You Should Believe in the Culture War

The Gospel as a Culture War

Cruella DeVille, Cruella DeVille. Well, one more quick video today. Like I said on my podcast. I'm not feeling that well today, but I wanted to do this before I forgot it. Some people have been questioning the idea of a culture war, right?

I tweeted a few weeks ago, and someone said, Well, why are you in a culture war? We're supposed to be spreading the gospel, not in a culture war. And then I saw some Cruella, you know, ranting about Federal Vision again.

You know, the boogeyman. Federal Vision and how we're in a culture war, but we should be about the gospel. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But listen, listen. The gospel is a culture war. The good news of Jesus Christ, the good news is it has content, right?

It's not just like this magical thing that absolves us from doing nothing in the culture. You know what I mean? Like the good news. What is the good news? The good news is that Christ is the king. Christ is the king.

He's standing at the right hand of the father. Sitting at the right hand of the father. Yeah, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Psalm 110. Psalm 110. If you memorize Psalm 110, you would know what the gospel is in its entirety.

Christ the King and His Righteousness

So Christ came. He came. He's a man. He's God. He died on a cross for the sins of his people. So if you put your faith and trust in him, he becomes your lord and your savior and you get his righteousness.

You can have right standing with God because of Christ's perfect righteousness. And he's the king. We can't forget that part, though. He is the king of kings and the lord of lords. And he's like a real king.

He's a real king that's concerned with real life. Like, yes, your soul is saved for eternity. And you get to live in the new heavens and the new earth and the eternal state and all of that stuff. And it's fantastic.

But he also saved you as you are now, as a person. Right? Christ is a person. Christ is a man right now. He has a body right now. And when we die in Christ, we're raised with Christ, we will be people.

The Garden Mandate and the Image of God

People that have a culture. Right? And this is nothing new. This was the plan from the beginning. Oftentimes we say that God's first commandment was to be fruitful and multiply. And that's good. That's one of the first things he tells his people to do, be fruitful and multiply.

But if you look at Genesis 2, right, what happens? He says, God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Okay? So he creates, you know, the world. He creates the universe. He creates the man. And then God plants a garden and puts the man in the garden. Why did he do that? Why did God put the man in the garden?

The scripture makes sure to tell us. You might have been confused by this in the past. I know I have. The scripture makes sure to tell us that there's these rivers in the garden that God planted, right?

And it makes sure to tell us the resources that are available in these rivers. There's gold. There's bdellium. There's onyx. All that kind of stuff, right? That's interesting. Why would it say that? Why would it say that?

Verse 15, Genesis 2, verse 15. The Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. To dress it and to keep it. The plan from the beginning was that Adam, the man, would build in this garden.

He would use the resources that were available, that he would organize it and cultivate it. Essentially, from the very beginning, the plan was that we were going to create a culture made in the image of God.

God planted the garden. He gave us the stuff, right? We can't create anything out of nothing, right? We're not like that. We can only create things out of preexisting stuff. So God creates all the stuff, right?

The bdellium, the onyx, the gold. He creates the plants. He creates the animals. All this stuff. He gives us all the stuff. And then he says, go have fun. Let's go. You're going to dress the garden. You're going to keep the garden.

You're going to improve upon this. I'm giving you all the stuff, and you're going to build. That was the plan from the beginning. So the culture war is nothing new. Now, it wasn't a war at this point because everything was good here.

God saw it, and it was good. And then in Genesis 3, we know what happened. The serpent comes. And the serpent does his dirty deeds, and man falls, and now it becomes a culture war, right? Now it becomes a battle.

Now it becomes a fight. And now, like the book of Isaiah, Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create.

And for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people, and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days nor an old man that has not filled out his days, for the child shall die at a hundred years.

But the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build and another inhabit. They shall not plant and another eat.

For as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. This is the new heaven and the new earth, right? God had to rebuild it. He had to make a recreation.

A recreation. That's what the resurrection is all about. It's a recreation. There's a new man now. The second Adam has come, and there's a recreation going on. Look at Psalm 110. I love this one. I love this psalm.

This is a great psalm. Memorize this psalm if you do yourself a favor. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. You think that God's forgetting to do that right now?

Like he's not destroying his enemies, putting them under his feet, and recreating the world? There's a new heavens and a new earth. There's a recreation happening. I'm not the first person to notice this.

Jesus the Gardener and the New Creation

Look at this. After the resurrection, after Christ rises from the dead, Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? This is the New King James, a little easier to understand. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking? She, supposing him to be the gardener, said to him, Stop right there. Why is she supposing him to be the gardener? Why is she supposing Jesus to be the gardener? Because Jesus was doing what the man should have been doing since Genesis 2.

Keeping the garden. Dressing it. And so she sees a man dressing and keeping the garden. And so, naturally, she assumes he's the gardener. Jesus was getting to work building a culture. That's what Jesus was doing.

And it's a war. You know how we know it's a war? Because there's gates. And there's participants. There's soldiers. We hear all this kind of rhetoric all the time throughout the Bible. What does Jesus say to Peter?

You are Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Where are the gates of hell? Where are the gates of hell? This is the battle that we're fighting right now.

This is the battle that we're fighting right now. Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father. And right now, all his enemies are being put under his feet. He didn't get up there and forget to get to work doing that.

He's doing that now. And we're participating in that. He doesn't have to use us in a cultural war. He could make a recreation all by himself. He didn't have to put Adam in the garden in Genesis 2 to keep the garden and to dress it.

He didn't have to do that. But he did it. That's what he wanted to do. And he's doing it again. So we're in a culture war, guys, whether you like it or not. We were supposed to be building culture from Genesis 2.

Things went sideways. And then Christ came, saved the day. This is the gospel. Christ came, saved the day, and got busy building a new creation, building a new heavens and a new earth. And making all things new.

This is what Christ is doing. This is the message of the gospel. This is why when we preach the gospel, what do we do? We baptize them. And then we teach them to obey everything that Christ commanded.

That's the war that we're in right now. That's the culture war. Because the nations have not been baptized. The nations aren't obeying Christ in everything right now. And so until that time, that's the war we fight.

So you better start believing in culture wars, everybody. Because you're in one. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.