Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Trump's Tariffs and Temple Tax

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

“I'm not an economist, but I think Mr. Trump is doing his very best to reset the narrative on global trade,” Pastor Allen said, “And the short answer is the United States has been ripped off for a long, long time.” In this podcast, Pastor Allen provides common-sense perspectives on current issues like the tariffs, the stock market, China, intellectual property rights, government spending, and more. He also discusses Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Holy Week, and how Jesus boldly spoke truth and fulfilled His assignment, even when facing adversity. We’re called to do the same. Through personal stories and biblical insight, Pastor Allen delivers an encouraging message that helps us see how obedience to God leads to a greater Kingdom impact.__ It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

You welcome back to culture and Christianity. Our goal is to live out our faith. I suspect you know that by now. This is my opportunity to kind of do an update on current events and culture and how it impacts our faith. And I want to take a specific week out of Scripture as the focus for this discussion. I think there's a lot of parallels with what's happening in our current world. I'm not trying to draw parallels between biblical characteristics. characters and current characters.

But I would identify some parallels between current activity and what happened in the section of time we're going to look at. I want to take that period of time between Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and when he's betrayed in the Garden of Gitsemone. I don't think I'll wander into the Eastern narrative. I'll run out of time. But those few days, it's about a week between Jesus making his entry into Jerusalem. and when he's betrayed by Judas in the garden is one of the most fascinating blocks of time that we have in all of the Gospels.

And it's really, it's such a critical window. The things that are happening will determine the fate of humanity. I don't think it's an overstatement. And I think the more we can understand it, the more we can live out our faith in this culture. We've kind of romanticized it. I laughed with some friends not long ago. You know, when I was a child and we went to school on Palm Sunday, they would. give us little pieces of palm, they weren't really palm trees. They were a little more like

probably the fern fronds, but they told us they were palm branches. And my memory of as a kid, if my mom was coming to me with a branch off a tree, it was not about a triumphal entry. It was going to be a punishment. But we've romanticized that whole Palm Sunday thing, and I'm not opposed to that, but we've lost the meaning of that week what Jesus' entry into the city was. And I think if we can understand that better, we can understand what God's doing right now better. So that's the target today. I hope it's helpful to you. I hope it's meaningful. I've spent my life trying to understand the implications of Scripture for the world that I live in. I had an opportunity at one point to have been a professional academic, and I could have stayed in

academia and written theoretical papers about scripture and the history of the church and what the people of faith had done in the seasons before I arrived in time. And I made a couple of decisions. One, I didn't want to do that because it didn't seem very relevant to very many people. And two, I had a very clear understanding that God was inviting me to serve in the midst of his people. And that required more than a theoretical knowledge of scripture and history. I had to really understand what it meant to live out the truth of God's word. And I'm still working on that. I very much imagine myself to be a beginner. But I have some experience.

I just don't imagine. You see, we're finite creatures, and I don't think we master an infinite God. And if you've been in church all your life, and I mean, maybe that's decades for you, or maybe you're just a really quick learner, it's been a couple years for you. I would invite you to the posture of a learner. If we can humble ourselves and cultivate a reverence or respect, the fear of God, I think the ceiling for our lives is almost unlimited. If we get stuck in pride and arrogance and hubris, I think we're frozen.

So we're going to pick this up kind of like beginners and learners, and we'll wander through this a little bit. But I'm going to read some scripture, maybe a little bit more than I would normally in a podcast. But, you know, it is the authority for most of the ideas, the opinions, perspectives that I hold. They are distilled from scripture. I mean, there's some opinion intermixed with that, no doubt. but it's at least an informed opinion. It's not just a radical opinion.

One of my favorite comments, I'm at the altar after every service and people come up and say, Pastor, I know what the Bible says, but let me tell you what I think. And I try to be respectful at that point, but inside I'm always thinking, oh, do tell. I think we start with what the scripture says and then we have to form our opinions in submission to that.

