46 You W3 Jason Fileta

It is so good to be with you all today.

It is honestly an honor for me.

It's a privilege I get to share with you

and thank God for this technology,

that's allowing me to visit with you today

even though I can't be there in person

My name is Jason Fileta and

I work with an organization

called Tearfund

And at Tearfund we partner

with churches

and communities all over the world

to respond to poverty and injustice

and ultimately to bring God's glory

Today, we are going to be talking about

the hot topics in our culture

and how we ought to engage with them

as followers of Jesus

What do I mean, when I say hot topics?

I'm talking about things like

racial justice

the black lives matter movement

climate change, caring for this earth

and creation care

refugees, war, violence

How are we as Christians are supposed

to engage with these things?

I see a few common approaches
out there

I see pastors and Christian leaders

who kind of guide us

in the direction of these

"This is not our business"

"We're not of this world"

"We don't need to engage
with these topics"

Now the other possibilities I see

are people who really

see these topics through a political lens

And at times, it feels like their guidance

is rooted in that worldly identity

Which team are they on?

Are they on the red team or the blue team?

Their engagement with these topics?

How ought we to respond

to racial injustice?

For example, is rooted in

if I'm on this team or this team

What I want to try to present today is:

How are we to respond

as followers of Jesus?

How do we look to scripture?

How do we look to God's revelation

of himself to know how do we engage

in this world around us

To do that and to get us going on that

I'm going to tell you more about me

so really the three questions

I'm going to wrestle with today are

Who am I? Who is this guy

standing in front of you right now?

Why am I here?

Why am I even here

speaking to you?

Who am I? Who is God?

Who has God revealed himself to be?

And then the last question is

Who are we?

as His children, as His beloved

as followers of Jesus Christ

Who are we?

So, who am I? How did I even get here?

How did I end up working for Tearfund?

How am I speaking to you today?

To tell you who I am

I probably need to first

tell you about my parents

My dad's name is Basumboulis Fellata

He is a jolly man

He is a very hard worker

He's the best chess player

I have ever met

He is from a small town

in the south of Egypt, called Malawi

And who is my mom?

My mom's name is Samia Alfons Habib

She is from Cairo, Egypt

She has the most contagious laugh

I have ever heard

the quickest wit

and the most hospitable person

on this planet.

She is from a place called Shubra,

which is in Cairo.

And for my parents,

growing up as Christians in Egypt where

they grew up, at the time they grew up

they were second-class citizens

Their identity as Christians was

literally on their national ID card

It was on their their version of

a driver's license

Their names told the world

that they were Christians

And

like most Christians in Egypt

they proudly wore a cross

to show who they were

what their identity was

Faith was not a garment

they could put on or take off

It was their identity

Even if you don't believe

it's your identity, right?

Because that's the family

you come from

That's your identity in that culture

And what do Christian's faith

in Egypt?

Discrimination

Getting paid less than other people

for the same work

or even for double the work

Getting threats of violence constantly

poverty, persecution

it was a hard, hard life

for my parents

They came to the U.S. in 1980

and they raised their family here

Me and my two brothers

And, growing up

I never was able to forget

a couple of things

One was my parents

never let me forget who I was

That my faith in Jesus was literally

bought by the blood of martyrs

That Christians had come before me

and faithfully followed him

even at the cost of death

and that their blood ran

through the generations

And I was a product of that

That following Jesus was a costly thing

We knew about persecution in Egypt

We knew about violence against
Christians

As a child, they didn't shield me

from these things

We prayed for safety

we worked together to mobilize supplies

or medicine or whatever it was a family

might need facing those difficult times

The other thing they taught me was that

God was our comfort

That God never intended it to be this way

That everything I had

as a child, was a gift

Just the chance to be a child

to be carefree

the chance to go to school

to be educated

the chance to walk around

and not be afraid of violence

or threats of violence

the chance to wake up every day

and eat whatever I wanted

These things were gifts!

