Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Heaven God's Oval Office or My Afterlife Bungalow? | Questions Your Asking

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Who is the right candidate to vote for in November? Who does God support? Understand the biblical attitude towards politics as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) discuss the Christianity and First Presidential Debate. Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+7.55&version=NIV (How the Gospel Preached Treason) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/do-pets-go-to-heaven/ (Do Pets How to Heaven?) from earlier in this series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/questions-youre-asking/ (Questions Your Asking). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Okay, so it's Friday morning after the presidential debate between President Trump and Vice President Biden that was on Tuesday night. I thought it was on Saturday night. Live. The next debate is on the Cartoon Network. So, yeah, so Patrick and I haven't really talked about it.

we've both been busy doing other things. Did you watch the debate, Patrick? Unfortunately, yes, I watched it from top to bottom. I don't know what that says about me. I feel like the big loser was the American people. I totally agree. It was a circus. I mean, I've watched a lot of presidential debates in my life, and they always get heated, and there's always tense moments, and there's always some hard things said across the line, but I've never seen anything like that, and I think everybody else agrees. Well, yeah, I tuned in because I thought it was kind of must-see TV, I was surprised that the ratings for the debate were far lower than people expected, that far lower than previous debates. Oh, I had no idea. Oh, far lower. I don't know

if that's because people are bored or if people are. I think people already voted. I mean, the amount of people have already done. Or people already know who they're going to vote for. Yeah, they've already decided. It just shows how entrenched we are in our political beliefs and perspectives that we're not really that interested in hearing a debate. And I think if you look at either candidate, it felt at times, and I will say, especially from President Trump, as though he was speaking only to his base, not to all of America, that his points were being made to win a certain demographic of people, which is probably not super broad. Biden, I think, did the same thing at times, although it was probably a little more broad,

but either way, I did not feel like I was being talked to. I felt like I was watching a cage match. I just kept thinking this somehow is God's judgment on America that we have 320 plus million people in our country. And these are the two that we're choosing between to lead the country. Have you seen that yard sign? It looks like a presidential campaign. It says 2020. But instead of having a name, it says any functioning adult. Well, that person is not on the ballot.

So maybe you're getting offended by us. I don't know what to tell you. My guess is you thought the same thing. And if you didn't, you didn't watch it because it was a national. embarrassment. So let me just say this. This is a good test for all of us. You might want to practice this. Here it goes. Are you ready? If you're ever asked, do you condemn white supremacy? The answer is yes. Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. As a matter of fact, I do condemn white supremacy in any forms that it manifests itself in. And then if you're President Trump and you just answer that clearly,

here's what you get to do. You get to say, and Joe, do you condemn? And then you can fill it in with whatever you want him to condemn. But the failure to do that was, I don't know, how would you characterize it? It was the most shocking part of the debate for me, because I think, again, broadly speaking, I don't personally know anybody who would have a difficult time condemning white supremacy. I literally know no one. So I don't know who you're winning by answering the question. Do you condemn white supremacy by trying to dodge it and then acting like you can't remember what the word is and then at the end saying but the real problem is antifa which i agree antifa's a problem to me it was such an easy thing to answer and as an american citizen for my president not to be able to say unequivocally

that that is evil was one of the most disturbing things i have frankly ever seen in any presidential debate in my entire life now to be fair if you follow this you know that on a number of occasions President Trump has condemned white supremacy in the past. But that's not something you should be inconsistent on. Nor something you should have a difficult time responding to. No, so if you answer their question right, half the time, that's still a problem. If you answer the question right, three quarters of the time, that's a problem. We need about a thousand on this one.

So he has condemned white supremacy in the past on numerous occasions. He failed to do so on a national debate stage, and that's troubling. All right. So this is our introduction, a long introduction into we're going to talk about politics. We're going to talk about how should we as Christians think about politics. What does it mean for Jesus to have a politic, for Jesus to be political, not partisan? So on our Facebook page, we asked recently, what do you think about when you think about heaven? And we had a massive amount of responses and people were sharing this.

