Obligation

And now I invite you to turn to Matthew and to chapter 11, where, once again this morning, we return to the section that closes Matthew 11 and to a consideration of these four verbs.

Matthew 11:28: “Come to me,” says Jesus, “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Well, we pray before we look to the Bible, from the Book of Common Prayer:

O Almighty God, who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful people, grant to your people that they may love what you command and desire what you promise, that so, among the many changes of the world, our hearts may be surely fixed where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In his reflections on the book of Psalms, C. S. Lewis makes this observation: “Christians [live] increasingly … on a spiritual island; new and rival ways of life surround it in all directions and their tides come further up the beach every time. … Some give morality a … new meaning which we cannot accept, some deny [the] possibility [of morality].”[1]

Now, it is within that context that we come to the Bible always. If you are someone believing in Jesus, you realize that your mind is now being trained according to the truth of the Bible. You discover that things that you have come to hold dear are not necessarily shared by the people with whom you spend the majority of your time. And as we sing with happiness and gladness and with a sense of privilege our national anthem, we remind ourselves that Paul, writing to the people in Philippi, who were, many of them, Roman citizens living in an outpost of the Roman empire, writing to them who are in Christ, he says, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”[2]

And so last time, as we looked at Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me,” we realized that in the invitation there is the promise of forgiveness—our past, our sins, our guilt wiped away by the blood of Christ—and there is at the same time the provision of the gift of the Holy Spirit. So not only do we have a new status, but we also have a new name, and we have a new gifting. He sets us free to be the persons that he has created us to be.

That was last time. And this time, we come to the verb “take” and to this straightforward exhortation, “Take my yoke upon you.” If it is as sinners that we come to Jesus to receive this invitation, it is, if you like, as servants we come to Jesus because Jesus is our Master. If we see the “Come…” of last time as the call of the gospel—which we may—then we can consider the “Take…” of this time as the pathway of discipleship. If “Come…” is an invitation which covers the entire verses, which it is, then this “Take…” is actually an obligation.

So we move from invitation to obligation. What is obligation? We understand it. It is an act of being prepared to constrain ourselves by virtue of either a promise or of a contract in order that we might fulfill a particular course of action. So, for example, when you get married, you enter into a covenant. You are now obligated—obligated on the basis of God’s pattern of marriage: “I promise that I will love you, serve you,” so on, “keep you,” and do all these things, “in sickness and in health.” It’s an obligation. It’s an obligation that people want to slip away from all too readily, but it doesn’t alter the nature of what is being called for. The great baptismal hymn which begins, “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end”[3]—Jesus may reply, “Well, in that case, let me tell you what to do: take my yoke upon you.”

Now, what I want to try and do is, first of all, consider this picture, this metaphor, and understand it properly and then make two observations as it impacts life in the living of it now.

Notice that this picture, we might say, is an understandable picture. We have the benefit of living close to the Amish community, and we also have the benefit of seeing a yoke in action in beasts of burden. A yoke is literally a wooden frame placed across the shoulders of an individual. I immediately had in mind the pictures from the Dutch Impressionist painters of the lady with the milk pails: that she has a frame across her, and the reason that it’s there is because it makes the burden easier to bear by distributing the weight on both sides of her shoulders, so that she is able to make progress. The same, of course, is true in terms of the beasts of burden.

And here, as in the rest of the New Testament, this phraseology, the picture of the yoke, is always used metaphorically. It is used as a picture in order that we might get the point. So, for example, when Paul writes at the end of 1 Timothy concerning what it means to be an employee, he says, “Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants…”[4] When he writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 in relationship to marriage, he says—actually, not just in relationship to marriage, but certainly it must be true of marriage—“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.”[5] So the picture is understandable. It is a picture, a metaphor, of submission to authority.

