Living Like the Elect

Part 2: After an Election
Pastor Rick Henderson               November 23-24, 2024

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This is what we’re talking about today. If you feel a little on the edge, no one will be more surprised than me if anything I say feels provocative. This should feel vanilla AND it should feel helpful. Before we jump into the deep end, I want to ask how you would define this word.

IDENTITY

This is my favorite definition.

IDENTITY: the story you tell yourself about yourself

We are all telling ourselves a story. We do it so naturally and effortlessly that it’s like breathing. We do it without being aware of it. You, me, every single one of us has a story, a narrative, a running commentary that we tell ourselves about ourselves. This isn’t a religious person thing. Every single person, across every single culture, across all spectrums of belief and unbelief—we all do this. What is the story that you tell yourself about yourself? That story that you tell yourself is your identity.

Think of your identity like a deck of cards. Everyone’s identity is complex, and multifaceted, with a constant shuffle and reshuffling of different roles. Some cards we always seem to keep. Some cards come and go. Just like in a game, not all cards are valued equally. How you value the cards in your deck determines which ones are toward the top and which are toward the bottom.

If this were me, there’d be a husband card, a dad card, a friend card, a pastor card. There’d be a card that read, “mediocre golfer.” Recently I got to add a new card to my deck. Thanks to the help of a friend, I now have a card that reads, “novice hunter.”

What are the cards in your deck? But most importantly, what is your top card? Top Card is the shorthand way of talking about the thing, that facet of your identity that gives you ultimate significance, security, and satisfaction in life. What is that thing for you? In the story we tell ourselves, our top card is:

TOP CARD

• The thing about us, that if we have it, life is worth living.
• The thing about us, that if we lost it, life would not be worth living. Life would seem pointless.
• The thing about us that validates our purpose and value.

If your top card is stable, you will be stable when you succeed and when you fail. If your top card is stable, you will be stable in peace and adversity. If your top card is stable, you will be stable in relational harmony and relational conflict. If your top card is stable, you can grieve deeply when you experience loss in life, and yet, you don’t lose yourself. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how important this is.

The Apostle Peter was one of the three closest companions of Jesus. The New Testament book of 1 Peter is a letter that he wrote to a group of churches full of people like you and me. Notice how he addressed them.

1 PETER 1:1-2 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect...

If you are a follower of Jesus your top card should be this word right here, “elect.” If you are a follower of Jesus, if you have repented and given your allegiance to him—you are the elect of God. Do you know why? Because Jesus gives his status to everyone who follows him.

• Because he is righteous, we are righteous.
• Because he is the beloved of God, we are beloved, too.
• Because he is the elect of God, we are elect.

Are you following me? That is all based on what he has accomplished, not what we do. We receive that as a gift of grace that can never be taken away. Hang with me because this far better than abstract theology. It’s intensely personal. If you are the elect of God, the Spirit of God is with you and in you. That is why, as a follower of Jesus, when you understand who you are, when you know what your top card is, when you remember that the Spirit of God takes up residence in you—all the circumstances in your life can change and rearrange—but all that change can never redefine who you are.

In the context of what we’re talking about today, would you take note of this?

Our stories are shaped by being the ELECT, not who wins ELECTIONS.

Let’s turn again to this letter from the Apostle Peter.

1 PETER 1:1-2 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Our new identity as the elect should result in something. What should it result in? Being obedient to Jesus. We like to say fully devoted followers of Jesus. We want to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do as he did. We want our lives to look like what it would be like if Jesus were living our lives. What does that mean for us in this context?

In every instance that God’s word speaks to a political issue—we conform our thinking to his. When God has been clear through his word, there are no judgment calls—we just have to decide if we are going to be obedient or disobedient. Will we pursue full devotion? God’s word is clear on a number of matters that intersect with politics:

• We are to protect the life and dignity of all people—born and unborn.
• We are to honor and care for immigrants. (not coded language for open borders)
• We are to honor and submit to government authorities.
• We are to be generous with the poor.
• We are to care for widows and orphans.
• We are to pay our taxes.

Now, the political parties, groups, candidates, social action groups that we partner with, the myriads of ways that we engage local, state, and national politics—that is a complex network of judgment calls.

I have zero interest in whatever political groups you do or don’t engage with. I’m about as interested in that as my cat is in taking a bath. I don’t care.

What I do care about is that you remember that you are the elect, and in everything you do that you seek to obey Jesus. And that will always look like love for all other people. The more seriously we take that, the more like Jesus we become, the less at home we will feel with our political parties and social tribes. There is another identity word that Peter used, and I’m curious if you noticed it.

1 PETER 1:1-2 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout

Being elect comes with the reality of being exiles. That means we are never going feel at home until we are with Jesus. Until that day, the place where we should feel most as home is with our church family, among the elect. We are going to disagree with each other on all kinds of things, even important things. It would be weird if we didn’t. The only reason disagreements would ever divide us would be if we forget who we are.

