[01:00:00:00 - 01:00:10:00]
 (Music Playing)

[01:00:13:03 - 01:00:17:12]
Chris
 That's why we've got to know God's word. And my theology really, truly does matter.

[01:00:19:10 - 01:00:38:21]
Chris
 Why I love to preach God's word and why I try to do it so passionately, because it's not just facts or things that don't really matter to the day-to-day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment we live, every relationship that we are in.

[01:00:42:10 - 01:00:44:15]
Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm.

[01:00:45:18 - 01:00:55:11]
Brenton
 This week is a bit different. So Chris, welcome. You were the only one that preached this week. Correct. We decided, though, to bring in a couple other voices.

[01:00:56:11 - 01:01:02:22]
Brenton
 So again, Paul Fishbach is becoming our regular here after he's hosted a couple times.

[01:01:02:22 - 01:01:03:22]
Paul
 Glad to be back.

[01:01:03:22 - 01:01:07:04]
Brenton
 Yeah, welcome. Good to have you. And Clay Baker, welcome.

[01:01:08:06 - 01:01:08:11]
Clay
 Thanks.

[01:01:09:14 - 01:01:10:21]
Brenton
 Household name. Yeah,

[01:01:11:21 - 01:01:13:16]
Brenton
 trusted voices. Absolutely.

[01:01:14:17 - 01:01:23:06]
Brenton
 On many issues. OK, so yeah, we continue. This is our second week of our minor prophet series.

[01:01:24:09 - 01:01:26:19]
Brenton
 And we went through the book of Amos this week.

[01:01:28:20 - 01:01:29:21]
Brenton
 So I want to start--

[01:01:31:04 - 01:01:57:10]
Brenton
 we have a few specific things to talk about today. But I want to start just kind of foundationally. So Chris, you argued that the biblical justice is rooted in God's character and not just simply a set of commands that he gave us in Deuteronomy. It is fully rooted in his character, to who he is. So why is understanding justice as an expression of who God is so important to this conversation? Why is it foundational?

[01:01:58:19 - 01:02:09:07]
Chris
 I'll start with another passage, this time from the Psalms. Psalm 89.14, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Step fast, love and faithfulness go before you."

[01:02:10:23 - 01:03:23:14]
Chris
 Psalms 97.2 says something similar. But think about that. The foundation of God's throne is righteousness and justice. And so that's the way that he rules the world, the foundation for how he rules the world. So we can say the very fabric of the universe in some ways is based upon God's righteousness and justice, which is why when we are unjust and we live in an unjust world, things don't run well and they don't go well because we're actually reacting to or in opposition to how God rules the world, how he's established it to operate. But more than that, we talked about on Sunday is it's just very clear that it's core to his character and who he really is. And so pretty much everything flows out of or should at least flow out of who God is in the very core of his being. And it's one of his chief attributes is that he is a just God and a righteous God. And those two things actually go together. The righteousness and justice is righteousness is that God's terms more of his moral commitment.

[01:03:26:01 - 01:03:33:18]
Chris
 And then his justice is more on his actions about how he stays faithful to his moral commitment of righteousness.

[01:03:35:00 - 01:03:44:11]
Chris
 So it's just we could talk about that a lot, but it really is absolutely, again, I'll just say at the very core of God's being is his justice.

[01:03:45:18 - 01:04:11:14]
Brenton
 Which also explains why justice is so important to us too. I mean, his justness is one of his communicable attributes. So that's something that we actually share with God. And it's because we were made in his image that justice is important to us. And I think it's clear that as any culture justice is important, whether it's misguided or not.

[01:04:11:14 - 01:04:13:14]
Chris
 Yeah. One thing I could have said on Sunday,

[01:04:14:17 - 01:04:24:09]
Chris
 I kind of wish I had more time, I guess, was to talk about how we all want to be treated justly, personally.

[01:04:26:01 - 01:04:47:05]
Chris
 We may not think about it too much to be too concerned about other people receiving justice, but we do not want to be the objects of injustice. So that's the world that we personally want to live in for our own sake. And that should just show us, OK, where does that come from? And why should it be so important for us not only to seek that out for ourselves, but for other people?

[01:04:48:06 - 01:04:57:05]
Chris
 Because we don't live in isolation either. It's that justice and righteousness are very much relational realities.

[01:04:58:16 - 01:04:58:21]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:05:00:10 - 01:05:01:03]
Brenton
 Yeah, for sure.

[01:05:02:12 - 01:05:17:14]
Brenton
 So Amos addressed people who assumed God's blessing on their nation meant God approved of their lives. They were living in a very rich time of Israel's history.

[01:05:19:12 - 01:05:30:09]
Brenton
 And yet, they took that as God approved of how they were living. How can that happen to us today? The prosperity, success, we obviously live in this kind of decadent age of America.

[01:05:32:00 - 01:05:35:11]
Brenton
 How do we see that playing out in our lives today?

[01:05:36:16 - 01:05:55:05]
Chris
 I think it's pretty clear is that when people are well wealthy and prosperous, they have a real tendency to believe that they don't need God, that they actually are experiencing these things because of their hard work, their own effort,

[01:05:56:14 - 01:06:22:00]
Chris
 maybe even their inherent goodness or something in the way that they're living their lives. And so that's what the people of Israel repeatedly in the Old Testament is they prospered. And then all of a sudden, they would turn away from God and their prosperity because they didn't sense a need for Him and a provision for Him. And I think the same thing is happening in our day.