And that it wasn't a given

for people all over the world

And that that inequality

God never intended it to be this way

God did not create people

He never wanted people

to die from hunger

He didn't create people

to die from persecution

He never wanted

people to face violence day in day out

They taught me about who God was

and who I was in light of that

They taught me about a vision for God's

redemption of this world that was so big

Jesus didn't just come

live, die, and rise again

to save me from my sins

He did not just come to give me

the power to resist listening

to secular music

or like something else like that

He came

to redeem not only me and my sin

but redeem the sin of this world

The weight of sin that causes violence

that causes war

that causes persecution

that causes hunger

God's redemption was so big

that it was even bigger than that

enormous amount of sin

Now, what happened growing up

in that environment

was I had a very deep

relationship with God

He revealed

himself to me I looked to him for

comfort. I had a vibrant prayer life

But as I got older and I started going

to a Christian school

I learned some new things

I came in carrying this burden of

injustice, and of inequality

And I learned that

God didn't actually care about

any of that stuff

I learned that He was way more concerned

with what kind of music

I was listening to

or whether or not, I danced

I learned that God was

didn't actually have this huge

vision of redemption

And all that stuff is worldly

That God's redemption

was really just for my soul

And that was so disheartening and

dissatisfying

And quite frankly

really really hard to make sense of

I became so cynical

When I was in high school

I became so judgmental of the church

here in America. I realized, if God,

following Jesus, says nothing

about violence in Egypt

says nothing about hunger

all it has to talk about is, whether or

not I smoke, or use these four letter

words, or these words

If that's all it means, I don't want

anything to do with it

So I really walked away from the church

but I couldn't walk away from God

Because like I said as a child

He had revealed himself to me

I knew He was there

I knew He was my comfort

He was my home

So, I continued to have a prayer life

but I was frozen in my judgment

I was frozen in my cynicism

I was frozen

in just how paralyzed I felt

by the weight of the world

But I continued to pray

and I continue to believe that

God was there

In about 2004, which might be

before some of you were born

In 2004, I felt drawn to scripture

I realized I had never really

invested in the scriptures

I had never really read them

the Bible, from start to finish

Here is this book that

people literally can die for having

and I have 20 copies of it

Every translation you can imagine

I've never actually read it

cover to cover

I was really familiar

with scripture

I was familiar with like the same 50

verses that everybody was preaching on

over and over, at my school, at my church

at summer camp, at conferences

at all these things

But I really had never read scripture

So, I felt drawn to read the Bible from

cover to cover, for the very first time

And so now, I want to answer that second

question of "Who

God is" by turning to scripture

This is some of what I found

So, we're going to do a fast

just kind of marathon sprint

From the beginning of the Bible

all the way through to the end

And I'm going to pull out highlights

for you what God taught me about himself

I want to start in the book of Exodus

This is Exodus 3: 7-10

to give you some context

The Israelites are in Egypt

they are being held as slaves

and God is calling Moses to set them free

So, what did this teach me?

This taught me that God really is

truly concerned with the suffering

That the God of my youth

the God that my parents taught me about

the God that we cried out to

when we heard about a church

burning in Egypt or

when I heard that my aunt didn't

have access to the medicine she needed

That God hears the cries of the oppressed

And not just the nations

and groups of people who are oppressed

but you and me!

