And you can turn in your copy of the scriptures today to Colossians chapter four, verse one. As we continue our sermon series, which is a series of applications of what we've learned from the book of the 12, the Lord's prophet speaking to us, pointing us to the kingdom of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. And today. as we've called this little series of applications, a just world with Jesus at its heart. We're continuing to follow the lead that the scripture gives us as we work that out practically. We've talked about being a just church as the soul, really, of human civilization. We've talked about just families as the fundamental unit of human civilization. And now we want to talk about a just society, a just society. And I will ask you to think carefully and patiently with me today. In fact, today's sermon is going to be a little bit more on the principal level up here. We'll get, Lord willing, to more of the practical level next. But I do believe we need to, in our day, think radically in order to renew our thinking about a just society, because superficial fixes are not going to work. In part, we need this as God's people, just understanding our time and place in God's providence. God, in his providence, has put us in the United States of America in the 21st century, and as such, The vast majority of us here have grown up here. Many of you have grown up in churches here. Praise God for all the goodness and the ways that his people have impacted our nation and American Christianity. So much to be thankful for. At the same time, we tend to have certain strengths and we tend to have certain weaknesses. When it comes to thinking about a just society, I think most historians would agree with me of whatever stripe that this is not one of our strengths. American Christianity, you say, might be strong on focus on individual discipleship or a personal relationship with God. These tend to be things that we focus on a lot. Praise God for that. We probably lack a lot of wisdom. in terms of how to make disciples of the nations, that is, mankind, in all of his social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics. On the one hand, again, that's understandable, because it's no simple task to work out well and wisely all the cultural and social wisdom that God has for us. On the other hand, we can't use the difficulty as an excuse. We can't hide behind, well, that's just not our tradition, so to speak. That's not what we're used to doing in our Christianity. I believe the fear of the Lord would compel us, if nothing else, the love of Christ would constrain us to press into this call to what does it look like to have a just society when people together are seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? And here's where we need real vision. We need vision as God's people to see what God sets before us and to be able to live up to that. The prophets of the Lord have spoken and they have given us a vision of the kingdom of God. And this is a vision for human society that the natural man does not grasp. He is made for that. Every man is actually made for life in the kingdom of God. We're made for life with God. But the natural man is not going to see it without Christ, so as God's people, let us see it, and then let us share that. As we enter into this today, I do need to review some truths quickly that we have considered in these applications of the prophetic word. We remember, you might remember us saying God is just and the justifier. God is just. He is just in himself, not only in the sense that all of his attributes go together, His justice is wise and loving. Pardon me. And so forth. But also in the sense that God is Himself the perfect exemplar of a just community. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And He has always been, in His one triune life, perfectly giving and receiving, living in justice. He eternally lives in just relationships. And when he overflowed then in love to create this world, he made a world that is good. He emphasized that for us seven times in Genesis chapter one. This world is good. It's exactly what it needs to be to reflect me, God, on a creaturely level, to participate in my goodness. It's all a good gift. It's a gift. It's united together in love. We then, we mankind, human beings, we as the image and likeness of God, are made to share in that love together. We are inherently social beings. We can't exist in any other way. We flourish in the peace of right relationships. In fact, friendship with God and with one another is what human society is all about. That's why there is such a thing as human society. God then gave his only Son as both the embodiment of justice in himself and the enactor of justice in this world. We've seen that the cross of Jesus is the definitive enactment of justice. It's a total gift, for one thing. It is, in that beautiful word, atonement. It is atonement. This is what God is effecting in Jesus Christ when he sends him in the flesh. That's why we call it reconciliation. It sets us free from our bondage to sin, to Satan, the world system, its redemption. And now, today, as the risen and ascended ruler of the world, Jesus sends his spirit to enact this just life, forming his just community, the church, enabling men to live in union with God and with one another in Christ. So we today live in faith, working through love, walking in the spirit, looking forward in hope to the resurrection life in the kingdom of God. And this is what has to