And lots of great things that I don't want to be critical of. A lot of people said I'm thinking about a loved one who's passed away. I'm thinking about where I'm going to be one day. I'm thinking about being with Jesus. And those are all wonderful things. What I find interesting about those things, while they're all wonderful, what I find interesting is that none of them actually align with what the Bible says about heaven. Not a single one of those comments you're going to find a parallel to anywhere in the Bible. When the Bible talks about heaven, it talks about something entirely different. In the Bible, heaven isn't so much a bungalow in the sky. In the Bible, heaven is kind of like God's oval office. Do you think that surprises people when they

start reading the Bible and they see these verses? Or do you think they just like ignore them? Well, I think we have these preconceived ideas that we bring to the Bible. And one of those ideas is that Jesus has come to die for our sins to take us out of here and get us to that other place, heaven. And people on the Facebook page were talking about being with Jesus. And I just want to say that that is true. That is in our future of all those who genuinely trust in Jesus as their king. Yes, we will be with Jesus. That's just not what the Bible presents as heaven. I want to read a few verses. And what I'm trying to get out here is I think what happened, and I used to do this all the time. Whenever we read the word heaven, again, we import into it an idea. When we read heaven, we think my McMansion in the sky.

But I don't think that's what the Bible means 98% of the time whenever it's talking about heaven. On the one hand, heaven can be just the sky. We use the same kind of language when we talk about the heavens and we're talking about stars in the sky and whatever else. But more frequently, heaven is the place, the realm that God rules in. So check out Psalm 2-4. God is described as the one enthroned in heaven. Or Psalm 10319. The Lord has established his throne in heaven. His kingdom rules overall. Or Psalm 123. I lift up my eyes to you who sits enthroned in heaven. Now what I'm highlighting here, and I mean, there's just such a huge amount of verses that do this. Heaven is the place of what?

it is the place of God's throne. Where's a throne go? Well, a throne goes in a throne room. A throne is like the oval office of the ancient world. Heaven is a place where God rules. Heaven is God's oval office. It's the strategic center of everything that he's doing in the universe. Jesus teaches us to pray that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Heaven is the place where God's rule is complete. And we are instructed to pray by Jesus that his rule would be done on earth as it is in heaven. So in other words, what we want is God's rule to encompass our whole world and not just heaven. That's kind of an interesting picture, going back to the Oval Office idea. If you kind of imagined a president who's in an Oval Office and he's got authority, things work properly in the White House, but there's such civil unrest outside of the White House that what the president commands in the White House isn't always happening outside of the White House. And yet the president is now in a process of bringing the rest of his country under his rule. And he has the right to do it because he's the president of the United States.

States. He needs to bring the rest of the United States under his rule. And that's kind of the idea that Jesus is getting at in his prayer, isn't it? It's that he's in heaven. He is enthroned there. Again, Acts 755. Stephen looks up into the sky and what does he see Jesus standing at the right hand of God? He's right next to that throne. Jesus is enthroned in heaven. And that's kind of what we're getting at here, is that Jesus is enthroned in heaven and he is now bringing that rule to bear outside of the place where he rules. So Jesus rules in heaven. And then when he comes to earth, he is going to bring his kingdom here. And part of what you see is that Jesus comes and he takes the very names and titles of the Roman emperor, the Roman Caesar. And you think of all the

things that he could have done. He could have come and presented himself as intellectual or even just as a politician, a military general, an athlete. But he doesn't. When Jesus comes, what we find is that he takes the titles and role that Caesar had. And so the point is, that Jesus says, look, I'm not just king of heaven, and I'm just going to rule heaven, but I have come here to rule earth so that God's will is done on earth as in heaven. So, for example, when we see Jesus take on titles like Son of God or Savior or Lord or the one who brings peace, all of those were titles that were given to the Roman Caesar. Yeah, and it's not just those titles that Jesus took. We found an inscription, it's called the Prian inscription, and on it is this big thing, and it's

