Awakening the Culture | From Conforming to Transforming | Pete Hughes

What is GARDEN CHURCH Podcast?

"Here as in Heaven."

For more information visit : garden.church

Intro/Outro: 00:07

Welcome to Garden Church Podcast. We're in a series called Walk with Jesus. This series is about learning to cultivate a passionate love with God. Enjoy.

Pete: 00:22

I want to start with a story about a trip I made a few years ago to Northern Uganda, a town called Sarati. We were visiting some churches who were doing the most incredible work, preaching the gospel and seeing communities lifted out of poverty. Their strategy was a fairly simple one. They would pair up and they would go and proclaim the gospel in rural areas. And as people came to faith, because that's what happens when we preach the gospel, as people came to faith, they would put them in small groups, and they would start devouring scripture, studying the gospels, the stories of Jesus.

Pete: 00:53

And as they engage in these stories from scripture, the leaders would ask them this question. What do you have in your hand right now that could alleviate human suffering and create pathways to human flourishing? In other words, we've all got a part to play in this kingdom story. We all have gifts, experiences, talents, things that we can contribute to the kingdom story. We met this one guy, he came to faith, he joined one of these small groups, he started reading the gospel accounts of of Jesus ministering in power.

Pete: 01:25

He was asked the question, what do you have in your hand that could alleviate human suffering, create a pathway to human flourishing? And his response, which was fairly common, was nothing. These individuals are coming from a background of extreme poverty. I've got nothing that I could bring. And the leaders were trying to encourage them, you got to think entrepreneurially.

Pete: 01:43

Everyone, every son and daughter, every image bearer has a contribution to make in this story. And this guy basically said, well, there's one thing I could contribute. The problem with what I could bring to this is that it's basically a bit of land that's become a swamp land. And because it's a swamp land, it's become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. And that means malaria rates are really high in this part of Sarati.

Pete: 02:09

The land I possess is actually causing suffering. It's quite literally killing people in the community, but it's the only thing I can bring to the mix. And the group said, well, let's just pray. Let's dream. Like, how could this land be restored?

Pete: 02:20

That a blue sky thinking moment. And someone in the group said, what if we tried to dig up the swampland? Like, if we, like, dug deep enough, could we hit the water level? Maybe we could establish a pond. So they basically found 20 guys that would commit to digging for 30 days to see if they could hit the water level and establish a pond.

Pete: 02:38

So they get the guys, they start digging. Week 1, no breakthrough. Week 2, no breakthrough. Week 3, ouch, no breakthrough. But at the end of 4 weeks of digging, they do hit the water level and they establish a pond.

Pete: 02:50

And they begin to breed fish in this pond. And with the fish, they start to feed the people from the local community, which is incredible. But there was more than enough fish for the local community, so they took some of the fish to market, to sell, to generate an income. And with the income, they started to fund children to go to school to get an education. Because as we know, education is a key pathway out of poverty.

Pete: 03:14

Now if the story ended there, I would say, that's incredible. This land that was causing suffering, killing people in the community is now feeding the community and educating the children. That would be enough, but the story gets better. You'll see in the background, there's a second pond. They took more of the fish to market.

Pete: 03:33

They generated more income. With the income, they started employing people to manage the ponds. They actually built 3 extra ponds. So 5 in total. They took the fish to market.

Pete: 03:45

They generated more income with the income. They started building homes for people in the community that didn't have a home. Now if the story ended there, we'd say, hallelujah. Amen. That's incredible.

Pete: 03:57

This land that was causing suffering, quite literally killing people in the community, is now feeding the community, educating the children, providing employment, building homes. But the story gets better. They asked the question, why are the conditions so perfect for the fish? And they discovered that the fish were feeding on the mosquito larvae, which means the malaria rates began to plummet. So this land that was killing people in the community, the cause of human suffering became the land that was feeding the community, educating the children, providing employment, building homes, bringing malaria rates down, lifting a community out of poverty.

Pete: 04:36

It was a picture, a snapshot of human flourishing. Little picture of Eden in the midst of a landscape. How did this story begin? One person coming to faith in Christ, living in a different story. One person coming to faith in Christ, living in a different story.

