Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church

by Andy Stanley

I asked folks in our church if perhaps they, like Peter and Paul’s adversaries, needed to unhitch themselves from the Old Testament as well,

The statement was in part a tease for the message series to follow: The Bible for Grown-Ups, which turned out to be my favorite series.

One way to discover what somebody means by what they say is to watch what they do and listen to what else they say.

All authority. Moses is not our guy. Jesus is our authority. The same Jesus who said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”29

If we want to know what God is like, if we want the world to know what God is like, if we want our children and grandchildren to know what God is like, let’s not introduce them to a shadow. Let’s introduce them to Jesus. The reality.30

If you’re more energized by the failure of your enemy than you are broken over their plight, even when it is self-inflicted, you have some unhitching to do. If taking a political stand is causing division in your local church . . . but since you’re right, you’re convinced it’s all right . . . you’ve got some unhitching to do. If making your point on social media isn’t making any difference but makes it difficult for outsiders to take our faith seriously because your tone leaves readers wondering if you take the teaching of Jesus seriously, you’ve got some unhitching to do. And perhaps some apologizing.

God doesn’t have a covenant with America. God has a covenant with you! A better covenant. A permanent covenant. A covenant established in his Son’s blood.

Imagine the afront it is to our heavenly Father when we opt for a covenant established with the blood of goats and sheep over and against the covenant established through the blood of his Son.

Wherever his constituency found a foothold, the world became a better place. But not because of how his followers worshiped. Not because of what they believed. The world became a better place because of how they behaved.

“For whoever wants to save their life . . .”30 Wait for it. . . . will lose it . . . In the end, winners lose. . . . but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

... but home invaders are not killing families because of the Gospel, but for tvs.

Russell Moore says, If people reject the church because they reject Jesus and the gospel, we should be saddened but not surprised. But what happens when people reject the church because they think we reject Jesus and the gospel? . . . And what if people don’t leave the church because they disapprove of Jesus, but because they’ve read the Bible and have come to the conclusion that the church itself would disapprove of Jesus? That’s a crisis.41

Five years from now, our “everybody needs to know” opinions will be all but irrelevant and forgotten. But the damage to the body will be done.

Once upon a time people were only aware of what was happening in their communities. Now we’re aware of everything, everywhere, all the time, and it’s too much. It’s overwhelming. Since you can’t take it all on, it’s easier just to shut it all out.

Filtering the useless. Jesus did not teach "globalism" until the Great Commission. The first Commission specified spreading the Gospel to Jews only. Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep. Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you have received! (Matthew 10:5-8) "there will always be poor..." "there will always be wars..." don't just sit at home, but wherever you go you will serve those... Wink ... true Christians should be at the border ... me: on the other side ... and "we" are Ford: Thailand for anniversary .... orphanage and families on the streets.

If you’ve opted to tune it all out, I get it. But while unawareness is bliss, for Jesus followers, unawareness is a swing and a miss because you’ve never been bothered by or inspired to respond to human suffering you’re unaware of.

We can’t shut it all out, nor can we take it all on.

The good news is, it’s not our responsibility to solve the world’s problems. We will never agree on how to solve the world’s problems. Or our nation’s problems.

Militarized churches. Serve, not conquer.

Jesus has not commissioned us to solve the world’s problems. Turns out, he didn’t attempt to solve them all either.

Jesus refused to be dragged into or tricked into taking sides on civic, social, and what we would consider political matters. He made no effort to fix the system. And there was so much that needed to be fixed. It was a broken justice system unduly influenced by lobbyists representing the interests of the temple that led to his execution. Yet even as a victim of a broken justice system, Jesus refused to comment on the injustice of the system.

The Gospels document interactions between Jesus and two tax collectors: Matthew and Zacchaeus. The system used to determine what taxes were owed, when they were owed, and how they were paid was extraordinarily corrupt. This was due in part to the fact that the system, like most ancient systems, was virtually impossible to monitor. But Jesus neither condemned the system, nor did he offer suggestions on how to improve it. Instead, he addressed two participants. He invited Matthew to follow him and invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house for lunch. While Jesus made no effort to change how taxes were collected, these two encounters changed two tax collectors.

In another missed opportunity, Jesus was asked to heal a Roman centurion’s slave. He accepted the invitation but failed to condemn or even comment on slavery.

John, who grew up on the teaching of Moses, underscored the unique approach introduced by his resurrected rabbi: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.12

Fishermen’s feet. A former tax collector’s feet. A traitor’s feet. Perhaps we should pause for a moment and let that sink in. Jesus got down on his knees in front of Judas and washed his feet.

When we get close enough and stoop down low enough to wash feet, we usually have an “Oh!” moment. Oh! I’ve always assumed . . . Oh! I thought people like that were . . . Oh! I never took into account . . . Oh! I didn’t know . . . “Oh!” moments don’t resolve disagreements. They resolve division and provide us with vision.