inspire our vision of a just society. This is where we have to start. If anything else begins to control our vision of what a just society is, then we're going to start to go astray. So today's sermon is simply a work of trying to envision together how to have a just society with Jesus at its heart by articulating basic realities of human social existence. We're gonna start with a very concrete one that is a fundamental to our Christian confession. And we say this very frequently here together. Jesus is Lord. That is the first absolute concrete reality that is necessary for us to understand what a just society looks like. Jesus is Lord. This is core reality. This is not simply a, as our world might put it, a religious belief that some people have. Well, you might choose to believe in that if you want to. That's like saying you might choose to believe you exist if you want to or not. That's silly. We call people who do that insane, right? Jesus is Lord is core reality. This simply is the way God has brought about history, and you can't deny it. It's the way he's worked since creation to bring about redemption, to bring us to where we're at right now, to bring it ultimately to the consummation in his kingdom. He's revealed himself in Jesus Christ. And this is the message that the church confesses. This is the way in which we live. And here's where we come to our text today, where I want us to consider some of the implications, the ramifications of this text in Colossians chapter four, verse one. You'll notice that we've chosen a text for this sermon that is working out the realities in society now. We've talked about the church, we've talked about the family, What about our broader relationships in this world? Well, the scripture has something to say to us here. It says, masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly. You give them what is just and what is equal, if we want to translate it that way. Treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. And it's that phrase in particular I want us to consider the implications of. You have a master in heaven. This is the rationale behind why you should act this way in the world, why you should relate to other people in this particular fashion. Why is it if you're a master here? It's because you have a master in heaven. Now, I believe as the scripture is speaking here of a master in heaven, In context, we should be thinking of what chapter 3, verses 1 through 4 talked about, which will set the framework for who this master in heaven is. It says, if then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds, your affections on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears and you also will appear with him in glory. When the scripture here tells us to know that you have a master in heaven, it's referring back to God in Christ. In other words, not just simply God as creator of this whole world, although he certainly is that, in that sense he's the master of everything. but God specifically how he has worked to bring about his just rule in this world in Christ. Who is ascended to glory? Jesus Christ, the God-man. The one who is, as the fulfillment of the Psalms say, has put all things under his feet. This is the master in heaven that we are reflecting on. Pardon me. And so it's invoking the whole work of God's work in Christ as the basis for this instruction. In other words, what we just rehearsed in the introduction a moment ago, right? This is what should control our thinking. In fact, this is what should bear upon our hearts and minds in terms of our responsibility when it comes to living justly in this world. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Jesus the Christ. And we as Christians have to make that a cornerstone of how we think about a just society. When Jesus came, He came declaring the kingdom of God is at hand. And this is exactly what was prophesied by the prophets. Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He did not come to bring a kind of salvation that was disconnected from the way God made man and from the fulfillment God designed for man. He came to bring a salvation that brings us to fulfillment in his kingdom. He came to effect God's righteousness and peace, a righteous and peaceful kingdom. And I believe in some ways his contemporaries even recognized this, even almost perversely, through their sinful actions. At the beginning of Jesus's earthly life, King Herod reacted to the announcement of a king of the Jews being born. Now, what did he say when he heard that announcement? Did he think, oh, that's okay, that's just a, you know, some kind of a spiritual kingdom, that won't really impact me at all. So I'll let him go do his kingly thing. Was that how Herod reacted? Herod said, kill all the children in that region. I've got to eliminate any potential rivals for my authority, my power. He saw it as a threat, because there was a king that was born. And I submit to you that Herod was actually right, although in a perverse way. At the end of Jesus's earthly life, the Roman official Pilate, although he could find nothing to charge Jesus with, no offense against Roman law or anything else, he could not resist when the Jews said to him, If you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend, right? He's claiming to be a king. That's traitorous. That's treasonous. And if you let him go, you're a traitor too. Pilate kind of threw up his hands at that argument, right? He didn't reason, even in his interaction with Jesus, you