David Platt on O Holy Night

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We are going to talk today about a David Platt sermon that was preached last

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Sunday from the pulpit of McLean Bible Church in McLean, Virginia. This is a listener -generated episode.

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Someone sent this to me and said, John, would you comment on it? If I'm sent things, sometimes I have the time to do it, sometimes

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I don't, sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. I would love to do more. But this was one that sparked my interest, and I thought, you know what?

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We'll do this. So we're going to talk about it. It's certainly not David Platt's most radical sermon or anything like that, but it illustrates a few things that I thought would be helpful for us.

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One is that conservatives and revolutionaries, for lack of a better term, revolutionaries and traditionalists,

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I guess you could say, they hear things differently sometimes. And I think that David Platt, in this sermon he's kind of vague, but long story short,

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David Platt tries to set up this song, O Holy Night, which is what he's preaching on. He's preaching on the song, O Holy Night.

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He tries to set up the history of this song being from two non -Christians in France.

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I guess one was Jewish, didn't even believe that Jesus was the Messiah, wrote the music, and then someone else. It sounded like, I haven't looked into it yet, it sounded like someone who was more of a progressive,

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I guess, for lack of a better term, in France, revolutionary type, had written this song. And it was banned by the church when the church found out, and I'm assuming that's the

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Catholic church. I'm going off of what David Platt here said. I haven't actually looked into this. But the Catholic church, it sounds like, banned this because they found out this was written by two non -Christians.

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And then the song, though, became popular with abolitionists in the United States because they latched onto some of the lyrics as representing their cause.

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And so that's really where David Platt, he wants to use that as the thing that he then brings into the present and says, well, just like abolitionists use this song, and they saw in it the cry for revolutionizing the labor relationships that existed, and that's what

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Jesus' birth and coming was about in some ways, we need to do the same thing today. That's what he's really trying to get everyone to see.

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And that, you know, all the injustices around him that he would, in his mind, think of as injustice are the things we need to focus on eradicating and disparities we need to eliminate and all that.

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The thing is, if you didn't know who David Platt was, I think some of this you might not, you might not have a big problem with it.

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People who are conservative might not see the big issue. Now, I would, I think because my ears are so tuned to this kind of stuff,

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I would still see problems with it. I would still see, I would still have suspicions. But I think, in general, if we didn't know anything about David Platt or the context of the social justice movement and his participation in it, if we didn't know what was happening at McLean Bible Church right now in regards to this, then we may not think about it the same way that we would if we didn't know that.

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And so it illustrates to me conservatives, progressives, they're listening with different ears.

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Traditionalists, revolutionaries, they're listening to these things differently. The left always claims, I should say many times the left claims, conservatives use dog whistles, racist dog whistles, that kind of thing.

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They're trying to show everyone that they're sexist, they're going to get the sexist to come vote for them, but they can't come out and say that, right?

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You hear this accusation. I think what that is is projection. Leftists do this all the time. They do that.

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They say vague things that their base understands what it means and that they can retreat and it's kind of the

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Mott and Bailey. They can just kind of retreat and then say, well, I didn't mean that, or, well, you're assuming that.

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I think that's kind of what Platt's doing here in a way. He's assuming some things about injustice that he's expanded on in other sermons, some of them we've talked about, that he's not stating here, but because we know the context, we know what he's talking about, and the people sitting there at McLean know what he's talking about in the middle of a fight in the church over this issue and a fight in evangelicalism over this issue.

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So we're all accustomed now to, when we hear things, we can't just hear them.

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We bring in sometimes, like when you talk about injustice, let's say, and if you have any history of being on the social justice side or if you don't clarify what you mean, a lot of assumptions are made.

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Sometimes they, in fact, most of the time I would say they're correct. In this case, I think it is correct.

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I'm going to go through the sermon, like I said. We're going to go through some clips of it and just talk about it. So one last thing

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I want to say. So let's see. I've said why this is important, yeah, what it illustrates, and also, secondly, it also illustrates that David Platt, even on a sermon about a

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Christmas carol, can't help but going a bit woke, so we're going to talk about that. The third thing

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I wanted to say, though, and this isn't an illustration, but just something I want to remind people about is when

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I play clips and I don't play the whole sermon, there is a danger there. Everyone needs to understand there is a danger of taking things out of context, and I do get accused of this every so often.

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John, you're taking things out of context. If that's the case, I will very humbly accept any correction, but here's the thing.

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I want you to be specific with me. What did the context provide that I left out or that I'm missing?