Do you know who you are? Do we know who we are? Are we willing to let anything else become our top card? This is how the Apostle Peter instructed us all to live this out.

1 PETER 2:11-12 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

This is what we should expect. Living like the elect will mean that we are different. Sometimes, people won’t understand that, and from their misunderstanding, they will accuse us of wrong. Sometimes, people will be hostile to the way we live and, from that hostility, will accuse us of wrong. That’s what we should expect. What does Jesus expect from you and me? Here it is. The way that we live our lives, even the way we respond to being misunderstood or mistreated, should lead and inspire nonbelievers to worship.

If we’re going to do this. If we’re going to live like the elect, then we must take on the mindset of an exile. The best place to read about that mindset is Jeremiah 29. Grab a Bible and turn there. If you open your Bible to the very middle, you’ll find Psalms. Next comes Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, then Jeremiah.

Here’s the backstory. God had a special relationship with Israel. Their job was to represent God to all the nations, so that everyone would know God and worship him. They were to be a nation of missionaries. If they obeyed God, he would bless them extravagantly. If they disobeyed him, God would punish them. And if they refused to repent, he would cause another nation to defeat them and take large portions of their population into exile.

Surprise, surprise—they rebelled against God and refused to repent. For years, God sent prophets like Jeremiah to call them to repent. They refused to repent and instead listened to false prophets who told them that nothing bad was going to happen.

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, brought his army and whooped them. And took back a bunch of them back with him to Babylon. This is the message that God had Jeremiah send to the people in exile.

JEREMIAH 29:4-12 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the LordAlmighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

This is your responsibility. Know God’s word so well that you can spot it when people misrepresent him and try to deceive you. It’s your responsibility to know God’s word so that you can be discerning.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the more famous verses in the Bible, and rightfully so. But I hope you can see the context. They received it as bad news. They didn’t want to be exiled. They wanted to go home. And God said, “No. You’re going to be here for 70 years.” Most of the people who got that message would be dead when the exile was finally over. Their grandkids were going back to the Promised Land 70 years later, but not them. Under the heavy weight of severe disappointment, God said, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you—right here, in this place that you don’t want.”

An exile knows how to be at peace and even rest in a community, country, or culture that is different from what they sincerely want. There are things in our country and culture that we don’t want. We know it could be and should be better. Do you know how to be at peace and rest because you trust God’s plan and purpose? Based on what we just read, let’s summarize what it means to be an exile.

EXILE 101: Live like this is your PERMANENT home, not your ULTIMATE home.

The commands they were given for living as exiles sound strikingly similar to another set of instructions. This sounds like what God told the first man and woman in the garden. Go read Genesis 1:27 through the end of the chapter. Rule over creation and the garden. Cultivate it. Steward it. Make more humans.

The commands they were given were the same that God gave humanity in the beginning. Their purpose had not changed. Their location changed. We can describe the instructions for the exiles as an Eden Mandate.

EDEN MANDATE:

• Build homes.
• Plant gardens.
• Grow families.

Build homes. The heart of this command is to sink roots where you are at and intentionally weave yourself into the fabric of the community where you live. I am challenging you to take that seriously.

If you are here temporarily, to get treatment, to get an education, or to advance your career—if you are here temporarily, that means you make yourself a part of this city and this community as though it were your permanent home.

Keeping relationships at arm’s length is human nature if you believe you’re here temporarily. I get it. If you are a follower of Jesus, don’t do that. Open your heart. Love this city, this community, and the people in it. And allow relationships to develop and allow people to love you back, even if it’s temporary.

I know what some of you will say: "If I do that it will be harder to leave.” Good! That’s OK. For a follower of Jesus, the solution to difficult things is never, ever, ever less love.

If you are a long-termer around here, maybe you are from here—this is your challenge. You don’t get to think of yourself as more important because your roots have been in our dirt longer. For a follower of Jesus, pride is never to be tolerated. For however long or short we are here, for those who follow Jesus, we are all exiles.

Plant gardens. On one level, this is straightforward and practical. Take responsibility for your needs. Don’t be dependent. Be dependable. You take responsibility for producing what you need. That’s good. I want to suggest it’s exactly that and more. I’m persuaded this imagery is important. Garden imagery is a dominant and recurring theme from cover to cover of the Bible. Humanity started in a garden. Heaven is described as a garden. A life that delights in God is described as a what? Garden. This is telling us to cultivate abundance and thriving.

Have you noticed that the dominant Biblical imagery concerning how we are to relate to the unbelieving culture around us is never warrior imagery? Machismo war imagery that’s popular in American evangelicalism is non-existent in Scripture. War language is employed in relating to our sins and temptations. But the dominant imagery for relating to people is that we are gardeners, shepherds, and fishermen. Being the elect, living as exiles should compel us to live more like farmers than fighters.

