Linda and I were standing on a subway platform in
New York. We were holding a subway map,
turning it this way and that, trying to decipher its meaning and discern which
train, going in which direction, we needed to board. A helpful New Yorker saw our struggle, took
pity on our plight, interpreted the map for us and gave us the directions we
needed. Then, before we parted, having
heard the distinctly non-New Yorkian pattern of our speech, our new friend
asked us, “Are you from Australia?”
Where is your citizenship?
If you were asked that question, especially during
this week of the 4th of July, you would probably answer, “I’m a
citizen of the United States of America.”
If most anyone here gave that answer, you’d be correct. You are blessed to live in this nation, to
enjoy its rights and privileges and to give it your allegiance, your loyalty
and support. We’d do well, as we’ve
celebrated our nation’s 243rd birthday to stop and remember that, in
spite of all our problems, our political divisions, the shortcomings of many of
our leaders, we live in a nation people will do most anything to enter, while
many people live in nations they’d do anything to escape.
Once we’ve counted our blessings as citizens of this
good land, as we should, we need to recognize that the nation to which we
belong is only one part of our citizenship and, for the Christian, not the most
binding part. For those who follow Jesus
Christ, the first and best answer to the question, “Where is your citizenship?”
is…
We are Citizens of God’s Kingdom
Paul is writing to the Philippians about people whose
hearts and minds belong to this world. He
grieves how some of them live for nothing more than their next meal and their
next chance to gain the praise of others.
But, he says, Christians are different.
Believers have higher aims. Followers
of Jesus travel a different road. He
sums up the difference between the loves and loyalties of Christians and
non-Christians by saying,
(Philippians 3:20) But our citizenship is in heaven. And
we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you recognize that your eternal citizenship is in
God’s kingdom, then that awareness will change your life.
·
Jesus is your leader—not president or party or policy.
·
You won’t live by a bumper sticker slogan, but by a
prayer—Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
·
You’ll guide your choices by the question, “What
would Jesus do?”
·
And you’ll support His campaign to redeem the world
with your time and hard work and money.
And of all the ways of belonging that make us who we
are, the most defining and the most cherished, is your place in God’s kingdom. As Paul writes,
(Ephesians 2:19-20) Consequently, you are no longer
foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also
members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
Our citizenship begins with Christ. Our love for Him
and our loyalty to Him define every other kind of belonging. And, as we’ve said, one of those sources of
belonging, another part of our citizenship, is this:
We are Citizens of our Nation
The Apostle Peter tells us that our citizenship in
God’s kingdom makes us good citizens of our country as well. He writes,
(1 Pet.
2:13-17) Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human authority:
whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to
governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend
those who do right.
15 For it is God's will that by
doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not
use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God's slaves. 17
Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor
the emperor.
We could spend the morning unpacking these few
verses, but let me name a few of the qualities of Christian citizens of any
nation.
·
We submit to the authority of good government as long
as it does good for people.
·
We live exemplary lives that give a critical world no
reason to look down on those who name the name of Christ.
·
We use our freedom as an opportunity to do God’s work
in our nation and our world.
·
We treat all people with respect, knowing each person
is created in God’s image and is a person for whom Christ died.
·
We make our love for God’s family clear, in word and
deed.
·
We fear God alone, keeping God our highest authority
and deepest loyalty in all we do.
·
And, we give due honor to the positions of leadership
that shape our nation.
I doubt I’ve told you anything you didn’t already
know, other than the fact that Linda and I sound Australian, but I want to talk
to you about a third dimension of our citizenship I’ve seldom heard discussed
in church. This third dimension of our
citizenship is so important that our very lives may depend upon the love and
loyalty we give it.
We are Citizens of our Father’s World
You
and I are connected to this planet in innumerable ways. Every time you take a breath, take a drink of
water, eat a meal, even step outside into the sun, you are taking some part of
this earth into yourself. A healthy
planet supports healthy people. A
poisoned planet will poison people. How
we care for this earth, our home, is a critical part of our citizenship.
But
is care for our planet a spiritual issue?
Is this something Christians need to take seriously? Does our highest calling to be citizens of
God’s kingdom include caring for the earth?
I believe it does. I want to name
three spiritual truths that can guide us in being faithful citizens of the
earth. As you’ll see, I believe that
many of the environmental problems we face have happened because we aren’t
living by the truth of God’s Word and the spirit of Christ.
God Owns the Earth
A friend was
driving me around the large city in which he lives and works. As guys are prone to do, our conversation
landed on the topic of his car, a big SUV that, I imagined, didn’t get very
good gas mileage. When I asked him what
kind of mileage he was getting, I unknowingly touched a raw nerve. He burst into a tirade, saying, “You know,
Dee, the government has no business putting mileage requirements or emission
standards on cars. If I can pay for the
car and buy the gas, I should be able to drive anything I want. Who are they to tell me what’s best for me?”
Had we been in court, I would’ve answered, “I’m sorry, your honor. I withdraw the question.”
I’ve
thought about my friend’s angry response to my question and have decided it’s
based in the belief that if I own something, I can do whatever I please with it.