talking about the day when actually the first Caesar was born. And it calls the day of his birth, get this, it calls it the gospel, the good news. And so when we read the gospels and we talk about Jesus's birth as good news, that he is the bringer of peace, that he is the savior of the world, that he is the Lord. These were to the ancient Roman thinker, kind of the equivalent, if I said of my son when he was born, I'd like you to meet my son Oliver. He flies in Air Force One. He has a first lady. He is, I could just keep going and making references to the president, and you would think I was a crazy person because you're like, your little baby is going to be president? Is that what you're trying to communicate? That's exactly what the gospel writers are trying to communicate. Jesus is trying to sit, not just on Caesar's throne, but on a far greater throne. He wants to sit on the throne of heaven. Heaven is not just a place we go when we die. Heaven is the place where God rules. So Jesus is the king, king of the universe, and he has come to establish his kingdom here on earth. And I think the original disciples, they understood that.

They started to get who Jesus was, and that changed how they lived their life. It changed their values. It changed the way they related to the state. Think about for a second, why was Jesus killed? And it's really, really clear. I mean, the Gospels, if you will just have eyes to see it, will tell you, pretty directly why. I mean, the sign they put above Jesus' head that had the charges against him was clear. It said, king of the Jews. So the reason that Jesus was killed was because he claimed to be king.

The Jewish leader said to Pilate, when Jesus was kind of on his kind of mocked up trial before Pilate, that he was claiming to be king, and they had no king but Caesar. So everybody understood what was happening here is that Jesus was a king who was threatening. Caesar's rule, not because he had a lot of power at that moment, but because he was claiming that the titles that belonged to Caesar were really his, that the power that belonged to Caesar was granted to him by God, that he was the true ruler of the universe. And Rome didn't like it. That's why they killed them. And that's exactly why they killed so many Christians. It's crazy if you think about it. Christians were known for being civilly-minded. They cared for the

poor. They cared for the needy. They were tax-paying citizens. They did their jobs with excellence, and yet these people are being executed. Why? Well, the ultimate answer is because they were giving their loyalty to something other than Rome, or to something greater than Rome. In Philippians 320, Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven. That's a treasonous claim. I mean, Paul was actually a citizen of Rome, and Paul is saying, you know what comes before my Roman citizenship? My loyalty to the throne of heaven. Do you know what comes before Caesar? King Jesus, he comes before Caesar. And Rome was going to broker no rivals. Rome needed to be first in their hearts, first in their hope. It would not let heaven take first place, and it would not let Jesus take first place. And that's why talking about

this stuff, you might be like, this is kind of a non-sequit, how do we go from a debate into talking about heaven? And now you're beginning to see it. Heaven is a politic. Heaven has a politic. Heaven has something to say about how our world should run and how our world should operate. Jesus has something to say about it. Yeah, so what do we mean by a politic? Because when we hear that word, we think politics and we think Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, and Green Party, and progressives and all that. And so we get kind of uncomfortable when we hear someone say that Jesus has a politic.

But what politic means is that Jesus has a way of ordering and structuring our world. So there's a book called Scandalous Witness by a guy named. Lee Camp and I'd commend it to you not as the only book or best book, but as one book that you could read and probably feel like he got a lot out of. He's got some really challenging stuff in it. And one of the things he does fairly early on in the book is he defines what he means when he talks about a politic. And what he says is this, is that a politic is just trying to answer the question, how do we live together? Like how do we deal as a society, as a culture, how do we deal with money or how do we deal with violence or how do we arrange marriages and families and social

structures? How do we deal with employment or authority or passions and appetites? In other words, every society has some sort of politic, a way they arrange their life together. And when we say Jesus has a politic, he has a kingdom, he has an ethic within that kingdom. He has a way for people to relate to one another. He has a way for us to relate to money. All that is what we We mean when Jesus says that he has a politic, he has a kingdom that we want to be a part of. So what do you think of as a rightly ordered human community? That's a really good question. I mean, if you could take time to sit down and write out your answer to that question,

