Matt Chandler - Citizens of Heaven

Well, good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We will be camped out on this passage. I’ve got some things I want to talk about before we launch in, but this has been an interesting little season for me in that the great concern of addressing this topic—like everywhere I’ve been this week, people are asking, «Are you sure you’re really doing this?» or «Why don’t you do something like definitive atonement or limited atonement or something like that? I don’t know if you want to get into this space.» And yet, I don’t feel overly anxious about what we need to do today, which is just allow the Word of God to shape and inform how we see the world that we’re living in. I am eager to dive into that. This is the last week of our prayer initiative. Remember when everything a few months ago was laid before you? What we wanted to do was be aggressive toward the brokenness of the world, and the way that we’re going to achieve that is by praying, fasting, walking in our neighborhoods, and praying. Each week has had a theme, and many of you have been fasting with us on either Wednesday or Thursday. This is the last week of that. So, really, across our area this week, at eight different parks, we’ll be gathering just to pray with one another for the good of our city and our nation. You can find a list of those parks on our website. I am aware that the weather doesn’t look great. I met some friends from Iowa earlier today, and this is their winter, so it looks great for them! But for us, it’s going to be a little rainy. I would just ask you to push into this last week. We’re praying for revival. Throughout human history, there have been moments when God has broken through in such a tremendous way that it hit reset on everything—the church, the moral understanding of the day for nations. This has happened before, and this is what we need God to do. More than we need anything else, we need God to pour out His Holy Spirit on our land, and that’s what we’re praying for this week. I want to encourage you to read Acts chapter 2, verses 1 through 46. Steep yourself in that passage this week and then hop on the website to find the parks closest to you. I think there’s one every night of the week this week. You don’t have to go to all of them; just find one that’s close to where you live. Let’s keep doing what the people of God have been asked by God to do.

All right, so I wanted to encourage you in that direction. I am more aware than ever that what was intuitive to me regarding communication as a 28-year-old is gone. What I mean by that is the movies I reference or the music I know or little throwaway «flux capacitor» illustrations are increasingly met with glazed-over looks that seem to say, «What’s he talking about?» I can feel myself getting older. It’s not just that I can be wounded sleeping, but the world is moving fast, and I’m still back here. As we dive into our first message in this series, which we’re calling «Dual Citizenship, ” about how Christians should think rightly about politics and our citizenship, I want to remind you that I grew up in a different day. Many of you in this room grew up in a different day. When I was in elementary school, we started every day, Monday through Friday, with the Pledge of Allegiance. We would all stand up, the PA system would come on, and we would put our hands over our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Every movie I grew up watching over and over again was filled with hardcore pro-American sentiment—"Iron Eagle,» anybody? I wore that thing out! I wanted to be a jet pilot; I wanted a walkman on my thigh, and I wanted to shoot people out of the sky. «Red Dawn"—oh, see, if you’re anywhere near my age, you had a stick in your hand and you screamed out «Wolverine!» at some point! «Rocky IV"—just think about how many movies we grew up with where America was unstoppable. We were the good guys, saying, «Get out of our way, hope of the world, let’s get it done!» Now, I was living on military bases, so whatever your experience was, mine was through the roof. Then let’s turn on the radio, and there’s «The Boss» with «Born in the USA, ” and Lee Greenwood’s „God Bless the USA.“ We’re crying, right? I mean, I was steeped in this stuff, and there was no way to not be a patriot in the home I grew up in and in the context I was in. By the way, this might blow your mind, but the majority of that was happening in the Bay Area of California, which I’m guessing when you think about it, you’re not like, „Ah yeah, bastion of American sentiment.“ I have honestly been stunned by the speed at which all of that vanished. Now, almost everything seems anti-American in sentiment.