Pete: 04:58

And as he began to live in a different story, his whole community was lifted out of poverty. Here's the principle, the story you live in is the story you live out. As he started immersing himself in the stories of scriptures, finding himself in the kingdom story, he began to live in that story, live out of that story, it brought awakening to the surrounding culture. The story you live in is the story you live out. Over the last few weeks, we've been looking at some redemptive shifts that we wanna see happen in the surrounding culture.

Pete: 05:29

And week by week, we've said, to see these redemptive shifts in SoCal, in the surrounding culture, they have to start in here. Lord, send revival. Start with me. Do the work on the inside, and it will flow outwards. Week 1, we looked at the case study of the city of Babylon and their shift from extraction to servanthood.

Pete: 05:49

From this mindset of I'm gonna extract what I need from the culture to pursue my dream, my ambitions, my goals, my desires. What would it look to shift that to, lord, I lay down my dreams, my agendas, my goals. I wanna serve what you're doing in SoCal. That was shift number 1. Last week, we looked at the shift from idolatry to worship, and the case study was the city of Athens.

Pete: 06:17

How do we dethrone the idols, put Jesus back on the throne where he belongs? And today, we're looking at the shift from conforming to the culture around us to trans forming the culture around us, and the case study will be the new Jerusalem. Are you ready for the journey? Yeah. You ready for the journey?

Pete: 06:37

Yeah. Here we go. So if you've got a Bible, turn to Romans chapter 12. Our 2 key texts is gonna be Romans 12 and then Revelation 21. Romans 12, Paul says, therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, in view of mercy.

Pete: 06:56

The kingdom story begins not with you, but with God and his mercy for you. It's his mercy that transforms us from the inside out. One person in sarathi encountering mercy transformed his life and then transformed his land. It became a pond serving the wider community. Only takes 1 to encounter mercy.

Pete: 07:22

1 Samaritan woman at a well and a whole town hears the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only takes 1. And when we encounter mercy, salvation then leads to transformation. And how does this transformation take place? Paul says, it requires the renewing of our mind.

Pete: 07:42

In other words, salvation leads to sanctification. We begin to think differently, dream differently. We have a kingdom imagination. And as our minds are renewed, as we engage in the kingdom story, we experience this shift from conforming to the patterns that surround us, the narratives, the scripts that surround us, and we embrace a different script, a script of resurrection life. The renewal of the mind means we shift from conforming to transforming.

Pete: 08:14

We give up on these scripts that lead to death, and we embrace a script that leads to life. And for too long in the Western church, we've idolized cultural relevance. Like, we we wanna be down with the culture that surrounds us, but as my friend says, as a warning, seeking cultural relevance to a decaying culture is a vote for death. And could it be in the Western church, we've been voting for death for way too long. Desperate to be popular with the surrounding culture.

Pete: 08:44

We are going after kingdom life. Amen? So this story of a land that was perfectly good, but then fell into chaos and became a story of a land that was perfectly good, but then fell into chaos and became a swampland, and then someone starts living in the kingdom story, and the swampland becomes a pond. This story is a micro story that points to a macro story. A micro story that points to the macro story.

Pete: 09:10

Here's the macro story, creation, decreation, recreation. Creation is Genesis 12. This vision of human flourishing, life in the kingdom of God. God creates humanity in his image, in his likeness, places them in a garden of delight abundance. Humanity are fully alive, living the dream, in relationship with God, in relationship with one another, in relationship with created order.

Pete: 09:36

No sin, no sickness, no suffering. A picture of what we were made for. A picture of what we are destined for. But then Genesis 3, sin enters the story. Remember Martin Luther, the reformation Theodian defines sin as a life turned in on itself, where your needs, your goals, your ambitions, that's all that really matters.

Pete: 09:58

And as sin enters the story, you have this descent into the creation, which is the focus of Genesis 3 through to Genesis 11, climaxing with the Babel story. And then in Genesis 12, a pivot point in the narrative. God calls Abraham to be a father to a nation, and God wants that nation to be a vehicle of healing, of restoration, and redemption. But Israel neglects that calling. So we move to the story of Jesus coming to fulfill the story of Israel.

Pete: 10:34

He lives, he dies, he rises to new life, and the poor, the story then moves towards re creation. How does our story end? I'll tell you how it doesn't end. It doesn't end with us leaving our bodies behind, ascending to a disembodied bliss, where we ride around on clouds, we drink huge amounts of Red Bull, and we sing average worship songs for all eternity. The story doesn't end like that.

