Citizens of Another Kingdom | Downtown | June 14, 2026

Spring Lake Church – Downtown

Sermon: Citizens of Another Kingdom

Teacher: Arlen Chastain

Passages: Jonah 4:1-11

In “Citizens of Another Kingdom,” we explore what it means to follow Jesus while living as citizens of an earthly nation. Through passages including Philippians 3:20, Matthew 22:15–21, Micah 6:8, and 2 Corinthians 5:20, we are reminded that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven. This message encourages believers to seek justice with humility, pray for governing authorities, resist political division, love their neighbors, and live as Christ’s ambassadors. Join us as we learn to represent God’s Kingdom in a divided world. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Morning. It's good to see you. Uh, if we've not met one another, my name is Arlen. I am the Lawrence Campus pastor. I was here last week, excited to get to be with you guys again for week one of a series that we have titled Uncomfortable. Uh it's gonna be an uncomfortable summer, but it's gonna be a good summer. We're gonna be walking through um some stuff that as a church we just have to have some conversations on. Um, and so just a quick word of advice for the summer. Uh don't rotate around because we're gonna rotate around. The preacher's gonna rotate around. So if you find yourself at Lawrence next week, you're gonna hear this exact same message. So stay put, don't rotate because we're gonna come to you. Um, but we are gonna be having just conversations about some of the things that sometimes people don't want to have a conversation about as a church, or sometimes uh they have a general idea of it, uh, but then they just don't fully engage with it or they don't talk about it. Um, and so I want to take a moment just to set the tone for the whole series. Because when a church tackles like hot button topics, it can sometimes feel like a lecture and sometimes it feels worse. It's like a beatdown. Um, and I want to be up front with you. That's not my heart today. And that is not our heart. Uh, it is never our heart. Um, we are not here to beat up on anybody, but we are here because we genuinely think that walking through hard things together strengthens the church. Amen. That having an honest conversation strengthens the church. And I'm here because I genuinely believe that. And I want us to have a good and honest conversation that like forms us and makes us into faithful, mature followers of Jesus and people who can love their neighbors well. And so uh this week we're actually starting with a relatively big one, uh, politics. We're gonna be talking about politics. And the second I said that, some people sat back and they're like, nope. And some people leaned in and they're like, yeah, let's have this conversation. And uh I want to talk specifically how do we engage with politics as a Christian? I'm talking to the Christians today. How do Christians engage with a political world? And I'm gonna go ahead and say the two words that not a lot of people want to hear on a Sunday morning: Republican and Democrat. We did it. We okay? We said it, we we survived. Everybody's still here, but we're gonna have this conversation today. Um, and why are we talking about this? Why did I want to have this conversation? Um, here's my honest answer. I think political division is one of the most significant barriers that keeps people from walking through the doors of a church. I think sometimes people can be so outspoken that it's keeping people from coming into the church. And uh, I'm gonna be even more transparent with you. I'm really burdened sometimes by how uh politicized the church can get. Not necessarily Spring Lake, but the church as a whole. Uh, and it grieves my heart when I see Jesus' name be used for anything other than to tell the truth of the gospel. Amen. Jesus was not a Republican, he wasn't a Democrat, those things didn't even exist in his time. Jesus is and was Lord. Amen. And that changes how we engage with the world around us. And so today's conversation might be uncomfortable, but it's gonna be honest. And it's not meant to shame anybody in this room, but it is meant to give all glory back to Jesus. Amen. Let me pray for us, and we're gonna dive in. Lord, thank you that we have this opportunity to meet together. Lord, I pray in this moment that we make this time about you because it is your time, not our time. Lord, I pray that our lives are about you because they're your lives, that you saved, that you gave salvation. Lord, I pray that you give us a conversation that is honoring to you today. And Lord, I pray that through all of this we lay down whatever is in our hearts and we lay down whatever is in our hands, and we understand that you are king above it all. Lord, we love you. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So here is kind of how I want to start the conversation, and I want us to all answer a question uh together. And it's a very simple one, and it's this Who are you? Right? This is a question that a lot of people are gonna get asked at some point in their life. Who are you? Uh, and I want you to sit with this question for just a second because uh if someone stopped you on the street and they asked you this question, who are you? Uh a plethora of stuff might leave your mouth, right? You might be a teacher or a contractor, or I'm a stay-at-home mom for others, it's I'm a husband and I'm a father. Uh, some people answer with where they're from. Oh, I'm from this country or I'm from this city. And some people might even lead with like their political affiliations. And I'm not saying this to be critical, uh, but I'm saying just for a lot of people, who are you is a complicated question. It can be a hard question to answer for some. Um, and some people uh they they know exactly who they are and they know exactly where they stand. But why am I asking this question? Why am I asking the question, who are you? Because I think it matters to understand how Christians should engage with politics, right? Like politics sometimes can be deeply, deeply rooted in identity. And how you engage with the political world flows almost entirely out of how you view yourself and how you see yourself. And so I want us to take a step back and answer that question, who are you from a biblical perspective? And to understand this, we actually have to look at uh how the New Testament authors uh introduce themselves, right? So if you read through the New Testament, uh, I'm gonna give you kind of spoiler alert. New Testament, most of it is just old guys writing letters back and forth. That's what the New Testament, New Testament is in a lot of ways. And we actually see how they introduce themselves often. Paul, who's one of like the major writers of the New Testament, often introduces himself as Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. Or Peter opens with Peter, a servant, an apostle of Jesus. And we see that throughout the New Testament, these New Testament authors are introducing themselves, not with their nationality, not with their occupation or their political standing or even their social status, but they introduce themselves with allegiance to Jesus. And I don't think that that's an accident. Because when we read those introductions and context, there's something really important. They're not just saying, uh, I'm writing for my own agenda, or I'm coming to you as a Roman citizen or a Jewish leader or a political voice, but I'm coming to you as someone who belongs to Jesus, and everything I say flows from that. Their identity set the tone for everything that followed. And here's why that matters for you and I today. Because if we get the order wrong, everything downstream is off. If you get the order wrong, everything downstream is off. If you do not see yourself as a Christian first, everything else is off in trajectory. Amen. You start as a Christian because if you just see yourself as an American first or a Republican first or a Democrat first, you start to engage like one and you don't engage fully like a Christian. You start as a Christian and everything else followers or follows. We are followers of Jesus Christ, and that's what we're building. And so uh I'm gonna pose just kind of a tension that exists. So we know who we are. Who are you? You are a follower of Christ. You are a Christian. If you claim him as Lord, you are a follower of Christ. But then there's this tension, right? Because some of you are like, Arlen, I get it. Uh, Jesus first, but I'm still an American. I still live here, I still vote here, I still pay taxes. What do I do with that? Where do I go with that? And that's a good question to ask. Honestly, that's a really good question to ask because uh the answer is not to disengage. The answer isn't to just throw your hands up and say politics doesn't matter. None of this is my problem. I'll just wait for heaven. It's not what the Bible teaches, but there's this tension that exists. And so uh I want us to land in just a simple verse, Philippians 3.20, for just a second, because we're posed with this with like this two kingdoms, one Christian thing going on. And so, uh, but it says this very clearly: our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We eagerly are awaiting that. Now I want us to understand something about what's being written here, uh, because Paul is writing this uh to a colony, uh, a Roman colony, a group of people that was made up of some Roman citizens, some not Roman citizens, but uh Roman citizenship was actually really important within this because uh it wasn't just like a legal status, it was a pretty big deal. It came with protections and privileges and social standings, and Philippian uh citizens were proud if they had that Roman status and they wore that identity and it shaped how they saw themselves and how they moved through the world. And so uh those who had Roman uh citizenship status, they loved it, and those who didn't have it, they actually longed for it. In the middle of that culture, Paul says, but our citizenship is in heaven. Now he's not saying Rome doesn't matter, he's not saying nor your civic life, and he's he's just saying, get the order right. There's a citizenship that supersedes the one that you might hold. You are a citizen of heaven, and if you lose sight of that, again, everything downstream gets distorted. Amen. We're citizens of heaven, and then Jesus himself gives us the framework in Matthew 22. He he's having this discussion. It says then the Pharisees went out and laid the plans to to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the the along with the Herod Herodians, uh, teacher, they said, We know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax. They