Instead of having you here for a good Puritan sermon of two hours, two and a half hours, I figured I'd break it up a little bit over the next week. So if you'll please stand in honor of the reading of God's Word. This is the Gospel according to Isaiah. This is God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word as it is recorded for us by Isaiah 2,700 years ago. Cry aloud. Do not hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the judgment of their own God. They ask of Me righteous judgments. They delight to draw near to God. In fact, they ask, verse 3, Why have we fasted, and ye do not see it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and ye take no knowledge of it? Behold, in the day of our fasting, you seek your own pleasure, says the Lord, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with the wicked fists. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose a day of a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? Is this not the facet I choose for you? To loose the bonds of wickedness? To undo the straps of the yoke? To let the oppressed go free? To break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to cover him and not to hide yourself even from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, and you shall cry and say to him, Here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, the speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong. And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail, and your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach and the restorer of the streets to dwell in. But if you turn back your foot from my Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath instead a delight and a holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, and not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, Then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the heights of the heavens. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Let's pray. Lord, send now your Holy Spirit. Illumine Your Word to our hearts. Illumine our hearts before Your Word, so that we might see our sin, see our idolatry, and beg and cling to Jesus. May we indeed rest upon the workmanship of Your Holy Spirit. Work mightily within us, Lord. We, in our natures, are rebels. But we ask that by your grace you would make us not only to be, but to live as sons and daughters of God as we ought. Hear us this day. We pray this in Jesus' name and all God's people said. Amen. You may be seated. Our topic this morning is going to be called, Faking Jesus. The reality is, is that whether we're in the Old Testament or New Testament, Old Testament points forward to Jesus, New Testament points back to Jesus and forward to Jesus, because we're looking forward to His coming. But the reality is, is that if we're in the Old Testament or New Testament, it doesn't matter. It's all going towards whether or not we're taking Yahweh in His manifestation of Jesus, the Son of God, as the Savior of sinners, seriously. From Genesis chapter 3, all the way through. And so we can talk, even though we're looking at Isaiah chapter 58, we can talk about the concept of faking Jesus. And our main point this morning is going to be that Yahweh calls the Church to repent of its formalism, of its faking Jesus for real godliness. Our main point is that Yahweh calls the church to repent of its formalism for real godliness. And you might be sitting there thinking to yourself, what in the world do you mean by formalism? Typically, formalism is used to describe going through the motions of worship. You know what I'm talking about. We're talking about the stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. The, uh, check your watch every 10 minutes move. The, uh, yeah, yeah, let's repent now. The insert religious message here idea. The, oh, there's a snack at the end. Thank you, Scott. That was on plan, by the way. That was, that's Scott doing his, his, his calling. There's a snack at the end, and that's all it is. You're just going through the motions of worship. And our heart is not in it. In fact, what we do is, as soon as we're done, we jet. We're gone. We're out of here. We did our good religious deed for the day, and that's it. If you're just going through the motions of worship without engaging the heart, it is formalism, it is sin, it is cultural Christianity. But I want to use the word in a broader sense. Formalism also describes going through the motions of the Christian life with no heart in it either. Now, you know what I mean by this. Interacting with profound theological texts with no communion with God. That's what I'm talking about. It's knowing the rules and the lingo with no thought to one's own sinful failures. It's giving a tip of the cap to the hardest of the commands of Scripture. It's the wanting to be seen as doing it all, but not actually doing any of it. It's cultural Christianity. It's sin. It's playing at Jesus. It's faking Jesus. We call it formalism. Jesus has an image for this in the New Testament. You know what he calls it? whitewashed tombs. They are clean, ornate, soaring with Facebook-worthy memes and quotes on the sepulcher. Beautiful, but rotten death on the inside. A corpse, fake, insincere. Beloved, the Lord has a better life for you than that. He does not want that for you. And He is going to take that nauseous reality, and He's going to cleanse it, and He's going to wash it by His power and by His grace. This morning, the formalism of the Church around 700 B.C. appears in four ways, and we are only going to get to two of those