[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
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[00:00:38] Speaker B: It's a common misconception that Jesus doesn't judge.
If you were to poll people on the street and ask them, does Jesus judge people? You'd hear a lot of oh no, no. Jesus never judges.
Jesus is always kind. Didn't Jesus say, judge not lest you be judged?
However, if the average non Bible reader were to then take a tour through the actual gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they would find the real Jesus shockingly judgy.
Jesus lays down the smack way more often than we think.
Don't get me wrong, Jesus isn't judgy about the things that a lot of people assume he's going to be judgy about. He isn't judgy toward people that we usually overlook. He warmly welcomes sinners and rejects. He befriends those who are often despised by others.
The people that everyone else seemed to hate liked to hang around with Jesus, which suggests that they must not have felt terribly judged by Him.
Women, often loathed, found acceptance and healing with Jesus.
Men, everyone condemned were forgiven and restored as true children of God. Messy sin, wrecked people discover grace and mercy in the presence of Jesus. And they still do.
We still do.
But does that mean Jesus never had a harsh or judgy thing to say?
Hardly.
Jesus critiques uppity religious folks all the time.
Jesus is constantly calling out hypocrites.
He warns the rich over and over and over again.
He rakes harmful leaders over the judgment coals, telling them it would be better that you'd go and drown yourself than to be you.
He says that you think I'm not being sarcastic.
And if you combine all these things into one, say an uppity religious, rich hypocrite who leverages their position to abuse others, well, then, get set for the harshest words ever spoken straight from the mouth of Jesus.
If you were to skip back through the Gospel of Luke like I did this week, with an eye for these things, you'd pick up on just how judgy Jesus can be toward rich Hypocritical abusers. Which should really come as no surprise, because Jesus set out his agenda right at the very beginning of his ministry by claiming for himself the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah.
He sat down in the synagogue one day, asked for the scroll, turned to a certain spot, and read, the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And with every eye staring him down, Jesus then informed everyone listening that day that that prophecy was being fulfilled in him.
And then he proceeded to show everyone what that might look like by loving the poor and challenging the rich. By proclaiming freedom from sin and forgiving sinners.
By restoring physical and spiritual sight, while also pushing back against the willfully, spiritually blind.
By setting the oppressed free and calling down judgment on those who are doing the oppressing. There's a lot of it to pick up on, particularly in Luke. Way back In Luke chapter 6, Jesus blesses the poor, and then he cries out, but woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that's how their ancestors treated the false prophets. We should all take a beat when we hear Jesus talk like that.
Well, later In Luke chapter 11, in a confrontation with the uppity, rich, ultralegalistic religious Pharisees, Jesus exposed their hypocrisy and injustice when he said this. Let me turn to to Luke chapter 11.
He says, get this a little longer, but you got to get the feel for what Jesus is doing here. This is what he says. Now then, you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you're full of greed and wickedness, you foolish people. Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?
But now, as for what is inside you, be generous to the poor and everything will be clean for you.
Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and other garden herbs. But you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.
Woe to you because you're like unmarked graves which people walk over without knowing it.
Now, I'm not done. In Luke 11. I love this next part. One of the experts in the law answered him, teacher, when you say these things, you insult us. Also, Jesus replied, and you experts of the law, woe to you because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
And then he goes on with more about them. It's, yeah, rather judgy.
And that's just a sampling of what Jesus has to say to these religious hypocrites who lacked generosity and neglected justice and made life harder for the very people they were supposed to be serving.
Jesus finished that particular smackdown in Luke chapter 11 by telling them they would be responsible for all the bloodshed, all the prophets that were killed, all down through history.
You don't think Jesus can get judgy, think again.
He's well capable of it.
Now, where am I going with all this? Especially for all of you who thought it's just dawning on you right now, this is not a Thanksgiving sermon.
Well, in this passage in Luke, we're going through the Gospel of Luke, and I'm committed to finishing it before Christmas, so get out of the way. Thanksgiving weekend.
Continuing to go through Luke.
In Luke's passage today, Jesus gets judgy all over again.
And just like before, we hear him get judgy about the uppity rich, hypocritical religious abusers.
And through this, we hear the heart of Jesus for people.
We're going to hear and see how central people are to the mission that the Father gave to Jesus and that we, as apprentices of Jesus now have received from Jesus himself. We need to keep people central to the mission of God. So grab a Bible. We're going to be at the end of Luke chapter 20.