[01:06:23:01 - 01:06:24:08]
Chris
 I think it's fairly clear.

[01:06:25:15 - 01:06:50:14]
Brenton
 Yeah, how can that affect our day to day? There is one side of this is just recognizing the blessings that we have, right? But how can we enjoy those without maybe mischaracterizing where those are coming from or why they're coming to us? How can we not repeat what Amos is preaching against here?

[01:06:51:16 - 01:07:02:22]
Chris
 Yeah, I mean, it would be great to hear from Paul and Clay on this. But for me, there I go, is this is why the scriptures call us to be thankful over and over and over again. And we see that particularly in the Psalms.

[01:07:04:20 - 01:07:26:23]
Chris
 They're literally hundreds and hundreds of times. Be thankful, praise the Lord, sing a song of thanksgiving. And then in the New Testament, we see literally commands that we are to even abound in thanksgiving. And so the more that thankful, we're reminding ourselves that this didn't come from my hand. It came from his hand. And I think that that's--

[01:07:28:04 - 01:07:41:20]
Chris
 Thanksgiving for Americans is largely a day of the year where we don't really give thanks. We eat a lot of food, and we play football, watch football, and hang out with family. And it's really meant to be a way of life for a believer.

[01:07:41:20 - 01:08:13:02]
Clay
 Yeah, that's a good word, Chris. I was thinking too of just how riches or material success can be deceiving. I was thinking of just now the parable of the soils and how the soil that produced thorns, the thorns, Jesus said, were the cares of this world. And the deceitfulness of riches. And then it choked out the fruitfulness, the spiritual fruitfulness of that person's life. And I just think it's important that we measure success

[01:08:14:06 - 01:08:23:18]
Clay
 by God's word and not by worldly standards. So if we come into material blessing, that's good and fine.

[01:08:24:21 - 01:08:34:12]
Clay
 But that isn't-- like you're pointing out, it doesn't necessarily-- it's from God, but it doesn't necessarily mean that what we're doing is right or good. And we need to judge ourselves according to God's word.

[01:08:35:13 - 01:08:38:16]
Clay
 And just another place that came to mind was the Sermon on the Mount.

[01:08:40:00 - 01:08:56:00]
Clay
 It wasn't that long ago we preached through that. But just Matthew 5 through 7, just very humbling to think about the righteousness that God expects of His followers. And it's always a matter of the heart and not a matter of the outward form.

[01:08:57:03 - 01:09:11:11]
Clay
 And God-- we know from 1 Samuel 16, God looks on the heart of the matter. And that's what He cares about. And that's just so different from worldly success and worldly measures of that and how riches can be deceitful in that regard.

[01:09:12:21 - 01:09:25:02]
Paul
 I agree. You said that well. I was thinking the exact same thing, that we're judging it by the wrong standard. If we're looking at our circumstances to determine if we're actually being blessed by God or not,

[01:09:26:02 - 01:09:29:09]
Paul
 I can think of-- so right now I'm reading through the book of Job.

[01:09:30:18 - 01:09:42:00]
Paul
 And obviously, he went through a lot of suffering, not because of any particular wrong that he did. But a lot of his friends were accusing him of, well, there's something.

[01:09:43:09 - 01:10:14:04]
Paul
 Clearly, God's not blessing you, so something's wrong. And he held on to his righteousness through that. We could look at the life of Paul. And a lot of people on the outward appearances would say, well, clearly, God's not blessing your life. You're going through all this suffering. You're going through prison. All those other things are happening. But how are we determining what success really is? And in obedience to following God, being faithful to what he's called us to do, that's really our standard. And it's not necessarily the success that we as a church are having or anything else. It's obedience and discipleship.

[01:10:16:09 - 01:10:31:21]
Brenton
 Yeah, it kind of reminds me of just even the prosperity gospel, right? Like our material goods are kind of based off how much faith we have. And so it's in direct proportion to what we're doing is what we get back.

[01:10:34:02 - 01:10:46:17]
Brenton
 I will see if this is a quick question. But looking at Israel, the northern kingdom who he's talking to at that point,

[01:10:48:08 - 01:11:00:22]
Brenton
 do you see a lot of meaningful similarities between our culture today and that culture that Amos was talking about? Does that make sense?

[01:11:00:22 - 01:11:01:18]
Chris
 Sure.

[01:11:02:20 - 01:11:03:14]
Brenton
 In what way?

[01:11:03:14 - 01:11:05:17]
Chris
 Well, very prosperous.

[01:11:07:14 - 01:11:11:07]
Chris
 Many Americans attribute our prosperity to God's favor.

[01:11:13:10 - 01:11:40:13]
Chris
 A lot of people who worship God with their mouth, but they're far from him in their heart, which is-- I mean, we didn't even get into this hardly at all. But they were-- one of the things that God accuses them of is like, you're coming to-- these people were going to church. They were coming and they were worshiping, OK? And he's actually saying, you're pretending or you think that you're good because you're going through the motion, so to speak.

[01:11:41:14 - 01:12:20:12]
Chris
 But you leave here and then you're actually disobeying me by basically ignoring all of these rules that I've given you about how to treat the poor and the needy and the most vulnerable. And so basically, I despise your worship because it's not coming from a heart. And of course, we even looked at this in chapter 8, where I said, you actually come into worship. And what you're actually thinking about is how can we get this service over with, so to speak, so that we can get back to making money, so we can make more money. And the way they were making money is on the backs of the poor. They actually said you were selling the poor.

