfortable”.

We live in a time when sitting on the sideline is becoming more and more impossible.  The issues are too critical and what is at stake is too important.  The politicizing of many issues will bring these issues to mind and will mean at the very least you are going to have to struggle with them internally…how do I respond?  Or what do I believe and why?  And as someone pursuing God, society is looking at you as someone who represents Christianity.  What does Christianity believe?  What does the Bible teach?  What it means to live like a Christian…a follower of Christ?

As part of the political spectrum right now, there is a lot of conversation about same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.  We are going to take just half of that this morning…same-sex relationships.  And despite the directives given to our armed forces “WE ARE ASKING AND TELLING.”

Jim Garlow (pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in CA) did an interview recently with Melissa Fryrear who is on staff at the Christian ministry, Focus on the Family, in gender issues.  She personally was actively living in this lifestyle for 10+ years and has a very compelling story and grasp of what is at stake.

The full interview can be found by going to Skyline Wesleyan’s website podcast section and downloading the “Jesus and Marriage Interview” podcast from October 19, 2008.

Let’s be clear. 

1.       God died for sinners.  Romans 5:8

2.        You do not get better to come to Christ.  You come to Christ to get better. 

3.       It is possible to have Grace & Truth.  John 1:10-14, Romans 2:1-4

4.       Real life change can happen from every background.  1 Corinthians 6:9-11

5.       God is calling you to be the Ecclesia – called out ones — not called away but out of sin, in order to impact the world.

6.       The tendency is to live in our own bubble and to live vindictively. Jonah 3:1-4:4