If you have a paper Bible, there's a few also scattered throughout the seats. Don't feel afraid to lean forward over the shoulder of your neighbor who, who did remember to bring their paper Bible. They won't mind you breathing down their neck. Today, we're going to start in verse 45, and then we're going to move into the first few verses of chapter 21.
Yeah, let's. Let's dig into it. If you're new to the Bible and you're trying to figure out where it is, it's the third book in the New Testament. So we have Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Then there's John Luke, third book in the New Testament should be clearly marked in your Bibles. You can find it there.
Well, if you've been tracking this with us for a few weeks, and my apologies to those of you who are visiting today, let me give you just a touch of a recap. Luke has just finished narrating a series of conflicts between Jesus and various groups who want him dead and will be successful by the end of the week. Jesus will be dead in Luke by the end of that week. Well, Jesus has just shut them all down. Picking up in verse 45, Jesus turns away from his silenced enemies.
And verse 45, while all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, beware of the teachers of the law.
I love this.
Jesus ain't shy about calling these wolves out.
Remember, the teachers of the law are still standing right there.
They're all within earshot.
I mean, they've all been struck dumb, but they're seething with rage.
They hate Jesus. They want to bash his head in. Imagine how they're going to feel now.
These men think of themselves as sort of large and in charge in God's temple, that they're the ones who have the authority to interpret God's law for everyone else. And here's Jesus arrives on the scene to all this fanfare, starts flipping over temple tables and telling them what's right and telling them what's wrong and acting as though he's the only one who. Who has real authority at all. And then proceeds to just dis on their high and mighty heads.
The time for niceties is over. Jesus knows that they're closing in for the kill he's done with these ravenous villains. And so now he openly warns his disciples about their malevolent treachery, standing right there in their precious temple. Beware of the teachers of the law. And this is what he goes on to say about them.
They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplace, to have the most important seats in the synagogues and places of honor, at banquets.
Getting the picture of these peacocks?
They're all smoke and mirrors, all religious show and respectful seats.
And rather than showing concern for how low God might be esteeming them, they're obsessed with how highly everyone else thinks of them. And Jesus points it out for everyone to see. However righteous they may look, they're nothing but religious posers.
And more damning than that, they're also religious abusers.
Because Jesus goes on to say this.
They devour widows houses and for a show, make lengthy prayers.
These men will be Punished most severely.
Did you catch the phrase about devouring widows houses?
It's important.
It's sandwiched inside all of this religious hypocrisy. Jesus explicitly judges their whole way of being righteous as corrupt. These are religious showboats masking evil practices.
Posing as upright law keepers, Jesus exposes them as low down law breakers.
And to make this even more icky, it seems as though they like offering lengthy, flowery, impressive prayers to God about devotion and sacrifice and giving and duty, while at the very same moment stealing away the economic livelihoods of of vulnerable widows.
I think you know this, but in ancient cultures and in many cultures today, women who did not have the social and economic protection of men were vulnerable to abuse by other men.
And widows in particular. Without a husband or a brother or an uncle or a son to offer that protection, they were exposed to predators who would take advantage of their vulnerability. And they did.
And God hated them for it.
In the law of Moses, Yahweh was very explicit about this.
The people of God rescued out of slavery, shown by the power of God who he is, a good God to the fatherless, making them a nation. He then commands them to care for widows and orphans, two very vulnerable people groups.
In Exodus 22 we read, do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My anger will be aroused and I will kill you with the sword.
Your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.
Turns out, Yahweh God is rather judgy about this sort of abuse too.
He expects his people to care for the vulnerable, not exploit them.
God is the God of the vulnerable and that's really good news.
Later prophets, ancient prophets, many of them, many, many, many of them, almost all of them in fact, constantly would drag this up and decry the abuse of widows and orphans as a sign that God's people were corrupt, that they had forsaken their God, that God's judgment would fall on them if they did not repent and do what was right.
Isaiah, you heard it in the reading earlier, called people back to the law when he said, learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
Jeremiah explicitly condemned the hypocritical practice of using the Jerusalem temple as a religious cover for oppression. Oppression of widows, oppression of the vulnerable. And it's from Jeremiah that Jesus gets his den of robbers. Quote more on that in a moment.
It's important to see this. Jesus calls out these teachers of the law right there in public, right there in their safe little temple because they were using legal loopholes to rob needy widows of their only means of financial support and then having the audacity to smear over their abuse with religious sounding language.