Now, the people that Jesus was addressing were pressed upon continually by the scribes and the Pharisees, who wanted to burden them down. We considered that last time. And Jesus is saying at least this: “I know that you folks are carrying heavy burdens that have been placed upon you as a result of the teaching of these religious leaders. I want you to understand that my yoke is not that, and it isn’t like that, because my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Now, there is absolutely no basis for the idea that appears in commentaries from time to time to suggest that the marketing slogan for Joseph’s carpenter’s shop had, if you like—the sign outside was—“Joseph’s Yokes Are Easy.” It’s a nice idea. It’s a quaint idea. It actually could be true, I suppose, but there’s no basis for understanding that at all. But if the picture is understandable, the point that Jesus is making is unmistakable. Right? Because the yoke which Jesus places on his followers doesn’t rub our necks. It doesn’t chafe us. It doesn’t burden us down. It doesn’t oppress us. It doesn’t make us drag our way through Monday to Saturday and so on.

And this is not because somehow or another, Jesus has decided just to lighten the whole notion of the law of God. The problem with the religious leaders was that they were not even content to stick with the law of God as it had been given. They wanted to add more and more of their own ideas to it, so that the burden became overwhelming.

In fact, Jesus does the very reverse of lightening things in one sense when in the Sermon on the Mount—which is there in chapter 5—you will notice that he was tightening, if you like, the demands of the law of God: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder.’” That’s right. “‘And whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who[’s] angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.”[6] He’s not making it easier. “Do[n’t] think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I [didn’t] come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”[7] All the ceremonial aspects that were represented in Judaism have been fulfilled in Jesus in his sacrifice, and the Mosaic legislation has been set aside. And the fact of the matter is that the principles that God demands for his children are there to be applied.

So, for example, “You[’ve] heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has … committed adultery … in his heart.”[8] So don’t let anybody tell you that the story about Jesus and the reason his burden is light is because you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. Well, the worry is not the right response, but the fact of the matter is, it is there, and it is there to stay.

“Whoever has my [commands] and keeps them,” says Jesus, “it is [he] who loves me.”[9] So, if you like, that is a cross-reference to “Take my yoke upon you.” What will it be like to take Christ’s yoke upon us? It will be to make sure that we obey the commands of Jesus. That was John 14. Here’s John chapter 8: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”[10] Okay? “Obey commands and be free. Obey my word and discover freedom. Do what I’m telling you and find the opening of a great pathway before you.”

The Westminster Confession helps me in this when it says for the Christian, “the Spirit of Christ…” Remember, we said that he has made the provision for our forgiveness, and he has given us the promise of the Holy Spirit to live within us. The Holy Spirit lives within us and enables our will “to do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, require[s] to be done.”[11] So the Spirit of God at work within our hearts enables us, according to the Confession, to do cheerfully and willfully and freely what God requires to be done.

Now, if you think about this in terms of relationships and the doing of the things that are involved… Let’s just stay with marriage for the moment. Yeah, you can do all kinds of things, but do you do it cheerfully? Do you do it with a sense of freeness? Or is it a horrible, brutal obligation?

The picture is very straightforward. The point is clear. This isn’t to be bound and restricted. It is to live in actual freedom. The psalmist in Psalm 119, which we’ve been reading there for a while—it’s a long time in Psalm 119—he writes in verse 44, “I will always obey your law, for ever and ever.” Listen to this: “I will walk about in freedom, [because] I have sought out your precepts.”[12] “I will walk in freedom because I obey your law.”

Freedom is found on the pathway of obedience.

Now, this gets the hackles up on some people, I know. And I want to make it clear that you need to beware of those who, like the characters that we encountered in our studies in Jude, tell you—and I’ve had people tell me this—that they do not live by precepts or by rules but according “to the judgment of their own hearts as constrained by love alone.” In other words, “I don’t pay any attention to those things, because I am just moving in response to my own subjective feelings about what would be the loving thing to do.”

It’s a folly. It’s a folly, and it leads to all manner of chaos: “Well, I think I feel it’d be far more loving of me to walk away and leave my wife, because I’m not a very good husband. And I think it would be a better thing to do. After all, people have often said things like this, and I feel it in my spirit, you know.” Do you know what you need? I won’t tell you what you need, but you definitely need your Bible. You need your Bible.

Here’s Calvin: by means of the law—the moral law of God—the believer learns thoroughly the nature of God’s will and is “aroused to obedience” and “drawn back from the slippery path of transgression.”[13] It is by means of the Word of God that the Spirit of God says what’s in and what’s out. And Jesus is actually saying to these people, “You are burdened by all kinds of things. Take my yoke, not that yoke. Take my yoke.” Freedom is found on the pathway of obedience.