what do I think of as a rightly ordered human community, which is going to bring about flourishing and justice and peace? What would I say? Whatever answer you give to that question, that's your politic. And again, Republicans have a politic. Democrats have a politic, and even within those two categories, there's probably a wide spectrum of politics which exist. What we have to understand is that Jesus also has a politic. And we're going to get into this more in our next podcast episode, but his politic, it's not right, it's not left,

it's not a spiritual, it's not a non-politic. He doesn't say, hey, just get out of it. It's all mucky. Jesus has his own politic. So what we want to make sure you hear is that Jesus is political. He has a way for our life to be arranged here on earth, but he is not partisan. He doesn't fit in either major political party or any political party. So anybody who is going to be a Jesus follower, first and foremost, is never really going to be at home in their political party. They're always going to feel like, well, I kind of identify with this party or that party, but I see how my party is out of step with the kingdom of Jesus. They're going to hold their party affiliation really loosely because they're holding on to Jesus really tightly. Well, it goes back to the whole citizen of heaven thing, right?

I understand that I am a citizen of heaven first and a citizen of the United States, including my party affiliations. Second, that's actually how we have to think. Now, I was talking to someone the other day, and we were debating who would Jesus vote for? And at first, like, okay, maybe Jesus would just write himself in because who could be more qualified to be president than Jesus. And suddenly it dawned on me, I thought, wait a second. Jesus can't. can't even vote. He's not an American citizen. He wasn't born here. He hasn't been naturalized. He hasn't married someone who's an American citizen. He's not an American citizen. So Jesus actually can't vote. And I think that's kind of cool on the level that I think if he asked Jesus about all this

stuff, he might be like, why are you guys so obsessed about who's going to sit in one office for four years? That office is too small for me. Four years is too short for me. Don't you understand that I've got a far bigger plan and a far bigger perspective than this? I mean, I know you're really worked up about it. But don't you get that what I'm doing expands beyond that? Yeah, Jesus would take a huge pay cut, and it would be a massive demotion if he was elected president of the United States. He's an eternal king. He doesn't need a four-year term in office, and he's not just leader of the free world. He's leader of the whole universe. So either political candidate that you vote for this November, realize this. That person is not going to usher in the kingdom of God. That person is,

is worthy of your honor, but they're not worthy of your hope. A lot of us misplace our hope in a political candidate or a political party. And we begin to think that that party will bring in the kingdom of God. But that's a dangerous way of thinking. You will always end up disappointed because the reality is that your political party will come and go. Your political party will change its mind on issues. Your political party will disappoint you. The only one who remains, the only one who will never fail you. The only one who never changes is Jesus. I was reading David French's latest book, Divided We Fall, and in it, he made some really fascinating points, but one of the most interesting ones was he looks at Bill Clinton's presidency, and he starts walking through

some of the legislation that he helped push through Congress, and he points out that some of the legislation is actually more conservative than a conservative today would be comfortable pushing through. And that just makes your point, right? So Jesus is going to look at our parties and goes, Reality check, 10 years from now, what your party believes is not going to be what your party believes right now. So don't get too committed to those things. My vision for the world, my politic is absolutely unchanging. How it's expressed in different times and places, that's going to require creativity. It's going to require a lot of thinking and wisdom. But my politic doesn't change. So given that we are citizens of heaven, I think we need to be thinking through heaven's goals.