The God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ hates that kind of abuse and especially religious abuse.
In the judgy words of Jesus, these men will be punished most severely.
And we agree with that, don't we? I mean really, I think we do. Most people would agree with Jesus on this.
Average people on the street who know nothing about the Bible, nothing about Jesus, who would normally say we shouldn't judge and Jesus isn't judgy, would if they were presented with the facts of the case, they would want Jesus to be judgy. In this particular instance, when it comes to men and women who use religious laws or spiritual devotion to mask abuse, the abuse of elders, the abuse of women, the abuse of kids, the abuse of the poor, any kind of abuse.
I mean if we're all thinking straight, we would agree with Jesus on this, that these abusers should be punished and punished severely.
So maybe we want, maybe we want a judgy Jesus after all.
No.
Kind of once in a while usually if it's just someone else.
But let's keep reading. Luke is far from done.
Now after this he moves on to a provocative story that's designed to drive Jesus point home. And it's a story that's often been obscured by well meaning misinterpretation.
See how this unfolds. I want you to capture in your minds what's going on. Jesus as he's in the middle of warning his disciples about these abusive teachers of the law who love human accolades and linger over their while at the very same time devouring widows houses, he looks up and he sees the exact thing he's been warning them about playing out before their very eyes. The rich religious giving for show, but in fact giving very little.
And then a poor widow being robbed of all she has.
Right at the start of chapter 21 I'll read the first four verses. As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury.
He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.
Truly, I tell you, he said, this poor widow has put in more than all the others.
All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on.
This story of the widow's might has often been used as a story about sacrificial giving.
And it's been held up as a devout example of how God doesn't look at the size of the gift itself, but rather at the size in relation to what you have and how all this is about the true heart of giving. And listen, that is true as far as that goes. It's just not what's happening here in this story.
What Jesus sees is a poor widow whose house is being devoured by the temple leadership, abused by the very people who should have been sheltering her. Instead, rather than giving all she had to live on so that she's now destitute and exposed, what she had to live on should have been protected and secured by the very leaders she was listening to.
But they weren't protecting her. They didn't care about her. They were exploiting her. In fact, somehow, through their teaching, through their example, through their wickedness, their evil intentions, they had pressured her or cajoled her or browbeat her, or tricked her into giving up all she had to live on.
Whether it's through manipulative means or false teaching, it ran directly counter to the will, the word of God.
They should have been covering her rent out of the treasury pot so that she had enough to live on, not taking her money so that she had nothing left. Now, don't get me wrong, everyone needs to figure out how much they can give. And it's not that the poor are robbed of that opportunity. It's not that the poor can't give or shouldn't give. Nor is it that we as followers of Jesus shouldn't give sacrificially. There are times we do that. There's clear teaching on that in other places in the New Testament. But here, in front of this temple giving box, Jesus is exposing a hidden rot in the religious leadership that has permeated the whole temple system.
And we're meant to see that Jesus, Luke, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he gives us literary cues so that we actually see what he's trying to say. If you zoom back out, you can see how Luke has been setting us up to hear all of this as God's judgment on the hypocritical, abusive religious.
They have hollowed out the temple from the inside. What do I mean? Well, after Jesus triumphal ride into Jerusalem, what is the very first thing that he did? Anyone remember?
He gets off his donkey.
And what does he do?
Right at the end of chapter 19, he enters into the temple courts and he began to drive out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.
The first thing Jesus does when he arrives is that he judges the temple. And he quotes Isaiah and he quotes Jeremiah as his rationale for calling out these religious leaders who were using God's temple as a cover up for abuse.
And all throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh repeatedly told his people how little he cared for religious sacrifices when they were at the same time abusing others.
Jesus acts out of his father's heart and out of his father's rage by driving out the sacrificial animals from the the temple precincts. Sacrifices to God. Actually mock God if you aren't loving your neighbor.
Well, that's at the beginning of this section.
Now here at the end, Jesus explicitly judges those teachers of the law, robbers in religious disguise, who are abusing widows, and then tells a story of an abused widow to back it up. Do you see how the start and the Finnish act as bookends to this?