Pete: 11:03

That's Greek philosophy. That's the teaching of Plato. It's not the teaching of the New Testament. Our story is way more glorious than that. Our story ends with God making his dwelling place with humanity.

Pete: 11:17

He comes to dwell amongst us and as he dwells amongst us he brings renewal and redemption. The Apostle John who has this vision in Revelation 21 of the end of the story, he begins to write it down as God makes his dwelling place with humanity. I can see that there's no more death, and there's no more grief, and there's no more crying, and there's no more pain, And then he sees God sitting down on his throne, which is indicative of his work coming to completion. He begins to sit down and rest, and he declares these words, behold I'm making all things. We'll try that one more time.

Pete: 11:53

Behold, I'm making all things. Now in the Greek language of the New Testament, you've got 2 words for new. You've got neos, which means brand new, and you've got kainos, which is something old that's made new, restored to its former glory. And when God sits down in his throne, the words that are used, behold, I'm making all things kainos. I'm restoring everything to how it was in the beginning in Eden, where there's no sin, no sickness, no suffering, humanity fully alive in relationship with God, in relationship with one another, in relationship with created order.

Pete: 12:35

I'm making all things new. Now Thomas Merton, the Catholic writer, says this, our lives are shaped by the end we live for. What's the end you're living for? Escaping this context for a disembodied bliss with red born clouds and sort of average worship songs for eternity? Or is the end you're living for, God returning, making his dwelling place amongst us.

Pete: 13:06

He's not gonna make some things new. He's gonna make all things new. He's on a mission to renew and redeem all things, to reconcile things in heaven and things on earth. This is our story. Story you live in, is the story you live out.

Pete: 13:25

And this story is fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, incarnation, Literally means in flesh. Incarnate. In flesh. Chile con carne.

Pete: 13:40

Chile in meat. God con carne. God in human flesh living amongst us. Entering our condition. And the sin that led to created order unraveling is loaded on Jesus at the cross.

Pete: 13:59

And at the resurrection, he triumphs over sin, over death, over darkness. He's the firstborn of the new creation. He fills us with his spirit, and invites us to participate in this story. God, on a mission to make all things New. All things new.

Pete: 14:17

On a mission to make all things new. Ivan Illich, the Austrian poet, priest, philosopher wrote these words. Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society. Rather, you must tell a new powerful tale. One so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story.

Pete: 14:39

One so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole. One that even shines some light into our future, so that we can take the next step. If you wanna change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story. What story are you living in? What story are you living out?

Pete: 15:02

Is it the story of God on a mission to make all things new? Because that's our story. Not escaping this context for some sort of disembodied bliss. No. A story of God coming to redeem.

Pete: 15:14

God cares about every sphere of culture, every inch of creation. He's on a mission to redeem the music industry and the fashion industry. He's on a mission to redeem the way we do education, the way we do business, the way we do our politics, and boy does that need some redemption. He's on a mission to renew every sphere of culture. Your workplace is on a mission to renew it.

Pete: 15:37

Your university on a mission to renew it. Your school, your street, he's on a mission to make it all new. Abraham Kuyper, the theologian put it like this, there's not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, whose sovereign overall, does not cry, mine, mine, I want to redeem it. N. T.

Pete: 16:04

Wright, the British theologian and with a name like N. T. Wright, how could you be wrong? He writes this, what you do in the present by painting, preaching, singing, sowing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbors yourself will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable until the day when we leave it behind altogether.

Pete: 16:37

They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom. Building for God's kingdom. So to see this transformation, the shift from conforming to the scripts of the culture to transforming the scripts of the culture, Paul says, you need a renewal of the mind, a change of perspective. Repentance is the Greek language. Metanoia, change knowledge.

Pete: 17:01

Metanosis. Gnosis means knowledge. A change in your thinking. To bring about this transformation, you need to think kingdom thoughts. You need a kingdom imagination.

Pete: 17:11

And I wanna suggest this morning 2 areas of renewal that we need in our thinking. Number 1 is the renewal of our understanding of change. Now I'm gonna tread carefully here because I know you're entering a key few months as we build up to the election. In the UK, we've just recently had a general election. So I I know it's dangerous speaking into American politics, particularly as a Brit.

