Living as Citizens Of Heaven | The "I Swear" Moment

TRANSCRIPT

We're going to talk today about what I call the I swear moment. No, I don't swear. Not, not, not like I used to anyway. But there is a moment in our lives where we make commitment. Maybe it was at a wedding. Maybe it was at the footy match. You stand up with the thousands of other voices and cheer them on.

But today I want you to think about cheering on your commitment to Jesus. Full heartedly. Top of your voice. We'll have a chance later to do that. I've been thinking now if Jesus was here in the spot today Man, that puts a bit of pressure on me. What would he want to say to us today in the 21st century?

What is the real issue for us? Big call, yeah? So I want to challenge us today to measure and weigh up this question Just how Christian do I have to be to be a Christian? What does it really mean to be a Christian? In the world, but not of the world, hey? Think about these things. What does the phrase mean?

What do you what I want you to know is that to follow Christ is a signing up thing. You might not have thought of it like these guys in the video, that you're signing up for something that will cost you probably everything. And so that's worth thinking about very heavily. I want to ask you this question.

Would our Savior, Jesus, recognize us as citizens of heaven just by spending a day alongside of us here on earth? That's a tough one for me, personally. How often would I have to check over my shoulder to see if he's watching? Check that last thought. Check that last word I misspoke to somebody that wasn't as nice and sweet and wholesome as it needed to be.

How often can we just say, Jesus, come along with me today, I'm okay. I'll never have to cover anything up. Well, it comes down to citizenship. Today, you you, this world is a bit of a divided world. We want to discuss this together. We're talking about dual citizenship. I borrowed this map, by the way.

But what we've basically got is the blue countries and nations are those that allow dual citizenship. So Australia is one of those. You can see down here. There are ones that are black, and those guys, well, they kind of say we'll allow a dual citizenship, but only with the exceptions to the rule. Usually not.

And then you have the beautiful red ones. Yeah, tend to be these big players over here, you know, North Korea, China, India. They don't allow any dual citizenship at all. So if you want to be a citizen of those countries, you have to renounce and denounce where you were before. You got to say, I'm no longer an Aussie.

I'm going to be a Chinese person. All right. And that's a big commitment there. I did a little, thank you for those who responded. I did a little Facebook survey this week to see who might have some dual citizenship. So right now I'd like you to wave hands if you have a dual, dual citizenship. Oh man, I see a few of you over there.

Yeah, okay. Well, you know what? That's okay. That's fine. Now I want you to think about this question. For many of us, I, I enjoy the flavour of dual citizenship. Dual citizenship in, in our midst. The different colors, the different nations we come from, the different languages, the accents, even the fashion sometimes.

And you know what? I could even invite you to do a you know, a Pentecost Day exercise. Can you just say on the count of three, praise God in your natural language at home, whatever your home language is. On the count of three, one, two, three. Alright, did I hear any accents there? Anybody in Korean? Okay.

Isn't it wonderful how God knows all the languages? Question number two I asked on my survey was, How does being a dual citizen help you as an Australian? And some pointed out to the freedom to travel. You know, you can choose which passport gets you the best entry into another country. Uh, things like having dual passports can be useful customs celebrating your place of origin.

If you have another place of origin, you can help your kids understand more of where you came from and family and language and culture. And it's good to be eligible though, as a dual citizen for pensions in Australia. So if you, you can get all the social benefits, you know, if you have both passports.

And so that can be helpful. Question number three I asked is, Are there any downsides to being a dual citizen? One person said, Well, when I die, the USA wants to tax me on my death. Now, Australia doesn't have a death tax. You may not have known that. Being a person who worked in tax, No, we don't have an Australian death tax.

But if you happen to have a dual citizenship, some countries want their little pound of, you know, whatever. So Yeah, I didn't say it. But you can think about the downsides of language, you know. Just don't say to your American friends, you're going to the beach and you're wearing a thong. Alright, some of you won't get that, but that's okay.

I won't elaborate. Social interactions are different in different cultures and languages, right? And customs can be quite embarrassing, except they're accepted trends in some countries. You wouldn't, for instance, in Asia, there's a lot of countries you don't pat a child. on their head, right? Because it's like their soul, you're sort of disregarding them.

