“Jesus Christ For President” from Sojourn’s Daniel Montgomery

Sojourn Pastor Daniel Montgomery is currently preaching a two-part series at The 930 during our Sunday worship services entitled “Christ for President,” using Romans 13 as his text.  The timeless message is particularly appropriate here in Louisville and throughout the U.S. because of, well, you know … the presidential election contest between Barak Obama and John McCain. 

 
‘Christ For President’ - Daniel Montgomery from Sojourn Community Church on Vimeo.

The video above contains the entirety of Pastor Daniel’s first sermon in this series.  He will wrap Christ For President up today in each of our four services.  After our 7 p.m. service, we will hold a Q&A session featuring Sojourn pastors and Professor Peter Richards, a political/legal scholar.  Below is the official Sojourn introduction to this series:

With the presidential campaign in sprint to the polls, and candidates on both sides of the political spectrum promising to save the country from certain doom in the hands of the opposite party, we, the church, must ask: can politics save the world? Christians are called to no longer conform to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2a), and the pattern of politics in our day and age is to place our hope for the future in the plan of one party or another. Healthcare reform, vigilant national security, wall-street buy-outs, tax cuts for the poor, for the rich; we’re told these things will save us. But the world is shattered by sin and this corrupts everything. The hope of political action is ultimately false. Above politicians, above government, Christ is our King, our Savior and Redeemer. Jesus Christ is the only hope of the world. God’s plan for the redemption of our sin-shattered world was not an earthly kingdom but a kingdom in the soul. So here we are, living in society with laws and government where Christ is not president. What do we do?

At Sojourn, we believe the gospel has the power to transform everything, even the political world where corruption and greed seem to rule the day with unshakable authority. We want to avoid two different ways of thinking which both fall into error. On one hand, we must not place political ideas and agendas above, or even equal to, the grace of God as an engine of change in our world. That would be idolatry. At the same time, we cannot throw our hands up in disgust and forget about the whole mess. God is at work in human history and when he saved us from sin, he called us to be the church and take part in seeing his invisible kingdom made visible, even in politics.

Our call as Christians is to live in the tension between political apathy and political idolatry. As we turn to God’s word, we come to Romans 13, Paul’s message to Christians under the reign of Christ and also under the earthly authority of government. How do we live under seemingly contradicting authorities? We hope you’ll join us as we investigate how our new identity in Christ as his church informs and transforms our relationship to politics.

See a recap of the worship service featuring the Christ For President sermon, part one, including music mp3s, photos, and more.