know, you say you're a king, Jesus basically, in a sense, put it back on him. You're gonna have to deal with that, right? He is a king. He acknowledged before Pilate that he is a king of a kingdom not sourced in this world, not of the same kind, if you will, of earthly kingdoms, and yet it is a kingdom that will rule this world. He didn't deny it at all. Pilate didn't know what to do with that. He couldn't resist that charge. You see, what I'm saying here is sometimes, I think even in our day, we tend to elide the force of that confession, Jesus is Lord, and say it really doesn't have social ramifications. It really doesn't have political ramifications. It really doesn't have cultural ramifications. It's kind of for, you know, the sweet by and by where one day there will be this kingdom of God. Well, it certainly is for the fullness of the kingdom of God. But Jesus didn't say, at some point, you know, somewhere, I'll be a king. He said to his disciples when he was raised from the dead, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. And he was raised from the dead in the vindication that he is ascended to glory at the right hand of the father right now. He is a king. And in fact, he commissioned us as his followers with that very authority. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you. That's his authoritative pronouncement as Lord. And I think we see the early Christians operating, preaching, proclaiming, evangelizing, making disciples in this same confidence. The book of Acts, for example, closes by describing the apostle Paul's ministry as this, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. End of story, right? This is how the book of Acts concludes. Proclaiming the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is our message. Jesus is Lord. In fact, probably in your Bibles, if you're reading from Acts to Romans, you just look right across the page. And how does the Apostle Paul describe his ministry in the opening to the letter to the Romans? He describes his ministry as bringing about the obedience of faith for the sake of Christ's name among all the nations, just like Jesus said to do. This was the reality because Christ is Lord. Many people today say that the early church did not concern herself with politics. The New Testament church, let's say, they weren't concerned about political movements and things of that nature. I want to submit to you that that's not accurate. Now, if people mean by that the church did not operate the way most people conceive of political operating, then that's true. The early church was not politically activist, if you want to put it that way. That was not their agenda, that was not their concern. However, the church was, by the power of the Spirit, actually showing men what true politics are. This is how humans live in light of the risen son, that Jesus is Lord. And this is how all the world is called to live. And in fact, this is authoritative proclamation The church came proclaiming the king of the world. That's not political. That's very political. The church came singing that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That's not political. That's ultimate politics. This is how we will live together in peace and justice. Jesus is Lord. And that's why the church would not confess Caesar is Lord. Jesus is Lord. This is the reality of the world. There will always be the Caesars who are pretenders to ultimate authority, but they can only be pretenders. They can only be idolatrous counterfeits. Jesus is Lord. That is the reality because he has been risen from the dead and been raised from the dead. You see, the reality that Jesus is Lord is the concrete condition that the Church upholds for a just society, and that's what we have to have the confidence of today. We need to take that confession seriously throughout all of human existence. Now, I want to move from this concrete touchstone, if you will, to other social realities that are entailed by this. You have a master in heaven. Although you might say they're more in principial form. We'll try to lay this groundwork so that we can build on it in the future. And the first social reality I wanna mention here then is that our good as humans, as mankind, as human societies, our good is in God. Our good is in God. We've already seen God is good, He's good in his creation, he's good in everything he does, he's good in his redemption and bringing Jesus Christ to lordship of all. But I simply want to point out here that he is what's often called in our social context, our common good. He is the good that unites us all together. There's been a kind of a revival in recent years about talking about the common good in human societies, and I think that's to be welcomed. We're all feeling, in our 21st century world, the fractured nature of our human civilizations. In fact, it's been a little bit unnerving, I think, for many people in this world when these great social systems that we thought we'd built in the West, you know, the greatest government system ever here in America, let's just say, and we're finding that it's not able to sustain. This isn't bringing in the kingdom of God. What holds us together? We say there has to be a common good that holds us together as a society, and there's truth. We don't hold together as humans without some common good holding us together. But I think we need to clarify what we're talking about. When we talk about the common good, we're not only talking about things that benefit everyone. Some