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That's the answer I've never gotten an answer for with anything I put out there. The fact is, we don't have time to go through sometimes every single,

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I can't play the whole entire sermon. Sometimes it's beneficial to do that, other times it's not, and in this case,

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I took some representative clips, and I just want to examine these clips because the sermon's very repetitive, and we don't have time to go through the whole thing, and you would be bored to tears if we did, so I just want to take these few short clips, and we'll talk about the sermon.

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It'll be much shorter, and you'll understand more what David Platt's trying to communicate here, but I just wanted to make that caveat.

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If someone has an issue, let me know. Be specific. I'm totally fine with that, and this is something

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I've been especially careful of. People have done that to me where they've tried to take things I've said out of context, so I know how that is.

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I'm trained in research, so I had to do that for my academic discipline, so I understand how sources can be twisted and used, and I go through great pains to make sure

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I do not do that. So that's my priority, and I hope that this is helpful for you.

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So we're going to start, let's see, at the beginning here, and I'll just stop it, and we'll comment as we go.

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The United States and our country as slaves and people were fighting against slavery in a civil war, and they were celebrating the birth of Christ.

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They sang, truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love, and His gospel is peace.

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Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease.

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Those were potent lyrics to sing in those days, and I would submit these are potent lyrics to sing today.

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I think that's the point of this whole sermon, honestly. That clip is what he's trying to say, that abolitionists had used this sermon to bolster their own argument, and so today we're in a very similar situation.

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Now this is what you have to ask. What's the situation? What are you talking about? What kind of great injustice?

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Is it abortion? And you find out, no, it's really not, and I'll play you that clip in a moment, and he identifies the groups that he considers to be oppressed, and so he's trying to make a

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Now, I don't want to get lost in a rabbit hole here, but David Platt's whole construction of this, that this, it's interesting, he says slaves and people were fighting.

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I don't think he meant to make a distinction between them. I think David Platt knows slaves are people, but what he's saying is that this was a rallying cry at that point in time when slavery still existed, and that it can be served today to be a rallying cry once again.

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Now I don't think, and this is the rabbit hole, I don't think that this is 100%, I think this is, he's leaving things out here,

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I don't, there were probably some radical abolitionists, right, who would use this, and maybe some abolitionists, just regular ordinary abolitionists, but abolitionism itself was viewed as a very radical thing at that time.

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It did not, it certainly did not characterize the entire North, certainly even many in the

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South wanted slavery to end, but they were not abolitionists, they were what we would call progressive emancipationists, or gradual emancipationists, probably a better term because of the way the term progressive is now used, and so there was a lot of, there were a lot of songs that they would use to bolster their claims and draw inspiration from, and many of them did see the

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North invading the South and subjugating the South as this, a prophetic thing, I mean that's kind of like the

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Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by someone who was a heretic, right, even if you read the lyrics to that song you realize there's actually false teaching in that song, but it was, the whole point was very prophetic, very apocalyptic type language that is then applied to the current situation at that time, which is

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North invading South and conquering the South, and that this was, it's justified because slaves are being freed, so all the things that came from that, from that consolidation of power, from the denying states the ability to leave, which

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I think some people wish that was possible more today, but it was already tried, and it was stomped out, and so people don't want to try that today as much,

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I don't see the courage to do that over abortion or other issues, which I kind of wish that courage was there in some ways, to nullify or to say we're out of this country if you're going to force us to allow women and doctors to kill their babies, right,

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I mean these are things that you can't really talk about because of that whole situation and what happened, and I heard it said,

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I'm trying to remember who said this, but that, you know, we didn't have our French Revolution, the quote -unquote revolutionary war, war for independence was not a revolution, it was more of a conservative move back to say we want our rights, read the

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Declaration of Independence, read the Olive Branch Petition, we want our rights as British citizens, that's what we, we're fighting because we're denied these things, and you're making war on us, it was a sort of a conservative move to preserve something that had been lost, but the

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French Revolution, that type of, that egalitarian type of ideal, that actually happened more in the

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American Civil War, that happened, you can see it even in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in a way, where Lincoln tries to make the

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United States about the proposition that all men are created equal, he takes the Declaration of Independence, one line from it, really out of context, and then infuses his own meaning and tries to make that, that's, that's the ideal of the

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United States, that we're all just trying to live up to that still, which now you even hear quote -unquote conservatives making that case, which is, it's, that dog don't hunt, it's not a good argument, in my opinion, it's not fair to the historical record, but that's the paradigm we live in now, that's what our elites pretty much all think that on both sides, and many of our people, even the working -class people now are even adopting that, because it's filtering down.