Pete: 17:34

So I'm gonna tread carefully. Be gracious to me. I don't know a huge amount. Is that gonna stop me from saying anything? Absolutely not.

Pete: 17:40

So let me speak into how we often understand change. There are certain instincts, drives within us. Imagine an x and a y axis, and on the x axis, you have on the left the desire for progress. To to leave behind traditions, things that hold us back. We wanna move forwards.

Pete: 18:02

Leave the past in the past. Let's move forwards. And on the right of the spectrum is like we need to preserve the best bits of this culture, ethical frameworks, certain traditions, wisdom from the past. We don't wanna leave it behind. We wanna cherish it.

Pete: 18:19

It's what's got us here, and we wanna build upon it. And then on the y axis, you've got to bring about change. We need to fight for it. We need to overcome the powers and the structures. We need to fight.

Pete: 18:34

Now the other end of the y axis, you've got this desire to withdraw. We don't wanna be polluted by the world. We don't want to be contaminated. We want to be set apart. These instincts aren't new instincts.

Pete: 18:48

We might feel a lot of them right now as we build up to an election, but they're old instincts. And if you rewind 2000 years to the time of Jesus, those instincts were at play. When Jesus said, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, he was basically calling people with different mindsets of how the kingdom would break in to actually shift from that mindset into his mindset understanding of the kingdom. See, there were these 4 groups, the Zealots. They just wanted to fight for change.

Pete: 19:19

They were looking for a military leader, a military messiah, a warrior figure to come and overthrow the Romans. When Jesus is in Gethsemane sweating blood, getting ready for the cross, like, when the soldiers come, what does Peter do? He grabs his sword and he's like, this must be the time to fight, revealing that he was a zealot. Like, we're gonna fight to overcome Rome. Right?

Pete: 19:44

This is probably a good time before it's too late. So you have the zealots wanting to fight. You have the Sadducees. These were like the hipsters of the 1st century. Hey.

Pete: 19:54

Just chill, guys. Let's just chill. Let's just do a deal with Rome. Like, if we scratch their back, they will scratch our back. They'll give us a bit of space to be who we wanna be.

Pete: 20:04

We'll give them space to be who they wanna be. We can probably sort this out over a skinny flat white. Everyone just chill a little bit. We'll make some compromises. They'll make some compromises.

Pete: 20:14

We can assimilate. We can make this work. Then you had the essenes. Basically said, we need to withdraw into the wilderness, the forces of empire. They're like, it's it's overwhelming.

Pete: 20:25

We need to withdraw so that we can pray and fast and get ready for the arrival of the kingdom of God. And then you had the Pharisees. And for them, it was about the traditions of the Torah, Torah obedience. If we can just obey the Torah, that will bring about the kingdom of God. All the same instincts.

Pete: 20:45

The Sadducees were the syncretists. Just wanted to syncretize. Zealots were the soldiers. Time to fight. The Essenes were the separatists.

Pete: 20:55

At this point, I was committed to the letter s. So the Pharisees, I'm calling this fundamentalists. The soldiers, the synchrotest, the separatists, the fundamentalists. And here's the mistake we make in the church, and you'll see this again and again in the coming weeks months. People ask the question, where is Jesus on the x axis?

Pete: 21:25

In terms of, like, left to right, Democrat, Republican, where where is where is Jesus? Where is the kingdom on the x axis? Axis? And where's Jesus? Where's the kingdom on the y axis between warfare and withdrawal?

Pete: 21:38

Where's Jesus? And the answer is Jesus can't be found on that axis. This is a worldly axis. And when people tried to pressurize him in the 1st century, where do you land on the axis? He said to Pontius Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world.

Pete: 21:53

It's the wrong question. Why are you trying to force me into your categories? My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight because I prevent my rest by the Jewish leaders, but now my kingdom is from another place. Now his kingdom was breaking in to this world.

Pete: 22:08

That's why he was in a conversation with Pontius Pilate. Everyone recognized something was happening, a revolution, the kingdom of God breaking in, but he says it's not from this world. His origin is from above. My allegiance is to my father in heaven and the vision of his kingdom. Right?

Pete: 22:26

And we need to remember that at this time. Our ultimate allegiance isn't to a city, or a county, or a nation, or a political party. Our allegiance is to king Jesus and his kingdom. Paul says this to the church in Philippi. Now Philippi was a a colony of Rome in Northern Greece.