Like, what's heaven? What's God's vision of the good life? Is it the same as the American dream? Well, there might be some similarities, but I don't think it's anywhere close to being the same. I think it's about people living in right relationship with God, right relationship with each other, right relationship with the community that they live in, and even the world that God created. I think that we also need to ask when we think about what's heaven's politics. We need to ask, how does heaven bring changes on earth? How does it do its political? How does it do its political? thing. And I think it looks like faithful witness. It looks like love of neighbor and enemies, not violent coercion, not bullying, not puritanical moralisms. That's not what heaven's politic actually looks like. You know what it actually looks like? It looks a lot like a poor peasant who willingly is crucified for the sins of people who have despised and hated him despite loving them entirely. That's heaven's way of bringing its power, its view of all reality from heaven to earth. Right now it feels like in our country what it is all about is power.

If we have enough power, if we have enough votes, if we control enough of the media or the academy or the government, then we get our way. And there's nothing wrong with power. I mean, think about it. God is the most powerful person in the universe. Jesus said, all authority has been granted to me in heaven and on earth. And so there's nothing wrong with power. But in heaven's politic, power is used on behalf of those who are weak, are disenfranchised, are marginalized.

Power is used to stand up and advocate for those who are hurting. So in the Christian politic, we can't just grab on to power and think, well, we as Christians, we want to be empowered. and we want to assert our rights and protect ourselves. What we have to do is think whatever power we have, how can we use that for the benefit of others? Yeah, you're making me think of Philippians to Paul's little poem about Jesus where he talks about,

even though he was in the glory and beauty and majesty and comfort of heaven, he set all of that aside to take on human flesh to the point of becoming a slave and dying on a cross. And that's Jesus' pattern of power, is laying down his power for the sake of those who are in need, which, by the way, is you and me. It's not just about the bringing change in heaven's way. I think it's about having heaven's values. Heaven's values are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generosity. Again, I was thinking about a conversation I was having with someone online and they were saying,

well, I'm voting for XYZ person because they share all of Jesus's values and they listed out some of the values. and it was shocking to me that they didn't mention anything out of the Serbian on the Mount. They didn't mention any of the fruit of the spirit. And the person that they were recommending that I vote for, dare I say, lacks some of those things. I don't know if I could say that on the podcast, but I'm just going to let it sit there. My point isn't to tell you who to vote for. My point is that we have to have the same communal values that heaven is calling us to have, that Jesus is calling us to have. We should value those things.

They matter. Well, I don't know who your friend was advocating for you to vote for, who has. had all of Jesus's qualities. That's a great point. But I'm flabbergasted by the idea that there'd be anyone that that person could promote in such an inspiring way. I will tell you this. I have not found the political candidate who fits that bill, not in history, not now, and I doubt I will in the future. And so I think that's the reason we keep 1st Peter 2 in mind. Fear God, honor the emperor. Whoever wins will be worthy of our honor, but not worthy of our hope.

God always before emperor. We are citizens of heaven before we are citizens of America. We see ourselves in the storyline of heaven, not just the storyline of the next four years, that we need to be people who are loyal to King Jesus, that we want to be about the politic of heaven, not just in what we want to accomplish it, but how we want to accomplish it. Not just the what, but also the why we want to do it. Not for ourselves, but for the good of others, for the glory of God. So if you're asking yourself, I would really like to invest myself in heaven's politics.

I want to know what Jesus has to say about a rightly ordered society. Where do I go? Where do I find that? I would recommend that you open up to Matthew 5 and you read the sermon on the Mount. You could do that today. In fact, before I came to record this podcast, I listened to the entire sermon on the Mount because I thought I want my own heart and mind as we're talking about this. Humble bread. Oh shoot. Wait, doesn't be sad to think about not doing your righteousness in public? humble, I think I just did that. Thank you for calling me out, Keith. Anyways, I'm here for you. You are. It's great because it helps us think about all these things, heaven's values, heaven's ethics, Jesus is sexual ethic, Jesus' ethic, Jesus is ethic around how we treat our neighbors,

what we do with our money, how we deal with things. I mean, there's so many amazing things in this little sermon in Matthew 5 through 7 that you're going to get. And if you can say, you know what, these are going to be the things that shape how I think about politics, how I think about our communities, that would be a pretty tremendous step forward for all of us. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

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