people use the term common good in that sense. Well, if it benefits everybody, then it's a common good. We might even use an example of a road. Well, you build a road. And it's free to everybody to use, right? So it benefits everybody. It's a common good. Even if they don't drive on that road themselves, their groceries come in a truck down that road and get delivered to their grocery store. So they benefit from that road. It's a common good in that sense. And there's something about that that's good. But we're talking about something much deeper than that. Some people talk about the common good as things we can all share in together without detriment to anyone. Well, most material goods obviously have things like limits. And so if I'm sitting on that particular chair, you can't sit on that particular chair too. At least not very comfortably, right? The fact that I am possessing it in that sense means you can't possess it. I'm excluding it from you. It's not a common good. It's particular to me in that sense. So the thing, well, what is common to everybody? Well, what are those things that we can actually increase our share of, so to speak, but without decreasing it for anybody else? In fact, that might increase it for other people. What about things like, Education. If you become more educated, does that take away how much education I can get? Well, you took it all. Sorry. I guess there's none left for me. Well, no. Actually, it doesn't work that way. In fact, it can work the opposite way, right? The more educated you are, the more you can help me become educated. This is something common we're sharing in. Oh, this is, we're starting to get closer to what we're talking about here when we're talking about this common good. But I think from a Christian perspective, we can say the common good is something essentially shared because it's something that we can only have when we have it together. By its very nature, it can only be had together, in common, in community. And when we see the common good this way, we realize that all the really human things, the things we really care about, The things that even distinguish us from the animal kingdom out there. These are the common good. These are what we need to live together as the kind of creature God has made us, as image bearers of God. Spiritual beings, intelligent beings, social beings, things like justice. These are the kinds of things you can't have if you don't have it together. I can't just claim justice for myself, right? I've got it. Because it's inherently a relational thing. It's gotta be in relation to you. And we have to share in it together. Things like love. These are the things that we ultimately care about. These are the things that ultimately drive us, that we desire, that we were made for because we were made for God. And that's what we can never forget. If we're talking about a just society and our principles that would inform us about what this looks like, we have to remember, who are you? What are you made for? You are made for God. But guess what? You're not made for God just as an individual. You're made for God by your very nature as a community. You're made to share in all of his goodness and his love and his productivity, his generosity, And it's in Christ that we see this come out so clearly. In Christ, we see our common destiny as mankind. Here is the man, the ultimate man who shows us, reveals to us what it is to be a man in relationship to God and to find fulfillment in that way. And he brings with him a multitude of brothers. This is our common destiny in the kingdom of God and it's found in God. What fulfills our nature? what makes us the kind of creature that we were meant to be, it's nothing short of God himself. And Christians must never shrink back from this. We start thinking about a just society of substituting something less than God for our ultimate good. So our good is in God. Let me share another basic reality that we as Christians believe, confess, and can share with the world. Because of what I've just said, Jesus is Lord, our good is in God. I want to say this as well. Authority is good. Authority is good. You want a just society? You need authority. Because authority is sharing of this common good with others in the ways that God ordains. the order that God gives. We need authority. So let me just say here today publicly, let us have more and more and more and more and more and more authority. Let us revel in authority. Maybe I can plagiarize from Amos since I'm thinking about the minor prophets here. Let authority roll down like waters, right? We want this whole world awash, covered, steaming with authority. And that's good. Give us more authority, please. because we want a just world with Jesus at its heart. But as soon as you say that, that makes us a little bit nervous. Shouldn't we try to limit authority? I'm not so sure about this. This authority might be impinging on my freedom, on my ability to do what I want to do here, right? Hey, Pastor, don't forget, we live in a sinful world, right? And in a sinful world, shouldn't we try to limit authority, keep it in its place, you know? I can see why we say that. We fear tyranny, and rightly so. We fear oppression. We fear enslavement, rightly so. But folks, the problem is not authority. In fact, in each one of those cases, the problem is a lack of authority. You see, authority should not be confused with mere power or force. Neither is authority merely a function, although it does work