I was recalling that famous encounter in Pilgrim’s Progress when, you remember—I hope some do—that Formalist and Hypocrisy… Formalist was a religious performer, and Hypocrisy was a religious pretender. And Formalist and Hypocrisy all of a sudden come tumbling over the wall, and they meet Christian, who’s on his way. And you have that great conversation that follows. Christian says to Formalist and Hypocrisy, “How come you didn’t come through the gate?” “Oh,” they said, “forget the gate! We don’t need the gate. For a long, long time, people have been tumbling over the wall. We thought we should just come tumbling over. We don’t need to be concerned about these things.” And Pilgrim says to them, “I walk by the rule of my Master. You walk by the rude working of your fancies. You came in by yourselves without his direction and shall go out by yourselves without his mercy.”[14]

“Come to me.” Not “Come to religion.” Not “Come to formalism.” Not “Come to hypocritical notions.” “Come to me.” Okay? “Take my yoke.” The picture is understandable, and the point is unmistakable. We could say more of that, but we won’t.

I want to make just two observations. And the challenge in tackling things like this—at least it’s a challenge for me—is that you never really know which direction to go, and so you have to choose one. So, here: the first observation I want to make on the strength of what we’ve just been considering is to recognize that what our contemporary world regards as freedom is an illusion; and then, secondly, to recognize that the biblical understanding of freedom is paradoxical. So on the one hand, this is an illusion, and in our understanding of the Scriptures itself, it is a paradox.

Let’s begin with a speech delivered by the late Arthur Leff of Yale Law School, 1979, four years before I came here to the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is Professor Leff: “Unless there is a God who is himself Goodness and Justice, … there can be no ultimate basis for law. For if there is no God, nothing can take his place. No human standard—no person, no group of people, no document—is [then] immune to challenge.”[15]

Now, just think about that for a moment. This is ’79, and he’s speaking to law students and to the folks within his context, and he is essentially saying if we remove the notion of the creator God, who, by the nature of his being, establishes the framework of morality and of human existence, then nothing will be able to stand up to challenge.

And if you think about the ensuing, well, forty-five years or forty-six years or so, you realize just how prescient his words were. You see, because… Okay, so we began in Yale. Most of us are not going to Yale. We haven’t been there. We don’t do Yale Law School. But that’s not some kind of remote notion that can be safely left in the corridors of law or in the so-called ivory towers of learning, because that actually impinges on everything.

Our views of issues like marriage, abortion, euthanasia, gender are tied directly to an understanding of and a conviction about the moral law, which is an expression of the moral nature of God. Now, I start there because that has been pushed back against all the way along the line, certainly over the last fifty years. And the Bible is making it clear that the law is transcendent, that the law is universal, because every person is created by God, every person is dependent upon God, and every person is responsible to God.

However, “behind a facade of ‘wisdom’”[16]—to quote our studies in Romans chapter 1—“behind a facade of ‘wisdom,’” the Bible tells us that we, because of who and what we are as sinners before God, we have rejected God’s wisdom, we have rebelled against God’s authority, and we have suppressed the truth. Suppressed the truth. Because, as we see in Paul writing to the church in Rome, he says the fact of the matter is that God’s invisible reality is clearly known to people.[17] It’s clearly known to people. It is not actually natural to disbelieve in God. To disbelieve in God is to go against what we actually know inside of ourselves, because we’re aware of the fact that there is not only that sense of the transcendent reality and beauty of everything, but there is at the same time a moral conscience within us, and we’re hard-pressed to discover where it’s from.

But where are we? Well, I think it’s not difficult to unleash some of the story. Here’s the kind of thing that we’re privy to on a daily basis, this kind of slogan: “Everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life as they choose without restraints of any kind.” And people say, “Well, that’s the thing that we just… With life and liberty for all!” It’s America. That’s how you do it—that we’re all free to do that. And unless you’re thinking, you might get swept away, and you say, “Well, wait a minute. Yeah, I suppose that’s the case. I don’t even know what I’m thinking about. I should just let live. Just let life go. Yeah, go ahead! Do what you want to do.” And the people say, “You’re such a bigot that you wouldn’t do that. Why wouldn’t you do that? What is the basis for your statement?”