[01:12:22:03 - 01:12:50:07]
Chris
 They may have even been selling people into slavery. Because we talked a lot about the debtor and text. You sell the needy for a pair of sandals. The wealthy could buy the sandals. The sandals became very, very expensive because the wealthy could pay that. And so the poor people couldn't even buy a pair of shoes. And they had to go in debt to buy a pair of shoes. When you went in debt in those days, it's not like you filed for bankruptcy. You actually became an indentured servant or a slave to pay off your debt.

[01:12:52:06 - 01:13:19:11]
Chris
 The wealthy can pay the big prices for shoes or what other necessities, essentially. But the poor people couldn't. And that's because the wealthy were just intentionally taking advantage of the poor to make more money. And so to go back to today, I just was like, there's still a lot of religious people in our culture. OK.

[01:13:21:10 - 01:13:36:08]
Chris
 And even a lot of people who still attend church and go through the motions, but they're ignoring very clearly some of the things that the Lord has laid out in scripture. And so we come on Sunday. We do our thing.

[01:13:37:11 - 01:13:55:01]
Chris
 But then we just get back. It doesn't make any difference between what happens on Sunday morning and then Monday through Saturday. It's just different. Like I've had someone even say to me, don't tell me about my life between Monday and Saturday.

[01:13:56:08 - 01:13:58:17]
Chris
 What we're doing here today has nothing to do with that.

[01:14:00:17 - 01:14:06:01]
Chris
 So that's probably more-- very few people will say that.

[01:14:07:19 - 01:14:12:04]
Chris
 But it's more common for people actually to actually live that way.

[01:14:13:15 - 01:14:29:06]
Chris
 And just to be fair, I don't think that's something that-- I think that's something that all of us struggle with to some degree, is the disconnect between our worship and our actual way that we are practically living our lives.

[01:14:30:16 - 01:14:37:20]
Brenton
 The word justice is used a lot in both the church and especially I think in our culture today.

[01:14:40:00 - 01:14:48:14]
Brenton
 And maybe just to preface this, you talked about social justice by name in your sermon kind of at length.

[01:14:50:01 - 01:15:00:12]
Brenton
 What helps us discern where biblical justice aligns with cultural justice or social justice and where it differs? Like what is our standard here?

[01:15:00:12 - 01:15:13:04]
Chris
 Yeah. Maybe I'll give an illustration that will help this. So a couple weeks ago, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, and Eva wanted to do a carriage ride tour of the city. So I paid a bunch of money for us to get in.

[01:15:13:04 - 01:15:14:23]
Clay
 I'm glad it was there, not Central Park.

[01:15:14:23 - 01:15:20:08]
Chris
 So it was actually great. It was beautiful.

[01:15:21:09 - 01:15:29:04]
Chris
 There's a lot of history in Charleston, South Carolina. But there's this church. And I actually took a picture that we went by. I had this sign out that says, "Be the church."

[01:15:30:15 - 01:15:39:20]
Chris
 Protect the environment, care for the poor, forgive often, reject racism, fight for the powerless, and share earthly and spiritual resources, embrace diversity, love God, enjoy this life.

[01:15:40:23 - 01:15:41:06]
Chris
 I know.

[01:15:42:14 - 01:15:53:20]
Chris
 One of the reasons I took this picture is because I knew that sermon was coming up. Now on its surface, just that in and of itself, I don't actually disagree with anything on that sign.

[01:15:54:21 - 01:15:59:00]
Chris
 I believe there's biblical justification literally for everything on that sign.

[01:15:59:00 - 01:16:00:00]
Clay
 Can you read them through again?

[01:16:01:05 - 01:16:02:01]
Chris
 Yeah, protect the environment.

[01:16:03:01 - 01:16:27:00]
Chris
 I believe we gotta care for the environment, the God's world. So maybe we can, what does protect mean? Okay, yeah, we could argue that and live with it. But care for the poor, forgive often, reject racism, fight for the powerlessness, share earthly and spiritual resources, embrace diversity, love God, enjoy this life. Yeah, if we wanna get into the nitty gritty, we could probably argue with some of the wording there.

[01:16:27:00 - 01:16:37:16]
Clay
 But- Oh yeah, no, I agree with you. Those are good categories. And then of course, it just depends on what somebody means by each of those things and what they include in some of those categories.

[01:16:37:16 - 01:17:00:07]
Chris
 Yeah, so here's the other part of it though. So there's that. And then another part of the church, there's, here's the prime flag. The same church? Yeah, the same church. And so again, you're right, Clay. Define, what do you mean by protect the environment and all that kind of stuff?

[01:17:00:07 - 01:17:02:16]
Clay
 Well, that's where like embrace diversity sends off alarm bells.

[01:17:02:16 - 01:17:03:05]
Chris
 Embrace diversity.

[01:17:03:05 - 01:17:09:16]
Clay
 Yeah, I'm all about embracing diversity, but within biblical parameters. So I'm sure this is where you're going, Chris, sorry.

