How many of you stayed up late last night and watched the football game? Anybody out there? So how many y’all were excited about the football game? He definitely was. Anybody else, it was, even if you don’t like either team, it was an amazing just football game. Now Bronson, who’s just up here, his wife Leah, went to Baylor, was wearing Baylor gear all week, was at the game. Probably not as exciting if you were on that side of things, but I I, last night I was studying as I typically do on Saturday night if I’m gonna preach. And I was in the other room and in the other room, my, my son and my wife, they kept, they kept making these gasp noises and, and, and so eventually I just got pulled into it and amazing play after amazing play after amazing play. But to me, one of the most fascinating parts of the whole thing is at the very end, they’re in overtime, Baylor’s trying to score.

Travis Hunter has this amazing defensive play where he knocks the ball loose, there’s a fumble, the crowd assumes the game is over and they run under the field. Now, there were 57,000 people in that stadium, and I would say judging by tv, half of them run out onto the field. Now, the game was not over, it was under review. So then they’re trying to convince all the students to get off the field. We, we have to get you off the field just in case we have to keep going. And then after that, they said, no, we are confirming the play is in fact approved game is over. And then they run back onto the field. But to me, the fascinating part was that you had these 30,000 students that are just going crazy, running onto the field, and then you had about a hundred security guards and they were wearing these yellow shirt, yellow jacket things, and they were kinda spread out.

And that first time they all charged under the field they, they had a few shots of those security people and they were just kinda looking at each other like, what’s the play here? <Laugh> like, are we supposed to try and stop this? Are we gonna link arms? Are we supposed to start tackling kids? Are we just gonna give ’em high fives as they run by us? And really, they did nothing. They just kinda, I mean, they were all looking at each other like, I, I don’t, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. When those 30,000 students could not have cared less, that there were security guards in the field, they ran straight past them. And it was just funny. It was just funny to me to watch, to observe that if they would’ve run onto the field at any other moment in the game, they would’ve been tackled.

But that moment, even though it’s against the rules, is normal. And so because it was normal and because enough people were doing it, you couldn’t really stop it. And I think sometimes in culture, if you are a Christian, you can feel like one of those security guards in the yellow where all of culture is going a certain direction, and you’re just looking around and you’re thinking to yourself, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to say? How are we supposed to act? And then there’s a part of those security guards that probably felt like they were the weird ones. Like, Hey, everybody else is going this way. Why are you even standing there? And we can feel that way too, that all of cultures moving past us. And, and we’re not sure what the next step is. There’s a popular meme probably been going around for 10 years, looks like this that there’s two guys and they’re looking at a number and one of ’em says the number six, one of ’em says that the number is nine.

And then the meme says, just because you are right doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You just haven’t seen my life from my side. And that sounds great, doesn’t it? Like that sounds like a warm and fuzzy thing, and yet everything about that is just dumb. Like that is a number. So the number cannot be both six and nine simultaneously at the same time, a number represents a numerical value of something. You can’t have something that is both six and nine simultaneously. Your perspective does not change the value of the number. If you think it does, try this on, go to your bank sometime this week and say, listen, I I’ve got, I’ve got my my bank statement right here and, and it, it says that I’ve got $66,666, but, but watch this. I’m gonna turn it on you. And now I’m looking at it and I actually have $99,999.

And so I, I get that you think from your standpoint that I only have a certain amount, but in my perspective, I have more and I’d like to withdraw that difference. It’s not going to work. Why? Because a number can, A number is objective. It cannot be subjective. It it represents a value of something else. But the heart of that meme gets to what culture has done that you’ve got this postmodern influence that has led to a thing called moral relativism. Moral relativism, if you look it up, is, here’s the technical definition. It’s the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint. For instance, that of a culture or a historical period. And that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others. It’s this idea that just because something is right or wrong for you does not mean it is right or wrong for me.