We don't try to get the scripture to submit to what we want. But that's more an attitude. that comes to us than what I think we begin with. We might as well start then. The lead in the news for several days has been Trump and his tariffs. It's freaked out the stock market. It's caused the talking heads to lose their minds. If you're a person who checks your 401k or your retirement on a regular basis,

it's probably caused you a little hardburn. I think our mantra that we've used a lot, watch, listen, think, and then act is appropriate. It seems to me from a very high-level view, and I'm not an economist. But I think Mr. Trump is doing his very best to reset the narrative on global trade. And the short answer is the United States has being been ripped off for a long, long time. And this is not about a political party because both parties have been involved in this discussion and have either lacked the awareness, the ability, the courage, for whatever reason, that they haven't engaged it.

Trade deals normally take months and months and months, if not years, to negotiate. and President Trump is trying to negotiate dozens of them in a matter of days. Some would say it's impossible, but I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt. They told us the border was secure before he was elected. And in a matter of days, he managed to close the border for the most part. I think he's earned the opportunity to look at this global looting that's been taking place, particularly with China. I mean, it is well understood.

I don't think there's any contention that they've been stealing our intellectual property. The good ideas we have, you know, if we are producing something here or there, and it becomes something that is sought after if the production gets up about, I heard somebody say if it's being produced in China and they start selling 5 million units, you know, they will rip it off. I mean, there's just no question about that. It's wrong. I'm not saying all the Chinese people are wrong,

but the Chinese government has sponsored, supported, promoted that kind of theft of intellectual property for material gain. And it has to be corrected. And it takes courage. It's going to be disruptive. It may mean some of the things that we all like at very cheap prices, change for a season. Ultimately, I think it will bring some very good things to our world. But change is very seldom welcome. So Trump's tariffs are in play.

stock market is a little uncertain or certainly is on a wild ride at the moment. I think what you and I have to do is, you know, where do you get your news is the question I'm asked all the time? Because people that watch what's talking head do you watch? And it's not a single source thing. That's where I think scripture is so important because it gives you some baselines on good and evil to understand what you're watching through the windows of your life. And how do you understand it?

And so I'm going to start with the scripture. It's in Luke 20. And it's in this window. All the scriptures I'm going to read to you on this session, fall in this window of time between Jesus' triumphal entry when he comes down the Mount of Olives. I lived in Jerusalem. I studied at Hebrew University there, and I lived just north of the Mount of Olives on Mount Scopus. There's a little ridge.

It's not really individual hills. There's a ridge that runs north and south. And so I could walk a half a mile from where I was living a little flat down to the Mount of Olives, which I would do from time to time, and just sit there and often watch sunset over the city of Jerusalem. And I would think, you know, just across, the only thing separated me from the city was the Cadrone Valley. And I'd sit there and think, you know, Isaiah prayed there and David prayed there. And Jesus prayed there.

And Paul was over there. And now I'm sitting here and praying. It was always such a bizarre feeling to me. It removed it from the sense of a fairy tale. But the topography of that triumphal entry is very real to me. coming down the hill, the Mount of Olives, with the city spread before. You can see over all of Jerusalem, even today, from the Mount of Olives. And as Jesus is descending that mountain with the city before him,

and the crowds cheering, and the children cheering, it was the most triumphant day publicly of Jesus' earthly ministry. And yet it is really the beginning of the series of events that will lead him to crucifixion. So it's a pretty important period of time. He comes down that hill to the midst of the cheers of the people. He goes into the temple mountain. That's where he's going to spend his days this week. He's going to be in the temple every day. Teaching, ministering, he's healing the sick.

It says he opened the eyes of the blind and he healed the lame. I mean, he's not doing small miracles. He's not praying for people with colds or sniffles. He's opening blind eyes. His antagonists are becoming more entrenched than ever. They're so angered by what he's doing that they're beginning to plot how to kill him. I mean, they can't tolerate it any longer. And these aren't pagans.