Things, little things, right? So another one, which may not seem very important to you, but you can't enter politics in Australia if you're a dual citizen. This came out in the news recently when a certain senator crossed the floor and started to talk against the party she represented. And it turns out that the whole Dual citizenship question was never properly answered for that person.

Interesting. Sometimes culture is so different that it's like just speaking a different language altogether. So you can see as we start to say, Okay, what is the difference between a citizen of heaven and a citizen of the world? I want you just to think about that as a, a proposition. There are only two citizenships we're going to look at.

But before we do that, have you ever been to an Australian citizenship ceremony? Yeah? Maybe it was yours. That's okay. Now we have for example, this is the pledge that we make in Australia. It goes from this. You stand up, put your hand on your heart, and the part under God is optional. Isn't that amazing?

But anyway. From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey. Yay! I mean, that's great, isn't it? I didn't have to say that one, but I knew it. I felt it from when I was born.

For today's message, I want to imagine just two citizenships available. One is citizens of the world. or citizens of heaven. Now as citizens of the world, I'm not talking about Michael Jackson's version, you know, of we are the world, we are the children, not that one. And not talking about John Lennon's version either.

Imagine there's no countries, right? We're talking about when the world becomes such an entity in itself and so gripping on your life that you actually do not remember that there is a God. above that and over that. You get so committed to the material and the experiences of the world that you forget there is a citizenship in heaven altogether.

It can be argued that you won't get to the Michael Jackson or the John Lennon versions unless you are fully a citizen of heaven. You see, it's a bit of a pipe dream to believe the best of humanity will actually be arrived at without the best of heaven. That's just my opinion. So let me explain what the Bible says about it. It goes like this. Paul was a Roman citizen. Paul was one of the earliest writers of the New Testament. But basically, most of that stuff from there to the end is his. He was pretty quick at writing stuff down. And we're going to see that as a Roman citizen, Paul knew how to use that draw card when he needed it.

He could play that citizenship card to the most effective means. For example, he wrote to Titus, and Titus not the one that became emperor in 79 AD, but Titus the apostle. And he writes him and says, remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities. To be obedient. To be ready to do whatever is good.

To slander no one. To be peaceable and considerate and to, this is good, always to be gentle toward everyone. What sort of citizens should Christians be? I think they should be the best citizens of any nation. Any nation should be glad to have Christians as their citizens because they're like that. Well, that's in theory, right?

Further it goes on to say he wrote a letter to the people in Rome. Now we know historically Rome was one of the places where Christians got the worst deal. You Eventually, but while he was speaking to them, he said to them, you know what? Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. That meant the Caesar.

Be subject to them, but don't give your allegiance to them for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. So that means it challenges us to think about it. When we're Australian citizens or living in this country. There are going to be times we disagree with the government, yeah?

It has to happen. And democracy gives us a bit of a say so. But the bottom line is God expects us to be obedient. Like he's said, I don't want a game on the field where there's no umpires. Nobody enjoys that match. Nobody can enjoy it when they don't know if that was a real goal or not. So he puts people in charge and sometimes he says I even give him a sword to carry out the justice, you know Obey that that's the sort of godly sign which the world would not have if it wasn't for God that authority so there's a sense in which we need that to start with Paul even used his earthly Roman citizenship for a Heavenly kingdom advantage have a look at this little jail here.

For instance Paul was in there once. There was a riot in the city of Philippi. Yeah, up there in Macedonia and things got so out of hand that they arrested Paul and his mate Silas And they threw him in the prison and he was so downcast he started to sing songs in the middle of the night Yeah, we get to suffer for Jesus

And as he's singing, of course, there's an earthquake and things happen, the place falls apart. And then the Philippian jailer rushes in and says, Oh, where's everybody? He's about to take out his sword and do the hara kari because he thought everyone had got away. Mixing metaphors, but you know what I'm saying.

He was ready to die because he thought everyone was going to escape because of the earthquake, and then finally Paul says, No, no, no, no, we're all here. We've got another verse to sing. And then he took them out. And he brought them out and he said, what must I do to be saved? And basically, long story short, he got baptized and became a Christian.