brought him uh the the denarius, and he asked them, Whose image is this? In whose inscriptions? Caesar's, they replied. He said to them, So give back to Caesar what's Caesar's, and to God, what is God's? Look, the Pharisees tried to trap him. They asked him uh if it's right to pay taxes to Caesar, and Jesus asked for the coin, he holds it up and he says, It's Caesar's. Give it to Caesar that's who it belongs to. And he's not trying to dodge the question, he's not avoiding it. He answers it with a framework. He's saying, Yeah, Caesar's real, government's real, civic life is real, engage it, pay your taxes, participate, that's not beneath you. But understand where Caesar's authority ends in your life. The coin bared Caesar's image, so give it back to him, but you bear the image of God. You were made in the image of God. Genesis 1:27, you were made in his image, which means the deepest part of you doesn't belong to any government, any nation, any party. It belongs to God. Give to Caesar what's Caesar, but give to God what's God, and you belong to God. Amen. You belong to God. And so I want to land here for just a second. I want to say this clearly and honestly. Sometimes something can be good for a country and bad for the kingdom of heaven. And sometimes something might be good for America, but it might not be good for the kingdom of heaven. And sometimes, if there is that conflict, a Christian must know which kingdom they truly belong to. Not because we don't love this country, but because we love something more. And I'm not saying that America doesn't matter. I'm not saying that you shouldn't love your country. We should be grateful for it and we should engage with it. I love this country. I love the freedoms that we have, including the freedom to do this right here, right now, to have this conversation. That's not a small thing, it's something that we should cherish. But the biblical reality is we are a citizen of heaven, living as a foreigner here on earth. The New Testament actually uses that language in 1 Peter. Peter calls us foreigners and exiles, not because the world is evil or we should hide from it, but because we're passing through. This is not our forever home. Think about it this way: if you move to another country, let's say you took a job overseas for a few years, you'd probably still follow their laws. You'd be a good neighbor, you'd still care about the community that you lived in, you might even love it, but you'd never truly forget where home was. And when that country's values might conf be conflicted with your own, you know exactly where you stood. We're guests here. We're grateful guests, we're engaged guests, but we're guests nonetheless. And so, yes, love your country, participate in it, vote, pursue the good of this country. Jeremiah 29 actually tells us to seek the peace and prosperity of the city that you've been placed in. That's a commandment. Not a suggestion, but love where you live in the way that a kingdom citizen loves it. With a Christ-centered heart and with a clear-eyed understanding that your ultimate allegiance was settled long before you ever step into a voting booth. That is true Christian faithfulness. We're Christians first. Amen. How are we doing? I'm getting a lot of crazy stares. We're feeling sufficiently uncomfortable yet? Let's keep going. All right. So where do we go, right? We understand we are Christians first, right? That we belong to a homeland that does not exist here on earth. We belong in heaven with God. Uh Jesus very clear so clearly tells us, you belong to God, so give to God what is God's. And so uh, what do we do with this, right? How do we actually faithfully engage with the political world around us? And so I'm gonna give us uh two anchors and I call them the dues. These are the things that I think Christians should be doing. Um, and I get these from scripture. This is not just Arlen thinks time. This is, hey, Arlen uh has read his read scripture, and I think that this is what the Lord is ultimately telling us. And so uh I'm gonna give us the first one, which is this do seek justice with humility, not just victory. Do seek justice with humility, not just victory. And uh I get this from Micah, the book of Micah, Micah 6, 8, actually. And so if you read through the book of Micah, a huge theme within Micah is uh they're dealing with idolatry and injustice. And so it's God kind of helping instruct uh against idolatry and injustice, and it says this He has shown you a mortal what is good. And what does the Lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God? And so uh I want us to kind of walk through this. This is actually gonna be a sermon within a sermon, really quick. We're gonna walk through this. It's gonna be a mini sermon within a sermon because this is an instruction from the Lord. And there are three distinct packs, there are three distinct things packed into this one verse, and they're all pretty important with how we engage, not just the political world, but the world around us. And the first one is very clear act justly. Act justly. Politics sometimes can be a really legitimate place to pursue justice. It can pursue justice for the poor, for the foreigner, for the vulnerable, for the marginalized. God cares deeply about justice, and his people should too. And politics can actually help lead to justice. And so I would argue this is an area that Christians can do this. That we do fight for what we believe Scripture is telling us to do, that we do fight for justice. But notice the second part, it says act justly, love mercy. Love mercy. And this is where it can kind of get hard because justice without mercy, I'm gonna be honest with us, is just self-righteousness. Justice with no mercy is just self-righteousness, and it becomes about being right more than it becomes about doing what is right. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say uh a life motto that I've lived by. Uh if I'm wrong about the way that I'm right, I'm wrong. If I am wrong about the way that I am right, I'm wrong. I might be saying the right things, but if I say it with malice in my heart, I'm wrong. Act justly, love mercy. It means you pursue justice, but you hold compassion for people on the other side of the conversation, even if you disagree with them. Because you care more about their standing with Jesus than you care about being right. Act justly with love and mercy. And then the third is walk humbly. Can I be honest? Humility is like the last thing that exists in political discourse. Everybody is certain that they have the answer. Everybody's certain. Nobody's wrong, nobody can be wrong. And there's not a lot of humility, and when that kind of like absolution over things that are not Christ-focused, when that starts to bleed in, we start just fighting for things that are not Christ. And so walk humbly means you hold your political convictions where they should be. And you want people to know the name of Jesus. And sometimes you're gonna be willing to acknowledge, I might be wrong about this. I might be wrong about what I believe. If it's not of the Lord, the goal of the Christian political engagement isn't to just win, it's to see flourishing for your neighbor, for the vulnerable, for the common good, for where you live, even for people who don't vote the way that you do. If winning is the primary goal, we have lost something so much more important than the election. Amen. Do number two pray for the governing authorities. This is where some are like, I'm out. Don't want to do that. First of all, when when we see this, I urge that praying for governing authorities is something that we should do. We get this from First Timothy, which says, first, first of all, then I urge the supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving to be made for all people, for kings who are in high positions, that we may lead peaceful and quiet and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Now, before you nod along, to say, Yeah, I'll do that. I want us to focus on something because our tendency sometimes is to just pray for the leaders that we like. Sometimes our tendency is to pray for the the leaders that we like, and then we just don't consider the ones that we don't. And that's not what Paul is saying. He's saying, pray for all leaders. Pray for them all, not just the ones that you share values with. And in the context of when this is writing, some there's some debate on when 1 Timothy was actually written. Um, but wherever it lands in the timeline, uh, the emperor at the time was just not a good guy. The large consensus is that it was Nero at the time that was in charge when he was writing this, when this was written. Um, and if you know anything about him, he wasn't a good dude. He was not a nice guy. It's not like they existed in this friendly democracy. And yet he still tells the early church, pray for your leaders. And that rings true today. Pray for your leaders. And so uh, I have homework for you today. And it's this pray for one leader this week that you don't agree with. And I'm not saying pray that their agenda fails, I'm not saying that they lose, pray that they lose. I'm saying pray for them. Truly pray for them. Pray that God wrecks their heart for him, pray that God gives them wisdom, pray for their family, pray for their soul. Pray that they are able to have their eyes open and they get to see who Jesus is. Pray for them because sometimes it's hard, it's really hard to dehumanize people that we're praying for. Amen. Pray for them. Pray for somebody in leadership that you might not agree with. These are the do's. Here we go. Uh, here's where it gets honest, and I'm gonna again I'm gonna say up front, this is not me trying to be uh lecturing you, but I'm just saying these are things that can wreck us if we're not careful. And so the first don't is don't make your party your tribe. Don't make your party your tribe. And I uh we get this from Psalm 146.3. Don't put your trust in princes and human beings who cannot save. And I'm gonna ask a question and I want you to answer it to yourself honestly. What happens to you emotionally when your side loses? Because if the answer is despair, if the bad election cycle wrecks you in the same way a personal tragedy would, then maybe we might be putting too much hope in some people. If it wrecks you, if your party has become more than a political preference, if it's become your identity, if it's become your tribe, if it if it becomes almost your way of life. Tribes seek to protect themselves above everything else. And I want to be gentle here, but also uh clear no political party bears the name of Jesus, no political name leader bears the name