Philippians 3:20 (A Better Citizenship)

The Shepherd's Church

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It seems clear to me that we live in a bad news world.

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It's all around us. It's on our televisions, it's on our phones, it's on our social media accounts, and it's everywhere that we turn.

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We are inundated with bad, heavy, and depressing news. And the truth of the matter is that, is if we focus on that, it's gonna become very easy for us to become discouraged and anxious and depressed.

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That's why today, I want us to remember who we are. I want us to remember that our identity as Christians is not bad news.

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Instead, we are good news people. We are gospel people. In fact, that's the very definition of what the gospel means, is good news.

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It's like a newspaper article, if the news actually published good news, or it would be like a television broadcast, if they actually broadcasted good news.

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The gospel, at its heart, is a news story. It's a message of hope that excites people to the point that they wanna share it and spread it and herald it and proclaim it.

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It's supposed to be good news. You see, the origin of this word gospel, it's not a

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Christian word to begin with. It began actually as a Roman word to describe the process of getting the good news out to all the citizens of the empire.

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You see, back in a day before they had television news and other forms of media like we have today, the ancients had news couriers.

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They had men and women called gospelers. And basically, they would carry updates and news stories to the people.

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When something truly significant happened, they would be dispatched all over the empire from town to town to town, singing and shouting and heralding whatever good news that had happened.

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In a way, this term gospel actually was a media term, if you can believe that.

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It was a way of getting important news and events out to the masses, just like modern media is supposed to function today.

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So without newspapers, online sources, or televisions, or anything else, the people were dependent upon these gospel news couriers to bring them the important updates so that they could stay connected to what was happening in the world.

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That was the only way that they were gonna find out what was going on. Now, I'm sure you can imagine in a world like that where news doesn't come every nanosecond into your phone and into your life and into your screen or whatever else, news was actually probably hard to come by.

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And I'm sure you can imagine how exciting that it would have been if someone up on the gate spotted a herald running towards your town.

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There would have been this sort of fever pitch excitement. The herald would have been welcomed into the gates.

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They would have been given a prominent position inside the city. And everyone would have been called out of their houses and their jobs and their activities to gather around and listen to what this courier had to say because it had to have been something important.

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These men weren't dispatched lightly or over trivial matters. No, they were reserved for the very best kinds of news.

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It was only unless something monumental happened that they would be sent forth out into the Roman Empire because it was expensive and it was costly and it was arduous journey for these people to go out into the world.

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So unless it was something big, they would not have been sent. So if they would have been sent to a town, that town would have been in utter anticipation and excitement over what was getting ready to be told to them.

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Now, the kind of news that would have dispatched these gospel heralds would have been political and kingdom news, much like back then, they gained their identity on how the empire was doing.

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So if the empire was doing well, it was good news. If the empire was doing poorly, it was bad news.

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And the kinds of stories that they would highlight as a part of this good news gospel exclamation would have been maybe a child being born into the royal family or a new emperor rising to power.

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You know, there's even record that when Caesar Augustus was born, that the heralds were sent all throughout the

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Roman Empire to announce the son of the gods has been born. That's what they called Caesar Augustus, the son of the gods.

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And not only had he been born, but his rule and his reign was gonna bring peace and prosperity back to the

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Roman Empire. It was gonna bring joy for all the people. And when the people would have heard a message like that, they would have been, they would have erupted in praise, they would have been excited, they would have been joyful, and they would have taken that news and they would have shared it with anyone who missed the message, anyone who was still stuck out in the fields.

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And it's that kind of excitement that I want us to focus on for a second. That kind of excitement about political advancement is very common even today.

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Presidential candidates make their kind of election career on announcing all of the good things that they're gonna do.

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They're gonna fix all of our problems and they're gonna bring peace back to the nation. They're gonna unite the masses together again.

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They're gonna heal the wounds in our nations and they're gonna address our deepest hurts. And at the end of their reign, as it were, we're gonna experience peace and blessing, good fortune.

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It's the same kind of messaging that's going on today that was going on back then and that is the kind of message that the couriers would have taken all throughout the empire.

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Now, if you're young and if you believe the hype, then you would have been thrown into ecstatic praise if you had lived long enough in our world especially, but if you'd lived long enough in theirs as well, you would know that no political kingdom is ever gonna live up to its promises.

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So no matter what the messaging is that's being shared with you, it's not ultimately gonna fix the problems.

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It's just another leader, another politician, another campaign that's gonna fall short.

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For example, today, America is 244 years old and I praise

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God that we live in this country. There's many good things that have come about as a result of this country, but there's also many evil things that have been unleashed upon the world because of this country, which just goes to demonstrate that no country, even some of the greatest countries, cannot ultimately fulfill the longings of our heart.