His whole household as well. And then the next morning the officials found out and said, look, you can go. And this is what Paul says. He says this right next to says, but Paul said to the officers. Because he was a Roman citizen and they beat him up, they beat us publicly without a trial. Even though we're Roman citizens and threw us into prison and now do they want to get rid of us quietly?

No, let them come themselves and escort us out. See, he played the card when it was necessary. He said, I may be a citizen of Rome, But I'm also a citizen of this nation, and I'll take full advantage of that. So it's an interesting play that we have, isn't it? We know we have rights and, and privileges as an Australian, for instance.

But when does that counteract what God wants? And when does it play into what God wants? We have a lot of balancing to do. Another time when he was unfairly held and treated to, threatened to be killed by the hostile Jewish leaders, He was taken under arrest again and then he was escorted out by the Romans who were trying to protect him from the Jewish people and Pretty soon.

He says the guy just hang on I'm a Roman citizen and the the officer in charge said what did you buy that citizenship like I did? He said, no, I was born into it. So Paul could use that citizenship to find protection when he needed it. He had the whole force of Rome working for him. When it finally come to a point in his trial, he said, I'm going to appeal to Cesar.

That's like the, the. I'm going to take my case to the highest court. Why would he do that? Well, Caesar needed to hear about Jesus too. You see, there's a place for our citizenship on earth to work with God's kingdom. So, let's move on. Can we truly be a citizen of this world and, and heaven effectively or not?

Jesus said, render to Caesar that which is Caesar's. Remember they challenged him about the coin? He He said, show me the coin, whose image is on it, and it was Caesar's. He said, well, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. We need to balance that up and decide which is which.

He was speaking to the Jews at that point. They were non citizens of Rome. They weren't citizens, but they were paying taxes. We might have to pay a tax or a fee to be in the world, but it doesn't mean our allegiance is to the world. Doesn't mean the world owns us. Persecution of the early church occurred irregularly and in various places.

And from the very beginning of being a Christian, it was dangerous. As we saw with those guys, most of the people that were disciples, the original 11 that were left, and then the others that were added to them. Most of them died a horrific death. Taylor went through a few of those with us a few weeks ago.

And at the end of that, we might think, well, who would be a Christian? Well, who would be? If you're not convinced about it, you're not going to sign up. If you're convinced that what Christ has to offer you is supreme, it's the best thing that ever happened to you, then whatever comes, come what may, I will serve him.

So Paul so historically we find out in one article, for instance, It says about Christians in the early Roman Empire, In this clash of ideologies the ordinary Christian lived under a constant threat of denunciation and possibly of arraignment on capital charges. How did Christians in a Roman world move from Paul's urging them to be the best citizens possible and then coming under various governors and emperors, such as Nero, who wanted them dead?

It was either they renounced Christ, that was their choice, or the world would renounce them. I'd like to tell you that that changed somewhere along in history, but it didn't. Either we renounce the world and accept Christ, Or we renounce Christ and we're living the world's way. This is an important message today.

In Roman society, Jewish communities were given some leeway because they had their own laws and they basically weren't bad citizens. The Romans kind of overlooked them a bit, but when it became obvious that the Christian sect of Jewishness was different, they would not bow down to the emperor. They would rather die than do that.

Then they begin to be persecuted. In fact, under Nero in AD 64, there was a great fire in Rome and the history book says it was Nero's fault, but he decided I'm going to blame the Christians and shift the blame. A little political move, I guess, but took the heat off him. All right. So you know what? I want you to think just as an aside here, just a sidebar thing.

People say sometimes, you know, the Bible wasn't written till 300 AD. Why were people dying at 64 AD? For something they'd never believed in? Something they'd never heard about or written about? Come on. There was an active Christian network of not just faith but writings as well that had people ready to be martyred.

The historian, Roman historian Tacitus says Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite Torches. Isn't it nice on a class? Hated by for their abominations called Christians, that's their word for Christians by the populace. Christus from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius.

At the hands of our procurator Pontius Atu and our most mischievous suspic superstition was thus checked for the moment. Again, it broke out not only in Judea. The first source of this evil, but even in Rome and quote, that's what people thought of Christians in Rome. After a while, they became so noted, so standout.

