God Bless America

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to a very snarky series called Things Jesus Never Said. I think we could have probably gone and come up with 10 or 16 phrases that we could put in the mouth of Jesus that sound really normal for 21st century Americans to say. But when you add them into the mouth of Jesus, you all of a sudden see, they don't quite fit. And why are we doing this? Because when you see what Jesus didn't say, you start understanding what he did say. So we've looked at two phrases so far. The first week we did YOLO. You only live once. Jesus never said that. And we talked about how Jesus said you only live forever. And that you can have eternal significance with the way that you live today. Not just for yourself, but for the sake of others. We also then last week looked at the phrase, hey, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you're a good person. Jesus never said that. Isn't that amazing? And why it's good that he didn't say it. You can actually go online and look up on our Thrive app or the Facebook feed. You can actually hear why that was a good thing he didn't say it. Because it opened the door up for me to be saved. Today we're on week three. And before I get into what the phrase is today, a little caveat. I really do love this country. I love this country. I love being an American citizen. I love what God has given us here in a lot of ways. The thing that I remember from childhood and why I love this country so much is that you don't have to make, in the United States, this country as the end all and be all of your existence. Remember that phrase in the Declaration of Independence that you can pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And happiness didn't mean pleasure. It really meant a different purpose, a different direction for your life. That your life didn't have to be all about the government or all about what you think. That you weren't under an oppressive form of government that said, you better believe, you better think, you better do it this way, and you better toe the line. That's what I loved about this country. That this country sees itself not as the ultimate, but as something penultimate. And my ultimate allegiance is to the Kingdom of God. And that's a good thing, isn't it? Isn't that great freedom that we have? But I have a feeling, I don't know, I've just noticed a little erosion of that understanding in recent decades. Where all of a sudden, if you say anything critical, if you say anything like, maybe we need to change, all of a sudden you're acting like you don't really love America. America, have you ever heard it that way? And if you either love it or leave it the way it is, hmm, okay? Nationalism has gotten a hold in some ways, and I'm concerned about that. Now, let me tell you, I love my kids too, okay? I really do love you, Emma, but I don't agree with everything she's ever said or done, right? And isn't that amazing? And yet I still love her even more, because I will then try to correct her. Try. And she tries to correct me. Try. Yeah. They're still my kids, and I think the same is of the United States as well. So, today we're looking at what Jesus didn't say. And he never said, God bless America. He also didn't say, God bless Israel, by the way. You will not find that in the scriptures. You will not find that he says, God bless my followers who are so wonderful. You are so much smarter and better than everybody else. All those people over there, you know? He never said that. Okay? The clarity is very important in a day and age where nationalism, identity politics, both right, left, and center has taken over, and a level of vitriol is thrown at anyone who disagrees with your side, whatever it is. Okay? And let me tell you, the context of Jesus' day was probably even much more of a powder keg on these issues than today. You might not realize it, but man, it was a time of tension in Israel and in Judea that Jesus was in the middle of. Did you realize they had been under foreign occupation for hundreds of years? Hundreds of years. And that the Roman occupation they were under currently was brutal. Oh, yeah. Rome talked about the Pax Romana, but that was because they had the military might to kill off anyone who disagreed with them. And they taxed the people heavily, so heavily that there was oppression. There was a group of people in the New Testament time called the Zealots who were trying to overthrow Rome. And they had actually overthrown foreign powers before. It's called the Book of Maccabees. You can look at what that was all about. So, nationalism was... Besides, Rome, they were pagans. They believed they were polytheistic. They were immoral. You could throw every ism at them and it would stick to Rome because it was the way it was. And to any... They had actually desecrated the temple on a number of different occasions. Every...