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And so David Platt, when he brings this up, he's, he's focused on that narrow, that, that group of people that was about, very much about immediately abolishing slavery, in some ways, by any means necessary, many of them thought, and he, he's using that group, and, and their moral, their treasury of counterfeit virtue, in my mind, many of them did not have, many of them would have still been, by today's standards, especially, but they would, they would have looked down at black people, they, it was very narrow, what they were interested in, often, and that was the eradication of slavery, there was a moral superiority, many of them felt, for being against that, there was somewhat of an egalitarian spirit at that time, and to actually care about the real, true conditions of these people, many of them did not,

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I hate to say that, but it is just the truth, many of them did not, they, you didn't see the kind of humanitarian, charitable work that you would have expected from that group, because this was very much so, it was a political thing, and there was a lot of virtue signaling then, like there was today, about this, and you gotta understand that, people don't really change, as far as who we are, the same kinds of things recycle over, and over, and over, and so,

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I don't want to get into the rabbit hole, because this could be, become very complicated, we are taught a lot of things, and there's a lot of onion layers to peel back, whenever I get into a discussion of something in history, that has, is forbidden to talk about, by the current intelligentsia, but David Platt's framing of this, is very much in keeping with the way modern academia frames this, and now pop culture frames this whole thing, and I just,

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I'm just telling you, it's not a hundred percent accurate, it's, it's not like you have this glorious cause on one side, pure as the driven snow, with virtue, and then on the other side, these evil, horrible people, just trying to, their whole goal is, they want slavery, and they want to perpetuate it, and they want to keep people from stopping it, and, and that's what, why they're fighting, and that's, it's not that complicated, and most things in history aren't, or it's not that simple,

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I should say, and most things in history aren't that simple, there's a lot more nuance, there's a lot more complication behind that, but because we have this, this neo -abolitionist interpretation of that conflict, it can be used, and both sides now try to use it to bolster their own cause, hey,

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I'm with the abolitionists, hey, no, I'm with the abolitionists, and, and so the left uses it, and now you even see some elements on the right trying to use it, saying, no, because they were

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Republicans, and we're Republican, or even in the pro -life movement now, sometimes you'll find people saying, like,

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I'm, I'm just like, I'm a John Brown of, I want to be like the John Brown of, of the pro -life movement or something, which, which is a little scary, knowing what

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John Brown did, but that's, uh, that, that kind of thing, um, and I'm, by the way, I, I should make a little note here for everyone listening,

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I'm not saying that abolitionism as it applies to abortion, I, I think, I wish it was a different term sometimes, but I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, there should be, um, we, we should want to abolish abortion, abortion is black and white in the scripture, no questions asked, a sin, murder, okay, and it needs to be, there's no gradual anything, getting, just stop, that's, just stop, don't do it, right, um, it's a little different,

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I think, when you're looking at issues that, uh, their scripture has teaching on, but doesn't in black and white tell you this is an absolute capital offense that needs to be, uh, it needs to be stopped, so we would all say, yep, slavery bad, get rid of it, thankful it's gone, because we want to see people who are self -reliant, independent, taking care of themselves much better, uh, but it, with a complicated situation in which this developed organically, no body came together and said, hey, let's vote for it, let's vote that we have it, it was something that developed over time, and then it was, how do we, what do we do with this now that we have it, and we've inherited this, a little more complicated, a lot of economic factors involved, a lot of social and political factors involved, and that, that was the situation that the people singing this song would have found themselves in, and they, and many of the abolitionists wanted to make this a very simple thing, uh, you bad, we good, and, uh, and, and we are on the side of the gospel, we are on the side of God's law, of his love, and, and so David Platt is making, drawing the same thing, he's doing the same thing, he's drawing a distinction saying, we good, you bad, we, people who are with me and with McLean, as we, as you listen to the sermon, you later find out, are against injustice, they're the good guys, and what they're doing is, is good, what, all the things

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McLean is involved in, very good, give money, he even says, give money at the end of the year, we need to, to keep doing the good things we're doing, uh, the people that go through the week, though, and they don't think about justice, or they don't do justice in our conception of what that is, they're bad, and I, I submit that this is the same thing the scribes and pharisees did, in a way,

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Jesus said, look, you're, you're, it may be well -meaning, it may be, uh, you know, I've, uh, not going to take care of my parents, because I've given my money to Corbin, right, for the

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Lord, uh, there may be some, some good intentions behind this, but what you've done is, you subverted the law of God for the sake of your tradition, and that's what we see,

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I think, with David Platt, look at his emphasis as we play this. Many African -American sisters and brothers in our church who have stories of oppression, whether personally, or in your parents, great -grandparents, and great -grandparents, and so on, who were enslaved when this song was being sung,

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I think of Native American sisters and brothers who, in your families and tribes, have experienced oppression and poverty,

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I think of a variety of sisters and brothers in our church family who immigrated here because of oppression or poverty in your home countries, and many of you are daily burdened by continuing oppression back home, where you still have friends and family living there.