[01:17:09:16 - 01:17:38:12]
Chris
 But I personally could define all of those ways. I could define all those things. I would in a way that I think would be faithful biblically. But my point is, is that, but then, and this is back to answer your question, it's what their meaning though, very clearly by some of this, is that then would be in opposition to what the scriptures would say in terms about marriage and sexuality.

[01:17:39:18 - 01:17:57:00]
Chris
 And so I can only imagine, I think it's pretty safe to say, like their meaning there when in terms of a variety of different things in this comment is that to support things that would be opposed to the scriptures.

[01:17:58:07 - 01:18:15:12]
Chris
 And so I go back is where we have to, and Clay's and I talked about this at Lane, it's really helpful to me last week. We have to define what we mean with terms and what we're talking about and be clear about it. But then we also have to go again to the scripture and we have to say, what does the Bible actually say

[01:18:16:23 - 01:18:35:15]
Chris
 about this? And people should be treated fairly and impartially. Yes, that's what the Bible's view of justice, but that doesn't mean that everybody has the right or should have the right to marry whoever they want to marry.

[01:18:37:02 - 01:18:44:14]
Chris
 Okay, so we just have to be careful about how we define things, speak about things and the nuances of these conversations.

[01:18:45:14 - 01:18:55:03]
Clay
 Chris, I really liked the Keller quote you included, the justices giving people their due. And I forget the three qualifier, whether you can fill in the gap there.

[01:18:55:03 - 01:18:56:21]
Brenton
 Unishment, protection or care.

[01:18:56:21 - 01:18:58:07]
Clay
 Okay, fine. It was my next question.

[01:18:58:07 - 01:18:59:00]
Brenton
 Yeah, sorry.

[01:18:59:00 - 01:19:39:12]
Clay
 Unishment, protection or care, but the overarching umbrella there is to give people their due, like what they deserve, what they have a right to as image bearers of God. And I love that, it's simple. And then what defines or how do we know, what a person is due? Well, we find that in the Word. And that's where we can draw these distinctions when we talk about justice or social justice or embracing diversity or whatever, we find the contours of the definition in a faithful interpretation of God's Word. And that's how we can determine what is and is not included in that or what a person really is or is not due.

[01:19:40:21 - 01:19:47:20]
Chris
 Yeah, I mean, so a part of it is like, again, back to the pride example is

[01:19:50:16 - 01:20:03:11]
Chris
 some people would interpret justice, meaning that people have a right to sexual behaviors and relationships that the Scriptures clearly condemn. And so that's where we've got to,

[01:20:04:12 - 01:20:08:13]
Chris
 that's one issue there, numerous other issues that we've got to go back to the Scriptures.

[01:20:08:13 - 01:20:11:14]
Brenton
 Well, maybe one that's the clearest is abortion, right?

[01:20:11:14 - 01:20:11:19]
Clay
 Yeah.

[01:20:11:19 - 01:20:18:16]
Brenton
 And they would see that totally different than the others where they would see it's healthcare, it's my right. That is justice.

[01:20:18:16 - 01:20:19:11]
Paul
 It's my body.

[01:20:19:11 - 01:20:20:06]
Chris
 Right, exactly.

[01:20:21:13 - 01:20:21:18]
Brenton
 Yeah.

[01:20:23:09 - 01:20:57:07]
Chris
 Okay. So, but again, I know we say this all the time and I've already said it probably twice at least, but I think we as, we have to go, and we have to go back to the Scriptures over and over again and not just on things like, oh yeah, like almost everybody that's listening to this podcasting, the abortion issue and the sexual relationships and all of that, the sexuality are gonna agree with us. But we also have to go back and just make sure that our viewpoint on these things

[01:20:58:15 - 01:21:06:07]
Chris
 is in line with the Scripture too, on a whole host of things surrounding the matter of justice,

[01:21:08:00 - 01:21:13:04]
Chris
 which we're gonna get to a big one here in a minute that will be helpful I think for this discussion. We're out of time.

[01:21:14:08 - 01:21:14:09]
 (Laughing)

[01:21:14:09 - 01:21:15:05]
Brenton
 That'll be good.

[01:21:17:11 - 01:21:23:05]
Brenton
 Amos repeatedly confronts not just like active oppression, but also indifference.

[01:21:24:15 - 01:21:32:05]
Brenton
 And like Clay was talking about, Tim Keller's quote, justice is giving people what they are due, whether punishment, protection or care.

[01:21:33:05 - 01:21:46:00]
Brenton
 What are some ways today that we as Christians can unintentionally or maybe intentionally become careless toward the vulnerable without realizing it?

[01:21:46:00 - 01:21:50:05]
Chris
 Yeah, maybe I'll get it started. We could just list them off here.

[01:21:51:22 - 01:21:53:17]
Chris
 We get consumed with our own comfort.

[01:21:55:14 - 01:22:06:10]
Chris
 Like comfort is somewhat an ultimate value and we just only think about ourselves in terms of what's gonna make us comfortable.

[01:22:07:22 - 01:22:18:11]
Chris
 I think maybe assuming that somebody else will help like the government or the church as an entity.

[01:22:20:06 - 01:22:30:17]
Chris
 And we just like, somebody else is gonna take care of it. Sometimes it could even be that we're just gonna, I'm gonna give, I give money, I give. And so I don't need to personally get involved.