That my experiences, my culture, my setting determines if something is right or wrong. There’s not an objective transcendent moral authority that determines right from wrong. Now you see this idea expressed itself and a lot of random phrases that you hear around culture that all sound really positive and warm and fuzzy and kind, that some of those phrases are like this, follow your heart. Hey, hey, if, if your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth, then what you need to really do is just follow your heart. Or we might say, you do you. That’s a real simple way of saying it. I I might not agree with it, but man, you just, you do, you do you all do me or, or more recently you have things like you are perfect just as you are. And that sounds really kind and nice and warm and fuzzy.

And, and then this is really common right now. Be your true, authentic self. This idea that really the person that understands you the most is you. So you need to be true to that. You need to be authentic to that, authentic to that. And although that sounds positive and kind, if you’re a Christian or, or if you believe what the Bible teaches and tells us, those are actually really harmful statements. Those are statements that undercut the message that we see throughout scripture. Like for example, look what it says in Jeremiah. Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can understand it? So if I think, well, hey, I I just need to be perfect just the way that I am, and I need to be true to my authentic self. Well, scripture would say that I was born sinful, I was born broken.

And then as much as I think I should just trust myself that my own heart is deceitful and wicked, and therefore I need a transcendent moral authority above me to help me determine the right direction to go. So if you think of moral relativism and you, you really tried to break it down in a simplified form, most Americans now would, would submit themselves to this general idea of morality. They would say, you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t harm anyone. I’ve got a family member who’s an atheist, and as the pastor, I try not to constantly bombard her with spiritual conversations, but occasionally she will bring up a spiritual conversation. And I remember a few years ago, which she said this exact definition, I I, I said, okay, if you don’t believe in a God, how do you determine what is right and what is wrong?

And she said, well, I I think that anybody can do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt somebody. And if they don’t hurt anybody else, that’s fine. And this statement sounds great on the surface except for two big problems. Who gets to define this word harm? And who gets to define this word? Anyone that Nazi Germany before the Holocaust, they practiced something called eugenics. The Hitler believed that the way that evolution was taking us, that that, well, if we’re trying to get better and better and better in terms of humans, the way that we do that is we should take the best DNA and push it forward. And in order to do that, we need to coal away all of the bad DNA. And so before the Holocaust, they started killing any human in Germany that had a disability, that had a defect, that had some sort of special needs, but just kill ’em.

Now, according to their definition, they would say they weren’t harming someone. They would actually say that they were benefiting the whole because the people that they were killing were substandard. They didn’t have the same value as another person. And that’s the same logic that brought about the Holocaust. They determined, well, well, Jews, they’re subhuman, and because they’re subhuman, we can kill them, and we’re not actually harming them because they don’t have the same value as other races and other people. And, and so this definition sounds great until you really start to unpack, well, well, how do we determine the definition for harm? How do we determine the definition for a person and whether that person has rights or has value? You see, really there’s three words that we have a really hard time giving a definition to. It’s the words love, the word harm the word hate, that all of those words require a transcendent source of moral authority.

Let, let me break it down this way. Let, let’s do John Mark Comer. He does this thing where he says, I’m gonna do an ethics case study. And this is the ethics case study that he gives. He says, imagine if a 5-year-old comes to you and says, I would really like to try heroin, and you have a choice to make in that moment, okay, I’m either going to say yes or I’m gonna say no, and one of these things would harm them. And one of these things would be the most loving thing for them. Well, well, pretty much everybody. You can’t find anybody in our country that wouldn’t say, well, no, you should say no to a five-year-old doing heroin. Can we at least all agree on that? We’d all be on the same page. We heroin bad for five-year-olds. So, so we could all agree as a culture, as a society that, that, no, the answer to that should be no, because it would be harmful. But what about a whole bunch of different issues that we face today where the answer culturally is not so clear? What about a teenage boy that comes to you and says, I wanna start watching porn?