Yeah, I'm a Christian. Oops, . I shouldn't have said that. You know, it was a really challenging thing to be a believer. So as a citizen of heaven, our allegiance to him will be our distinctive. Let's have a look at Matthew six, nine through 13, and we're gonna use this for the rest of our message as a, a backdrop.

Some of you will recognise it straight away as the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father Prayer for some people. Now this prayer can be seen, if you want to, as a Pledge of Allegiance. How do I mean that? Let's have a look at it. It starts off with this, Our Father in Heaven. Well, as a point of allegiance, let's think of it.

Our Father in Heaven. This is about the prayer where we say your name is to be hallowed. Your name is supreme. Your name is above all names. You see, when we think about allegiance to God, we need to know that there's a name greater than ours, greater than the government. It's greater than any king that ever lived.

And that's the name of God in heaven. I want us to understand this. Way back when the first Jewish people were being made into a nation, they were given laws. And one of those laws in Exodus chapter 20, verse 7, said this. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Now we've mostly interpreted that to mean I will not swear, not saying oh God or oh my God or OMG. They all mean the same thing or geez. Whichever way you want to, forgive me for saying those words please, let me explain. The actual meaning of this scripture is if you want to stand up and say I'm wearing a shirt, I belong to him, don't do that in vain.

Do not take the name of God in a vain way that's not going to lift up his name or honor him. Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. Don't represent him and then do everything that you want to do as though he didn't exist. You see the difference? It's not so much what comes out of my mouth, but what is my allegiance to that name and how will I bear it up?

How will I represent, you know, as a member of his family with his name over my life? So we go on to that and we think about it. Who would ever call their child Hitler or even Nero? You know, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't want to represent that name, but you can call them, you know, these children belong to God.

I will baptize them in his name or dedicate them. Alright, let's move on. In verse 10 it says, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is. Thank you very much. Everyone's still awake. That's great. This is an allegiance rule. Your kingdom come, your will be done. What Jesus said about his citizenship is important.

He was confronted by Pilate, and we'll go quickly to this verse in John 18. This is an eyewitness report, fresh in from the field. Let's go to John 18, verse 33. So Pilate entered his headquarters. This is when he was arrested, Jesus, and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the King of the Jews? And he said, Jesus answered, Do you say this in your own accord, or have others said to you about me?

Stop playing games, Jesus. Are you or not, you know? And then he goes on and says, Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? And he said, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.

You see the contrast here? But my kingdom is not from the world. My servants would have been fighting for me if that's the sort of kingdom. And citizenship I was calling for. I'm not going to set up another political force, said Jesus. I am the force. May the force be with you. You know, I think about this very often.

There is no greater force in the universe than the one who made it and sustains it by his own word. Think about that. That's the kingdom of heaven. That's the authority under which we sit, if we choose. Interestingly how they later mocked Jesus by putting a crown of thorns on his head and a purple robe over his beaten and and bloodied back and turning to the crowd that day who were all Jews Pilate said here is your king but they shouted we have no king but Caesar what a pivotal moment that was in history the Jewish people that didn't love Jesus had shown their hand they loved the The, the citizenship of this world more than the citizenship of heaven.

So they said crucify him. Shall I crucify your king? Yes. Jesus of Nazareth he said let's put this sign above his head on this cross. Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews. He did it in three languages just to make sure they knew what he meant. Let's go on. My kingdom is not of this world, Jesus says. As a citizen of heaven, our allegiance to him will be our distinctive.

Think about it. What is our distinctive? Our allegiance to him. There is some way that we need to understand sin. We always think of sin as something I did or didn't do. Some rule that I broke. And it's not really about that. Honest. It's not. You'll be amazed. It's all about, did I have my allegiance to him or not?

If I fell short of that allegiance to him, then I will repent of it. I will reaffirm it immediately. I will confess, Lord, I let you down. It's not about what I did, but what I knew was where my allegiance should remain and be. I hope you understand that. And so we get to verse 12 and it's verse 11. It says, and give us today our daily bread.