It's not Roman soldiers. These are the leaders, the most significant religious leaders in the community. The people with the best background in Scripture, the people who are most fastidious about keeping the religious rules and the religious holidays. You know, amongst us, if we pull that into the 21st century, they'd be the most church people amongst us. They would be professors or pastors or bishops or clerical leaders, whatever label is most appropriate for the circles that you. move in, these people are determined that Jesus has to be silenced. And Jesus keeps ministering to the people and challenging them. Luke 20, that's where I started.

I know I took a detour. It says as Jesus is teaching the people in the temple courts, the chief priest and the teachers of the law came. This is Luke 20, the first opening verses. And they said this to him, tell us by what authority you're doing these things. Who gave you this authority? and Jesus, let me ask you a question. John's baptism, was it of God or not?

And so they step aside to talk about it amongst themselves. And they say, if we say that John's baptism was godly, then he'll ask us why we rejected John. And if we say that it wasn't godly, the people will be angry at us because they think John was a prophet. And they come back to Jesus and said, we don't know. That's a lie. They have an opinion, but they're not willing to tell the truth.

because they don't want to have to accept the consequences of telling the truth. Now that principle is very much in play in the 21st century. We have all kinds of levels of leadership in our nation, from our local churches to our local governments to the highest offices of our land, where we have leaders who have access to the truth and may know the truth, but they won't tell it clearly and plainly and lead with the truth because they don't want to accept the consequences of the truth. But when they said that to Jesus, Jesus said,

then I'm not answering your question. But what I think is really intriguing to me is what they said to Jesus. They're trying to shut him down. They want him to be quiet. He's overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And now he's healing and he's telling the people to not listen to the words, not to do what the leaders are doing.

And so their message to him is, by what authority, are you doing these things? Did the Roman governor pilot tell you you could do this? Did the Jewish governor Herod tell you you can do this? By what authority? The implication is you don't have the authority to do the things that you're doing. So we're here to tell you to stop it. You've got to stop.

You're acting beyond your scope of authority. Well, what's Jesus been doing? Well, he's been raising the dead and healing the sick. He's been exposing the looting and the fraud in the temple. and they don't like any of that. Now, they don't have the authority themselves to raise the dead or heal the sick, and they've got their snouts in the trough in the temple, so they're not about to complain about that.

Jesus' answer is brilliant. I mean, he exposes their recalcitrant attitudes and points to how hard their hearts are. But it's a very similar question that's being asked today about what's happening in our own world. You know, does Elon Musk really have the authority to do what he's doing. How dare he do that? He's not an elected official. No, no, he's really not. But the truth is he's working for the executive branch, and there's only one elected member of the

executive branch, and that's the president of the United States. He appoints the rest of the people who help him carry out whatever the people who elected him sent him to that office to do. That idea, that pattern is not new with President Trump. That pattern has followed the equation in Washington in my entire life. It happens to be constitutional. But the posing of the question reveals the heart of the people who are asking it. They don't like what's happening. We don't like what you're doing, which is completely illogical to me. Tell me again, why you don't like exposing fraud and waste. The Doge team has found billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent spending. I mean, really bizarre stuff. I mean,

Social Security payments made to people who have been dead for a long time. Unemployment benefits being paid to people who aren't born yet. I mean, clearly fraudulent abuses of the system, to me, those things would be, I would imagine, celebrated pretty much universally. Same way I feel about what Jesus was doing. You would think if blind eyes are being open and lame people are being healed, there'd be pretty much a celebratory attitude on the temple mount. But that wasn't the reality.

and it's not the reality that we're seeing either. We hear all these angry voices. And it's really confusing. You know, I think the principle that we can distill that it'll hold true, whether it's the first century or the 21st century, sometimes when the right thing is being done, it can't be opposed on the basis of outcomes or intent.