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They can't ultimately fix the problems that we know that are here. And no matter what side of the aisle you're on politically, you don't have an answer to the problems that we face ultimately.

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You don't really have good news, hope, and joy because all of those things, especially in 2020, are in desperately low supply.

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And this is because we intuitively know this, but human kingdoms are not ultimately good.

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Human empires are built by humans and humans are sinful. And therefore, at a minimum, a conglomeration of sinful people making an empire is going to have sinful dynamics, especially when you add power and wealth and other elements.

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There's gonna be, there can be good that comes out of these empires, but there's also gonna be a massive amount of devastation and destruction that come out of these empires.

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And the point that I'm trying to make and trying to tease out here is that they cannot ultimately bring the kind of good news that they promise.

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And that's why that the biblical message and the biblical gospel is so much better.

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Because while this word, gospel, did not originate as a biblical word, Paul and other writers of the

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New Testament used this word to describe how what Jesus had done was infinitely better.

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His gospel is better than the gospel of Rome. His gospel is better than the gospel of the Caesars.

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His gospel is the only gospel that can truly bring good news. You see, in the same way that the

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Romans announced the birth of their kings as good news, the

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New Testament tells us about the true and the perfect king who was born into this world. And it was his reign and it was his kingdom that is gonna truly bring good news worth heralding.

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He came to rescue men and women who were enslaved to the wicked serpent. He came to deliver his people into freedom.

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He came and while perfectly innocent, he took our punishment upon himself and he gave us his royalty to be our status forever.

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No king, no empire, no leader has ever done that. No, what they do is they sit on top of their ivory towers and they make empty promises.

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They sit in the comfort of their palaces while the people are not living in the kind of luxury that they have promised.

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They promise peace, but it never comes. They promise life, health and wealth, but it never materializes.

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They promise all of these things, but at the end of the day, human empires are hollow and their words are empty.

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And while a lot of good can come from a human establishment or a human government or a human empire, they cannot ultimately deliver on their promises because they're not the one true king.

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And it's that king that we celebrate. A king who left his palace to be born among the slaves.

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A totally innocent king who was crucified, a criminal so that you and I could walk away free. A man,

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Jesus Christ, whose life, rule and kingdom are absolutely good news.

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And 2000 years later, it is still good news and it is still worth sharing and it is a part of our identity as Christians.

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We may live in this secular state called America, but we are citizens of a different king.

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And that's what I want us to focus on for the next several moments as we turn to Philippians 3, 18 through 21.

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And as we examine that text together, this is what Paul says. For many of whom

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I often told you and now tell you even weeping that they're enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose

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God is their appetite, whose glory is in their shame and who set their mind on earthly things. What Paul is saying here is that there are many people in this

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Roman town called Philippi where he's writing to, who have tied in and wed their happiness to how

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Rome is doing. Philippi was a patriotic colony. It was a colony full of war heroes.

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It was a colony full of people who loved Rome. And Paul is saying that even with tears in his eyes that these people are enemies of the cross of Christ because they have valued

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Rome higher than they have valued the kingdom of God. These were people who had professed allegiance to Christ but didn't understand what that meant because their allegiances to Rome were still greater.

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And Paul says that their end is destruction. Their God is their appetite.

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And they set their mind on earthly things and earthly kingdoms.

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And Paul is writing to Christians in Philippi saying, do not do that.

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Why? Because our citizenship is in heaven, verse 20, from which we also eagerly await for a savior, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory by the exertion of the power that he has even to subject all things to himself.

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The main point of this passage is that Paul is writing to people and he's telling them that your citizenship ultimately is in heaven.

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That means at a bare minimum, if you were a Christian, then you have a sort of dual citizenship where yes, you belong to Rome or in our case, yes, you are a citizen of America.

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You actually are a citizen. But he's trying to lift our gaze off of that and say, don't get your hope in that.

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Don't put your trust in that. Don't get your joy from that because ultimately we are citizens of a better kingdom and a greater kingdom and that is the kingdom of heaven.

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And what Paul is trying to get us to understand here is that that is actually good news.

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Now, I don't wanna bash America on its birthday. But I do want us to understand that our primary citizenship is not here.

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And praise God for that. And praise God that we don't have to get our hope from how this country is doing.

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Because if our only citizenship, if we had no God and if we had no kingdom and if we had no king like Christ and if we were still stuck in our sins and lost in our own depravity, then the only hope that you and I could have is in how this country is doing.

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If the country is doing well, then it would be great. But look at 2020. Where's your hope then when a plague hits and when unrest hits and violence and racism and police brutality, public riots, when

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Antifa takes over pockets of downtown communities and where political blame shifting is happening.

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And in the midst of all of that, you've got an election year where both candidates are throwing bombs back and forth to each other and nothing at all about any of this resembles peace.

