"He Gets Us" Did It AGAIN! | Pastor Reacts

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Oh boy, the He Gets Us campaign is at it again. At the Super Bowl, we all saw this. Take a look. What? What the hell is even that?

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Is that a Christian hugging an LGBT at a pride parade? What's the message here? Was this helpful or did it just make things worse?

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Also, some folks are already responding to the He Gets Us campaign, but are they missing the bigger picture as well?

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We're about to get into all of that right now. Welcome back to Wise Disciple.

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My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be, which includes understanding how to think through this whole

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He Gets Us campaign. Make sure to like, sub, and share this one around, but only if it blesses you, all right?

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So last night, we saw this commercial. All right, so I can't play the audio, so I'll talk over it. So this says, what is greatness?

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We got pictures here of various people helping others, essentially.

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You know? Pictures of people pushing a car stuck in snow, a firefighter running up the stairs to rescue people, a donor giving one of their organs, presumably, another lady here helping out somebody who was in a car crash, and some more photos here.

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But then we see this, right? What are we to make of this?

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It looks like somebody wearing a John 316 hat embracing an LGBT person at a pride parade.

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Notice another presumably LGBT person smiling at this embrace in the background, right?

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You see that? Now, the question is, what is the best explanation for this photo? Is it evidence of something inappropriate or totally acceptable for a follower of Jesus?

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And then there's some more photos. And then it closes with,

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Jesus showed us what greatness really is, okay? And then another message.

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He gets us, all of us. And then the, that's the slogan, and then the website to go to, right?

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Now, if you go down the rabbit hole here, this is what you'll find on the website. So we have the website here, and it's part of the commercial that we saw, people taking care of each other, a man giving haircuts out to the homeless, which is great, by the way, you know?

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And then we have this video. Let's take a look at this. Is our obsession with greatness actually fueling our dissatisfaction?

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It's like we think being great will somehow solve all our problems. If we work hard enough, if we just focus our efforts in the right direction, we'll find the fulfillment we've been looking for.

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To be great means to be celebrated, superior, content, to be happy. But right now, most of us aren't.

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He gets us spent weeks traveling across the country to find out why, why we're so divided, anxious, isolated, and frustrated.

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Most of us are sick of the state of our lives and our world. It seems like our desire for greatness is leaving us a little bit empty.

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So I like the approach, you know? Are they identifying what people struggle with, what secular people, what people who, they don't know the

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Lord, what they try to do in their own lives, right? Because we've hit this many times at this channel.

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If you are not dying to self, which is what Jesus emphasized, you know, one of the things that he emphasized in his teaching, well, then you're elevating it.

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And so naturally what's going to happen is you're going to start talking about greatness. You're going to start trying to elevate yourself and it's going to lead to dissatisfaction ultimately because you will not be able to satisfy the true longing that is deep in your soul.

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At the very least, we don't feel great. But if you look at the teachings of Jesus, you start to uncover a different way of thinking about greatness.

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A pursuit that has nothing to do with our achievements, our reputation, or our superiority.

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Jesus showed us that our greatness is measured in how we care for others, how we serve people in need or in pain.

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He showed that the greatest thing we could be is a humble servant, sacrificing our own desires for others.

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What would the world look like if we all pursued that kind of greatness? How great would that be?

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Okay, so we have some of the bigger pieces here. So how are we supposed to think about this? Is this totally fine for an organization to do or have they completely missed the boat?

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Now, a lot of Christians are already coming out and saying, yeah, He Gets Us has missed the boat.

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Take a look at Jamie Bambrick and watch how he put the ad together that he says that He Gets Us campaign should have made.

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So it starts out very similarly. Again, there's a song in here that I cannot play, so I'll just talk through it.

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But what we have here essentially is, Bambrick has put together photos, or whoever made this video, has put together photos of Christians who have been persecuted for their faith, either imprisoned in North Korea or,

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I mean, completely snuffed out by ISIS, arrested, imprisoned in China, attacked in India.

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It's jailed in the United States for two years. It's absolutely horrifying what

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Christians have gone through. And again, not even in other parts of the world, some of it is right here in the

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United States, in the West. This is part and parcel to the experience of Christians around the world, separated from their family.