[01:22:32:12 - 01:22:38:23]
Chris
 Here's a big one. And I'll stop on this one, but I would really love to see this change

[01:22:40:14 - 01:22:56:04]
Chris
 as we reduce people to labels. We talk about people a lot more in terms of labels than in actual people and image bearers of God. So we talk way too much, I think, about people like the homeless, the addict,

[01:22:58:06 - 01:23:04:01]
Chris
 the convict, and not that those things are maybe are wrong.

[01:23:05:04 - 01:23:14:02]
Chris
 But we think of people in terms of labels instead of thinking about them as having real value in human dignity.

[01:23:15:20 - 01:23:32:06]
Chris
 And so I could go on, but that would be like, I just, that would be in some ways a simple change that I think may actually have, make a big difference in terms of how we relate to people who are in a position of need and vulnerable.

[01:23:33:14 - 01:23:44:03]
Paul
 I kind of build off that as I was thinking, this is kind of related to the things you mentioned, but I think we don't wanna get involved or be this,

[01:23:46:04 - 01:23:48:12]
Paul
 it's kind of a discomfort thing, but we don't want to--

[01:23:50:03 - 01:24:01:00]
Paul
 Inconvenience. Inconvenience, that's the word I'm looking for, thank you. We wanna inconvenience ourselves. And so a lot of these categories of the vulnerable are categories, the orphan,

[01:24:02:02 - 01:24:06:07]
Paul
 those that are in jail, the naked, the needy, that kind of thing.

[01:24:07:11 - 01:24:31:01]
Paul
 And we don't have a personal name or a relationship with any of these people. And I think the way we kind of break through to that is actually starting to engage in relationships with people and digging into the mess a little bit with them and getting involved. And then these concepts that we probably have maybe some strong opinions on,

[01:24:32:17 - 01:25:03:07]
Paul
 we actually have to live out. And then we realize that there is nuance involved in these things. And we do need to look back at the scriptures and say, how does this apply? We might agree on terms and words and that kind of thing, but we've been talking about what do those actually mean? And we're talking about application, like how do we live that out then? And God calls us to engage in all of these things, not to be distant or stand by and watch.

[01:25:04:14 - 01:25:14:09]
Clay
 Yeah, the only other thought, that's all great. And I agree with all of that. I was also just thinking of like the having the attitude of people getting what they deserve.

[01:25:15:11 - 01:25:33:21]
Clay
 I think when we think about people that are kind of down and out, it is often, it can be the result of poor or unwise decisions that they've made. But then I think our hearts can become calloused and proud to think on the one hand, like kind of we,

[01:25:36:01 - 01:25:41:02]
Clay
 the good stuff that's true of our lives is because we've earned that or built that.

[01:25:42:08 - 01:25:53:17]
Clay
 And then the bad stuff that's true of other people's lives is because, well, they deserve that for what they've done. And I think there's kernels of truth in all of that, but I just know like from a biblical perspective,

[01:25:54:22 - 01:26:08:01]
Clay
 I'm just really glad I didn't get what I deserve, which is death, which is God's wrath. And I think that's what Christ calls us to, is to look at God's mercy for us and how He demonstrated that at the cross.

[01:26:09:04 - 01:26:21:12]
Clay
 And I think of the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan didn't look at the beaten Jew on the side of the road and think, oh, he got what he deserved. He stopped and helped, and even though he was inconvenienced

[01:26:22:22 - 01:26:42:19]
Clay
 as Paul was talking about. So yeah, I just think that's kind of the heart that God wants us to have is to be reminded of God's mercy for us and then have that kind of heart of compassion for those who are downtrodden and consider what is our part in helping lift them up out of that, regardless of whether or to what extent they deserve their situation.

[01:26:42:19 - 01:27:04:03]
Chris
 Yeah, that's really good. And to go along with that, here's another thing that Keller talks about, he talks about, it doesn't matter how smart you are, how hard you work, if you were born in a Tibetan village, okay, in the Himalayas in the 1500s, you were gonna be poor,

[01:27:05:19 - 01:27:19:00]
Chris
 desperately poor. And so there's a lot of people, and I would include myself at times in my weaker moments where we were born on third base and we think we hit a triple.

[01:27:21:12 - 01:27:29:03]
Chris
 And so we just like, yes, I've worked hard, and yes,

[01:27:30:05 - 01:28:28:06]
Chris
 I've tried to be faithful and all those kind of things, but how could I work hard? Well, God gave me the ability and I had the privilege of, I wouldn't say my family was wealthy, but it's only middle class and I was able to go at that point, college relatively cheap, I got out of college without any debt or anything like that. And there's just a lot of people in our world who have not had the advantages that we have had, and maybe they made some mistakes, poor choices, but there's a lot of people who actually who haven't. And it's just the circumstances they were born into are the things that happened to them along their life that they just don't have the education or the resources or whatever, and the family they were born into was broken, severely, and so just having compassion, even if someone has made poor choices, where's our compassion? And that goes back to the compassion God's had on us.

[01:28:29:20 - 01:28:52:14]
Brenton
 Well, and I think coming back to a little bit to what Paul was talking about, how we need to deal with these in relationship to where it's not, we're not kind of just going at it with this collectivist mindset of everyone in this position has done this and so they're deserving of this. Like each individual has their own story and we should get to know that person. Sure, sure. That should influence how we act.