I've lived long enough to know that

in a group this size

there is somebody who is suffering

There is somebody

who has experienced abuse

There is somebody

who has been mistreated

There is somebody here

listening to these words and maybe that's

the whole reason I've been brought here

is to tell you that God hears you

Do not feel like you cry out in vain

Exodus 3 tells us He hears the cries of

His people and He hears you

Continuing on from Exodus

then I got on to Leviticus

And Leviticus is traditionally not

anyone's favorite book of the Bible

In fact, Leviticus is really a book

that you don't hear a lot out of

It feels like a lot of laws

a lot of commands

a lot of kind of boring stuff

that's for the ancient times

But I want to talk to you

about a specific law, a rule

This thing called the year of Jubilee

In the year of Jubilee. So I'm

going to read portions of this to you

So, see God, Him calling Moses

what we just read in Exodus

was so significant to His identity

That He has taken that on

as His name, the God who

brought you out of Egypt

And if you read scripture

you will see it over

and over, and over

the God who

brought you out of Egypt

the God who rescued you

from slavery in Egypt

And to this day the Jews call him that

during the Passover feast

every year they remember

God delivering them

So this is not some

small piece of 'who God is"

this is central to His identity

Continuing in verse 39

"if any of your fellow

Israelites become poor

and sell themselves to you

do not make them work

as slaves

They are to be treated as

hired workers or

temporary residents among you

They're to work for you

This is the key part

"until the year of Jubilee

then, they and their children

are to be released

They will go back to their own clans

into the property of their ancestors

Because the Israelites are my servants

and whom I brought out of Egypt

They must not be sold as slaves

Do not rule over them ruthlessly

but fear your God"

And so, going back, the year of Jubilee

was a law that God gave to his people

He gave them this guidance

And I believe the reason is because

He knew that left to our own devices

we would enslave each other

We would abuse each other

We would lend money

to each other at interest

We would take advantage

of each other that eventually

if left to our own devices

our society, even God's society

the children He called

the covenant people

the children of Abraham

He knew, they would abuse each other

So he created a law

that hit reset every 50 years

Every 50 years, every slave is free

Every 50 years, every debt is canceled

I mean you thought

Bernie Sanders was radical

He has nothing on the year of Jubilee

Every 50 years, property goes back

to the ancestral owners

Every 50 years, God would hit reset

Because He knew

that all it would take

was a couple of decades

before we start abusing each other

taking advantage of each other

So, God revealed to me that

he protects the poor

That's what I saw in Leviticus 25

Now jumping to the prophets

And we don't have time

to go into all the prophets

We don't have time to

talk about Amos.

We don't have time to

talk about Nehemiah

We don't have time to

talk about Jeremiah

But, I do want to

read to you from Isaiah

because this scripture

rocked my world when I read it

This is Isaiah 58: 6-10

God is speaking to his people

about fasting

You see they have been desperate

for intimacy with him

They want to feel close to him

How many of us feel that way?

We long to feel close to God

when we sing worship

when we study the Bible

when we pray

We just long to feel him near to us

because we have felt it

and we know how good that is

So, God is saying you are fasting

to try to be near to me?