As an act of allegiance, we know that he is the creator. He is the one that provides everything for us. Keep going. Verse 12. Yep, I got a second. And forgive us our debts as we also, we've been forgiven. Sorry. Let's start again and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven. Our debtors have forgiven.

Oh, okay, proviso. Okay, so this one is about allegiance to the one who is able to forgive and we are forgiven as we have forgiven. We cannot truly have dual citizenship when it comes to being a follower of Jesus Christ, okay? It's counter cultural to be a citizen of heaven in the world today. You'll always stand out, right?

And it won't be because of wearing the shirt. It's because you're different from the inside out. They should make a movie about that. Allegiance to turn away from evil. This is verse 13. This is where it gets really heavy. And, and, and forgive us our debts. And then verse 13, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

I used to wrestle with this thought. How much of my temptations is God's fault? And I have to leave it to him to lead me away from it. Crazy thought, yeah? But you get tempted, don't you? I won't ask for a show of hands. When we get tempted, we need to think about it. What I'm doing is not showing my allegiance to the Father if I allow that temptation to keep coming.

A temptation is not sin, it's where it leads me to. And so, when we say lead us not into temptation, we're doing spiritual warfare right there. We're identifying that there's something coming at me that's not of God's kingdom. Something's coming into my life and I need to renounce it. You know, when I get thoughts of lust or, you know, pride or arrogance or, or whatever it is, that's when I've got to call it out and say, I renounce you, spirit of lust.

I call you out. I will not let you live in my heart while I'm a citizen of God's kingdom. And there's great power in that. It's called deliverance ministry. When we say deliver us from evil, we're saying we're entering into a place where God can switch us around from being victims and consumers of our lusts and, and our earthly desires, and we're becoming victors over them.

We're actually taking a stand. It's an I swear moment. As soon as I get tempted now, I just say, Oh God, I renounce that one. I confess to you. You know what confession is? It's agreeing with God. That's all it is. When you confess your sin, you're just saying, I agree with you God. It's not from you. It's simple.

No fancy words there. It just means I'm going to do business with God. And so we go on to say this, Would Jesus recognize us as citizens of heaven just by spending a day alongside of us? Would he? Now, I was going to talk about baptism and communion. They're just other spiritual warfare moments. Baptism is a declaration before the evil one saying, my allegiance has changed.

That's it. Communion is just a fellowship of all those who have made allegiance to the Father, coming together, enjoying that meal that says he bought it by his blood. So salvation is a question of allegiance to God through trusting Jesus. It's not moral perfection. If I could be saved by moral perfection, that means I could lose it by moral imperfection, and that's not how salvation works.

We didn't get saved because we were good enough. We're saved because we've made allegiance to the one who saves us. The bottom line, if we think we are dual citizens with one foot in heaven by faith and then fully free to live as the world lives, we've got a problem. We need to address it. We're in the world but not of the world.

It's impossible to live as Christ lived to be light and salt to the world and at the same time be fully engaged in whatever our earthly nature tempts us to do and be. If we believe that we're citizens of heaven there is, you won't like it, no compromise between earthly living and godliness. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done is where and how we live.

And you'll say, that's too hard, Pastor Len. That's just too hard. But the secret is to confess, to fully renounce the things of the world and receive what he wants. Now, we're almost running out of time here, so I'm going to skip a whole bunch. Welcome back to the worship team. Yay, give them a clap. Here they come.

While they're doing that, I want to go to slide 22 on the notes. Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the good news about Christ. Paul put it right out there when he spoke to those Philippians, the same people that put him in jail. He said, you know what?

Your allegiance to heaven is going to be such that you will live a way that's worthy of that good news. I'm going to invite you to stand with me in just a moment, only if you want to. Maybe you've never surrendered your will to the Father's will before. Maybe you've never made that choice. You have a choice.

Now you know you can't just ignore it. You can either be a citizen of heaven today and swear allegiance to him or not. My invitation to you, right here and right now, is to make a stand. So if you're ready to do that, and we will honour God together, would you stand? You don't have to put your hand over your heart, but we're going to say the Lord's Prayer as a pledge of allegiance.

Let's stand if you're able. You can say it with me. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Repeat after me. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I swear. Ooh, you just swore. Amen. Bless you all.