Luke uses what's called an inclusio. It's a common literary structure that's designed to draw our attention. The three conflicts with the religious leadership start and then finish with Jesus judgment on how they're robbing the poor, specifically widows. The very system that God had set up that was supposed to care for this widow was in fact devouring her and then having the gall to hold her up as a devout example and praise her for our sacrifice. Nothing doing. Jesus says this is abuse. And Jesus gets judgy and he isn't done. What's coming next week. And we will wait till next week.
Empty house next week. Sorry.
Will be the greatest judgment that Jesus pronounces yet. Predicting the total destruction of the temple itself. A temple that had lost its soul and forsaken its God, that had adorned itself. Next verse. Actually with gifts gained by abusing widows and would soon pay the ultimate price for that sin. But that's next week. Come back next week for when Jesus Gets Judgy part two.
But for today, we need to ask what's going on here, what we can learn from it. Very crucially and perhaps above all, we need to see how Jesus reveals God the Father to us.
How much he hates it when religious people use their power to harm others.
The holy people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, are called to reflect the heart of God for all people. And whenever they use religious power to abuse others, they will incur the special judgment of God if they don't repent and do what is right. So Much of the prophets was exactly that.
Well, why is this the case? Let's break it down a little bit.
First, religious abusers incur special judgment because they defame God's character.
Whenever religion or faith or the church or the name of Jesus is used to take advantage of people, that's literally the definition of taking the name of God in vain.
The true character of God, the God who is good and loving and just and pure and holy, his character is mocked.
God, our Father is the Father of the fatherless. He is the defender of the weak. He reveals that over and over again. And when people who abuse in his name, it turns out they have slandered him, they have misrepresented him, and they'll pay for that misrepresentation.
Those who were meant to reflect God's character are defaming it through their actions.
Now, I want to speak very clearly. If you are a person who has ever been hurt or harmed or abused by someone in any position of power, you need to know that God the Father is angry about that. He's against that. He hates that.
Jesus takes abuse of power very seriously.
And if you were ever harmed by someone who claimed to follow Jesus or was in a position of religious power or used the Bible in a way that held you down, made you do things you weren't supposed to do or didn't feel good about, you need to know that God, the true God who loves you, he rages against that abuse and he will judge that sin for what it is, an absolute affront to his character.
God, your Father sees you in your hurt and he wants to heal you because he loves you and he weeps with you in those places where you've been hurt. What you experienced was not his will, not his way.
And he will not overlook those who have abused you.
Second, religious abusers incur special judgment because they deface God's images.
God the Father really, really, really cares about people. He really cares about how his human images are treated.
That's why he speaks up so often and sends the prophets over and over again. It's why he gave his people all the laws that he gave them, so that they would love each other, so that they would treat one another justly, so that they would do what is right, so they would flourish as a society. That's why in the Ten Commandments, theft and murder and lying and adultery are right there named. Why? Because they're so destructive to people. And the most central command in the whole Bible, Old and New Testament is that we would love God and Love people and those cannot be separated. So when people use God as a cover for hurting others, the God who cares for the vulnerable, watch out or I say step back so you don't get singed.
As Jesus said, it would be better to go and drown yourself than face God's wrath over that.
God hates it when his human images are defaced. And through Jesus, he steps into our place of suffering. He steps into our suffering, into our abuse, in order to restore us who have been defaced, to bring healing to what's been broken and restore us to the proper place. As glowing images himself. God wants to restore you.
Third, religious abusers also incur special judgment because they denigrate God's law.
You know, they use what God said and then twist it for their own selfish gain. That's what these teachers of the law were doing.
We've already highlighted how God's law was designed to protect people from abuse, literally. That's why it was written.
And here we see how much it misrepresents what God intended when his law is used to undermine his ways, his will. Just like you hate it when your words have been twisted or misrepresented, God hates it when His Word is misused or misrepresented to do the very opposite of what he wrote it for.
If you ever hear people using God's word to defend or excuse or to perpetuate abuse or exploitation, know that it's being twisted and God will not be mocked.
Fourth, religious abusers incur special judgment because they destroy Christian witness.
You know, few things bring more disrepute upon the church than religious abuse. Can we agree with that?
Whether that shows up as sexual abuse, financial exploitation, however it shows up, how many times have we seen this?
Religious abuse obscures the good news of Jesus.
It obscures Jesus. And what's crazy about it is the very Jesus who hates abuse of any kind, and especially religious abuse. When people use religion as abuse, the very people who need freedom from the Jesus who sides with them find that they can't get to him because they don't even try. They think they've tried it, and that's what Jesus is about, and it's not what he's about.