It is not actually natural to disbelieve in God. To disbelieve in God is to go against what we actually know inside of ourselves.

You see, the fact is, again… And Peter, not in 1 Peter but in 2 Peter, when he’s speaking to these people, he says, you know, “You better be careful, because there are these people around who promise you freedom, but they’re actually slaves of corruption.”[18] And then listen to this one sentence: “For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.”[19] “Whatever overcomes a person”—whatever controls a person, whatever is the epicenter of a person’s life, the thing that is his bottom line, the thing that when everything else hits the fan, he’s going to stick with this and nothing beyond this and nothing less than this—that is the thing that masters the person.

And without God at the center, providing the meaning of our existence, an understandable discovery of what it means even to be human, inevitably, other factors take the place of God. So if a person’s “thing” is success, then he lives for success. She lives to be known as successful. If it is intellect, then everybody needs to know how clever I am and how important it is. If it is influence or power… And so on. What are those things? Well, they’re actually the things that we can’t live without. They’re the me-ness of me: “This is what makes me me. When I have to choose between this and this and this, I choose this. It’s the factor that I can’t live without.” And it is that, then, which overrules everything. And so when you can’t have that or when you’re unsuccessful in that, then you will be frightened at not being able to live up to it, and you will be angry towards everybody who thwarts your endeavor to have that in control.

I know I come to this quote every time, but it’s as good as you can find. Dylan was right:

You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
… It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord,
But you’re gonna … serve somebody.[20]

Now, that is exactly what the Bible is saying. We either serve the living God and find freedom in him, or we serve substitute gods, which can never satisfy and which are self-depleting.

I’m glad that we could sing the national anthem. As I said, it’s a good anthem. I’m not so sure that our “God Save the Queen” is anywhere as close in terms of just the melodic framework of it. But nevertheless, we’ll leave that aside. But when it’s sung, especially in stadiums, when it comes to “the land of the free,” and “free” lasts for about a minute and a half—“freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”—and then that’s when everyone starts clapping and shouting and taking their hand off their heart and doing whatever you do. And so we… This is us! We are the free. We’re the free! How free are we?

You see, this is Deuteronomy 6 versus the winner of the Oscar for the best original song in 2013. “Explain yourself,” says somebody. Thank you; I will. Deuteronomy 6: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” He is the one living, true God. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart … with all your soul … with all your might.” We were made by God to know God, to love God, and to serve God. On the strength of that, “these words,” says Moses, “that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, … shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”[21]

That in contrast to the Oscar-winning song of 2013: Elsa in Frozen. This is not funny! You see how skillful the Evil One is? That’s how the children sing about it. Elsa in Frozen is no longer determined to meet the expectations of her parents or of society. Instead, she decides to “let it go,” to express her true identity: “No right, no wrong, no rules,” for her.[22]

“It’s Disney. It’s children.” Listen: she’s a poster child for expressive individualism. She is a classic representation, in miniature form, of the egotistical framework of a society that has chosen to live without God—wants no notion of yoke. Forget the yoke of the king of England. Forget every yoke, actually! Forget it. There’s no reason for this at all. Freedom for Elsa, and for those who share her view, can only be found in a world where there are no boundaries at all. No boundaries!

That notion of freedom, the absence of all restriction, is not reality. It is an illusion! And that mantra is heard from corporate boards of America down to the children’s nurseries. “Everyone should be free to determine their own truth and to define their own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of life.”[23] “Where did you get that from?” That was an opinion in the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, from the Supreme Court of America. Listen: “Everyone should be free to determine their own truth and to define their own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of life.” Where did that come from? “There is a higher throne than all this world has known.”[24] Freedom of choice without constraints has become almost sacred in our culture, so long as you don’t harm anyone. That’s all. You can do whatever you want to do, as long as I don’t harm you or you don’t harm me.