ways this morning. So, we're going to look at four ways. In fact, if you turn to the inside back cover of your bulletin, you'll find there are some sermon notes you can write down there. There are also sermon manuscripts on the back partition where Aaliyah is. And we're going to look at the first two. We're going to look at seeking and fasting, and how formalism has infiltrated into those things. Next week, we're going to look at justice and Sabbath. And I think what you're going to find is that these things are going to be very, very true, both back then, and very, very relevant for right now. So then, firstly, seeking. I'm sorry, fasting. Seeking. The church only appears to seek the Lord. In fact, the Lord does something very, very striking here. He does something kind of anti-Presbyterian, something very raw, something very visceral. Notice when he tells Isaiah, he says, cry aloud. Don't hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people the transgression to the house of Jacob their sins. You know what he's saying here? I'm going to take a little step back from the mic. He's talking about such an anger where It's something close to that. You have to see the visceral reality and the detestation that he has for the sin being committed. Now, you might think to yourself, well, Mr. Preacher, that isn't very southern of you. But God isn't interested in kowtowing to social faux pas here. In fact, as we'll see later, it's the pretending-at-Old-Testament Christianity that He takes issue with. They're faking Jesus from the Old Testament. And we can fake Jesus from the New Testament. He wants us all to lament with His prophet over this particular sin. He wants us to know the danger that our souls are in. And so, he's getting your attention. That's the whole point of the loud barbaric yawp or scream or yell. In fact, you know this. Because when a child, your child, is playing you the train tracks and a train is coming, social faux pas be damned, you are yelling to get their attention. You are going to make sure that you grab them by the scruff of the neck and rip them off those train tracks. There's not anything polite about that. There's not anything gentlemanly about that. He is yelling in grace. Well, what is Israel doing? What's going on to create this situation? Look at verse 2. Yet, so he's introducing a contrast here, they seek me daily. Wait, what? What, what, what? I'm sorry, they're seeking Him daily? If you didn't know that God could be righteously sarcastic, here you go. As you are reading this, imagine that seek, me, and daily all have their own personal sarcastic quotes around them. Number one, they are seeking God Daily. Right? That's the whole point here. In fact, it refers back to what God has said back in Isaiah 29, chapter 29, verse 13. This people draw near to me with their mouth and they honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. So they are bringing daily sacrifices. And as the text continues, they even appear to delight, to know my ways. So they are packing out the local synagogue. They are packing out the church. And they appear to be reading the scriptures. Beloved, do not make the mistake of thinking that just because a church is big and packed, that God is blessing it. that the Bible and the Gospel are being preached, and that the people are growing in the knowledge of sin and growing even more in their knowledge of the sufficiency of grace and Christ. It's just not true. Our text literally tells us that that's not true. They are pretending. Plenty of people will go to hell with way more Bible knowledge than you have. That's scary. If any of you just felt like I just punched you in the gut, that wasn't me. That was the Holy Spirit. That wasn't me. But here's the kicker. Israel actually believes that it's blameless. They don't see anything wrong with their godliness. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing. This is the problem with sin and idolatry. We self-deceive. And remember, back in chapter 6, God told Isaiah that this would be the context of his ministry. In chapter 6, verses 9-12, he says this. And he said, Go and say to the people, keep on hearing, but don't understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." In fact, what happens is we end up calling good evil and evil good. And suddenly, we're justifying disobedience. We're justifying things that are clearly corrupt. Man, in our hardness of heart, we investigate like Inspector Gadget, right? We're going around, we're looking with our eyeglass, and we're turning over in our minds, we prod it from every direction, and then we confirm it yet again. Yep, we're calling evil good and good evil. How long will His people have to live in this situation? Isaiah, chapter 6, goes on, verse 11. How long, Lord? How long will this be my ministry in Jerusalem? How long will this be my ministry amongst the people of God? until the cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, a.k.a. until Babylon comes knocking on the door of redemptive history and removes his people from their place. That's how long. That's a tough call. I don't want to be the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of the Valley of Dry Bones. That doesn't sound appealing to me. But that's Isaiah's call. And he weeps through it. Their deportation to Babylon after he dies is only about a hundred years away, and God is warning them and calling them over and over again to repent. In fact, there's so little that they see wrong with what they're doing, they are bewildered at God's discipline of exiling them to