Matt Chandler - Marked by God

Well, good morning! It’s good to see you, and to all of our campuses, welcome back! We’ve been off for the summer; everybody’s kind of been doing their own thing. This is the weekend when we’re all kind of back online. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those; we’re going to be in Matthew chapter five. As you’re turning there, I don’t think I need to say this, but I am going to say it. It is the official position of the Village Church, its pastors, its elders, its leadership, and those involved that white supremacy and the alt-right are incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are evil and from the pit of hell. That is not a political statement; you cannot, simply cannot, call Jesus King and believe that nonsense. In fact, a friend of mine said that heaven will be a white supremacist hell. I thought, «Dang, the nations are here, right?» I just want to go on record stating that this is so despicable, disgusting, and evil that it needs to be called out for what it is: bigotry, hatred, racism. You cannot attach the name of Jesus Christ to it; even doing so reveals just how ignorant and foolish you are. Jesus would look far more brown than he does white, right? The name of Jesus and white supremacists do not go together. I’m not politicizing anything; I am just clearly calling this what it is: despicable and deplorable. In no way can you tie this to biblical Christianity.

Now, with that said, I believe we can applaud this; it is true and right. I mentioned a couple of months ago, and I’ll say it again: what we’re experiencing is deeply demonic. I know that we might want to say, «No, it’s this, or it’s that, ” but I’m saying there’s something underneath all of this; new laws aren’t going to solve it. It’s not that we shouldn’t be involved in that domain; we need to be very active in that domain. But it’s not law alone, it’s not technology alone, it’s not education alone. In fact, all we have seen in the last 48 hours is that you can educate, but you cannot transform a heart. So without a heart transformation, you’ll get the same behaviors you’ve always gotten. That’s why, without the gospel of Jesus Christ, you are never progressing; you are always regressing. It is only in the transformation of the human heart that the walls of hostility are broken down and a new people is formed—not marked by ethnicity, socio-economics, intellect, schooling, or any of those things—but marked rather by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that creates a new people where there once was not one.

So, what I want to do is pray. I want you to join me in praying that, by the grace of God, in the ugliness that has been explicitly exposed, we might finally see more clearly, repent more fully, and see the gospel do its work. I’m going to pray along those lines, and I would like you to join me in that. Then we’ll dive into our text and our first sermon in our fall series.

Father, we ask for your help. We confess—I pray that we all confess—that we are sickened and disturbed. We ask, Spirit of God, that you would do the miraculous; step into broken, terrible, wrung-out spaces and begin to heal and put them back together. I want to pray specifically for those who were injured yesterday, those who are courageously calling this what it is this morning in churches across the United States. I pray that we would not shrink back in fear, but boldly call this what it is. May the light shining on it help us see more clearly. I pray that you would do a profound and beautiful work in your church in the United States of America, making it more and more diverse, more and more multi-ethnic—a place where we can see that there is one King and there is one new man brought about by the blood of Jesus Christ. I pray for the utter annihilation and destruction of racism, bigotry, and nationalism that would have us suppressing, distorting, and destroying those made in the image of God. We ask you to do these things because you and you alone can accomplish them. We, your servants, lay our lives at your feet and ask you to tell us what to do and where to go. For now, we are praying and hopeful. It’s in your beautiful name I pray, amen.

As I watched a Nazi flag being waved yesterday on the news, it struck me just how great a cost our country paid to actually put that flag down. It is actually illegal to own and wave that flag in Germany. Let me dive in before I don’t even get to preach this. In 2011, the Village Church was a mess. Here’s what I mean: it was a kind of mess that a lot of pastors dream of. I am NOT one of those who dreamed of the mess that we were in. Since '03, we had grown by over a thousand a year, and cracks were starting to show.