You can't really say, we don't think you should save money. You can't say we don't think you should open blind eyes. So we have to challenge the behavior that we don't like on some irrelevant issue. And the ones that the scribes and the Pharisees chose was, you don't have the authority to do this. And it makes me smile that in the 21st century, we have a lot of voices, a lot of talking heads, a lot of pundits,

a lot of political leaders saying to the people that are exposing the fraud and the waste and the lies, you don't have the authority to do this. And I very much believe the president does have the authority to do this. In fact, I think it has to be done. And I think it's incumbent upon you and me to be aware enough and alert enough to understand what's happening, to know that it isn't political. It's for the well-being of our children. I, for one, am tired of being lectured by politicians that we should pay our fair share,

while they are not diligent stewards of the resources that have already been entrusted to them. We all understand that a government contract is a contract, filled with more money than almost any other kind of contract you can be involved with, whether they're building roads or rockets or whatever it may be. We've just accepted that the government is inefficient, that it's bloated. What we haven't paused to think about frequently enough is that it's our dollars. The government doesn't have any money. They can print money, but if they print the money, we have to create the value that supports it.

The only money that the government has are dollars that, that we have given to them, and we should expect them to be good stewards of those dollars. Well, Jesus understood the nature of their argument, and he didn't just give in. He challenged them and exposed their hypocrisy. I think we have to have the courage to stand up in our culture. I want to pick up another point from that window in Jesus' life, because I think it's so helpful. I've alluded to it already. As he enters the city, and there's the cheering and the children and all of the celebratory,

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus, the first thing that's recorded that he does is he goes to the temple and he overturns the tables of the money changers. Some of you remember that story. And he drove the money changers out. That's been interpreted many ways through the years. But I think it's a very important point. Jesus has been to Jerusalem many times.

You know, Jesus goes to Jerusalem. and the first time when he's eight days old, his parents take him to the temple to comply with the requirements of the law. We know he's there again when he's 12 years old because his parents lose him and they find him in the temple debating scripture with the scholars. The Gospels record that Jesus has visited Jerusalem many times, and upon none of those occasions,

has he ever challenged the money changers in the temple. So this visits different. Their behavior is no different. The timing is different. This visit to Jerusalem, Jesus is much more provocative in his messaging to the leaders of the city. I would submit to you that when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, he's been telling his disciples on the journey to Jerusalem. When we get there, I'm going to be betrayed and arrested, and he explains to them what's going to happen. And they have a hard time understanding that.

And when they get to the Mount of Olives, he sends two of his disciples to go find a donkey. for him to ride into the city, a very clear symbol of a leader coming into the city of Jerusalem. You need a little background on Judaism, perhaps to grab that. But it's a very clear message that the king is coming into the city.

But Jesus, when he gets on that donkey to head into the city, he knows with absolute certainty what awaits him just in a matter of hours. There's nothing random about that. He descends that hill to the midst of the cheers of the people.

In fact, he stops halfway down the Mount of Olives and begins to weep over the city of Jerusalem. It's in Luke 19, if you want to check me. There's a little chapel built there now. It's called the Chapel of Dominus Flebitt, the place where Jesus wept in Latin. He didn't weep in Latin.

It's labeled in Latin. It's one of my favorite of all the churches in Jerusalem. It's one of, if not my favorite. It's such a peaceful little place. It's kind of tucked away. But Jesus is weeping over the city of Jerusalem. And he said, if you'd only recognized what would bring you peace, but you didn't recognize it.

so now your enemies are going to build an embankment against you. He's referring to siege warfare. In the first century, the most common, you know, today we have our warfare. We use inter-ballistic missiles and drones. But in the first century, the most common form of warfare would have been to encircle a city. And you would basically starve it into submission. Nobody could go in. Nobody could come out.

So they couldn't resupply. and then when it was deemed that the city was weakened enough, you would build siege ramps. You'd build earth and ramps up against the most vulnerable parts of the city wall or the city gates so that you could either breach, climb over the walls, or you could batter them and break them down. So Jesus is on the Mount of Olives looking at Jerusalem, and he said your enemies are going to build embankments against you.

You're going to be besieged. And within a few short years of Jesus' death, the Roman legions came and did precisely that. In fact, today, if I could stand you on the Mount of Olives and you could look towards the city, you would see the remains of the Roman embankment still built against the walls of the temple that was there when Jesus was on the Mount of Olives. He's the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets. And he's weeping over the city in the midst of the triumph and the parade and the celebratory language. He's saying you're going to be destroyed.

