Matt Chandler - Citizens of Earth

If you have your Bibles, I would really love for you to turn to this passage. If you’re tuning in at home this morning or perhaps at a church at home somewhere in our area, I would love for you to grab a paper Bible, and if you have a digital Bible, that’s fine too. But let’s open up to our text. Before we dive into our message this morning, I want to take a moment to say this: over the past six weeks, we have experienced some unique and strange tragedies that have befallen some of our members. I wanted to take this moment to reiterate what I’ve said before about how proud I am to pastor the village church. In each instance, these men and women have been loved and cared for. In fact, if I reflect on the past six months, this has been an incredibly difficult season for many people—emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, and in countless other ways. Time and again, I want you to look right at me and hear me say this: you have been the Church of Jesus Christ. You have right now. We are a church, a 501©(3) non-profit organization, but you have owned being the Church of Jesus. You have been the presence of Jesus to people, providing for them as often as you could be present where they felt alone or afraid. After 18 years of watching you, over these last six months I have thought, «Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for this group of people in this part of human history. Let me be a part of the family.» So I wanted to say right out of the gate, I am proud of you. You make it easy, for the most part, to pastor and shepherd. I love watching you be the Church of Jesus Christ. I am fighting hard to instill in your minds that you are the Church. I mean, I’m a part of the Church, but you are the Church, and you’ve just been crushing it. I’m really proud.

Let me give you my premise because I think there are some expectations here today. I’m going to let the air out of the room quickly: My intent today—whatever happens—is to instill in you a joyful confidence in Jesus Christ, period. So when you leave here today, more than I’m interested in the «what abouts» and the «how abouts, ” I am hoping the Spirit of God will work through the proclamation of His Word to instill in you, in the deeper places, a joyful confidence in Jesus Christ. I genuinely believe that if you and I walk in a joyful confidence in Jesus Christ, the rest of this stuff starts lining up as it should. It’s not that it won’t be messy; it’s that in its mess, if you have a friend who is messy, I don’t know if you know this, but messy people actually have a system in their mess. That’s why they can freak out if you clean up after them—like, „How am I ever going to find that?“ Well, it’s because that’s where it goes. Some people’s minds work differently, and there is something going on in that mess. I believe that if you have a joyful confidence in Jesus, you’ll see the mess for what it is. That’s my end goal. If you were hoping for a Piperian or Mohler-esque kind of thing today, you’re just going to leave frustrated with me, so let the frustration start now.

With that said, before we dive in, I’m going to look at three passages, three little vignettes, if you will, about how I think we should think and behave in this day with joyful confidence in Jesus being the fuel that drives our engine. To do that, though, we need to assess where we currently are. If you’re on a map, you have to identify where you are. So here’s where we are. I don’t normally do this, but it’s just too interesting right now. Here we go: Seventeen percent of Americans say they’re proud of the state of America, which is pretty low. But watch this: Seventy-one percent of Americans say they’re angry about the state of America, and eighty percent say that the United States is out of control. Now, let’s do a quick survey for my shepherding heart; I will not weaponize this later in the sermon. How many of you feel a bit angry and think things are out of control? You can raise your hand. Again, I will not conclude the sermon by saying, „You’re so angry; shame on you.“ I’m not trying to weaponize this. I’m trying to get a sense of what’s going on right now.

In 1970 or 1964, seventy-seven percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most or all of the time. But by 1994, that had taken a precipitous fall. Between 1964 and 1994, there are reasons for this.