Let me talk about that

That's the intimacy with God so many of

us have been chasing and longing for

So, here I saw that God making His

identity in Exodus is the one who

sets you free from oppression

The God who brought you out of Egypt

the same God who made the year of Jubilee

to protect the poor

He considers it worship because it's so

core to His character to care about

his most beloved and suffering children

It is so core to his character

that when we spend ourselves

on behalf of those children

He accepts that as worship

It's not just the traditional thing

we think of worship

Of course, we ought to sing

Of course we ought to fast

Of course we ought to pray

But it brings Him glory

when we spend ourselves

on behalf of the hungry

when we challenge the yoke of injustice

And I could go on, and on, and on

in the prophets

but what I learned was that

the prophets as I had been taught

in my youth, weren't people

who foretold the future

The prophets were the people who

declared the future God always intended

The prophets were the people

who said God intended for

there to be no suffering

God intended for all of us to

live in peace with each other

and with Him

In right relationship with the creation

In right relationship with our neighbors

In right relationship with him

Those were the prophets the people

who were reminding Israel who God was

and who they were meant to be

All right, jumping into the new testament

I know this is a lot of scripture

but I know that you all are serious

about your faith

and that's why you're at this conference

spending the new year here

So I hope that you're enjoying this

and that you're soaking up

God's word here

I want to jump to Luke chapter 4

This is Jesus's first sermon

So Jesus is entering His public ministry

He is in the synagogue and He is a rabbi

So they asked him to read the scroll

And the typical practice would be for

the visiting rabbi or

whoever was given that task

to read the scroll from

what we would call

the Old Testament, to them

this was just their scripture

and to give some thoughts on it

to teach about God

So Jesus opens up the scroll of Isaiah

and He is quoting Isaiah

in Isaiah 61, which I don't have for you

but you can look it up on your own

He is quoting Isaiah who is quoting

that passage from Leviticus

that we read, the year of Jubilee

the year of the Lord's favor

So, Jesus in his first public sermon

is going back to this random thing in

Leviticus that maybe some of you have

never even heard before today

And he's quoting it

the year of the Lord's favor

What does he say?

Instead of giving a sermon here

Jesus just rolls up the scroll

gives it back to the attendant

and sits down

The eyes of everyone are on him

They're waiting

Isn't he supposed to preach now?

Isn't he supposed to tell us

what God means?

And all he says is

Just absorb that moment

I'm going to read it again

because there is nothing like our Jesus

There is no God who is like our Jesus

That's who our Jesus is!

That's who we follow!

That's His identity!

Friends, the good news is absolutely

that Jesus came to set us free

from our sin but it's not that small

He came to set us free from

the sin that has infected our world

The sin that has infected

our political systems

The sin that has affected

our societies our cultures

The sin that has affected

our economic systems

The redemption of God is so big!

The year of our Lord's favor is

fulfilled in Christ!

And I don't have time to go into all the

things I read about Jesus's life

The ways that He embraced others

the way He embraced people that were

deemed unworthy or unclean or unfit

I don't have time to go in the ways

he embraced Samaritans and women

and prostitutes

I don't have time to dig into

all those things that just backed up

this united thread of who God is and now

who His son is

Getting into the New Testament

and I'm not going to read to you from

all these different passages

but there were stories that once again

reaffirmed that common thread

of God's identity is justice

God's identity is caring for the oppressed

God's identity is

freedom for the captives

I've read about Saul

the persecutor of God's church

the persecutor of Christians

being not too far for redemption

being so loved by God

that God saved him

God rescued him

He, Jesus, the resurrected Jesus

appeared to him on the road

revealed Himself to him

And that Saul, this horrible man

who was a murderous person of Christians

became a leader of Christians and

changed his name to Paul, and wrote half

of the New Testament that we now read

That radical reconciliation--that a

murderer became a champion in the faith

That is what Jesus was about!

I read about Philemon

How many of you have had heard sermons

about the book of Philemon?

In this book

Paul, who I just spoke about, is writing

to a church leader named Philemon

who has a runaway slave named Onesimus

And under the Roman law

the punishment for him

it would be just for him to even have

this runaway slave murdered

And Paul is writing to him

violating the law

violating the culture

violating the norms

and saying, "Philemon, embrace

Onesimus as your brother

because he, too, is in Christ."

I mean Paul is advocating

something that would be so

radical for that time

'"Embrace him as a brother."

So I read about that

And finally, the last scripture

I'm going to share with you

because you obviously don't have time

to go through the entire Bible today

is from Revelation 21

This is in revelation 21:1-5

there will be no more war

there will be no more refugees

there will be no more pandemics

there will be no more death from hunger

there will be no more death from

preventable disease

there will be no more racism

there will be no more poverty

I added some of those pieces

And it was then

When I read this that I knew who I was

I knew what the truth about God was

And I knew what He wanted from me that

He was going to restore all things that

through Christ

He would redeem everything in this world

Not just me from my sin

but He would redeem all things

And that if I was His follower

I needed to join in

I couldn't turn away

from injustice in the world

like the school I grew up in tried to do

I couldn't turn away and ignore

poverty, I couldn't ignore war, I couldn't

ignore racism, I couldn't ignore refugees

And that the way I would have to engage

with those issues

wasn't oriented around a political idea

or a political party

or what suits me here

what suits me there

It would be oriented around

God's promises that one day

there would be no more death

no more hunger, no more tears

In that in God's world

this redemption doesn't divide people

It unites them

It takes the souls of the world

brings them into the fold

transforms them

And makes them champions

that in God's design of reconciliation

in restoration

and God's design of justice

People are restored

relationships are rebuilt

and that's who we are

Getting to the final question

I said we would talk about today

Who are we

in light of who God is?