So if you hear nothing else, hear this. Whenever people claiming to follow Jesus have abused others or excused the abuse of others or covered up the abuse of others, know that they do not represent Jesus. And in fact, he has set his face against them just like he did here.
Now, whether that's abuse that's happening through prosperity preaching or Happening or. Or happen through residential school abuse or through manipulative church leadership or polygamous situations or other weird stuff where people have used the Bible to prop up abusive systems. Wherever you discover it, Jesus wants people to know he is not for that. He's against that.
He's for the healing and the protection and the flourishing of people, especially those who are vulnerable. It's the reason why he came.
It's the very reason he enters into the temple that day and flips over the tables. The very reason he warns people about religious hypocrites.
The very reason he was then killed. I mean, he didn't make any better friends that day.
The very reason he rose again from the dead was to bring the good news to the oppressed, healing to the broken, but also, as we heard last week, to rule and tell all his enemies have been put under his feet. He is the judge after all, of the living and the dead.
Jesus loves the church.
He loves the church that is filled with recovering sinners and rescued men and repentant women.
A church that is in the business of letting a hurting world know that God is for them, that God came for them, that God is actively working for them to make everything right through Jesus. And while there have been times in history, shameful times that we need to call out, the truth is down through history. And even today, the church has been a shelter for the vulnerable, a place where those who are broken have received healing and care because they've reflected the Father of the fatherless. And so with all that in mind, we, as followers of Jesus, we don't hesitate to call out spiritual abuse or religious abuse wherever we find it, wherever we see it, and we do so in the name of Jesus.
We don't ever, ever allow sinful abuse to be covered over because we don't want, oh, you know, we want to protect that reputation or we don't want that person to be exposed. Abusers should be exposed and expelled. That is what Jesus is doing here.
It's not only done for the protection of the vulnerable.
It's also because it's actually the only hope abusers have for themselves. It's only if abusers themselves will repent that they too can be saved.
There are those who have lived abusively, and their only hope is that they throw themselves on the mercy of Jesus. If that's you here today, if you realize in your heart you have done things, you have caused harm in the name of Jesus, use the Bible to prop it up. Whatever, however it's happened, I appeal to you Throw yourself in the mercy of Jesus before it's too late.
When you hear people talk smack about the church because abuse that has happened, stories they've heard, maybe not even in your local church, maybe more broadly in culture.
My appeal to you is don't get defensive about that.
I mean, if it's true, agree with the anger.
If it's something we need to call out, agree with the judgment.
Whether that's way back in history or just last week, remember Jesus here, he calls out this religious abuse.
It's a sin that God hates.
And what God hates, Jesus hates. And what they hate, we hate.
So stand with those who've been hurt and name abusive actions as sin. Call it out. That's not who God is. This is absolutely contrary to who Jesus is.
This is sin, period.
And like Jesus, we don't protect the guilty.
Far too many churches down through history and even today, evidenced really in the last few decades, was various things that were exposed have been guilty of hurting the innocent and protecting the guilty.
And we just cry out, lord, have mercy.
Have mercy and bring judgment so that we as your people, do not defame your name or deface your images or denigrate your word or destroy our witness.
So first off, that was my first point joking. We join Jesus in his judginess and we judge religious abuse as the foul sin that it is.
But, and this is very, very important because as difficult or as harsh or however that sounded so far, we need to take a beat and realize that we also need to take these warnings to heart so that we don't fall prey to hypocrisy ourselves.
This is very important.
Whenever we get judgy, we also better get humble.
You know what I'm saying?
The truth is, as I've studied history and read various accounts and listened to podcasts and paid attention to how these things have happened, the downfall of various leaders or abusive situations, I've noticed that most of them, some of them maybe, but most of them didn't start out intending to become that way, intending to manipulate or abuse. The truth is they drifted into it slowly over time by not paying attention to the word of God, the Holy Spirit, Christian community, what was going on inside of them. This means that whenever we hear Jesus judge the religious for their sin, we need to do the same. And then we need to walk around the other side of that finger and stand there and take it personally as well. Do you hear me?
We need to take this judgment personally.
And so we go to the Lord and using, say the words of Psalm 139 we pray, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way. And I think some other translations have wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
We guard against hypocrisy in our own lives and hearts. We have to whenever we sense that we might be covering over what's really going on inside of us. Anger, bitterness, rage, lust, looking down on others, whatever it might be, and especially if we start covering that over with some religious fervor or some virtuous signaling, we need to take that to the Lord in confession.