Babylon. In fact, Yahweh continues, as if they were a nation that did righteousness. Now, that's interesting in light of the last chapter that we were just preaching on. Remember, they were wholesale falling away from the Lord as it was initiated by their own leaders, introducing paganism upon paganism upon paganism, while still attending church, while still seeing themselves as faithful to God. And it's as if they did not forsake the judgment of their God, as we continue. And yet last week we saw that that's exactly what they were doing, as they were embracing sexual immorality of all kinds, embracing all sorts of false theology about man, about sin, error regarding Yahweh. They're so blind in their sin. Here's what they ask. They ask of me righteous judgments. They delight, remember there's our sarcastic parenthetical statement there, they delight to draw near to me. And God is like, really? You want for me to execute righteous judgment? I don't think you understand what you're asking. Right now? You really, really won't like it. That's what he's saying. They cannot fathom. Here's how hard-hearted they are. They cannot fathom that God might be more pure than they are. That's a dangerous place to be spiritually. And honestly, we could even say that's probably one of the main problems with the American evangelical church today, is that it cannot fathom a God holier than their pretended righteousness. Israel cannot consider God's ruling in equity means that He might actually hold them guilty too. Neither can we. God would never. He would never do that. He's too gentlemanly. They're not able to comprehend that their God is not partial in judgment, and that the standard is actually higher for the bride of Christ than for those who are outside. Have you ever considered that? When you cry out to God for justice, for equity, for righteousness, when things are going wrong, have you ever considered that it may not go well with your own soul when you ask that question? Have you considered that for your sin you actually deserve God's punishment? Now, it's not that you shouldn't ask for justice. You should. The whole point here is not that, hey, let's just be indifferent towards asking God to rule in equity. That's not the point. The point rather is for you to see your own need of a God-created holiness and godliness and righteousness in your own heart and life and character and thought world. Have we considered that both the person wronged and the person doing the wrong are both sinners justly deserving the wrath of God? Israel is calling for justice as though Israel were innocent. And just like us, they're not. But they are blind. In fact, their blindness gets worse. Take a look at what happens in the first part of verse 3. They are talking back to Him in response. Why have we, that is Israel, fasted and you, Lord, have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you have taken no acknowledgment of it? Is that why you're fasting? to be recognized. Is that not actual grieving over your sin? Is that why you're fasting? You're fasting to get out of my discipline that sends you to Babylon. You're fasting to get something from God, like it's a divine vending machine. Oh, it's just so disingenuous. It's fake. My kids do it all the time. Parents, have you ever realized that your kids are sorry to get out of a spank? Not sorry for what they did? That's like parenting 101, right? It happens all the time. I mean, oh, tears. Just melting tears. I can't. And then as soon as you address the actual transgression, they point right up. And it's like they didn't even do it. Wait a second. You're crying more over getting spanked than your injustice against your brother with shoving a Lego up his nose. Now that has not actually happened in the Spockman family yet. Yet. I wouldn't put it past him. Singles, for those of you who are single, have you ever been offended by someone else's actions and they apologize for how you respond? That's not an apology. That is an apology for your reaction, not theirs. It's disingenuous. Then, have you ever considered that you apologized, you repented God actually for the same reason? Have you ever acknowledged that maybe your repentance is actually you trying to get out from under the consequences of your sin instead of actually just owning your sin? God does it. He's telling us that we do the same thing. Or the church laments and mourns, not for the sin, because it doesn't want to go through God's discipline. They're using a nationwide fast not to actually repent. In fact, they are publicly humbling themselves for the show of it. And God looks at it and says, you're faking with me. You're faking, just Old Testament style, with Jesus. Let the sin, therefore, let the transgression sink in. Let it ruminate on the back of your souls. Parse it. Look at it for what it really is. Look at it in the presence of the Holy God. Look at it in the light of the cross. What it deserves is the wrath of God. I know today it's a social faux pas to talk about sin and idols in the church, but God is more interested in saving your souls than He is in adjusting His Word to the social structures and conventions of the South. Your sin should scare you at times. The presence of a holy God is a frightful place to be in light of your sins. In fact, don't back off, because He is a consuming fire. Because here's what happens. If you water down your sin, you will water down the gospel that saves your soul. And He does not want that for you. He wants you to glory in all the different ways that He has saved us from