[01:28:52:14 - 01:29:00:19]
Chris
 Yeah, and I just throw this in too. My experience, I've seen this time and time again where people who maybe had this idea

[01:29:02:03 - 01:29:54:11]
Chris
 and think about these things in some way, they actually get involved with someone who is maybe vulnerable, poor, needy, and it actually changes things for them. I've seen this, people go on short term mission trips over and over again. I've seen it happen here in our community with City Hope and people just actually real flesh and blood people instead of like just this concept or this idea. It just, it can drastically change. And that's why we want people to go on short term mission so that's why we want people to serve in City Hope. We want to minister to people. We also want people's hearts in our body to be changed around these issues. And that largely is not gonna happen from our ivory towers or safety of our homes. We're gonna have to get out and be willing to engage with people.

[01:29:56:00 - 01:30:00:05]
Brenton
 All right, so we did have a fairly lengthy submitted question.

[01:30:01:21 - 01:30:34:04]
Brenton
 So yeah, we'll try to, I think it's an important one. It's very timely right now. But there's quite a bit in here, so I'm gonna try to navigate us through. You can probably summarize. I can kind of summarize. But where I wanna start is what is a biblical sojourner? What is Amos talking about? And this isn't obviously the only place that we see this, but when we read in scripture sojourner, what should we read?

[01:30:35:14 - 01:30:36:14]
Chris
 Resonant foreigner.

[01:30:37:20 - 01:30:38:01]
Chris
 Okay.

[01:30:40:02 - 01:30:46:02]
Chris
 Someone who would come into Israel from another land. A lot of times they were fleeing oppression.

[01:30:47:04 - 01:30:48:00]
Chris
 They were refugees.

[01:30:49:16 - 01:30:51:03]
Chris
 There was a famine,

[01:30:53:05 - 01:30:59:14]
Chris
 some type of natural disaster and they were coming in, so for a whole variety of reasons.

[01:31:01:12 - 01:31:17:00]
Chris
 And so they were coming to live in Israel and they were staying there. They weren't moving on. They weren't like just passing through. A resident foreigner maybe would be the best example.

[01:31:18:23 - 01:31:32:13]
Brenton
 How does that then compare to what we see today in modern immigration, whether that's refugees coming in or really anyone immigrating into the US, how does that compare?

[01:31:32:13 - 01:32:07:20]
Chris
 Yeah, I think I would back up on this question at least to, and this is the reason that I wanted to have Clay and Paul in here too, because they can, I'm certain can add some really helpful things here. But as I try to think about this, there's two big biblical principles. One is that every human being is made in the image of God and is therefore deserving of being treated with inherent value and worth.

[01:32:09:12 - 01:32:36:18]
Chris
 So regardless, when we get into this issue, we start talking about, I said immigrant, I did it intentionally on Sunday. The language in the Old Testament is sojourner. I said immigrant because I think that's the modern equivalent, it's an immigrant. And anytime you say immigrant, I know people are thinking, well, what about illegal immigrants? And that's a legitimate question. This whole immigration is a legitimate question, but we don't start with, are they illegal?

[01:32:38:04 - 01:32:52:17]
Chris
 We begin with, are they human beings? And if they are, we as Christians are called to treat them with inherent value and worth. And so anybody that way, right? That's a core value for our church, is a core value for Christians.

[01:32:54:10 - 01:33:28:00]
Chris
 And so we don't, that's where we start. Then we also need to recognize that Romans 13 in particular, tells us that governments, God has given government the authority to govern and to protect their citizens and to establish policies and variety of different things in that arena. And so it's very legitimate for a government, actually a responsibility of a government to have policies for how you handle immigration.

[01:33:29:11 - 01:33:51:12]
Chris
 Okay? And so we've gotta start there with those things. Yeah, I didn't mean immigrant pejoratively. No, I know you didn't, but I think we've gotta start with those two things in any of this discussion. Because if we don't, we're probably gonna get off track, could potentially get off track pretty quickly.

[01:33:52:17 - 01:34:03:03]
Chris
 So how it applies today, I mentioned this on Sunday briefly, we're not, America's not Israel, okay?

[01:34:05:02 - 01:34:06:09]
Chris
 Well, we're not.

[01:34:07:09 - 01:34:20:10]
Chris
 And so all of the laws that God laid down for Israel in the Old Testament, we can't just say they naturally apply to us today.

[01:34:21:13 - 01:34:27:20]
Chris
 But what I was talking about is the principles of how God's character does. And so we should take the principles

[01:34:29:09 - 01:34:34:08]
Chris
 and seek to apply them in how we relate to immigrants.

[01:34:35:09 - 01:34:41:03]
Chris
 Today, while understanding that the government also has to, and the government's done a very poor job, okay?

[01:34:42:20 - 01:34:52:13]
Chris
 With this issue. And not just the current one, but going back a long, long time, which has led to a very messy and very difficult situation

[01:34:53:15 - 01:34:55:22]
Chris
 today that has no simple and easy answers.

[01:34:57:02 - 01:35:03:11]
Chris
 So I'll just pause there, let the other two guys jump in however they want to, or maybe they don't want to at this point.

[01:35:03:11 - 01:35:04:10]
 (Laughs)

[01:35:04:10 - 01:35:31:21]
Paul
 Well, yeah, I have some strong feelings about this, but some of this is, for me, is personal. I'm the son of an immigrant. My mom immigrated with my grandparents after World War II from the Netherlands. And when I was growing up back in the 80s, my parents were part of a church that helped immigrant families come to America from Laos.