They won't leave one stone on another and they'll dash the heads of your babies. against the stones of this city. That's not the Jesus we talk about. Jesus is prophesying the destruction of the city. He's going to rule and reign from that city, from a new Jerusalem over all the earth, and he's pronouncing a judgment upon it that is brutal. You see, there are points in God's economy

where there's no more forgiveness. We have such a sloppy Christianity right now. We've lost, I think we've lost our imagination of that. But Jesus isn't giving us. them another option. He's saying, this is coming to you because you didn't recognize what I was doing. Now, I think that's a relevant point for us. I'm of the opinion that God is moving in the earth. I think God is moving in this nation and that we as people of faith have an opportunity to choose him, to cooperate with him, to yield to him. If we will choose that, if we'll be willing to stand for a

biblical worldview, not to be angry or belligerent or hateful, I'm certainly not violent, but if we'll stand up for the truth in all the arenas where we have influence. If you're a teacher in that influence, if you work in health care in that arena, if you're a minister, tell the truth. Whatever arena God has given you influence, and certainly at your kitchen table and your holiday table, tell the truth, the biblical truth. If we'll do that, I believe our children and grandchildren have the brightest future in the history of our nation. If we don't do that, I am very concerned that they'll face God's judgment. Hey, I've written the new book, Angels, Demons, and You.

I believe. I believe in angels. I believe in demons. And I believe they impact you and me. We better have a plan for that. You know, I meet Christians all the time. He says, well, I just don't believe in that, pastor. I don't like to talk about that.

That's a novel approach. You know, I like to eat chocolate. Suppose I said, I just don't believe chocolate will make you fat. I don't believe that. It wouldn't make me thin. Denying the truth of Scripture will not make us safer, happier, are our lives more fruitful. We need to take counsel from the Word of God so we can live victorious lives. Angels and demons are real. The demons oppose the purposes of God for you. The angels will help with the purposes

of God for you. We need a plan for how we can engage in a meaningful way. This book is taken from scripture intended to help you flourish in your journey through time. You can get a copy at Alan Jackson.com slash warfare. Jesus leaves there, the Mount of Olives, goes into the temple. He clears the place. And we've interpreted that into something else. Jesus drove out the profiteers. Please understand what was happening. They're required by law to offer sacrifices in order to please God. And at Passover, a part of that is a lamb. Well, the people who operate the temple, they're no different than we are. They recognize that there is a forced market that the people have to have a lamb. So guess what? The people that lead the temple get into the lamb business.

And then they understand that they don't only want to be at the point of sale to sell the lambs, and they can charge an extravagant fee. They could own the supply chain. So they actually do. They own the shepherds fields just outside of Bethlehem. That's where the Jesus announcement started some 33 years earlier with the angels outside Bethlehem to the shepherds. Well, those shepherds work for the temple. They drive the sheep down the Kidron Valley through the sheep gate to the pools of Bethesda.

the leadership structure of the temple controls the entire supply chain and then they charge the people an outrageous price for the sacrifice that they are required by their religious laws enforced by their religious leaders to offer to God. And Jesus is so angered by the hypocrisy of it that he overturns the tables and he said, You have turned my father's house,

which is intended to be a house of prayer, into a den of thieves. Now the church has taken that, the historic church, capital C, and we have said, see, it's a prohibition on selling things at church. I think that's a complete misunderstanding of scripture. I don't believe Jesus is condemning an exchange at all. He's an advocate for paying the temple tax. There's a tax to be at the temple.

He sent Peter Fishing to find the money for the temple tax. when they brought him a coin, a Roman coin, and said, do we pay taxes to Caesar? They were trying to trap him. And Jesus said, render unto Caesar, what is Caesar's? And unto God, what is God's? Jesus has no prohibition that I see anywhere in Scripture upon the exchange of a price in the context of your faith. The whole notion of the sacrificial system, if you weren't a herdsman yourself, you would either have to purchase or barter or trade for the sacrifice you needed all the way back to

Kane and Abel. You know, Abel tended flocks and Kane grew crops, and Kane wanted to offer his crops to God. He could have traded the crops for an animal, but he didn't want to. He was rebellious. So I think we have mistakenly taken that passage of Jesus in the temple and said it's wrong to ever sell anything in the church. You shouldn't sell a cup of coffee. You shouldn't sell a T-shirt. We have a bookstore in the church.