Pete: 22:48

So it's in Northern Greece, but the Romans basically tried to create an outpost of Rome where everything looked Roman. People would have to wear what the Romans wore. They would have to speak the, the language of the Romans, the Latin. They would have to worship the Roman pantheon of god gods. They would have to worship Caesar as lord, like everything looked Roman.

Pete: 23:07

And when Paul writes his letter to the church in Philippi, he says, your citizenship is in heaven. You're not citizens of Rome primarily. You're citizens of the kingdom of God. And when you understand that, that will enable you to participate in a way that recognizes your identity is from above, your purpose is from above, your belonging is to that kingdom, and that enables you to engage in a completely different way. We need a renewal of the mind as we engage politically at such a time as this.

Pete: 23:45

Secondly, we need a renewal of our understanding of heaven and hell. In other words, the end of our story. So let's talk about hell because people really enjoy talking about that. I wanna read you a, an intro to a chapter in my book. My book's called All Things New.

Pete: 24:03

It's about the grand narrative of scripture around this principle. The story you live in is the story you live out. One of my friends described this book as one of the best books never read. No one's actually read it. So what I've started doing now is reading it over people because I want I want the material out there.

Pete: 24:19

I walk around London, I head to the tube and I just start reading on the tube to people. And then I walk to parks. I start reading it over people in the park. I'm obviously joking. I don't do that.

Pete: 24:29

But let me read the intro to this chapter on hell. Not many people know this, but I have an extremely sensitive gag reflex. I discovered this during a week of mission on a local estate near King's Cross. We were working with local churches and some local organizations to proclaim and demonstrate God's love through social action projects, evangelistic events, and community fundings. 1 of the organizations we partnered with were were doing the most phenomenal work amongst young people in some of the most deprived parts of London.

Pete: 25:04

Their vision was to take the love of Jesus into every school, onto every housing estate, into every neighborhood. And as they did this, this was their vision statement, to love the hell out of the community. What does this practically look like? Well, the first job each morning of the mission was to clear the park area in the middle of the estate, so we could host a barbecue and some 5 a side soccer games. And by clear, I mean put on rubber gloves and pick up every bit of dog poo in the park.

Pete: 25:30

So I put on my gloves, hoping people would see this public demonstration of servant leadership, and bent down to pick up the first poo. I immediately retched. I'm not sure it was the smell or the texture, but the combination of the 2 was overwhelming. I put the poo in a bag and moved on. The next poo had the same effect.

Pete: 25:51

I retched again. This time I needed a few moments to recover, to practice some mindfulness, and prepare myself for poo number 3. Multiple questions were raging within. What did they feed the dogs around here? Did that last dog survive?

Pete: 26:07

For surely that was the poo of a dying dog. How many dogs live on this estate? Because this park has quite literally become a dumping ground. I took a deep breath and bent down once more, desperately trying not to retch. I failed miserably.

Pete: 26:22

The cumulative effect of the 3 wretches was taking its toll. I was right on the edge of vomiting. I was doing the best I could to demonstrate servant leadership, trying to love the hell out of this park. Each poo provided a very real manifestation of hell. But it all became too much.

Pete: 26:38

A lovely lady in our community approached me, looked at me with compassion, before asking me to find a different job as I was distracting everyone with my retching. I took off the gloves, watched the army of volunteers press on by getting their hands dirty and transforming the park into a garden of delight. Within hours, there was a party atmosphere with barbecues, bouncy castles, and football, all accompanied with the sound of laughter and delight as the community came together. It felt like a tiny foretaste of heaven. Jesus said, he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

Pete: 27:16

The implication is that hell is more than just a future reality. It's also a present one. Jesus' vision was and is to use his church, his hands and feet to push back the darkness and flush from his creation. All forces that oppose his kingdom purposes. What we were doing for the park in the middle of the estate, God wants to do for the world that he so loves.

Pete: 27:40

Why? Because he loves the hell out of his creation. You see, often in the church, we don't live in the full narrative of scripture. We live in a truncated version of the narrative. Imagine the narrative as a 4 act play, creation, full, redemption, renewal.