of Jesus. Jesus, the moment that we start equating anybody with the name of Jesus other than Jesus is when we start to devalue this is the true honor of who Jesus is. And I want to be gentle but also clear. Again, we have to keep Jesus in the king spot. We can't water down something that has never meant to be diluted. The world is not broken because a political party did something you didn't agree with. The world is broken because of sin. Amen? Full stop. That's it. It's broken because of sin, not because like a Democrat spent money away you didn't like or Republican made a policy you didn't agree with. That's not the reason the world is broken. The world is broken because sin exists and no election, no matter how important, can ever fix that. And again, let me say this as lovingly but as directly as I can. If any political leader, any of them, and you place their name next to Jesus and hope that they're gonna fix what's broken in this world, that is a red flag. Because only Jesus can truly fix what is broken in this world. And I'm not saying we shouldn't uh honor our leadership, and I'm not saying that leaders can't do great things, but no leader, no matter how good, no matter how much they align with your values, no leader died for your sins. No leader rose from the grave, no leader holds the world together by the word of his power. Only Jesus does that. Amen. His name is amazing and is great, and we should keep it there. If you have found yourself excusing behaviors of the political world because it suits an agenda, but it doesn't go with the Christian values and with the name of Jesus. I want to wave a caution flag because our allegiance was bought at too high a price to be handed over to someone who can't keep it. Our allegiance is with Jesus. Don't number two, don't dehumanize your neighbor across the aisle. Matthew 22, 38 and 39. Uh, he just gave us 39, but uh 38 is Jesus he's talking, he's saying, he's telling him, hey, these are commandments that I'm giving you. Uh love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And then he says, in the second, like this, love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. And we live in a world that has politicized everything. And I mean everything. And somewhere along the way, I think we've started treating people on the other side of the aisle not as neighbors, not as image-bearers, but as enemies. And that is not good. And the church hasn't been immune to this. That this has crept into the church, and uh, we see Christians compromising the truth of God's world because uh it's more comfortable than confronting their own political thoughts. We have people who are louder on Facebook about in any political agenda than they are willing to be about the name of Jesus. And if that's us, if we're more outspoken about our political frustrations than we are about the gospel, we need to orient our hearts in the right way. We should be brokenhearted for people. And we should want people to know the name of Jesus more than we should want them to know the name of any political leader. We should desire for them to know the name of Jesus so much. I want to say this so incredibly directly to you. The person across the aisle is not your enemy. The person across the aisle is a human. They are an image bearer. Our battle is not with flesh and blood, it is with sin. And sin corrupts. They are someone that Jesus died for. They might be your neighbor, they might be your coworker, they may be the very person that God has placed in your life to hear the gospel from you. And if your political identity has burned that bridge, that's a tragedy that has nothing to do with policy and has everything to do with misplaced priorities. We just studied Jonah. We just talked about this. And sometimes we want justice and vengeance for the people that we think have done wrong. And we read this whole book to understand God loves them anyway. And so we should want them to know that Jesus is king. Look, I'm gonna this is hard, but it doesn't matter who's in charge. If they are doing something that is not of the Lord, we should not align with that. And we should hold true and fast. Look, right, lying is wrong, cruelty is wrong, dehumanizing people is wrong, and we hold that cons standard consistently with everybody, not just when it's politically convenient, because the second we compromise the truth of what we believe to protect our tribe, we haven't just made a bad political decision. We're not living faithfully as Christians. Because he's more than that, and he deserves our allegiance. Amen. So then where do we go with this, right? What do we do with this? Well, I want us to understand our responsibility. Understand your responsibility, my responsibility, and I want to land here. We started this conversation today with the simple question: who are you? Who are you? And I hope by now the answer is a little clearer. You're a citizen of heaven. You are a faithful foreigner, you are an ambassador of another kingdom, living in a country that you love, but this is not your final destination. And that word ambassador, I want us to sit with for just a second. We get it from 2 Corinthians 5.20. It says, We therefore are Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. Think about what an ambassador actually does. They live in a foreign country and they engage with its culture