It's really not so much a bookstore as a resource. Center, but they've got some things, and I always smile. I've had multiple meetings for people say, you know, Pastor, I can't believe you sell a T-shirt. But if we have a guest come to the church for a concert or something, people will line up dozens of people in deep to buy the merchandise that the artist brings. And I've never had anybody say to me that was inappropriate. I think it's a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying. I think he's challenging the greedy, stealing that is taking place by the people in power

at the sacrifice of the working people that are being burdened with the greed of their leaders. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty familiar to me. I am really tired of sending relatively ordinary people to Washington, D.C., who have led ordinary lives with ordinary jobs, with ordinary jobs, and after a few years in D.C., they're multimillionaires. I don't think the water in Washington makes you just an economic genius. Something else is happening. I don't think that's the intent of the system.

And I think what's happening in Jerusalem has been happening before our very eyes for a long time. And then that's the class of people that oppose the truth being told. They come to Jesus and say, by what authority are you doing this? How dare you do that? And it seems to me that's the prevalent attitude right now that we're seeing in Washington. You know, by what authority are you doing that? Well, the people screaming the question are siphoning off too much profit. I think, again, from a high-level view, the opposition to Jesus is unrelenting.

It doesn't stop. It started that day during the triumphal entry. They present to him before him in the temple almost every day, trying to trap him or ensnare him, or to find some weakness in what he's saying, this notion that everybody loved Jesus. The other thing that fascinates me is that Jesus keeps challenging them.

He keeps telling these parables to the crowds that are coming for the miracles and to hear his teaching. And in every one of the parables or in many of the parables, he's exposing the hypocrisy of the leaders. And the gospel writers, Each of the four gospel writers tell us of this period of time.

In order to get this whole week clearly, you've got to read the portions out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And what's very clear is the power structure in Jerusalem knows exactly that Jesus is talking about them. And he keeps doing it. He keeps leaning in, and he said, you're hypocrites. You're dishonest. You're turning my father's house into a den of thieves. John came and the prostitutes when they asked him the question about John

he said that when John preached a gospel of repentance the prostitutes and the tax collectors the two most publicly immoral groups in their culture repented and were baptized and when you saw that you refused yourselves to repent I hope you understand how offensive that is Jesus looks at the religious leaders and if you'll allow me in plain language

He said, the hookers have hearts more tender than yours. They're more obedient to God. The greatest thieves in the community are far more sensitive to God than you are. And when you saw those groups responding, you doubled down on your stubborn rebellion. You see, I think what's happening in the midst of that is they had a good thing going. I visited the excavations in Jerusalem. and they found some truly remarkable things. I've wandered through this.

There's a 5,000 square foot house, complete with very elaborate mosaic floors and bathrooms. I mean, beautifully decorated, overlooking the whole, the majesty of the temple area. And the best archaeologist and the finer scholars suggestion is that it belonged to the high priest or to one of the priestly rulers to part of that political class of religious leaders. And, I mean, they had a really good thing going. They're living a good life. And Jesus is perceived as an intrusion into that. Now, that feels pretty relevant to me. I think all of us carry a little fear that if we really yielded our lives more fully to Jesus,

he's going to want to take something away from us. So maybe we want a little Jesus. We want enough Jesus that maybe we go to church on Sunday, or maybe we go on Easter Sunday, or we want some biblical, but we don't want so much that he intrudes on how we do business or how we do. define morality or we don't want him to creep into how we lead our lives. We want to keep him segmented into that church section. It's exactly what was happening in the first century.