ourselves. And you can't do that if you're not taking sin seriously. So we have to ask the question, which one are we? Do we ignore real sin in our hearts and lives, or are we taking it seriously like God does? So seriously that He sent His Son to die for it. Well, the church only appears to seek the Lord. But when you think that it couldn't get worse, it actually does. That's our second point here. The church appears to fast for the Lord. Let's look at the rest of verse 3 and all of verse 4. Behold, He's drawing our attention to this national day of fasting, which they think is just so great, so awesome. Look at our fidelity to the Lord. And He reveals it for what it really is. And the day that you fast, you seek your own pleasure. That's not a nice diagnosis. And oppress all your workers. Behold, you only fast to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Boy, how strange is that? How strange is that? Have you ever done that before? You make sacrifices, you put your flesh to death, and you think it's for one reason, but really it's for another. Ever done that? You think it's to honor the Lord, but it's really to honor yourself. You know, I talk about motives a lot. Have you ever heard me talk about motives? We have layers of motives. We don't have any one motive that is impinging upon what we do at any given time. A primary motive that you might have, number one, for any action would be the glory of God. Alright, number two, honoring your family. Number three might be hard work. Number four might be loyalty to a friend. But number five might be self-love, self-righteousness, and self-sufficiency. And the problem really comes, and that's all fine and dandy. That's great if any given action that you have, that your actual sinfulness and your fleshliness comes in at four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Alright, that's fine. But the only thing that you have to watch out for is when you've convinced yourself that it's true when it's really not. That is, what used to be 1, 2, 3, and 4 are actually 5, 6, 7, and 8. And self-righteousness, self-love, and self-sufficiency are really 1, 2, and 3. That's what they're doing. We are deceiving ourselves so thoroughly that we don't even see it, and we confuse, intentionally confuse, to make ourselves feel better. That is what He is saying. You're doing it for your own pleasures. You're doing this for your own glory. This is what Israel has done, and that's what we, as a church, and we individually can do too. They just don't really, really, really don't want to go to Babylon. And they're using fasting to try and twist God's arm to not. But God has already decreed it. So now that fasting isn't to honor Him, what it actually is doing is it's fasting to fight with Him over what He has decided and determined to already do. Did you know that you do that too? It's not just that we deceive ourselves and there's a self-deception, but it's actually we use obedience as a facade to fight with God over what He has determined is going on in our lives. Through fasting, they are holding high the rebellious fist to the heavens. That's what they're doing. And they don't even see it. They presume it's in their best interest to stay in Jerusalem, and that's not true. When in reality, the Lord has already said salvation is actually on the other side of exile, not by trying to stave it off. So finish verse 4. Here is Yahweh's verdict regarding all of this. Fasting like yours, this day, will not make your voice to be heard on high. Well, you know, I think a lot of people seem to think that it's their overt sin that is just clear, and they see it all the time, that leads God to plug His ears to their prayers. And sometimes that's the case. But in general, it's probably not the case. Because most of the times what happens is that when you see it, you freak out, and you cry about it, and you repent about it. But oftentimes, it's not that. It's not the overt, obvious manifestations of sin that are actually plugging God's ears. Rather, it's the more subtle sins. It's the more subtle, more prideful, more self-sufficient sins. And what he's saying is, this is gross to me. This is disgusting. So, here you are. You commit these moles atrocities against me. You're redeeming God and you think that I care more about your ceremonial mourning than your actual changed hearts. No. No, He doesn't. He doesn't want words of I'm sorry for the thousandth time. He wants you to want a changed regenerate. He wants a Christ-like heart. He wants holy actions. He wants redeemed attitudes. He wants a godly rectitude. He wants broken and contrite hearts that look to Him for power to change. And when your brother is in need, the moment that what he's asking isn't the, okay, let me pray about it. That's what we do. When your brother is in dire need, we oftentimes feign religiosity and feign godliness, and we use the appearance of obedience to actually disobey. Well, let me pray about your needs. Hold on. Let me go ask God if this is true. That is actually the time to act. The brain about it pretends obedience. It looks holy and righteous, but it is really disobedience because the man is still left in his need. So here's Yahweh's response. Read verse 5. Is such the fast that I choose for you a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? It seems like the clear answer is, well, no, we probably shouldn't do that. It's a rhetorical question. You might be prone to think, well, actually, yeah, fasting is for humbling and for repentance. Now, we do need to stop and clarify something about what