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Look at this, heartbreaking. And then when Bambrick, when the video gets to the end here, it ends by showing that people are still gathering together to worship

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Jesus in spite of all this persecution. And then it says, greatness is not following the world, it is defying the world.

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Okay. So what are we to make of all of this? By the way, let me know in the comments, is the

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He Gets Us campaign botching their opportunity? I mean, obviously, you have to spend, what, I heard something like $8 million or something like that for an ad during the

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Super Bowl. So these folks spent $8 million or more for what?

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Now, again, if you go to the website and you do a deep dive, this is what you're gonna find. So this is the About Us page.

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What is He Gets Us? Look at this, there's an FAQ. What is the agenda of He Gets Us? Well, our agenda at He Gets Us is to move beyond the mess of our current cultural moment to a place where all of us are invited to rediscover the love story of Jesus, Christians, non -Christians, and everybody in between, okay?

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If you're starting to get a sour taste in your mouth for all of this, I'm right there with you. Look, Jesus was often misunderstood, okay?

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So my initial thought is to take a charitable view of He Gets Us and understand them in the way that they see themselves, right?

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It looks like they're an organization with some Christians, non -Christians, everybody in between, who want people to know

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Jesus. My problem is in reducing Jesus down too much, in reducing

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His teaching down and the Bible down and Christianity down way too much, and that's what

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I think is going on here. What they've done to make Jesus more understandable in the age of attention deficit is they've taken

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His teachings, which are rich, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, one of the primary goals that I'm doing here on this channel is to show you how deep spiritually, theologically, practically all of His teaching really is and the teaching of the

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Scripture and how it's all interconnected. They take all of that and they reduce it down, which means that Jesus' teachings now has been reduced down to orthopraxy, to the detriment of orthodoxy.

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So orthodoxy refers to the content of doctrine and theology, right? Orthopraxy refers to what it looks like to live out this doctrine or teaching in your life, right?

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So in other words, we have Jesus' teaching to go and serve your neighbor. I mean, look at this, Matthew 20, verse 26.

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This is, whoever would be great among you must be your servant. This is Jesus talking. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave, all right?

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Amen. If you stop right there, we can still amen that, and it looks like the

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He Gets Us campaign is highlighting this aspect of Jesus' teaching. As a matter of fact, it's not clear because I can't find a verse on the website.

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I imagine that Matthew 20, 26, like what we're looking at right here, was the impetus for the whole

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Super Bowl ad, right? The problem is when you keep reading, though, look at this, verse 28.

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Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and here it is, to give

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His life as a ransom for many. Wait a second. Wait a second. Are we merely talking about cutting someone's hair now?

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Or is Jesus tying this to something theologically greater than serving other people?

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See, this is why. So I made a video last year around this time when

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He Gets Us did another commercial and that flustered a lot of people, and I said back then that this kind of stuff is a horrible idea.

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Christianity is not an ad campaign, and it's not a marketing strategy. Jesus does not need millions and millions of dollars to make a

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Super Bowl ad, and all of this type of stuff, in my opinion, what it does is it caters to the attention deficit of our society.

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And when you do that, you reduce a whole way of life, a way of living with the one true

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God down to a soundbite, which is not a good thing, ladies and gentlemen, because when that is your concern, or at least one of your concerns, then you start making decisions where you try to squeeze deep answers to the things that matter most in our reality, which is the existence of God, right?

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The teachings and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You try to take all of that and squeeze it down into a 60 -second

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Super Bowl commercial. That's insufficient. A Super Bowl ad is insufficient to set a person up well towards understanding not only

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God, but the path of discipleship. That's why He Gets Us doesn't capture Christianity in the same way that Bambrick's video doesn't quite either.

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Both of these approaches are wrongheaded, in my opinion. And I know what Bambrick is doing, and I applaud him for it, actually, but all of this just shrinks the

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Christian way of life down too much. It shrinks the message down. You know, by the way, the disciples of Jesus knew all of this, right?