And so I think one of my questions is, are you angered by what's happening in our culture right now? Are you angered by the re-emergence of a biblical worldview, defining marriage between a man and a woman? Are you angered by the definition of human sexuality that it belongs in the context of marriage, but not beyond that. That beyond that, it is diminishing and it isn't helpful. Are you angered by the assignment to forgive that you can't carry grudges and anger and hatred for things that happened decades ago or many years ago?

We have to forgive and move forward because every one of us has a need to be forgiven. And the immaturity, the misbehavior, even the evil of others and other generations does not give us license to be evil now. Do we celebrate when fraud and waste and greed is exposed? Or do we get anxious because we've been profiting from that? We've been benefiting from that. Why should the government be less efficient than the workplace? I don't believe a government job should be less stressful than a secular job.

I just think we have tolerated and accepted some things that we shouldn't tolerate and accept. but the anger and hostility around the debate feels very biblical to me. Jesus as a provocateur calling out the religious leaders, pushing them into a corner. They have no choice. By the end of the week, they have no choices left. Either they silence Jesus or they're going to have to support him. But the crowds are growing, the miracles are growing, the demonstrations of the power of God are growing, and they're either going to have to join the movement or they're going to have to shut him down.

That feels so much like what's happening these days. If you don't agree what's happening, you'll resort to violence. The violence that we're seeing in our streets, you know, we recently had a governor's mansion burned. I don't care which side of the aisle you're on. Using violence to destroy your enemies is not right. Not in the system we have. Jesus walked them right back into that corner,

but it didn't stop with Jesus. By the second chapter of Acts, when the day of Pentecost, when Peter stands up to preach, He says in the streets of Jerusalem, you killed the Messiah. You killed him by crucifying him on a cross. That is very provocative language. In Acts chapter 3, there's a man healed.

The Sanhedron brings in Peter and John because they see them as the perpetrators of this Jesus narrative, even after his execution. And they say to the Sanhedron, you crucified the Messiah. Our Messiah, I mean, it's a Jewish. Jewish community that's having this discussion.

I mean, there's nothing conciliatory in the language of Jesus in this week, and there's certainly not conciliatory language in Jesus' followers after his ascension back to heaven. So how did the contemporary church decide? The only language we would have towards ungodliness is conciliatory. Why is it? We're more understanding of sin than we are willing to tell the truth. It's really perplexing to me.

Perhaps it's not so perplexing. I think it's ungodly. and it's driven by a spirit that is not the spirit of God. Again, I don't think we have to be angry or belligerent. I certainly don't think we need to be violent, but I think we have to tell the truth. And if we're not willing to tell the truth, then my question is, are you compromising? Is there some way you feel like you're benefiting from ungodliness, so you don't want to say anything about it? Do you think by cooperating with ungodliness, you're bringing more harmony to your family?

That's really a mistaken notion. See, I don't believe you can invite evil inside your family and imagine that over time that's going to bring good benefits. Maybe you imagine you're benefiting financially because you're tolerating or overlooking ungodliness. Again, I think that's a short-term perspective because I believe the greatest treasure we can lay up the treasure that has no diminishment to it

is the treasure that comes from obedience in the kingdom of God. And if we sell our soul or forfeit a portion of our soul to gain some short-term financial advantage, I don't believe we'll keep it. It takes courage to choose the truth for our lives. You know, the one part of these podcasts, we try to keep consistent, whether we have a guest or it's just a monologue with me,

is what can we do? Well, I simply, let's welcome Jesus to town. Let's be certain we're a part of the voices that are saying, we're glad you're here, we're glad for your arrival. Help us understand the truth. In that cast of characters that gathered from the Mount of Olives through that Holy Week, all the way up to Githemite, there's three groups, there's the disciples, there's this crowd,

and there's the antagonist. I want to be in the group of disciples, the people who said, we'll follow you. We will disassociate from friends and families and habits and routines and whatever. We want to be considered close to you. Now, the disciples are confused, they're often beleaguered, they're occasionally frightened. I mean, it's not just a simple journey. journey, but I want to be a disciple. So start with, let's welcome Jesus into our lives and our homes.