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I think about conversations I've had with Eliza, who oversees our counseling and care ministry, some of you are quite frankly burdened by oppression in your home, even now.

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So, these are the people that are oppressed. Now, what did David Platt leave out? That's what I want to encourage you to think about.

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What's he trying to signal to his congregation? Black people, Native Americans, immigrants, okay, and then people that have personal issues that need counsel, they need counsel for them.

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So, he doesn't, now, I'm not saying he doesn't believe this on some level, but he's not talking about the unborn here.

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He's not talking about those forced to shut down their businesses or to take the jab or, you know, against their will to do that, and they've lost their jobs, they've lost their businesses, they've lost their livelihood.

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He's not talking about those who were the victims of last year's looting and everything associated with the

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BLM protests. He's not talking about the, I gotta be careful what

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I say on YouTube, the, let's just say the results, supposedly, of a certain election.

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He, there's a lot of things that he leaves out of this. What about people who live in Appalachia, who are poor as dirt?

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And there's a lot of historic things you can point to to say this is why they were, they are the way they are, you know, from, you could even say it's the total war, going back to the

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Civil War, that was committed against many of them, civilians. We could talk about what happened when the federal government went in and made the

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Appalachian, or the Appalachian National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We could talk about how they were sold on the idea that prisons would bring some kind of economic development, and it didn't.

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It actually did the opposite. Lack of access to healthcare. I mean, like, there's just a lot of things you could point to, and I'm not saying you have to be exhausted with every single group, but David Platt loves to point to the groups the left specifically would use as their own human shields to get their agenda done, right?

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And there is some truth to it, right? There have been injustices that have taken place in the past to various groups, and Native Americans, in my mind, being one of the groups that would be at the top of that list.

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But especially, it's funny, especially many of the quote -unquote abolitionists who would have, he's championing as they're the ones that want to break the chains of slavery and so forth.

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It was the army that got set down there, right, that they would have been so positive about, that then, right after that, they go out west, that same army, and they conquer the

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Native Americans and oftentimes break treaties. And I mean, history is a lot more complicated than sometimes it's made out to be.

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And so David Platt's probably not thinking consistently on all of this, but I'm just trying to point out, he wants you to give, he wants to err on one side of the political divide.

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And the classes that are specifically, the social locations, quote -unquote, that are specifically used by the left to bolster their own cause are the ones that he wants to emphasize here.

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So that's, he doesn't come out and say, like he has in other sermons, that look, there's a disparity, and look how many people are pulled over who look like this, and look how many people are incarcerated who look like this, and are on drugs, and that means that it's, he doesn't say that in this.

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But the people who have been under that teaching at McLean, they know what he's talking about, because he's expanded on it in other sermons.

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And he continues to just identify those groups as the ones that, when he preaches sermons on injustice, those are the groups he brings up.

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I find that interesting. I think in my mind, look, abortion would probably still be the number one thing. If I was going to talk about injustice and preach a sermon about it,

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I would, I don't know how you get away from mentioning that, right? That's like, the Holocaust is happening, and let's talk about,

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I don't know, some historic disparity between Jews and Germans or something, like that could, that's the kind of thing that been used in Germany at that time, not ignoring or downplaying kind of this other thing that's horrible that's actually really happening, and then focusing on stuff that, honestly,

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I mean, look, you want to talk about disparities with African Americans or something? Yeah, but look at the opportunities that exist out there.

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Look at the, especially since the 1960s, look at the kinds of things that are available to people who are

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Black. If they want to get a degree, the scholarships that are available, the jobs that are available because of diversity requirements and these kinds of things,

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I mean, it's just, to me, to focus on that still, and that's the big thing that we need to be so focused on, and that's the parallel that exists.

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It's just slavery is still existing because we have these kinds of problems with these groups of people and these disparities.

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It's just, to me, it shows kind of where his sympathies lie, right? And so this is more vague stuff.

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This is more, he's not out there, like, in, you know, waving the social justice flag, but it's subtle stuff that becomes ingrained in your mind if you listen to enough of it.

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You start attributing, when you hear, like, the word injustice or oppression, you start, immediately, the images in your mind come up of a certain, certain kinds of people, right?

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And that's on purpose, I will submit. A baby who will make slaves brothers, like, will totally change the fabric of society.

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So, totally change the, that was, Jesus came to totally change the fabric of society. Is that true?