We need to let the Holy Spirit examine us.
We need to let the word of God rebuke and correct us.
And we need to seek Christian brothers and sisters who will speak the truth in love to us so that we're maturing in Christ and not drifting toward hypocrisy.
Be on guard against hypocrisy. Jesus also warned us, just in those exact words, in other spots in the Gospels as well.
We also need to submit to one another humbly in love.
There's absolutely no place in the Christian church for power grabs, for spiritual elitism, for looking down on others, for excusing abusive or manipulative behavior, for ignoring the vulnerable, for masking abuse behind religiosity.
Never, ever, ever, no room for it. And so we cut that out root and branch by submitting to one another humbly out of love. This is the stance we have toward one another, not up here, but down here. How do I submit to you? How do I serve you? How do I submit humbly to you? And this is the call of Jesus in our lives. We also are called, as I already mentioned, to speak the truth in love.
I've already talked about the fact that we're not going to mince words about things that are happening, abusive things that are happening in the name of Christ, be that financial or sexual or spiritual. But here in community, together, we're also going to commit to speaking the truth in love to one another so that we don't excuse or cover over or just manage what the Holy Spirit actually wants to kill in us and remove from us.
This can only really work, of course, when we actually have trust in one another.
We grow in community with one another. We pray with each other, we study the Word together, we connect with one another. It only works when you've actually humbly submitted to one another out of reverence for Christ. But this is the call to speak the truth in love to one Another.
And then, of course, we also recognize one of the things that comes out of this.
We take this seriously, that we serve those who are vulnerable to exploitation.
I mean, seeing how much God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ cares for the vulnerable means that we as his people who've received His Holy Spirit, who have His Word in our hands, it means that we, we are going to serve the vulnerable. We're going to make serving the vulnerable very central to how we actually understand what it means to follow Jesus.
Now, in our day, that can look like a lot of different things. Caring for widows? Yes. Fostering kids? Yes.
Helping people who are new to Canada? Yes.
This certainly includes caring for vulnerable elders among us or developmentally delayed folks among us.
This means. Yes. Giving money to missions, giving support to. I know some of you have. Your fridges are just plastered with World Vision kids.
That's awesome. These are the kids who are vulnerable. And you're giving month after month to serve these kids is empowering them to come out of what would have been exploitative or dangerous or abusive situations. You're putting your money where your faith is and you're helping these kids flourish.
But this also includes supporting people who might be struggling to make ends meet, people that are just down the street from you, people that are in your life.
It might be also helping those who feel like they have nothing to live for, reminding them of who they are and how much they're loved.
Serving the vulnerable who are around us and are vulnerable to exploitation also will mean advocating for those who are vulnerable and voiceless. Advocating for those who are most vulnerable to things like assisted suicide because they think, I don't want to burden anyone, I don't want to live anymore and might seek that option.
They need us to advocate for them.
Also for speaking up for those who think they can't live, they can't manage, they can't move on because they now have a baby on the way, and so that baby is vulnerable to even being killed through an abortion.
That's what it means to serve the vulnerable.
It means also being willing to inconvenience ourselves again and again for a lonely neighbor or a struggling addict.
In the name of Jesus, we're going to live this out and we're not going to make apologies about God's heart for the fatherless and the widow and the foreigner and the poor, for God's heart for the vulnerable, for those who are on the edge.
We will let God's heart form our hearts so that we serve and protect vulnerable people at our own expense.
At our own inconvenience and sometimes depending on who that vulnerable person might be, even to the detriment of our own reputations.
We ask the Holy Spirit to quicken our conscience, to soften our hearts, to sharpen our minds so that we're not drifting toward the very sin that Jesus is here exposing and judging in closing, the litmus test of a Christian church is not fancy worship.
It's not big gifts. It's not large numbers. It's not beautiful buildings.
It's whether or not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is being represented, worshiped and obeyed. It's whether the Word of God that is designed to help people flourish and know that they're loved is being heard and proclaimed. It's whether or not those who are most vulnerable among us are being protected and provided for and loved. That's where Jesus judged the people of his day were lacking. And it's what he calls us to follow him in because it's still what he cares for.
Now the half brother Jesus put it this way.
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves and their religion is worthless.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless. Is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world?
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
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For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant Ca.
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