You can find plenty of psychologists today, plenty of literature today that would say, well, that’s a normal reaction, and you should embrace that and you should allow them to engage in that behavior. If I say yes, is that an answer that harms them or is saying no? The most loving answer that I could give them? What about a teenage girl that comes and says, Hey, everybody else is doing, I I wanna start having sex with my boyfriend. Should you say yes or should you say no? What about the college student that comes back or the high school student that says, every one of my friends is smoking weed? I, I I want to engage in this behavior saying yes or no. Is that loving or is that harmful? What about the child, the 7-year-old that comes and says, I know I’m a boy, but I actually now identify as a girl and I’d like to transition?

What is loving and what is harmful? John Mark Comer has this quote, which I love, and when he talks about our culture, he says, more and more, the greatest sin is to still believe in sin. What people feel they need saving from is the idea that they need saving. This is the world we’re living in. Romans chapter 12, verse two Paul unpacks this idea where he says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Now, here’s what Paul is laying out for us, that we need to just assume. We need to understand that we live in a world that is going to constantly be wanting to change us towards the pattern of this world. And we have crowds of people that are running a certain direction, and the most normal behavior is just to turn and go the same direction as everybody else.

But Paul warns us against that. He says, do not be conformed to the pattern in this world, but instead he offers this alternative be transformed by the renewing of your mind. He said, if you submit yourself to a different transcendent moral authority and you seek after him that there’s gonna be this renewal process that’s continually changing you Tim Keller, he, he used to have a conference called the Gospel Identity Conference. And really he was tackling a lot of modern philosophy while giving a biblical worldview it. And he unpacks these three different identities that we have. First, he talks about his traditional identity. For most of human history, this was the identity that humans had, that their value was found in external standards. And those external standards were, were things that, that ultimately valued the family and valued the community. So if you lived 200 years ago, the expectations were that your choices were really not about you and more about your family and the community around you, especially if you lived a thousand years ago, 3000 years ago, that you are one cog in a, in a bigger system, and your choices need to support that external system.

And that’s why so much of culture was honor and shame. Hey, do things that help family do things that help community. We will honor you do things that harm family and harm community, and we will shame you. And so when that traditional identity existed, the lack of self-worth comes from not meeting those external standards. Then really in the last a hundred years, we now have this modern identity, which totally has transformed that and the modern identity in it. The value is found in this subjective standard set by each individual as you look inward to find your own value, validate your significance, and reject external standards. So in the traditional values, this idea that I am less important than my community and my family, their needs first, in the modern identity, it inverts that it says, well, no, actually my needs are more important than anybody else’s needs.

So, so my needs are more important than my family. My needs are more important than my community. Now. Now, it’s not all bad. Sometimes we, we think of that and we say, oh, well that’s terrible. There’s some wonderful things that have come out of modern identity that for most of human history, marriage was arranged, arranged. It was, Hey, you are going to marry this person because this is the best thing for our family, or this is the best thing for the community at large. But the modern identity would say, well, no, you choose a spouse based off of you, based off of your feelings, based off of who you love. So it’s not that one is good and one is bad, but neither one of them is really what we see scripture reveal as a gospel identity. Now, the big challenge of a modern identity is that when I’m not worried about the people around me and I’m only worried about myself, that can cause issues and problems.

I’ll give you a very practical example. We put speed bumps into our parking lot. Why do we need speed bumps? Because people speed. Now, we wouldn’t need speed bumps if everybody just said, Hey, I’m, I’m gonna go a really low speed because I recognize there’s kids, there’s people, and I don’t wanna accidentally hit somebody, ruin their life and my life, and so I’m gonna tone it down when I’m in this parking lot. But instead, we tend to say, well, I want everybody else to go slow in the parking lot. Like if I’m walking with my kid and somebody else is speeding, I’m gonna be very angry at them. But, but when I’m driving, I’m careful enough of a driver, then maybe I can go fast and not worry about those problems. I had. This is a real conversation I had when we put ’em in, we’ve only put ’em in within the last two weeks.