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Where's your hope then? If America were all that you and I had, if it was the only place that you and I could call home, then we would be the most pitied people on the planet.

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That we'd have no hope. As this nation continually spirals into anarchy, our happiness would erode, our confidence would crumble.

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When we turn on the news, we would be depressed and angry people every single day.

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When we listen to the rhetoric of the news media and politicians, we would be disillusioned or disgusted.

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If this were our only heaven, then we would spend all of our energy and effort thinking about it, pouring our energy into it, trying to fix it.

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And this country, like all countries, will eventually fall. It will eventually be relocated to the history books that it's gonna gather dust on an empty shelf.

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Praise God that that is not our hope. Praise God that this is not our hope.

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That our joy does not need to come from how this particular geopolitical country is doing or how a party is doing or how a platform is doing or how the

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Supreme Court is doing. Praise God that our allegiance is to a different king and to a different country and to a different Lord because only he can offer true joy, better joy.

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If you and I wanna live most fully, most happily, most joyfully, it's not because we've been good patriots or nationalists or good

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Americans, it's because we found true joy in the kingdom of Christ, true peace in the kingdom of our

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God. And again, the reason I bring this up to each and every single one of us is because Paul is writing to one of the most patriotic cities.

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He's writing to the people who were national loyalists. He's writing to the conservatives, the military loving

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God and country, America people. He's writing to the Republicans of his day.

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He's writing to people who loved their country and who gathered to sing the national anthems.

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He's writing to the people who would joyfully gather in a backyard barbecue to celebrate the birth of a nation.

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He's writing to firework people. He's writing to the people who loved their country. And he's writing to people just like us.

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See the point of his message could not be more clear. The real good news that you and I need today is not nationalism, patriotism or party allegiance.

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And it's not to find our hope in a kingdom that is going to fade. The real good news that you and I need is to remember that we are citizens of the kingdom of God.

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Now that doesn't mean that we hate our country by no means. It just means that our priority, is in the right place.

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We are not first citizens of America. We are not first citizens of this world.

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We are citizens of the kingdom of God because Christ our King is better. No matter who wins the election,

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Christ will still be King. And it won't bother you who wins the election if you understand truly that Christ is

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King. And it's not gonna bother you which party is dominating the political atmosphere because you have an irrevocable citizenship that can never be taken from you.

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And it's not gonna cause you depression or anxiety or fear when you turn on the news and when you open your phone, when you see all of the angst and the frustration that's going on into the world.

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Because if you know that you serve a true and better King who is sovereign over the events of the world and who loves you and who has a plan for you and is leading you in this world until you meet him in heaven, where you're gonna spend eternity with your great

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King. If you understand those truths then this world will not depress you. And this world will not break you.

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And this world will not cause you anxiety. It's normal to feel sadness over the state of our country.

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I certainly do. And it's normal to feel sadness for those who have no hope. But as Christians, these feelings do not crush us.

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They fuel us towards mission. And they fuel us to sit down into the good news that we know and believe it and to accept it as our identity and then to take that message and then to share it with other people.

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You see what's interesting about it is that in the Roman world, only special people got to be gospel heralds.

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And they went and they told everyone else, in the Christian world, everyone gets to be a gospel herald.

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Everyone gets to go all throughout the world and share the good news that they have in Christ. To announce that this kingdom that we live in is better than the kingdoms of this world, everyone gets to be a gospel herald.

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Because God has made you and I not just citizens of his kingdom, but his ambassadors to the world.

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So that we can understand the good news, live it and accept it as our identity and take that wonderful message to the world so that other people can have the hope that we have in Christ.

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So this 4th of July, the two things that I want you to remember is that we have a citizenship in heaven that is greater than our citizenship here on earth.

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And God has made us his ambassadors to go and to tell the world about the good news that we have in Jesus Christ.

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Let's pray. Father, thank you so much. Thank you first and foremost that we get to live in a country where we have a good news.

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Where we are still free, where we can gather and where we can worship. But Lord, I also ask you to lift our gaze above this kingdom and above this nation, above our states and above our counties and above our cities and above all of those things that are very real.

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And to lift our gaze to heaven, to lift our gaze up to the gospel. And to understand that it's only your gospel that gives us true freedom and true peace and true love and true joy.

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It's only your gospel that saves us from our sins and truly rescues us.

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It's only your gospel that will deliver us into an eternal kingdom where we will live with you forever. It is only your gospel that does any of that.

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Lord, I pray that we would accept that truth and that reality as our identity. That we would not allow this world to make us angry and frustrated and feel powerless.

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But Lord, I do pray that we would let that message empower us, empower us to courage, empower us to service and empower us to missions.

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Lord, I pray that we, as the bride of Christ, would go out into this dark world and we would share that good news of Jesus Christ with everyone.