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That the Christian enterprise is way bigger than we often realize, which is why you will not find their gospel message very far away from the key components of repentance, salvation, the judgment of God, the forgiveness of sins, but also the teaching of Jesus, right?

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What was the first thing that the early church in Acts devoted itself to? The teaching of Jesus.

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A lot of the apostles, they also didn't say anything without bringing scripture into the conversation over and over and over again, you know?

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I mean, think about it, because again, I get what He Gets Us is trying to address, right?

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But do you think the apostle Paul, when he visited Athens, didn't see folks who needed help? Didn't see folks who needed food because they were hungry?

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Who needed haircuts or hugs? You think the apostle Paul didn't see any of these things?

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Of course he did. You think Peter or Stephen or even

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Philip in the book of Acts didn't see the outsiders and the outcasts among them? Of course they did.

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And of course they helped those in need. Of course they shared what they had with those who were in need.

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Look at this, Acts 2, verse 44. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings.

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And here it is, distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And this particular type of compassion care was so effective that, watch this, by the time we get to Acts 4, verse 34, there was not a needy person among them.

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For as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each, here it is again, as any had need.

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Now, if you stop there, again, it seems like, man, the whole point of Christianity is to make sure no one's hungry.

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That's not the whole point. The picture of Christianity is the fulfillment of what

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Zachariah foresaw. Zachariah 14, verse 16 says, then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the

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King, the Lord of hosts. And to keep the feast of booths, right? So the prophet here is talking about a time in the future when the day of the

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Lord shall come upon all peoples, every nation. And they will not only feast together, praise the

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Lord, but they will also worship the same God together. Where was that in the commercial?

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And that's the whole point, you know? The food that a man needs can certainly be understood as the physical stuff that he puts in his mouth and swallows into his belly, okay?

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But physical food is also a symbol for the spiritual food of God's word that satisfies the longing of the soul, all right?

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By the way, I'm not making this up. I mean, I'm repeating to you what Jesus taught. Look at this, John chapter four, verse 31.

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So the disciples are urging Jesus saying, hey, hey, rabbi, eat. But he says to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.

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So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat? Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

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By the way, that actually is not a controversial statement that Jesus makes. I mean, I know the disciples aren't getting it in the moment right here, but do you realize that the

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Jews already knew all of this? That's why they called the Torah bread, food, right?

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It's because as Jesus said to the devil, man shall not live by physical food or by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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That's why it's insufficient to suggest that Christianity is merely about helping others.

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It's not actually. As great as that is, so I don't want you to hear what I'm not saying, that's not the core of Christianity.

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The core of Christianity is about being covenanted to the God who made you. That's what's really going on.

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And guess what happens when God's people express this core, this covenant by living life according to God's word, they clothe the poor, they feed the hungry.

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Praise the Lord. But it's only because God's people have been clothed themselves with the robes of salvation and they have been fed themselves with the manna of Jesus' body that has been broken for you on the cross.

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You see how it's, golly, it's so much deeper and more spiritually rich.

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Good luck explaining that to people who are half paying attention in less than 60 seconds on Super Bowl.

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This is why I've said, ladies and gentlemen, the only marketing that is required for Christians is to go fulfill the great commission one soul at a time.

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You know, the Lord in his infinite wisdom has actually decided to advertise, to run advertisements for the death and the resurrection of his son, but God's platform is not the

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Super Bowl and it's not television, it's you. If you're a

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Christian and you're bothered by the He Gets Us ad, then don't look at what others are doing in photos, go do what

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God has called you to do in the lives of those around you. You know who's in need.

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You should. You know where you can find those who cannot take care of themselves. Go be all that Jesus called you to be.

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Because when you do that, the gospel becomes this wonderful and compelling message to those around you as you are living it out and obeying

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Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, well, those are my thoughts.

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But actually I'd love to hear what you think. What are your thoughts about the latest He Gets Us campaign? The last time I made a video on this,

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I made a lot of people upset. Are you upset? Tell me about it. Do you agree with me? I don't know. Is the

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He Gets Us ad, is that a good idea or is it just a huge waste of time? Let me know in the comments below. As always, if you made it this far and you're not a part of the

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