You
know what? That argument doesn’t stand
up to scripture. The Bible says you can’t
do whatever you please with any part of this world because you don’t own
it.
(Psalm
24:1) The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who
live in it.
This is my Father’s world and everything I do with my
little part of His world should honor His desires and fulfill His purposes for
it.
My neighborhood
friends and I had entered a phase of pretending to sword fight. I don’t know if we were Robin Hood and his
merry men or knights in armor or the Three Musketeers, but we enjoyed the
adventure. One day, I decided that the
stick I was using for a make-believe sword wasn’t up to my knightly standards,
so I decided to make a better one. My
dad had a lumber rack in the basement of our home. I found a piece of wood I believed would make
a trusty sword, cut it to the correct length, sharpened one end, and nailed a
small piece crossways to make a crossguard.
I took it outside and shared a few hours of fun with my friends. When my dad returned home from work, I showed
him my new creation. He didn’t look
totally pleased. He then explained to me
that I had chosen to make my sword out of a piece of costly molding he had set
apart for a construction project in our home.
I should have asked him for a piece of wood I could use to defend the
honor of the neighborhood. Rather than
live by the sword, I thought I might die by the sword that day. I’d used that wood for a purpose at odds with
my father’s plans.
The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. He has a purpose for His creation. And we place ourselves at odds with God’s
plans when we selfishly claim ownership of His world and destroy it. We must know this is our Father’s world. Then we’re ready to learn that…
God Has Made Us Stewards of the Earth
In
the creation story, God gives humankind a special authority and responsibility
for the world He has made.
(Genesis 2:15) The LORD God took the man and put him in
the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
It’s our job to manage our Father’s world, to make
good use of it and use it for good. If
God were to call humanity before Him today for a job review, for Him to judge
how well we’re managing His beautiful world, what kind of job do you think
we’re doing?
Rising temperatures, rising sea levels, polluted air,
unsafe drinking water, melting ice caps, islands of plastic trash in the
oceans, dying coral reefs, bigger storms, monstrous hurricanes, droughts in
some places, flooding in others. I don’t
think we’re doing a very good job.
Why not? I
believe, at the root of our poor stewardship of the earth, is a spiritual problem:
greed. Again and again, mankind
has chosen personal profit over proper care for our Father’s world. Paul tells Timothy and us,
(1 Timothy 6:10) For the love of money is a root of all
kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and
pierced themselves with many griefs.
I recently watched a
documentary about a man who was sentenced to prison for repeated safety
violations in the mining industry. The
corners he cut led to the deaths of a number of miners and damage to the
environment. When one of this
executive’s subordinates was interviewed by law enforcement, he told the
officers of a day when he had called his boss, worried about the risks their
company was taking with the lives of their workers and the health of the
community. His boss answered his
concerns with these words, “If you want to make it in this company and this
industry, you need to get this straight in your mind right now: you are here to
make dollars, not worry about people.”
If I could make a birthday wish for my nation, it
well might be this; that we would learn and live by the truth that, in God’s
eyes, profit is not the bottom line. Treating
human beings with love and respect and helping them have a good life and make a
decent living is a far greater good. Caring
for our Father’s world is a greater good.
And greater still is living in such a way that we will hear our Father
say to us one day, as we give account for how we treated His children and His
world, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Why is our citizenship so urgent?
Future
Generations Will Live in the World Our Choices Create
Many passages of scripture give us a beautiful dream
of what life can be when we love God and live for God. But, loving us enough to tell us the whole
truth, some other passages reveal the nightmare of what will happen when we
stray from God’s heart and are unfaithful to our calling to live as His people.
One of those horror passages is found in
Deuteronomy 29. Listen to what it says,
(Deuteronomy 29:22-25) Your children who follow you in
later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the
calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the LORD
has afflicted it. 23 The
whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur-- nothing planted,
nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the LORD overthrew in fierce
anger. 24 All the nations
will ask: "Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce,
burning anger?" 25 And
the answer will be: "It is because this people abandoned the covenant of
the LORD, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he
brought them out of Egypt.
Some people might read this passage and write it off
as symbolic prophetic language. But I
challenge you to hear the simple truth it proclaims about God’s people, then
and now. They disobeyed God, they weren’t faithful to the covenant, and they
destroyed the earth for themselves and future generations. Are we doing
that? Are we?
CONCLUSION
On July 4, our family gathered at our home to grill,
eat and enjoy some time together. In the
gathering were all four of my grandchildren: Liam, Creighton, Josiah, and
little Juliana. Those little ones stir
up such deep feelings in me and sometimes leave me feeling overwhelmed by the
truth that the life I live, the beliefs I hold, the choices I make are creating
the world in which they will live.
As the African proverb says, so prophetically,
We have not inherited the earth from our fathers; we have
borrowed it from our children.
I want them to live in a beautiful world, as the God
who created it and owns it intends.
I want them to live in a world that gives them the
good things they need to be fully alive, not struggling to survive in a poisoned
world that makes them sick.
I want them to think of you and me and say, “They
laid aside selfishness and greed and loved us by caring for God’s creation.”
This is our Father’s world.
He’s called us to take care of it.
The future of those we love depends upon how we
answer that calling.