And somebody came up and they said, I hate speed bumps. I can’t believe you put it in speed bumps. And then this is the next phrase that came out of their, their mouth. They said, I was speeding over one and didn’t realize it was there, and I almost hit my head on the top of the car and it almost destroyed my car. And I mean, I’m just thinking to myself, you are it. You’re the reason we put those in. Do you not understand the words that are coming outta your mouth? Clearly you are it. If you go, went so fast over the speed bump that your head hit the the top of your car, you need to slow down. But, but we don’t tend to have that idea. It really is this idea of, okay, what is about me? What is about my needs? What is about my focus?

That’s the modern identity. But the gospel identity is something completely different from that in the gospel identity. It goes back to external worth. Go ahead and put up the gospel identity. The gospel identity is that our value is found in an external standard. That external standard is God, but the means of living up to that standard has already been achieved in Jesus. You see in the external, in the traditional standard identity, it was, if I do all the right things, then I’m valued by community, then then in this modern identity, it’s like, well, I’m gonna ignore everybody else. I’m gonna just do what makes me happy. But both of those things fall short because both of those things are about my own achievement and the modern identity. Okay, here’s my goals, here’s what I want. And if I do these things, then I’m gonna be happy and I’m gonna achieve certain things.

But it’s never enough. The gospel identity is the only identity that is received and not achieved. It’s set apart because it says that my value does not come from my external worth, what I’ve done for other people. But it also doesn’t just come from my internal worth. What I think about myself, my value comes not from what I have done, but from what Jesus has done for me on the cross. It also points to the reality that I’m born broken and sinful. I’m born, separated, and apart from God, and I need Jesus in my life. He becomes my transcendent moral authority. That my right and wrong is based off of the character and the nature of who God is and the character and the nature of who God is, is revealed to us in scripture. Jesus teaches this over and over and over. And not only that, we see him represented in how he lives out his life.

If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to John chapter eight. If you don’t have one, you can follow along on the screen or in the app. John chapter eight, we’re gonna start in verse one. Here’s what it says. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives early in the morning. He came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and taught them. The scribes in the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst, they said to him, teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do you say this? They said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Now, pause for a second and understand the tricky situation that the Pharisees think that they’re putting Jesus into, that they have this woman who’s caught an adultery.

Now, we don’t know all the backstory why they didn’t also bring the guy. We’re not sure, but a lot of people speculate it’s because they wanted to make this really catch 22, gotcha moment harder for Jesus. And if they bring this woman, there’s this part of Jesus can be really empathetic to her. And if he says, well, I don’t condemn her, don’t do anything, then they’re gonna say How we got you. The Old Testament says that you’re supposed to stone her. And if you were really a teacher, if you were really a prophet, if you really loved the Old Testament, then you would tell us to stone her. And therefore, since you’re not telling us that you’re a false prophet, but if Jesus does the opposite, if Jesus says, okay, let’s stone, her Roman law prohibited anyone from carrying out an execution, the Jews in the first century were not allowed to stone someone.

And and so if Jesus would’ve said, let’s stone her, then immediately they would’ve gone to the Roman authorities and they would’ve said, Hey, this guy stoned her. You need to arrest him. So they thought they had him in a perfect predicament where no matter what choice he chose, it would work to their favor. And Jesus does something they didn’t expect. So they say that in order to test him, to bring charges against him. And then Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. Then it goes on to say, and as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And once more, he bent down and wrote on the ground. Now, there’s some things that Jesus does in scripture that, that we don’t fully understand why he does it.

We don’t know what Jesus writes in the dirt right now. And he has different moments where he does things that just seem different. Like once he healed a guy and instead of just putting his hand on his eyes and say, you’re healed, it says that he spits into the dirt and makes mud and takes that mud and puts it on his eyes, and that’s how he heals it. Why does he do that when he could have just used his hand? I have no clue. But it’s one of these interesting things about Jesus. He’s very intentional with how he’s doing things and why he’s doing things. But often what he does looks very different than what everybody else would expect him to do. And so as these Pharisees, these scribes, these religious leaders, very righteous men, at least that’s the way that the community would’ve seen them, as they’re waiting to see what Jesus is gonna do, he starts to write in the dirt and then he stops.