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Think about this biblically. Is that what Jesus did? I mean, he used slavery, slave imagery in his parables.

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He even talked about, I mean, it's Jesus, I'm not saying this, he talked about beating slaves in his parables as a positive thing for disobedience.

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This is, you have to make sense of the way Jesus acted on this earth when he was here, in a

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Roman time when slavery existed and, in some ways, was far crueler than the kind of slavery that existed in the

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United States. Now, the slave trade was horrific, especially, and certainly, some of the conditions that some slaves endured in America weren't great either.

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But, that being said, look at Roman slavery. Roman slavery, sex slavery was just normalized in that system.

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You had gladiators that would have been slaves. You had, I mean, Roman privilege,

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I guess, would have been a real thing. You couldn't have been a slave if you were a Roman citizen. That wouldn't have happened. There was man capture on the borders.

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So, this all existed in Jesus' time, and what does he do about it? That wasn't his primary purpose, to stop that particular thing.

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It wasn't to revolutionize these relationships and these hierarchies. In fact, what you find is, some of the things

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Jesus says, almost, you could try to make the case, I don't make this, but you could even say that they reinforce it.

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And, the reason someone could try to make that case is because Jesus doesn't challenge that relationship, and instead, the effect of his preaching was slaves became better slaves, masters became better masters.

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And, we see the extension of that in Paul's teaching, where he gives directions to slaves and masters, and he's not trying to revolutionize anything.

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Look, this is the thing about Christianity. It's reformational. It is reformational, not revolutionary.

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There are sins that must be stopped. Things in black and white in the scripture, bing, boom, they're evil.

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We stop them. We fight against them. But, what we don't do is, hey, look at this disparity that exists, which is what

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I think David Platt wants people to draw from this. Look at this injustice over here. We need to go completely revolutionize everything, change the way we do business and church and everything, diversify our elder boards, and that's not the way

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Christianity does it. Christianity is more organic. You're not putting people in these positions because of some external quality.

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You put them in because, hey, they're brothers and sisters in Christ, and it's not based primarily on this racial or identity thing.

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By emphasizing our relationship to Christ, you crush bigotries, but you do it in a reformational way.

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That's how it works. You crush bigotries. If you make that your main purpose, that we are going to be about some justice kind of thing on the forefront, that's our mission, and therefore, even though you're qualified, we're passing over you and hiring this, as Matt Chandler says, we'll hire your

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African -American six instead of your white seven because we're about fighting injustice, then you actually just create more prejudice by doing that.

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You create resentment. You actually lower the standards for the people you're trying to help, and they need to try to meet standards in order to be successful in the world.

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You're not doing them any favors, and that's the effect of the social justice movement, and so I would disagree wholeheartedly with this, and I don't know that that's what the song is even saying.

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Maybe it is, but I never gathered that, like, and I don't think the song comes out and says that.

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That Jesus came to revolutionize. Jesus, yeah, the effect of Jesus's ministry was to show that, hey, slaves are brothers too, but that doesn't mean you get rid of the relationship that exists.

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The labor relationship doesn't deteriorate just because of that. It may take a long time to come to the understanding that, it's a lot better that society has people responsible for themselves.

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We want to encourage that as much as possible. We don't want slavery. We want people to be responsible and relying on themselves and being able to exercise the duties and responsibilities

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God has given them, and it takes time to get there, and it did in the ancient world, and anyway, so that's

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David Platt's construction on that, and I just, I want you to hear that. I want you to don't, you know, it's a little thing he says,

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Jesus came to revolutionize, but that's significant. That's the same language you heard with all the people that talked about the new left ideas that they wanted to incorporate in Christianity that I write about in Social Justice Goes to Church, like Richard Mao and Jim Wallace and Ron Sider.

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That's the kind of thing that they said all the time. It wasn't said in Christianity much at that time, not evangelicalism at least.

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All right, let's keep going. Jesus came to transform our lives, to give all of us hope that this weary fallen world with its poverty and captivity and blindness and oppression will not have the last word.

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Jesus came to give us hope and to revolutionize the way we live and we love in the face of all of these things in this weary world.

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Christian brothers. All right, I want to stop there for a second. This is a verse that's commonly used. It's Jesus's quote from Luke 4, where Jesus says the book of Isaiah was handed to him, and he opened the book and found the place where it was written, the

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Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, and he sent me to release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the

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Lord. And he closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down, and the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him.

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And he began to say to them, today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And then people were like, wait a minute, hold on.

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We know where you're from. How can this be? And he said, hey, no prophets welcome in their hometown.

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And then the people of the synagogue were filled with rage, and they got up and drove him out of the city, and that's how that went.