fasting actually is. The modern church is not familiar with the concept of fasting. It probably considers it way too legalistic or just, we like our food. And it's certainly contrary to our modern American live-by-your-own-appetites approach to life and truth. Fasting, though, is a religious rite whereby the body is starved in order to make the soul more sensible of its need of God. When your body aches for food, the soul should ache for the Lord. And it should be communion to the soul, to obey God, as you become more sensitive to Him. It isn't just about getting to an ache for the Lord, it's actually about communion with Him. But the goal of fasting, therefore, is obedience. And this is the part that they are missing. They are fasting to protect themselves from God, not to obey God. This is tantamount to seeking God's righteousness and kingdom, and ensure confident response, obeying your own agenda. That's what it's tantamount to doing. Lord, show me your kingdom. Show me your righteousness. Really, Josh, what you really want is your own righteousness, your own agenda. You're just going to do what you already want to do. That's what we do. That's what's going on here. And boy, how often do we do that? Oh, that's weekly. I mean, that's a daily thing. So then what obedience does he want from his people? What does he want his people to commit to do through fasting? He's super clear. Look at verse 6. Is not the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? That's not a question. I know there's a question mark at the end of it. That's not a question. That is a command. And here is what is most amazing about that. When we hear that, here's what we tend to do. That was a loud gulp. Because you know what? This is our failure zone. It's interesting that it's also in 700 BC Israel's failure zone too. So now I want you to notice something, that though the Lord is talking about His people, the language of who He is talking about doing this to is much broader than merely His people. What God cares about is all image-bearers everywhere. But first, We have to put these two aspects together. God's people are to fast, not to get out of going to Babylon. They are to fast, they are to starve their bodies, make their souls ache, to be fed by communion with God, to manifest the justice of God. Now, you know me. I have zero interest in liberation theology. I am not a social justice warrior. That is not the boat that I row. I think that what is going on here, we need more theology, not less theology. We need more of the Scriptures informing how we are to respond and how to live in light of these things. But God, who is just and justifier, who commands us to care about His attribute of justice, He is calling us to manifest that. He is calling us to reflect that in the world around us. This is literally what Isaiah's point is, and you might be saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, are you telling me that Yahweh is telling me that I am called to deny myself for the sake of others? Yes. Yes. Not just in the church, but outside of the church? Yes. The basic point here is that those who know the compassion of God in Christ ought to want to show the compassion of God in Christ to others. Those who know the mercy of God in Christ ought to want to manifest God's mercy to others. Those who know the peace, those who know peace with God through no work of their own, but only through the work of Christ, ought to want to bring that peace to those who don't have that peace. If you've been liberated from your sin through union with Christ in His life, death, and resurrection, and His burial, you should want to see others, everyone liberated by the same God, the same Messiah. If you've been freed from the oppressor of sin, Satan, and the world, through the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, how can we be disinterested when we see sin's oppression and reign in the world around us? And this, again, this is not suggested by God. It's commanded. It is a summons. They are to loose the bonds of wickedness. Now, in their day, they had a system for people to get out of debt. The word used to describe that system is slavery. It's closer, though, to indentured servitude. But it's a very different concept than what was going on in Southern slavery. For instance, periodically, according to God's law, all slaves will be released and all debts erased. I'm pretty sure that smells nothing like the wickedness of southern slavery and slavery all over the world. Now, it may be that Isaiah is referencing some Jewish slaveholders giving their word that they will release slaves, but then they didn't. Now, that's actually a situation that happens in Jeremiah chapter 34. If you want to go read it, you can look at it. But I don't think that that's merely all that he has in mind here. Isaiah is getting at every form of oppression from those in authority. The question that the Jews need to ask themselves is, are they using their authority, their position and power for good, to manifest Yahweh's attributes, to reflect it to the world around them? Or are they misrepresenting God's good and holy universal governance by oppressing not only their fellow Jews, but also Gentiles? Now, this is where I want to jump off and get into what is going on in our culture around us. Because, and I have zero interest in relitigating what has happened. I want nothing to do with that. What I want to offer, though, is a theological interpretation of what happened and how the church should respond to it. Because, honestly, as I have seen more and more