in this manner, it's not merely a function of public office. It is a communication of goodness and truth for the particulars of our lives. How are we gonna live together in God's goodness? I think authority needs to be understood like a very closely related word, like authorship. What does an author do? Well, an author authorizes. An author communicates. He gives some real good to others who need it. And that's what an authority does. An authority authorizes, sets free to do good. Now, why can we just see what I've said about authority as well as wish for more of it? Because what the scripture says is all authority comes from God. All. I mean, if it's authority, it comes from God. No questions asked, right? Now, if it doesn't come from God, is it authority? No. This is the distinction we're making. In fact, it's wonderful to recognize that all authority comes from God because God is a generous father. And he is always giving of himself to produce good. His character is woven into the wisdom of the works of his hands so that we can know it and we can respond to it. And this whole world works by his authority. Young people, if you're studying in school, Even things like you might have a science class or a nature study or something of that nature. Don't forget, you're studying God's authority. You're studying God authorizing his world to work, to be what it's supposed to be. It won't work without that. It will fall apart without God's authority. And this is wonderful to contemplate, actually. You begin to see how generous his authority is, how fruitful his authority is, how he really is a good father. By the way, when we pay attention to the way this works and thinking about it in terms of having a just society, this is what's sometimes called natural law. You'll find those kinds of discussions a lot when it comes to human society, politics, how we ought to work. Natural law is a true and good thing. It starts as basic as Good is to be done and evil avoided, right? What is this talking about? It's talking about we can, God has revealed himself in the works of his hands and we can't help but see it. We humans made in his image will see it and we will respond to it. It's the kind of thing we sometimes said you can't not know, otherwise you're dead, right? If you're alive and functioning as a human being, You're knowing these things, and you're responsible to God for those things. In other words, God's authority is working in his world, and men are responsible to it. It's a liberating and freeing thing. So, pardon me. Well, sometimes, actually, in our American history, American Christians or, you know, have been fairly nervous of talking about natural law in terms of thinking somehow the world is operating apart from God, that we can just operate and build a just society apart from God. That's not at all how we should see it as Christians. Natural law cannot function independently as a basis for a just society, but submission to the natural law is necessary for simply the character of God worked out in his works. It's an absolutely necessary feature of a just society. Any society, any human society, that tries to flout natural law will not be a just society. It will fail in that because it's ultimately flouting God's authority. We can go on from that to say all authority comes from God and is vested in Jesus Christ. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. When Jesus says that, he's not using hyperbole. He is saying that. All authority It belongs to me. If you want a just society, you have to take that seriously. It doesn't come from anywhere else. Who is the man that has the authority now, so to speak, who's been invested with as the judge of all, the king of all? Jesus. Pardon me. Now that's actually wonderful to recognize when we see how good God is in the redemption that Jesus Christ is bringing about. He's exactly the one we would want to have all authority, that we could trust in to have all authority. But no human authority can ever operate contrary to Jesus Christ and claim to have authority. As soon as it does that, it is actually cutting itself off from authority. It is denying the very source of authority. Pardon me. It's damming up the river and still wanting to irrigate the crops. You can't do it. All authority comes from God. It's vested in Jesus Christ. It does not arise from us independently of Jesus Christ. And there's a real temptation for us as human beings to think that Well, one, to think of authority as not good, to think it arises from us, and therefore we have to put it in its box, so to speak, to keep it away from us. We don't want it influencing us. No, God's good authority in Christ flows throughout the world, and even into human creations, our human governments, sometimes we call them, of whatever level or kind. In 1 Peter 2, verse 13, the scripture tells us to be subject to all human creations, is literally the word there, whether it's to the emperor, the king, as the official, or to governors. You say, you mean actually human, these things that happen according to God's providence over the course of time, different nations, different polities, different ways humans live together, those actually participate in God's authority? Yeah, they do. You say, but it's a human creation. Yeah, but where does it get its authority? From God. If it doesn't get its authority from God, then it's worthless. In fact, when human creations begin to set themselves against the Lord and against his anointed, they take away