Pete: 27:59

What we tend to do is chop off the the Eden bit, and we begin our storytelling with Genesis 3 and original sin. And therefore, our emphasis is on the remedy to original sin, which is redemption. And that's absolutely right, but then we chop off the end of the story, got on a mission to renew and redeem all things. And in the truncated story, full redemption, full redemption, we end up with an understanding of the end of our story that looks something like this. We live out our days on earth and at the end, we either rise to a disembodied bliss and enjoy life all eternity with Christ or we descend and spend eternity without Christ in hell.

Pete: 28:40

And it's not that there's no truths to this story. It's just a massive distortion of what the New Testament actually teaches. In this story, heaven and hell are counterparts. But if you do a biblical word search of heaven and hell, in other words, sentences, verses in scripture, where heaven and hell are side by side, do you know what the results will be? Absolutely nothing.

Pete: 29:06

You won't find any verses in the bible, in the bible, in the bible, in the bible, in the bible, in Paul, where heaven and hell are counterparts. Because heaven and hell aren't counterparts in the biblical narrative. Heaven and earth are counterparts. If you do a biblical word search for heaven and earth, you're gonna find a 194 verses, and we're gonna work our way through them now 1 by 1. That's obviously a joke.

Pete: 29:30

Genesis 1, in the beginning, God create the heavens and the? Earth. Genesis 2 verse 1, thus the heavens and the? Earth. Were completed in their vast array.

Pete: 29:39

Genesis 24, this is the account of the heavens and the? Earth. Right the way through to Revelation 22. Heaven and Earth. Heaven and Earth.

Pete: 29:48

Heaven and Earth. God is on a mission to reconcile all things in heaven and on heaven and earth. So we need to reject the truncated story and its distorted understanding of the end of our story. Remember Thomas Merton, our lives are shaped by the end we live for. The full story looks quite different.

Pete: 30:10

Let me read you these words from Joshua Ron Butler, A theologian, he writes this in his book, skeletons in God's closet. He says this, in the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God's good world, and God is on a mission to get it out. To reconcile heaven and earth from hell's evil influence to himself through the reconciling life of Christ.

Pete: 30:41

The time is coming when God's heavenly kingdom will come down to reign on earth forever. When Jesus will cast out the corrosive powers of sin, death, and hell that have tormented his world for so long. This is what it looks like. It begins in the ministry of Jesus. It will reach its climactic moment when he returns.

Pete: 31:02

Heaven will come down and hell is flushed from the face of the earth. And how do we participate in this pushing back the darkness? That's what I long for. I long to be an agent of light in the context of London. Living in the light and pushing back the darkness.

Pete: 31:23

The manifestations of hell present on our streets, in our communities. The violence, the knife crime, the gun crime, the drugs, the addictions that choke people of life, the debt, the loneliness, the suicidal ideation, all these manifestations of darkness that are like hell on earth. I long to see them push back. So people can experience light and a peace that passes all understanding, so they can experience belonging and freedom. That's what I long for.

Pete: 31:58

That's what I believe people are longing for. They don't want the darkness. They're trapped in the darkness. What they want is the light. And we're called to be a people of light.

Pete: 32:09

And we live in the light, and we push the light forwards through holiness and justice. This is what Joshua Ann Butler says. He says, Jesus calls us to holiness and justice. Holiness involves dealing with the spark in our own hearts. In other words, it starts here.

Pete: 32:27

Lord, send revival. Start with me. Do something in my own heart. Justice involves dealing with the wildfires in our world. Holiness and justice, not holiness or justice.

Pete: 32:42

Holiness and justice are the tools Jesus has given us to join his fight against the power of hell. These are the inseparable pathways through which he calls us to follow him. Together, they are the means by which the church proclaims its resurrected king and bears witness to his good kingdom, that is coming soon to reconcile heaven and earth and redeem the world. You see, holiness is meant to lead to justice. Righteousness, right living here is meant to flow outwards into the world.

Pete: 33:16

The problem with the surrounding culture, and let's just be really honest, problem with the church is that there's a separation between holiness and justice. We care about justice. Holiness? If you look over recent years, some of the campaigns that a younger demographic have just, like, jumped on board with. Like the Me Too campaign, exposing misogyny, sexual oppression, sexual discrimination, Black Lives Matter, exposing systemic racism, extinction rebellion, make poverty history, the list goes on.