and its government and its people and they follow its laws and they care for its good. They might even love it deeply, but when they are confronted with the culture of where they live, they never forget where they come from. They never forget who sent them, because their identity was settled before they even got on that plane. And that's us. We don't hide from the political world, pretending it doesn't matter, checking out because it's too messy. We engage it, but we are not conquerors of it, as if the right election ushers in the kingdom of God, because only Jesus ushers in the kingdom of God. You're an ambassador, you show up, you love your neighbors, and you pursue justice, and you pray for your enemies, and you hold truth without apology and without cruelty. And at the end of the day, the end of every election cycle, every news cycle, every exhausting political season, you know where home is. You know exactly where you live. And before I go, I want to bring it back to what we should always bring it back to, which is Jesus. Let's bring it back to Jesus because here's what I don't want us to leave with today. I don't want us to just leave with a list of political do's and don'ts, and I don't want us to leave feeling guilty or bad about a bumper sticker or Facebook post. I don't want us to just leave with like a civics lesson with some scripture sprinkled in. I want us to leave with the name of Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate example of everything that we talked about today. He was a citizen of heaven who came into a foreign land, who engaged it fully with the culture, with the government, and he had just engaged the broken and the messy in the political charge world of the first century, and he didn't check out, he didn't hide from it. He actually showed up and he engaged it, and he never once lost sight of why he was here. And in John 6, they actually try and take him and forcefully make him a king, and he says, No, no, no, I don't want to do that. And he actually retreats because, not because he wasn't a king, he is a king, but his kingdom was not of this world. His king, his kingdom is bigger and is more eternal, and it's so much bigger than what we can imagine. And when they tried to make him this political king, he's like, uh-uh, that's not what I want. I want you to understand that I am a king of heaven, that I am a king of something greater. And he rendered to Caesar what was Caesar's, but he gave everything, his life, his blood, and his last breath to God. And he did that because he lived as the ambassador of heaven. It died in our place, and that way we might become citizens of that kingdom, not because we earned it, not because we voted for it, but because he gave us that access. And that's the gospel, and that's what it's what's at stake when we attach anything to his name. And so my here's my charge to you. Go home and ask yourself that question. Who are you? Are you a follower of Jesus and reflect on that and then ask yourself, well, does the way that I engage with the political world around me reflect that answer? When you sit down at Thanksgiving and politics comes up, does your family see you as a kingdom citizen or just like a news commentator? Or when you're on Facebook and you're scrolling, because we all do it, we all scroll through and we all find ourselves getting mad at something. Does our response say kingdom citizen? And that's what we have to come back to. When that familiar rage rises, how do you respond? And the hope is that we respond like somebody who has not forgotten where their home is. When you walk into the voting booth, and you should walk into that voting booth. Do you walk in as someone whose ultimate hope is is in a candidate, or someone whose ultimate hope was settled on the cross 2,000 years ago? You're an ambassador, you've been sent, and you have a role, and your role is not to win the culture war, and your role is not to own the other side, your role is to help build the kingdom of heaven, and your role is to represent your king faithfully, humbly, courageously, and lovingly, and in every conversation, every post, every vote, every interaction with someone who sees the world completely different than you than you do, your job is to be an ambassador of Christ. My job is to be an ambassador of Christ. The world is not going to become better if we have better politicians. The world only gets better with an emojis. Be an ambassador, understand your role, engage faithfully, but engage responsibly and seek to do what is good and what is of the Lord. We are Christians first, and everything else flows from that. Can we pray for us? Lord, thank you for who you are. Thank you that you've given us this time to have a conversation that might not be easy. And Lord, I repent where I have made idols in my life, where I have placed hope in people that I shouldn't have placed hope in, where I have misprioritized you in my own life, where I have bought into the narratives of the world over the truth of Scripture. Lord, I pray that we are a church that doesn't do that. I pray that we are a church that holds politics open handedly and centered on you. I pray that we're a church that engaged in with those around us in a healthy way, in a way that is ultimately Christ exalting. We love you, Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.