churches, pastors, even denominations jump into the middle of this whole thing, what I have not seen is substantial biblical reflection on it. Now, part of that reason is because it literally just happened. The other part of it is that we are creating a narrative that I think is entirely outside of the Word of God. So first I want to get into a theological interpretation. Here is where we all agree. Tension in the country was already high due to coronavirus. It was already high due to the Ahmaud shooting. Floyd's killing was absolutely atrocious. He is an image bearer of God whose life was grossly snuffed out. Every image-bearer deserves our highest dignity and respect from his fellow image-bearers. His slayer deserves prison. The cops idly standing by deserve to be held responsible and are guilty. The media in this country are not helping the situation. Protest is a wonderful right that we all have. Destruction and reactionary violence is sin and is not helping any solution. I think we can all agree on those basic ideas. But I want to start by saying this. This is nothing new. There's nothing new about what happened a week and a half ago. This has been going on for a long time. And many rightly want to point out injustice has been going on to black image bearers for the last 200 to 400 years in this country. Racism, hatred, and murder are all sin, but it's far older than that. And while the injustice is executed on our black brothers and sisters is before our eyes right now, this goes way beyond skin color. It's happening to a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds, and it started with one brother rising up with hatred in his heart to slay another brother in Genesis chapter 4. And if you think that this will someday end on this side of heaven, that's just not true. It won't. There will be more George Floyds, and that doesn't justify its continuation or the ignoring of the church's role as a new creational community where things should look fundamentally different. But no amount of social political legislation can change what the actual problem is, and that is the problem of the heart. Again, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to change things locally, but my point is that the heart of the problem is the problem of the wicked heart. So let's get back to Floyd. The Church, as the redeemed community of God, should not think about this the way the rest of society does. We are called to be in the world, but not of the world, and therefore we must look at this through the lens of Scripture. Not our culture, not media, certainly not social media. We must take a theological interpretation. And therefore, first, if we have any interest, we should have interest because George Floyd was an image-bearer of God. And you know what? I don't hear that in any narrative. He was an image-bearer of God. He reflected, he reflects. It's not like he's not an image-bearer anymore. Yes, he doesn't have his body. He's still got his soul. He reflects, present tense, the trying God of the Bible, just as any of us do. And that's where his value lies, as a precious fellow image-bearer, as a son of Adam. And yet that language is wholly missing from the Church's dialogue about this on any kind of media. We shouldn't be partial to one's ethnicity because more basic to his objective identity as a human being than the color of his skin is a theological truth that is undeniable. This man was a reflection of God in this world. And Luke actually puts it this way in Acts 17.26. He made from us, he's talking about God making from Adam every nation, that is every ethnos, every ethnicity of mankind to live on the face of the earth. They all come from one source. Secondly, great music. Secondly, a lot of people are angry as though they are righteous. They are angry as though I'd never do that. And one aspect of all of this that I think we all forget is that no matter the color of our skin is who we really are in that situation. The reality is that none of us morally, before God, according to our natures, according to our rebellious hearts, none of us are Floyd. You know who we are? We're Officer Chauvin, every single one of us. Do you know who we are? We are Officer Chauvin. We sing the words, ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers as we look at the reality of the terrible crucifixion of Jesus at Calvary. We presume that we'd be there, standing there saying, oh, this isn't fair, what did he ever do? No. We're the ones who would say, crucify him. Crucify Him. We're the ones, no matter, because of our rebellious hearts, we're the ones who would stand upon the back of the neck. We're all scoffers. We're all rebels killing Jesus. So don't forget who you are. You're not morally better than Officer Chauvin. A lot of people virtue signal, I'm a Floyd. No, you're not. Morally, you're rebelliously shoving your knee on the neck of another image-bearer as an act of cosmic mutiny against the God who made that man. That's who we are. That's who we are in and of ourselves, no matter which color we are. In fact, I think what's happening is we're going in the wrong direction for the categories that we need in this whole conversation. We go to secular sources, we go to media, we go to Facebook, we go to Twitter memes, and all of this is leading us to ask the wrong question. We're asking, what happened? We know what happened. But what we're not asking is, why does this happen? And the Bible tells us why this happened, and the answer is enmity. Not envy, enmity. So thirdly, enmity with God is what produces enmity between God's image-bearers. Again, Genesis 6, 5 puts it this way, "...the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually." That's us! And Jesus added to the idea in Mark 7, verses 20-23, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. Here's what comes out of a person. Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all of these things come from within. They defile the person. What we're seeing today is the impossibility of American culture to deny the depravity of man. That's what we're seeing. It is because mankind has fallen in a sinful state, waging war with God, that the bystanders of that war are image bearers of God. That's why. We brought up Cain and Abel earlier. Cain wasn't mad at Abel immediately. Who was Cain mad at? Cain was mad at God. Cain was angry that his offering and his sacrifice didn't lead up to snuff, because Cain was coming in his own self-righteousness. And so, knowing that he could not kill God, he does the next best thing, and he slays God's image-bearer in his brother. The question is not, how can our culture fix this? The more important question for Christians is, how shall we live as the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in light of the sin and rebellion in the hearts of men? And we therefore don't even look to pastors. We don't look to pastors. We don't look for lawmen. We don't look to our society. They can't legislate racism out of our culture. We can't legislate hate out of the heart. Not a thing. There's only one who can fix this, and that is Jesus the Christ, granting new hearts through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. That is Jesus washing and beautifying our souls through the power of the Spirit, working repentance within us. That is working repentance, working humility, working self-forgetfulness, working Christ-likeness all in us. That's the solution to enmity. Fourthly, I don't know why, but I have seen almost no pastors ask the question about George Floyd's eternal salvation. And I don't understand why. They're not asking about Chauvin's soul. They're not asking about Floyd's soul. They're not asking about the souls of the other officers. They're not asking about the passers-by. What are people going to say? That's not as important as changing the culture? Wrong. This is the most important question in all of human history, and suddenly it's gone from our dialogue. Is Christ the Savior of my sins? Am I identifying with Floyd or am I identifying with Jesus? Where am I going to die? Where am I going when I die? But no one is asking that question. No one even seems to be caring about that question for any of these men. Do we so devalue the lives of all of those men involved, so devalue the lives of each other, that we've stopped the agenda of the kingdom of God as it's propagated through evangelism and sharing the gospel? That's the wrong answer, no matter what happens. In fact, if anything, this is the most obvious question to ask. Identify with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the Righteous One on your behalf, the Resurrected Lamb. Lastly, because sin is the root of this problem, only the new heavens and new earth will right all of these wrongs. I know that some people are trying to get justice in this world, and they should strive to get it. But I'm telling you right now, do not think for one second that one of those officers, or maybe even all of those officers, might get off. Don't even think, consider it. And if you think it's bad now, what happens when that happens? We need the hope of the rule and reign and equity of Christ, ruling from on high. As the ultimate governor of all that is, we need our Master and Messiah. One hymn is put it this way, Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure. That's our hope. Does that mean that you can't strive for change now? No. Please, go ahead. If that's where your calling is, go ahead. Strive for change now. Good. But I want you to hear the way the Apostle John puts it in Revelation chapter 7, when he's talking about what he sees before the throne of glory. After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, every ethnos, from all tribes, from all peoples, in all languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying with one loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and glory be to the Lamb. That's our hope. That's the theological interpretation that the church needs right now, so that this place can be fundamentally different than any solution that our world and our fallen world can ever muster. Now, none of that is an excuse to be indifferent right now. If anything, it's a reason to be sensitive to all of this right now. So, there's your theological interpretation. We've been going for a while. Let me just read verse 7. We'll pick up at verse 7 when we come back next week. Because here are the practical applications that I wanted to get into, and at the same time that the Lord proposes for us. What should we then do? Is it not your share, verse 7, is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own family and flesh? Here's what the answer is. Love your neighbors well. That's the answer. Dignify all image bearers wherever you find them. Be liberal with what you have. Be generous with what you have. Don't use your authority and position to be stingy but gracious with all image bearers everywhere. That is the fundamentally different approach. All of us. that the Church has that no other institution in the entirety of human history has because it doesn't have Jesus as its Lord and Savior and Messiah.