Pete: 33:53

You see, we're a generation that cares about justice. But you know at the very peak of the Me Too campaign, the number one best selling book was 50 Shades of Grey. We care about justice in the world, but what happens here, well, that's just between me and me. Right? We care about justice, but we don't really care about holiness.

Pete: 34:18

If we wanna deal with the wildfires in the surrounding culture, we have to deal with the sparks. Like, these sparks of lust, that's what leads to the sexual oppression out in the culture. These sparks of anger in here, that's what leads to the violence, the knife crime, the gun crime. Like, the greed in here, that's what leads to the poverty out there. So the call is, lord, have mercy.

Pete: 34:47

Purify my heart. Put my heart right. I wanna have clean hands and a pure heart because I wanna send the hill of the Lord. And as we do that, we can start tackling the wildfires that exist in the surrounding culture, holiness, and justice. This is why the cross is the center of the story, because only the cross has the power for this.

Pete: 35:10

You don't have the power. I don't have the power. The cross has the power to wash away our sin, to separate our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. The cross can do that. Only the cross can do that, to wash us white as snow.

Pete: 35:27

And only the cross can overcome the powers. Like, Paul says, the cross triumphs over the structures, the powers. The cross, at the cross Jesus makes a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them at the cross. The cross is the center of our story. So when we look at the grand narrative of scripture, creation, de creation, re creation, fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection of Jesus, at the center of the story is the message of the cross.

Pete: 35:59

If you extract the cross from the story, what you're left with is sanctified humanism. And sanctified humanism doesn't have the power to change the world. And maybe in the Western church for too long, we've been trying to be relevant to the culture, offer a message that's a little bit more palatable. So let's just dial back on the message of the cross. Let's just offer life, not take up your cross.

Pete: 36:23

Let's just message of life. Have we been offering essentially sanctified humanism that doesn't have the power to see people move from death to life, doesn't have the power to transform culture. The cross is the center of our story. So we preach the cross. Here's a summary, and we try and distill this message.

Pete: 36:49

How can we work towards the New Jerusalem? This journey from the garden to the garden city, how can we partner with God in his mission to make all things new? His three principles. Number 1, the story you live in is the story you live out. So I wanna ask you a question, what are the stories you're living in?

Pete: 37:09

What are the stories that surround you in your workplace, in your communities, in the culture, and be really honest, are they stories that surround you, or have they got on the inside? Are you actually living in them? The dream of comfort, The dream of significance, human significance. You you can go through the list. Are these stories out there or are they in here?

Pete: 37:36

The story you live in is the story you live out. Secondly, storytellers become story writers. We're living in a very significant moment where secularism has been shaken. Even someone like Richard Dawkins, one of the leading figures of, you know, the new atheist movement is basically rejecting the movement, calling it failed. Now describing yourself as a cultural Christian, which is completely, completely crazy.

Pete: 38:03

But what we're seeing right now is a crumbling in secularism, and you're seeing it particularly amongst the young. We see this regularly at KXC. You're experiencing experiencing it here at Garden, where younger people are coming to church, basically asking, can you introduce me to the better story? Because the story I'm living in is leading to chronic anxiety, high levels of despair. I'm drowning in darkness.

Pete: 38:28

I have no hope for the future. Can you tell me the better story that these people seem to be living in? We're seeing this now, Keckley. People from all faith backgrounds rocking up at church, basically saying, I'm living without hope. I hear this is a community of hope.

Pete: 38:44

Is there a better story you can tell me? People are looking for a better story. The question is, are you and I gonna be courageous enough to tell the story, to proclaim this story with our lips and with our lives? Faith comes through hearing, so people need to hear it. Are we gonna proclaim the story?

Pete: 39:06

The storytellers become the story writers. If you wanna understand the culture, listen to the stories. If you wanna change the culture, you tell a different story. We need to proclaim the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Final principle, live with the end in mind.

Pete: 39:24

Start now. Our lives are shaped by the end we live for. What's the end you're living for? Because the end of our story, the scriptures, is the renewal, not of some things, the renewal of all things. God cares about every sphere of culture, every inch of creation.

Pete: 39:47

And as we adopt these principles, like the guy who heard this story of grace, encountered mercy, experienced a renewal in his mind, which led to a swampland becoming a pond. Like that guys, we live in this story, we partner with God in his mission to make all things.

Intro/Outro: 40:21

Thanks for listening. For more information, please visit garden.church.