And you can imagine if you’re a Pharisee, you, you’ve brought this woman and say, okay, what are we gonna do with this woman? She’s caught in adultery. Okay, come on, let’s, let’s hear your verdict. And then instead of saying anything, he’s spinning down and writing the dirt, and they’re probably looking at each other and probably elbowing each other. And somebody says, Hey Jesus, what? What are you gonna do here? Well, what’s your choice? And Jesus says that he who has no sin throw the first stone and he goes back to the dirt and he keeps on drawing. And some scholars, their guess, we don’t know, but their guess is that maybe what Jesus was doing is he was writing the sins of those Pharisees into the ground so that each one of them saw that Jesus knew the sin that they had in their own heart and their own life.

But we don’t know. We don’t know what Jesus is drawing, but we do know the result that he continues to write on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones. And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Now imagine if you’re the woman. I mean, talk about just all kinds of different emotions. I mean, she understands what’s happening. She, she hears what they’re saying. She’s now in front of this religious teacher. She thinks that at any moment they’re just gonna pick up big sticks, big stones, and start pelting them with her. She thinks, at any moment, I’m going to be killed. And now all of a sudden it’s just her in Jesus. And, and I think sometimes the perception that we have of Jesus may, maybe if you are new to church or maybe you grew up in the church and had some bad experiences of the church.

And so because in the church you felt condemned or you felt judged, that your idea, your picture of Jesus is if you were standing just you and him, that your mind of Jesus would be that he’d be taking stones and he’d just be hurling ’em at you. You wretched sinner. You should be better. Maybe that’s what she thought was about to happen to, but that’s not who Jesus was. Instead, it says that Jesus stood up and said to her woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She said, no one Lord. When Jesus said, neither do I condemn you, go. And from now on sin no more. Now there’s two really important pieces to capture what Jesus says here. The first, he says, neither do I condemn you. And then the second is that he says, go and sin no more. Now, I think the tendency inside of church is for us to be one extreme or the other.

The tendency inside of church. And then it feels like some churches or the perception that people have of a lot of churches is that if you go into that church and you are a sinner and you’re not living the way, those external expectations, that if you’re not living according to certain things, then that church would just pick up stones and start hurling them at you. And that’s not who Jesus calls us to be. You see the gospel identity, if I recognize that everything I have is received and not achieved, it’s not because of how good I am or how great I am, then I can walk in humility. I, I can recognize someone who walks into the church that is broken, that is struggling with sin, that has unrepentant sin in their life. And my response should not be condemnation and judgment. It should not be hurling stones.

No, it should be love. It should be acceptance. It should be, we are so grateful that you are here. You’re not in a place that is gonna condemn you. But now on the other extreme, you have churches that just want to love and accept and affirm and celebrate anyone and everything, no matter their lifestyle. And that’s not healthy either. Imagine if we had someone who was struggling with addiction that that came to church for the first time. And and maybe that’s you. Maybe that’s your story. And the church our size. I promise you, every single Sunday there is somebody that has alcohol in their breath that, that on Saturday night they were struggling with alcohol. And maybe someone comes into our church and they are an alcoholic. I mean, they’re struggling is an addiction. It is destroying their life. And if that person comes into our church on the one side, we want to love and accept that person.

They shouldn’t feel judged. They shouldn’t feel hate. They shouldn’t feel like they’re getting stones thrown at ’em. We want them to feel welcome in these seats sitting right next to us. But simultaneously, the least loving thing that we could do is to celebrate the sin that they have in their life. The most harmful thing that we could do is to say, you’re perfect. Just as you as you are. You’re living your true authentic self. Stay in this pattern of sin, that pattern of sin that’s destroying your life. You just stay in it. No, we, we want to say, Hey, we’re, we’re not here to condemn you. We’re here to love and accept you. But also what Jesus says is so powerful, he says, go and sin no more. You see, the most loving thing that Jesus could do to the woman was to challenge her to repent, to change her lifestyle, to go and sin no more the most harmful thing he could have done.