I want to talk to the men in the room, especially men that are younger than me. We live in a country and culture that has distorted ideas about sexuality and gender. Our country and culture will not give you a compelling vision of manhood. It’s understandable to me that many young men are drawn to podcasters and preachers who celebrate warrior manhood. That is naturally very compelling.

There is a time to fight. I’ve been in fistfights as an adult. I was a security guard on the night shift, in a hospital in New Orleans while in seminary. Those are stories for another time. Do you know what will require all the strength and grit you’ve got? It’s not being a warrior. It’s being a builder. It’s cultivating and contributing abundance and goodness for your family, community, and church. Ladies, you are not left out of this. The original Eden mandate to rule and cultivate was to both the man and woman. So, ladies, invest your strength and grit in cultivating and contributing abundance and goodness for your family, community, and church.

All the strength and grit that you have should be invested in long obedience in the same direction. The descriptors of your life and my life should be: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

Grow families. Get married and have kids. This is a good command. Please hear me. If you are single and if you don’t have kids, that doesn’t make you wrong or second class. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to be single. There’s nothing wrong with you if you desire to be married, and it hasn’t worked out.

Strong and healthy families are indispensable to experiencing abundance and thriving for every nation. Here’s the bad news. We are in the middle of a strange phenomenon right now. Every developed country in the world, except for one, has a declining birthrate. That creates all kinds of problems that I don’t have time to get into. The short version is that having fewer children always hurts a nation. Smart people are studying this rigorously. We have ideas as to why birth rates are declining, but there isn’t a definitive answer yet. The only developed country on this planet that doesn’t have a declining birthrate is Israel.

Getting married, having children, growing healthy families contributes to the abundance and thriving of all. I want address two errors that are unfortunately quite common in the church world. The first error is the belief that we should have as many kids as possible to outbreed the liberals so that we can win back this country. Your children and my children are not a means to an end. Children are an end unto themselves. Children are a gift. They are not agents to be drafted into a culture war. They are not weapons to be deployed in a culture war. Children are gifts. Full stop.

Here's the second issue. Don’t pretend that you can follow Jesus with everything in your life except your sexuality. I can’t spend a lot of time on this, so I’m going to be direct. God created sex as a gift to be exclusively enjoyed in the context of marriage between one man and one woman for life.

Don’t adopt and assimilate to the sexual values of this culture. If you are single, don’t buy the lie that you can sleep around now, but pivot to Jesus’ values for sex after you get married. Don’t be casual with your body and other people’s bodies. If you are the elect, the Holy Spirit of God is in you. Your body is a temple. Don’t sleep together until you are married. I don’t care how serious it is. I don’t care if you are engaged. If you are a follower of Jesus, follow him. You can trust that he has plans for your good, for your abundance, not for your harm.

EXILE 101: Understand the difference between INTEGRATION and ASSIMILATION.

In 2 Corinthians 5 we are described as ambassadors of Jesus. An ambassador’s job is to understand their foreign country so well that they can navigate it as though they were native to it. And yet, all the while, maintaining distinction. Ambassadors integrate into the culture and country while living for the interests and values of their home country. We are to integrate, not isolate. And as we integrate and participate, we live for the values of King Jesus, not the values of our surrounding country and culture.

EXILE 101: Invest in the well-being of OTHERS like YOUR well-being depends on it.

God loves the people of Rochester. He loves the people of Minnesota, and the United States. He loves the people of every community and country around the world. Loving people is so important to him that Jesus said loving our neighbors is equally as important as loving him. In fact, he said every command can be distilled down to loving God and loving people. No group of people should be more invested in the well-being of every group of people than followers of Jesus.

This is just one reason that leadership is a destination of discipleship. We are to use our influence to invest in the well-being of all others. That’s not easy is it? But it is good. I want to repeat something that Pastor Otis shared last week.

Our INFLUENCE has the most IMPACT up-CLOSE.

If we want to live like the elect will move toward the messes. We will get up close. This is something that I truly admire about you. The generosity of the people of Autumn Ridge was a big reason that 5 and half years ago I applied to be your next pastor. Over the past few weeks your generous, up-close impact has been on display.

• Your response to kids through Angel Tree is impressive.
• Your response to families through Big Boxes of groceries is impressive.
• Your response to ministry partners through the Missions Store is impressive.
• Your response to some of our precious senior citizens is impressive. Folks in our church family who are over 90 or who are shut-ins get Christmas cards that you all make I found out this week that each one of them gets over 40 cards on average.

The way of Jesus is good. Those who follow Jesus are happy to serve the good of all. And that is experienced as love. Love between us and love from us. It truly is the love of Jesus that compels. Remember who you are. If you have trusted in Jesus, you are God’s elect. Let’s keep living like it.

And if you wouldn’t yet describe yourself as a follower of Jesus, I want to invite you to repent and give your allegiance to Jesus.