Then I think we've got to guard our hearts. Jesus warned us that the love of money is a root of a lot of things. You don't have to have money to love it. I'm not talking about your bottom line or your economic status. I'm talking about an attitude. What will we compromise in order to secure more? And are you angry at people that have more than you do? You know, one way to know that you've kind of limited that

is you celebrate the good things that come to other people and you don't imagine that they should have come to you before they came to them or wonder how you can get more of that or whatever it is. Just guard your heart on that point. You know, are we willing to be identified with Jesus? Are we willing to be advocates for Jesus entry into our culture? We're willing to come down that hill with him celebrating, knowing that there are people in the crowd that intend to destroy him.

Or do we stay quiet? Do we want to stay in the shadows? Are we skeptics? Are we ambivalent? Are we indifferent around this Jesus story? Or maybe even we're adversaries. Maybe we were mad at church. We don't like organized religion.

I mean, it's not hard to find weaknesses in God's people. We're all a bunch of cracked pots. You know, sometimes we're adversaries because we imagine Jesus to be disrupted our self-designed initiatives. We have things we know we want to do and we're not sure that Jesus would sign off on them. So we want to hold Jesus at arm's length for a season longer until we get done doing what we want to do

and then we think we can come back to Jesus on our terms. I think that's a bad theology. I think it's a bad practice of discipleship and I think it's a pretty destructive life choice. I love this block of time, Holy Week, these days leading up to Jesus' betrayal, not because it's not, I mean, it's really a horrific time, but it's so insightful into the character of what happens when Jesus comes to town.

Well, my opinion, and it's that, my opinion is God is moving in the midst of our lives right now in unprecedented ways. There's more truth being told in Washington, D.C. than at any time I can remember in decades. There's more truth being told on the global stage. I mean, whether it's about the war with Russia and Ukraine. I mean, the brutal murder of over a million people. And the Ukrainian president isn't anxious to stop it. He wants to be sure he gains an advantage, economically, politically, in stature, in status.

That's abhorrent to me to think that another 100,000 of your citizens could die, but you're trying to secure some advantaged platform. I mean, we're watching this all over the world. God is moving. The truth is being told. and there's far too many of us in the Christian community, I think trying to cover our eyes and stop our ears and say, well, I don't want to be political.

I'm not advocating for parties or candidates. I'm an advocate for the truth, the biblical truth. I recognize that there's a conflict in the earth between good and evil that's beneath all of the political dialogue and the cultural dialogue, there are spiritual forces shaping the world we live in. And those of us that have had a bit of experience,

we have an assignment to tell the truth. It's the best possible future for our children and our grandchildren. Let's not act like we don't notice. And I've seen the pictures. I've read the accounts of D-Day and that group of young people that were put in those rickety boats and pushed ashore on the beaches of Normandy and the beaches of France. You know, they're 18, 19, 20-year-old young people, terrified, waiting ashore in the waves, in the midst of the hail of the fire from the entrenched fortifications

on the beaches, and yet they did it anyway. And we've called them the greatest generation, and I don't think it's an inappropriate label. My question is what is going to be said of us? Are we going to be called the recreational generation? Did we have the lowest golf score? Did we have the best toys? I'm not opposed to any of those things, but I pray that it says, we were a generation that chose the Lord with our whole hearts, with our whole heart, mind, soul, and body. And we were willing to choose the truth, knowing that there would be opposition,

knowing that there would be a cost, a price engaged with that, and we still chose the truth. I don't believe you will ever regret being an advocate for Jesus of Nazareth. I believe there could very possibly be consequences in the short term that you'll have to overcome. But I don't believe you will ever regret being an unyielding advocate for Jesus. That is culture and Christianity. That's more than sitting in church or being kind or being polite. You'll never be so kind that evil will submit to your kindness. The only thing evil will yield to is a power greater than itself. And that's the power of God.

and that requires a people of God who are yielded to the authority of Jesus. If we will do that, we can stand in his authority and I believe we will see evil yield in our generation. Now that's worthwhile. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. I'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for joining me today.

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