their own authority. Right? This is the way authority works, and this is why it is good. We need to move on quickly here to another essential reality. True religion is necessary to adjust society. True religion is necessary to adjust society. You see, religion is not really one aspect of what people do in human society. That's the way it's treated in our world today. You have your religion here, you have your job here, you have your politics here. Whatever you do in your religious life, that's your private business. What we're saying here is religion is not that. Mankind is essentially religious, just as he is essentially social, and every human society will be oriented by some religion. A pipe fitters association, just to clarify what I mean here, a pipe fitters association does not need to necessarily discuss religion at its meetings. Or a conference for bankers doesn't have to make sure everybody attends a session on religion, on theology. Nevertheless, There will be an operative religion working in the background of every human society, whether it's a pipe fitters association or a bankers association or anything else. There will always be some religion working in the background. One recent way I saw this come out, reading some words by the historian Walter McDougall, whom I've learned a lot from over the years, taught for decades at University of Pennsylvania. But he's especially attuned to how civil religion tends to function in human societies. And so he talks about, to give an illustration here, his experience as a teacher where he would teach a seminar that he said often baffled his students or made them not sure what the class was even about. But as they would come into class, he said he would postpone all introductory remarks and have them sit for an hour while he played a videotape of a presidential inaugural ceremony. And then these are his words. After the last ruffles and flourishes, I asked the students, in a seeming non sequitur, what sorts of activities comprise the liturgy, meaning the ceremony, I explain, of worship in a church or synagogue? Well, prayers, they answered, or hymns and psalms. Did we just observe those activities on the tape, I ask. Yes, we sure did. What about a sermon or a homily? Well, absolutely, for what is an inaugural address but a political sermon. Did we witness a solemn procession, an invocation of the divine, a convocation in which the congregation celebrates the common creed? Yes, again. How about a call to repentance, an amendment to those shortcomings besetting our nation? Yes, again. How about a dismissal in which the new high priest calls on the assembly to go forth in faith and to serve as good citizens? Yes, again. Well, I conclude, if a presidential inauguration possesses all the characteristics of a religious service, what religion does it serve? That's the question he posed to his students. Okay, if this is, we're acting like a religion here, what religion are we partaking in? I think it's a good question because what he's challenging us to think about is we humans can never operate without it. It will always be there. and it will always show up. You can't pretend like we can build a just society regardless of what the religion is. That's not really relevant. That's kind of your private business. Sorry folks, in the world that God made, in the world that Jesus rules, it doesn't work that way. There's always going to be a religion. And as Christians from the beginning have argued, and I think correctly, and we need to follow in their footsteps in this way, You actually can't build a just society without true religion, a true relationship to God. Any human society that really is a society, not just a chance conglomeration of persons, will corporately enact some kind of a relationship to God. If it's idolatrous, it will have false gods, but you simply can't avoid it. And I think one of the great lies that modern liberalism has told us successfully in many ways over the last few centuries is that religion is the source of violence and that you can have a just and peaceful society by relegating religion to the private sphere. That's how we have peace and justice. You make religion private, don't make it a public issue, then we all live in peace. And what that lie has blinded us to is how much violence we've perpetrated in the names of our false religions, right? The 20th century can beat everybody when it comes to violence. How much did our privatizing religion buy us in terms of peace? Christians used to say it openly. You want a just society, you have to have true religion. That's how it works. One more point, and I need to close quickly here today. I know we're covering a lot of territory, but I think this is also true from what we've seen from Scripture. Society works by serving one another. Society works. Human societies work by serving one another. You have a master in heaven. Who is that master? How does he work? How does he institute a good society? He died, and he rose again from the dead. And this is how we live together. Again, this is something the natural man does not want to see. And I would challenge us as Christians to think carefully on this. Here's an example from Ludwig von Mises, who's a notable economist and often considered a conservative. But when you look at his philosophy of human action, this is from his book, Human Action. Listen to what he says. Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men, and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict. And the Christian says to that, false. You have a totally wrong understanding of mankind. You don't know where we came from. You don't know what we're made for. You don't understand how we work. And you're going to invent a system that's going to build in those idolatries if you don't understand this. We actually were made for love. We actually were made to love one another, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And that's how a good society actually does work. Even sin can't erase it. Pervasiveness of sin can't can't obliterate this image of God in which we actually do want love. In some sense, you can't even have wars. You know what I'm talking about? One of the worst things we can do to each other is mass kill. We can't even have wars without love. Because why do men fight wars? Ultimately, they love their neighbor. They love something they think is worth protecting, worth fighting for, and therefore they're willing to do that. You simply can't get around the fact that society actually does work by serving one another. Now sometimes this is called by a fancy name, subsidiarity. Perhaps you've heard that term before. And again, we need to be clear about what we're talking about. This is the idea that all forms of human society exist to help, support, relieve, or reinforce one another. The original Latin of that term means help, support, relieve, reinforce. Or to a quote from another man, it's a social form in which higher levels of association are ordered toward the fulfillment of lower levels of association, and ultimately to the fulfillment of the human person. In fact, the higher levels, if you want to call them that, only exist in and through the lives of the lower levels, and the lower levels are fulfilled through elevation into the higher levels. It's all intertwined. It's not this against that. Society is not built on competition. And you won't get a just society by trying to build one on that. You won't say, for example, this is why, just to challenge our thinking, why this is not an adequate statement. Big government is the problem and we need less of it. Now, in context of a conversation around here, we might say something like that. Get general understanding of what we mean. There's an overweening and overreaching going on But his size really the issue Already we've set up an issue of well government and us that's a competitive relationship and As soon as you think of the world that way you're missing out on the justice that Jesus brings It's actually not the way the world works from Jesus's perspective We need the vision to see it in a new way. I Through authority, each smaller order is integrated into the friendships that constitute the substance of the higher levels of order. Here we have unity and difference not in conflict, but actually requiring each other. Remember how we talked about this with men and women in marriage? You don't solve the problems of conflict by making women like men or men like women. You unify them in their differences. It's actually through their differences that they can become unified. And the same thing is true in society at large. In fact, this is what Augustine would call order or peace, the tranquility of order. And this is the way Jesus' kingdom works. Revelation gives us this vision, echoing what the prophets said. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. We're going to go on next week, Lord, willing to talk on a practical level about some of the principal things we've talked about today. But I simply want to challenge us that we as the church lead the way to a just world with Jesus at his heart. Christ's followers do overthrow tyranny and establish justice, but not with more worldly force, but with peace. Receiving the world as a gift and participating in God's truth, we don't operate by fear and force, but by love and faith and hope and the power of the spirit of the risen Christ who reigns forever and ever. If that's your hope today, would you confess your faith as his congregation, Jesus is Lord, all together. Jesus is Lord. Amen. Pastor Justin, would you lead us in prayer? Let's pray. Lord, this is Just as we said, our hope is in you and in your rule and in your lordship over this, your created world and reality. And Lord, even our recognition of that is, we would confess, is weakened through your grace growing. And so, Lord, we ask that you would continue your work in us, allowing us to grow in wisdom. Lord, it would seem that we need help in many ways, but even as we live day by day with families and within our church, Lord, these your truths are of profound import in how we approach that. Keep us, Lord, shepherd us away from selfish competition, from seeking our own desires. But draw us into, Lord, through your Spirit, giving ourselves away in love to one another, serving one another, considering our brother's needs more important than our own. Lord, these simple and profound truths so often escape us. We grasp at them, Lord, but We are dependent upon you working in us to draw us into this, your truth, your reality, and your authority. Lord, we desire to be faithful disciples, and yet so often we wander and stray from what you have called us to do, from your truth. We close our eyes in the midst of the light of Christ that you have revealed to us. And so, Lord, help us. Help us to grow in life, in reality, in recognizing the good authority and that our lives be a clear proclamation and testimony that this is what is true and this is life. Amen.