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And he was able to escape from them. So this is from Luke chapter 4. Now this is Jesus reading though from Isaiah chapter 61, which even

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John MacArthur talks about this being a symbolic of the year of Jubilee, when every 70 years property would go back to the rightful owners by family, and slaves would be freed.

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And it's kind of this wonderful thing, but that's a type and shadow of what's to come in Isaiah 61, when

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Jesus sets up his kingdom. And so he talks about this. Let me read for you.

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Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to free the prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the

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Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning.

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Now he goes on, and it's all very prophetic. It's about the restoration of Israel.

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They will rebuild the ancient ruins. They will raise up the former devastations. He talks about, and listen to this, strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, and foreigners will be your farmers and your vine dressers.

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In other words, hey, a bunch of foreigners and strangers are going to be working for you. Like, you know, is that part of David Platt's, you know, this is what we're supposed to be doing.

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If we're supposed to be doing all this, fighting all this injustice, should we, I don't know, I'm just curious, should we also try to copy this passage by, if it's a command for us, do we also need to go out there and find foreigners and strangers to do the work for us?

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Is that, I mean, he would freak out. That's against social justice. That's against what I believe, but that's in the same passage.

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I'm just pointing this out. You will be called priests of the Lord. You'll be spoken of as ministers of our God. You will eat the wealth of nations.

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In their riches, you will boast. In their riches. So let's go take the wealth of the world. Let's enjoy the wealth of the world because we're going to have it.

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Yeah, I'm sure that's, let's apply that to America, right? Is that what David Platt wants to do? I don't think so.

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He has to only focus on the first part of this passage or else he gets in real trouble if he tries to then go through the rest of the passage and then say, uh -oh, this is what we're supposed to do.

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I will submit to you, this is what I think about this. This isn't a command that's given to Christians today that they're supposed to go and do these things.

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Now, some of these things we should be doing. There's other places in the Bible that talk about this. That's not the point of the passage though. Point of the passage is, it is messianic and the

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Jews would have taken it that way. Why else would they be trying to confront him over this? They wouldn't have had a problem if Jesus was saying, you got to go and do good things and nice things for people.

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That wouldn't have been very controversial. But the fact that he says this and applies it to himself as they knew what he was saying, wait, you're the

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Messiah? You're the one that's going to bring in this rain? This isn't something we usher in. This is something that God does.

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The Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.

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This is something the Lord does. And the point of it is to look to God, that this is what

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God is doing. Now, the second thing is, because David Platt wants to make this about like, oh, this is what we're supposed to be doing.

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The second thing I want to say though is, I want to read for you, this is from John Gill's commentary, to preach the gospel to the poor.

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John Gill says, in Isaiah, it is to the meek, which design the same persons and mean such as are poor in spirit, and are sensible of their spiritual poverty, have low and humble thoughts of themselves and their unrighteousness, and seek to Christ for durable riches and true righteousness, and frankly, acknowledge that they have and are, all they have and are is owing to the grace of God.

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It goes on, talking about spiritual poverty here. Those hearts who are broken, you know, deliverance to the captives, those who are captives to sin,

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Satan and the law, recovering sight to the blind, which the prophet says, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, and which is subtuigent render, as here in Luke, the

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Caldei paraphrase in part agrees with it, interpreting it thus, to the prisoners, yet to be revealed to the light.

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Now, because persons in prisons are in darkness and see no light, and he goes on as all humanity is in darkness.

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So, he's saying this is spiritual. What Christ is saying here is spiritual. Same thing if you go to John Calvin's commentary on this.

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To the poor, Calvin says this, the prophet shows what would be the state of the church before the manifestation of the gospel, and what is the condition of all of us without Christ.

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Those persons to whom God promises restoration are called poor and broken and captives and blind and bruised. It's a spiritual thing going on.

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Now, here's what I'll say. A lot of prophecies are like this. There is a sense in which this is true physically, right?

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Christ did do miracles. He did give a foretaste of what the kingdom of God was going to to be like when

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Christ came and set up his kingdom. And so, the kingdom of God is upon you.

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The kingdom of God is here. We're living in the kingdom of God. It's Christ's ministry demonstrated the blessings of the kingdom of God, and many of those are physical.

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But I do agree with Calvin and Gill here that I think that's the main emphasis and the thing

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I think Christ is trying to communicate. Because right then, yeah, is he... are there miracles? Is he about to...

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is he sort of setting off and doing his ministry? Yes.

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But what was his ministry in his first coming? What was the emphasis? What was the purpose? It was spiritual.

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It was to seek and save the lost. It was for man who is in chains to sin, to be broken free from that.