When you are faced in your high school

or in your church

or in your community

with these questions

What's going on in our world?

God is doing something!

Be sure about that

God is doing something right now

He is revealing oppression

He is revealing injustice

against all kinds of people

And the world is going to be fighting

about that and talking about it

in what we do, in response

either tells the truth about who God is

or tells a lie

What do I mean by that?

I mean that you have Christians

who are out there saying

as their identity as a Christian

close the door to refugees

What does that say about God?

It says that He wants nothing to do with

the suffering but we know that's a lie!

Do you not see that

when we engage with injustice

this is the best evangelism we could do

And this is what makes us different

than the world around us

when we say that racism is wrong

We get to say who God is

Every time we declare something

in this world is not right

we get to declare how it ought to be

And we get to declare that

this is how God wants it to be

The injustice of the world

is a chance for us

Not to join political stuff

or get mixed up in

all kinds of culture wars

It is a chance for us to say

who Jesus is

that he has come to set

the captives free

that he has come

to set the oppressed free

that when we spend ourselves

on behalf of the hungry

when we break the yoke of injustice

we are near to him

This is evangelism!

We don't do injustice

and we don't fight injustice

or respond to injustice

because it's a little sideshow

a little good act

This is evangelism

We have the insane honor

to tell this world about Jesus Christ!

And who he is

and how much He loves us

and how much He will restore this world

fully!

So when you face

the hot button issues of today

don't fall into the temptation

of so many who have come before you

of so many in the generation

before you to ignore it

Say I'm not going to get involved

in black lives matter

I'm not going to get involved in talking

about this earth and the environment

That's not for me

I'm focused on the spiritual

Don't make that mistake!

And don't make the mistake

of many in my generation

Who forgot who we were in Christ

and got involved in those things

based on what team we played on

Maybe we're on the red team

or the blue team

and we took our talking points

from media pundits

and from you know political leaders

Go back to scripture

and get involved in this world

because of who Jesus is

because of what he promised

because he is so good

because he loves us

because he is so incredible

that not only is he consumed

and concerned with the refugees

suffering from wars around the world

with the persecution of believers

all over the world

he is so good that he has enough room

to care so deeply about that

And so deeply about me

And so deeply about you

to redeem not just those big issues

but to redeem you

and to redeem me

Who are we going to be

in face in the face of a world

that is so corrupt but is so beautiful

and beloved by God

Who will we be?

Will we be like Moses?

Will we be like Paul?

Will we be like

Onesimus and Philemon?

Who will we be?

Will we be like Christ?

That's the invitation for you today

to wrestle with how we can be

His ambassadors in this world

How can we respond to

the evil in the world around us

and to have hope to bring hope

And that's my final thought

There is so much depression

There are so many young people

who are wrestling with the weight

of the world who are without hope

Let us bring them hope

The hope of Revelation 21

The hope that one day all things

will be made new

Please pray with me

God, I thank you for your goodness

for your love

for your mercy

for your justice

for your promise

to make all things new

God we believe it in our bones

So we live with hope, Lord,

because we believe your character is

who you say you are in scripture, God.

Help us bring that hope to others

to proclaim your good name

and to do things to bring glory to you.

Teach us how to spend ourselves on

behalf of the hungry, teach us how to

break the yoke of oppression, Lord.

You are so good.

God we love you.

We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Thank you all. God bless you!