You say, Hey, you just keep on living the way that you’re living. Don’t worry about it at all. So with that comes this really challenging question for all of us. How in our culture should we demonstrate love to the people around us? What does it look like? I think it starts by us recognizing that every single one of us is a sinner. I’m a sinner. Paul over and over and over in his writing says that he’s the chief sinner. So he recognized that all of us need Jesus. And if we have that posture, it changes how we engage and encounter with other people. Look what Paul writes in one Corinthians chapter 13, the love chapter. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of it. And in that chapter he says, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. And so when people come into our church, we want that to be their experience, that our love is patient with them. That whatever they’re struggling with, there’s not some expectation that hey, you gotta change that. For some people, it’s a lifelong journey. So we’re patient and we’re kind and and it’s not envious or boastful. It’s, it’s not arrogant or rude. It’s it’s humble. It’s humble. Because of that gospel identity, everything I have is received, not achieved. But it goes on to say, how? How do I love someone? Well, what is love? It says, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. And so to love someone, well, we need to be kind and generous and compassionate. But also we need to not celebrate or affirm a lifestyle that is wrongdoing instead of being loving, which that might feel like, feels like that’s the most loving thing that I could do. Actually, scripture would teach us that it’s harmful to do that.

That if I’m a Christian, if I’m falling after Jesus, it means that instead of my moral authority being what culture determines or what, just I and my own heart determined no. My moral authority is a transcendent moral authority. That it’s the character and the nature of God. And that character and nature of God is revealed to us through scripture, through His word. And that doesn’t mean that I’m perfect, but it means that that is the lifestyle that I’m striving after. And if I love someone else, then it means that my hope, my goal for them in life, it would be that they recognize that the most joy filled life they could possibly ever have is a life that aligns with scripture. That’s challenging in our culture today. It’s challenging in our context today. It’s challenging because there’s moments where everybody feels like it’s going a certain direction and we don’t wanna feel like we’re the one person that is standing against that.

And so what’s the space that we as the church should exist in? I tell you, it’s a couple things that, number one, we, we want to love people. Well, when they come, they’ve done studies about what changes somebody’s worldview. And, and if we try and debate someone to change their worldview, it almost never works. But here’s what they found in studies, that when someone experiences Jesus and they become a Christian and give their life to Jesus, that through the power of the Holy Spirit, they start to transform. And those worldviews start to shift because their identity is now underneath God and they’re submitting to what God has laid out as the best life for ’em. And so we wanna be a church that loves people well and loves them to the cross because I can’t change people and neither can you. My preaching ain’t that good.

I, I can be really eloquent, but, but me changing someone’s worldview will not happen. But if we love people really, really well and we lead people to the cross that Jesus can and does and will change, people will transform people. And that doesn’t mean that it always happens overnight instantly, but it means it sets ’em on a lifelong journey where they can experience love and joy and peace that is not found apart from him. And in doing that, part of that is repentance. It’s turning away from behavior that’s destructive. It’s turning away from behavior that does not line up scripture. So we wanna hold both things. We don’t wanna be a church that carries around rocks. And that’s the perception the world has us, has of us. We wanna put the rocks down. We wanna love people well, but also we wanna lead ’em to the cross ’cause we know that there’s a life available to them that is so much better than the one the world has to offer. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for each and every person in this room. God. And I pray for anyone in this room that does not know you, Lord, that they are caught in the trap of our culture.

Lies that sound so warm and fuzzy of being our true, authentic self God. But scripture is so clear that we are born broken and that our true, authentic self doesn’t know up from down, left from right, right from wrong. And so, God, I pray that today for anyone that does not know you, that today can be the day that they receive that gospel identity, put their faith or hope to trust in you gotta pray for anyone here that’s just struggling now with these cultural issues of how do I love well and how do I swim upstream? How do I not just get caught up being conformed to the pattern in this world? And so, Lord, I just pray that we would be church that can live love. Well be compassionate that just like Jesus, we would not condemn and not throw stones. And yet also we would call people to repentance out of love ’cause it’s the best thing for ’em. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.