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And so, that... I think David Platt doesn't even really focus on this so much.

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He mentions in the sermon that he kind of, in passing, mentions and he kind of builds up in this mention, but it's short, where he talks about that, yes,

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Christ came and he paid for our sins, but he doesn't really... he doesn't seem to attach it much to what he's trying to say about injustice.

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So, those are the two things that I say to watch out for, because Jim Wallace has done this whole thing for years. He goes to this passage and says, hey, that's what...

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basically, this is a command, though. We're supposed to go do this, and he stops right there, doesn't read the rest of the passage, and doesn't realize the prophetic...

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what's prophetically trying to be communicated in that. It's not a command for Christians now to go help illegal migrants, or something like that, right?

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That's not what Jesus is trying to say there, but that's kind of where Platt leans. He leans in that direction, is all

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I'm trying to say. Let's keep going here. Church family at NBC, true followers of Jesus are not content to debate justice.

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True followers of Jesus are committed to doing justice. And there you go. There is the connection between what's happening at McLean right now, and what is happening in this broader social justice movement, and what he's trying to communicate.

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That's... he's giving it away right there. That's what he's trying to say. Hey, guys, brothers and sisters at McLean Bible, we shouldn't be debating.

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If you're debating about this, shame on you. You shouldn't be debating about injustice. Go just do justice, right?

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But we need to know what we're doing. If we're doing something in that's unjust, in the name of justice, that's wrong.

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So if you... it doesn't matter what label you slap on something. I mean, you could slap on...

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people used to slap the word justice onto things like eugenics. It's just, you know.

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What if in that context David Platt said, well, we shouldn't be debating it. We just got to go do it. Well, some people would take away, well,

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I guess we got to go get involved in eugenics. So, no, it is very important to know what justice is. If you don't understand it, then you can't actually go and do it.

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So, ignorantly going around trying to do justice without having it defined, bad idea.

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But David Platt wants to rain on the parade of anyone who would try to debate this. And the fact is, we actually need to come to a conclusion on what it is first before we do it.

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This gospel is peace. Change shall he break, for the slave is our brother. That's exactly what

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Paul says in the Bible to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, a former slave. Paul says,

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Philemon, do you realize he's not a slave or a bondservant? He's our brother in the

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Lord. Jesus has made this total relationship transformation.

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Yeah, and did... no, it's not a total relationship transformation. The word total is the key in that.

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No, it's... the labor relationship still exists. That's the thing. Paul returns

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Onesimus to Philemon. He wouldn't have to do that if it's just like, well, the gospel's here, now you're free.

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That's not what happened. He's more than a slave. He's a brother. That's the thing.

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It's not that he's not a slave now. He's more than a slave. He's a brother. So, I just...

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if you can botch a scripture like that, what other scriptures are you going to botch? Very concerning to me.

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I hear this all the time. I even hear this from so -called conservatives who try to make the case from that passage, and I understand what you're trying to do.

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You don't want Christianity to be associated with slavery because slavery has got such a bad rap, and it's so bad, and people today would not want anything to do with any of it, and I get that, but you can't subvert biblical teaching.

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I'll tell you what I do. This is the easy thing, the easiest way when you're witnessing to someone, and this comes up. First, you ask them, why is it wrong?

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And then they have to prove it in their worldview, right? So, you can get on, well, you need an objective standard. The other thing you can do, though, is if you want to have a serious conversation with someone, is you have to start actually getting into details and saying, well, what is...

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what at the ground level is a slave master relationship? What is involved in that?

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Define it out, right? And then talk about the kinds of parallels we see today in our culture, and ask them, well, what do you think about sweatshop labor that goes into the things we buy?

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What do you think about generational welfare? What do you think about that? Do you think that's wrong? I mean, people are dependent on this.

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I mean, whatever aspect someone brings up to say how horrible slavery is, ask them about modern things that are happening around us that we don't think of as slavery.

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Of course, you could... I mean, abortion is one of the horrible evil that is not even worthy, in my mind, of being compared with slavery in and of itself.

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It could be compared to certain kinds of slavery, for sure, but abortion is just... it's murder.

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But you could even... you could bring that up if you want, where our tax money goes, and all the kinds of things that are fundamentally unjust that happen today.

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What about the whole... this is another one. What about civil slavery? What about... because the slavery that happened in ancient times was very much within the family.

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Families would have slaves. It was in that unit, that... and different laws apply to families and apply to countries or governments that oversee countries.

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But the kind of slavery we have today is civil slavery, where the government tells everyone in this very impersonal way what they can and cannot do, and acts like they own you, and you belong to them and have to just obey them.