[01:35:33:13 - 01:35:45:09]
Paul
 We got to host one of those families. We were a family of five in a thousand square foot house, and we had five more people join us to live for a while.

[01:35:46:12 - 01:35:48:11]
Paul
 And I don't mean like days, but like months.

[01:35:49:23 - 01:35:59:07]
Paul
 And it was great to be able to enter into their lives and help them get assimilated here. I'm currently involved with another immigrant family,

[01:36:00:14 - 01:36:14:17]
Paul
 but all of these are actually different types of immigrants. So my family came over after the war and legally immigrated and all of that. There's refugee status, which is different.

[01:36:15:21 - 01:36:43:01]
Paul
 My parents didn't, or my mom didn't come over as a refugee, but she came just part of the regular immigration process. There's refugee status where they're fleeing something in their country that they are under threat of. And then the current family that I'm working with, they're called parolees. So they're Ukrainians. And there's currently a war going on in their country, so they're not actually trying to stay here permanently,

[01:36:44:01 - 01:36:49:00]
Paul
 but they're seeking relief from a dangerous situation for them and their family right now,

[01:36:50:05 - 01:36:52:13]
Paul
 and hope to go back home someday.

[01:36:54:03 - 01:37:24:03]
Paul
 But they're trying to stay out of danger for a while. And all of these are different situations. And that's why I kind of come back to what I said before, like we have to enter into these stories and realize there's not just, when we say immigration, we're not talking about one category of people. It's not one story. There's not one, it's not just all illegal immigrants. It is all different kinds of situations, and it's important for us to care for people on a personal basis that way. So when it comes to modern immigration, I agree with what Chris said.

[01:37:25:07 - 01:37:36:02]
Paul
 The government has the right and responsibility to enforce the laws of the country. Our immigration policies in large part, I would say, are quite broken.

[01:37:37:14 - 01:37:42:03]
Paul
 They take far too long. There's so much bureaucracy, and it is very difficult.

[01:37:43:17 - 01:37:47:04]
Paul
 And our leaders, unfortunately, I think, this is my opinion,

[01:37:48:15 - 01:37:50:17]
Paul
 haven't done a good enough job trying to fix the problem,

[01:37:52:01 - 01:37:56:18]
Paul
 because they're all afraid of not getting reelected. But I think there's,

[01:37:57:23 - 01:38:20:02]
Paul
 as Christians, as we apply this in our personal lives, we have to advocate for those immigrants, for legal immigration, and for all the other different statuses that are part of that to follow the laws of the land. But at the same time, that doesn't mean we have no compassion for these people. They are created in the image of God, regardless of their status, and we should treat them honorably in the process.

[01:38:22:02 - 01:38:27:18]
Clay
 That's very well said. Yep, for sure. I don't know if there's not much to add. That's why I had you.

[01:38:27:18 - 01:38:28:20]
 (Laughing)

[01:38:28:20 - 01:38:35:01]
Clay
 Yeah, I keep coming back to the image of God. So even if a person is here illegally,

[01:38:36:03 - 01:39:31:07]
Clay
 and they need to be subject to the laws of the land, but if we're acting justly, those laws are gonna treat that person humanely, and the people enforcing those laws are going to treat that person humanely, because they're an image bearer. So there's policy debates on whether or how a person should be detained who's here illegally, but if they are detained, it should be in a clean, and safe, and sanitary environment. And same thing is true for our prisons and our jails. They're serving consequences for their actions, and they're being subject to the laws of the land, but they're still human beings, and they're entitled to dignity and worth, and they do have dignity and worth in God's eyes. So yeah, that's kind of on sort of like a, I guess a negative side of things, and then just positively just came back to embracing diversity back from that church sign that Chris talked about earlier,

[01:39:32:17 - 01:39:43:11]
Clay
 just recognizing that just not succumbing to ethnic prejudice or pride, and realizing that people's of all ethnicities all over the world are made in God's image, and are part of the church.

[01:39:44:14 - 01:40:06:06]
Clay
 If not now, then by the time he returns, every nation, every tribe, every tongue is gonna be represented in the church, and they're gonna be worshiping with us in heaven, and they all bring value and gifts, and just wonderful contributions to the church. So yeah, just kind of encouraging all of us to remember to see the positive in it too.

[01:40:08:01 - 01:40:19:04]
Chris
 I think just maybe we can get real practical for some points to walk through here, because this is a real issue that I think a lot of people are wrestling with, we should be wrestling with is,

[01:40:20:14 - 01:40:26:12]
Chris
 I think we as Christians should advocate for just immigration policies and enforcement.

[01:40:29:04 - 01:40:41:00]
Chris
 And I think that there's room for Christians to disagree exactly on the specifics of that, and we need to be gracious with one another, and recognize there's different,

[01:40:42:13 - 01:41:04:18]
Chris
 we might come at it a little bit differently, and that's okay to come out a little bit differently, maybe even come in at it a little differently, if we can have these discussions, we can actually find a better solution to it. But we all should be advocating, want to advocate for just laws, and just enforcement of them, as Clay was even mentioning some examples of what that might look like.