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And is that right? Is that within the boundaries? Christianity has an answer for that, but we just accept that today. We even accept that as loving one another to just do what the government says, right?

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So people just don't think. They don't think deeply. They don't actually follow their conclusions to their...

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or their beliefs, their ultimate conclusions. And that's how I like to challenge people to think. I think once people start thinking, they start thinking of world history, that the fact that certain kinds of slavery existed up until very recently throughout all of human history.

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That's just... that was just the case. That was how some people survived. Once people start to understand and they're broadened, they can see that this isn't perfect, that this isn't good, that we would prefer to have labor relationships that don't involve this, and more personal responsibilities.

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But they also realize we're in a fallen world, and that there are... there are situations in which you're not going to be able to either end it right away or you're not going to be able to fundamentally get rid of it in all its forms.

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And I think the proof is in the pudding. We can't... we haven't even been able to get rid of it in our day and age. It still exists.

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We just don't usually use the terms for it, the names for it. And I haven't even talked about sex slavery yet, but that's another whole thing.

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There's more slaves today than there have been in all of human history by some estimates. So yeah, that's...

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anyway, what was the point he was making? That that was... that was what Paul's point was. No, it wasn't Paul's point.

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That wasn't... and if it was Paul's point, then Paul would be condemning the morality of the Old Testament, in which this was regulated but not actually forbidden.

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So it gets you in all kinds of conundrums. You remember how Martin Luther King's famous speech, how long ended?

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How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright -eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?

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When will wounded justice be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men, he said, in the middle of civil rights battles?

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He said, I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.

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Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. It will not be long because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the

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Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.

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His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.

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He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat. Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him.

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Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on. Glory, hallelujah. Glory, hallelujah.

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Glory, hallelujah. Yes, sweet hymns of joy and grateful chorus raise we.

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Let all within us praise his holy name. Isn't it interesting? I don't know.

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For me, it's a curious thing. Oh, it looks like my camera died, so we're just going to finish it this way.

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Let me see if I can get a better screenshot here of David Platt without looking that awkward.

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Here we go. All right, so isn't it curious to everyone that Martin Luther King Jr., though he was a heretic, though it's proven now that he abused women in some way, definitely ran around on his wife, that he, for some reason, is not just acceptable, but the promoted one.

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I mean, this is the crescendo of the sermon is the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, and he's relating that to what

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Jesus said in Luke 4, and what Isaiah said in Isaiah chapter 61, and what this

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Christmas carol says, and that it's all kind of tied together in Martin Luther King Jr.'s

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saying the arc of history bends towards justice, and that that's where we're going, and I just find it interesting to me, and towards the end of Martin Luther King Jr.'s

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life, when he wanted to do a poor people's march, and he started showing kind of more very progressive tendencies that aren't the one little phrase from his

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I Have a Dream speech that even conservatives like to quote, even myself, I like to quote that phrase.

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s idea of justice is not the same as biblical justice, but his idea of the gospel is certainly not the same either, and this song is his law is love and his gospel is peace.

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I mean, it's just, I just find it fascinating. Is there any other figure that would be, that had the heretical views of MLK that gets a pass, and you don't even have to put a caveat in there that about his heretical views, and you could just quote him and apply what he says to the

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Bible into this Christmas carol. It's just amazing to me, but that's how the social justice guys think.

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They, that's not a big deal to them. They strain at gnats, and they swallow camels, and you can see that even in this to some extent.

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David Platt seems to swallow that camel of just bringing MLK Jr. in as, to crescendo the sermon, as to tie all the points together, but he can't, he can't abide even his brothers and sisters who weren't, let's say, or even today,

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I should say, brothers and sisters who would want to maybe clarify what justice means, maybe debate it to understand what it is before we do it.

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No, they're not okay. They're bad, they're evil, but MLK, I mean, because he was on the right side of justice, right?

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Priorities way out of whack. So this is a very, in my mind, a mild sermon by today's standards about social justice, but it serves as an illustration to all of us,

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I think, and hopefully that helped you understand more about David Platt and more about kind of how social justice preachers can get their point across.

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So God bless, again, more coming later, and it will be Christmas related.

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We're gonna leave this stuff. Can't, can't do more of this stuff. I got a lot of stuff. I got a pile of stuff, but go to, by the way, worldviewconversation forward slash shop, and you can get

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Christianity and social justice religions and conflicts, social justice goes to church, the new left and modern

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American evangelicalism. If you buy both of those, I'll throw in social justice Pharisees by AD Robles for free.

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So that's the deal. It won't say that. I just, I'm keeping note of it. And I'm letting you know that that offer will be standing until January 1st.