[01:41:06:08 - 01:41:12:00]
Chris
 We also though, regardless of what the laws of our land or what our government is doing,

[01:41:13:01 - 01:41:21:03]
Chris
 how we should view whatever, if they are going through the legal process, the refugees or parolees, or they're here illegally,

[01:41:22:03 - 01:41:32:15]
Chris
 those people are image bearers of God, and how we speak about them, and how we interact with them should be in a way that would honor the Lord, and He would want us to.

[01:41:34:04 - 01:41:37:15]
Chris
 Even if someone is here illegally, we still have a responsibility,

[01:41:39:14 - 01:41:40:09]
Chris
 they're still our neighbor.

[01:41:41:22 - 01:41:43:14]
Chris
 How do we love our neighbor?

[01:41:45:07 - 01:41:51:00]
Chris
 Now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't advocate for, like what they're here illegally, so they,

[01:41:53:07 - 01:42:02:08]
Chris
 our government needs to address that, and that's very appropriate. We want to support those who are addressing it, trying to address it appropriately,

[01:42:03:11 - 01:42:10:12]
Chris
 as God would have us to do. I think though what I would add is, I would just encourage our people to reject

[01:42:12:07 - 01:42:18:03]
Chris
 the way that this whole issue is often addressed and talked about, and we're going to,

[01:42:20:02 - 01:42:37:12]
Chris
 a lot of times, and whether it's on social media or cable news, the way that people are making money and getting attention is by just telling the worst case, only the worst case scenario, there's illegal immigrants who's done this and this and that, and those, yes,

[01:42:38:16 - 01:43:32:11]
Chris
 those cases are true, but what happens then is we throw a blanket on it, all illegal immigrants are here, and they're trying to overrun the country, and they're ringing drugs in, and they're murdering people, and the truth is that a large majority of the illegal immigrants are here because they're fleeing situations that are very difficult, if not their life, they're in danger. Now, I'm not saying that it's okay for them to come across the border or anything like that, I'm just saying, where's our compassion in those situations? We want to give people what they are due, so they're here, and especially if they're committing crime, they need to be punished and we need to be remedying in that. We need a way to better immigration policies and enforcement and all that kind of stuff, but where's our compassion, especially for these people who have, many of them lost everything, or they're fleeing for their lives?

[01:43:34:05 - 01:44:12:00]
Chris
 And everybody, again, everybody we want to be on one side, it's just like, we just want to throw a blanket over the whole thing, and that's not the Christian response. The Christian response is how do we think through this biblically, which is largely probably not going to be, and I hope everybody will receive it, it's probably not going to be the way that the left responds or the way that the right responds, it's the way that the Bible and the Christian responds, and a lot of times it's not the right or the left, it's somewhere else, I'm not going to say in the middle, somewhere else, okay? Yep.

[01:44:13:15 - 01:44:19:02]
Chris
 And we are we going to be led here

[01:44:20:21 - 01:44:28:21]
Chris
 in a way that is honoring to the Lord and honoring to the scriptures rather than in maybe our political affiliations.

[01:44:31:10 - 01:44:33:17]
Chris
 And are we willing to do that?

[01:44:33:17 - 01:44:34:09]
Brenton
 Yeah.

[01:44:34:09 - 01:44:53:04]
Chris
 And rejecting whoever the person is in leadership, when they speak in a way, inhumanely about people, are we going to be able to say even if that person is our candidate or whatever, that's wrong, and they should not be speaking like that.

[01:44:54:08 - 01:44:55:19]
Chris
 Yeah. Right. Right.

[01:44:55:19 - 01:45:18:22]
Brenton
 Yeah, I think that's helpful in that, the government is one side of this, and I think we should all have opinions about this, and I think we should vote toward this and talk about this, it should be something open to talk about, but at the same time, I really appreciate Paul's story because even if our immigration policies are in just,

[01:45:20:12 - 01:45:56:18]
Brenton
 they're bringing people to our front door that we would have no other opportunity to, and so I think there's even still opportunity because of maybe unjust laws that these people from other parts of the world we never would have met are now in front of us and we can now. So I think, yes, personally, us as Christians should reach out to that community, right, the people that are here as immigrants, but that doesn't necessarily affect how we should vote, right, like those are the problems.

[01:45:56:18 - 01:46:06:19]
Chris
 Yeah, well, but I think it's a great note maybe to end on here, as we think about the mission of the church and our mission here at Harmony Bible Church is to reach the nations. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:46:07:19 - 01:46:45:07]
Chris
 In God's sovereignty, He's bringing the nations to us and we might say, well, we don't like the way that that's happening or the government's, I mean, God, this is a, it just, I think it's so much, we can just look at this and say, and honor the Lord through it and say, of course, He's using the failings of our broken government to bring people here to fulfill the great commission and can we look at it in that way without saying, okay, it's okay, right, or it's not an issue that needs to be addressed. We have people like, we have Ukrainians here, we have people from the far East that are here,

[01:46:46:08 - 01:46:59:09]
Chris
 from the Middle East, Africa, and some of them are believers and they're actually adding to our church and strengthening our church, and some of them are not, and we're having that opportunity, so, yeah.

[01:47:00:22 - 01:47:04:12]
Brenton
 Okay, we'll wrap there, thanks guys. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, take care.

[01:47:04:12 - 01:47:05:04]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:47:05:04 - 01:47:12:09]
Brenton
 All right, well, we're up there. If you do have any questions, ask a further podcast.com, and we'll talk to you next week.

[01:47:13:11 - 01:47:16:15]
 (Upbeat Music)