The problem in that, of course, goes right back to the beginning. Because the very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law that presides over all. If there is no natural law that then determines the framework, then the standards or the ethos of society is the creation of those who rule it. Government of the people, for the people, by the people, whatever it was, and the circumstance is this: when at the highest level—at the level of education and law and so on—there is a complete reversal of a commitment to the reality of freedom as found in the living God—when that goes, when there is no moral law that overarches both those who are ruled and those who rule—then the society will decide what it is. And you’ve got chaos!

Because somebody says, “I don’t think you ought to put your feet on the seat.”

And the teenager says, “What’s up to you about the feet on the seat? I’ll put my feet wherever I want. I’ve always thought it was much nicer to put my feet on the seat.”

“Well, you ought not to do that.”

“Who says ‘ought’? Where does ‘ought’ come from? There is no ‘ought.’ There’s just personal preference. And after all, I’m not exactly harming you by putting my feet on the seat, am I?”

I think you get it, don’t you? Any decision about what harms somebody is actually rooted in a specific understanding of human nature, of happiness, and of right or of wrong. Is euthanasia harmful? To whom? Why would there not be that, if all that you have to do is make sure you don’t harm the person? You’re harming the husband who wants to see his wife slip away quietly in Switzerland?

I mentioned last week the way that this runs through the generations, and I came across a piece from McKinsey & Company on Gen Z. And, you know, here you’ve got it: “Young people today have come of age in the shadow of climate doom, pandemic lockdowns, … fears of economic collapse. … They’re [the] ‘digital natives.’” This particular generation has “the least positive outlook … the highest prevalence of mental illness of any generation.” Their “pessimism is fueled by growing global unrest.”[25] Is there a God who is in control of the universe? Is there a God who created the heavens and the earth, and he said, “Seed time and harvest will remain; they won’t pass away”?[26] Is there that God? No, there is no God, apparently. So, “global unrest, wars and disruptions, financial crises, … educational interruptions due to the [COVID]. Feelings of ‘climate anxiety’ are also widely reported: many Gen Z people report that they think about the fate of the planet on a daily basis.”[27]

Why? Why? Because they have been told, “There is no one in charge. You’re living in a random universe.” What do they need? They need Jesus. They need Jesus to say, “Come. You don’t need to be burdened down by this. These are not irrelevant conversations. But you don’t need to walk around carrying this great burden on your back. Come to me! Learn of me! You’re weary? You’re burdened by this? Come, and take my yoke. Take my yoke.”

We need to end: from the negative side to the positive side. When we come to the question of freedom in the Bible, it’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Instead of viewing freedom as the absence of restraint, we can understand it in terms of Jesus’ words: “Take my yoke upon you.” In Jesus, I’ve no right to behave any way I want. I’ve no right to believe anything I want. And instead of viewing freedom as freedom from responsibility to God and to others to live for myself, the Bible says that true freedom is freedom from myself to live for God and for the benefit of others. Instead of freedom belonging to the absence of restrictions, we recognize that true freedom is found in the restrictions. What is a game of golf without the white and the red stakes, without the diameter of the hole, without par? There is no game. What is the point of going out here for Ambassadors and having no goalposts, no sidelines, just “Go ahead and have a terrific time”?

Why do you think that marriage has disintegrated to where it is? For the very same reasons. I can’t love Sue without understanding the restrictions that it places upon me and the restrictions that it places upon her—the freedom that comes as a result of understanding. “Well,” someone says, “well, who decides on the restrictions?” The same one who gave the invitation is the one who presents the obligation.

The Bible says that true freedom is freedom from myself to live for God and for the benefit of others.

A friend gave me a biography of one of the players, one of my favorite footballers in the world, who plays for Real Madrid, but he’s Croatian. And I’ve been reading it this week and thoroughly enjoying it. But here’s this idea of restriction. He’s talking about what has been involved in his life in preparing himself for what turns out to be an amazing career. He says there are sacrifices

you have to make compared to your peers, such as going to bed early while others go out and have fun with their friends, or the constant training and obligation not to lose your focus. … You need to make progress, and this will most certainly not happen if your mind is elsewhere and if you keep thinking about what your friends are doing, where they are, whether they[’re] having fun, and where the girl you[’re] attracted to is.[28]

He restricts himself in order that he might enjoy the freedom. If he wants to go and hang around with his friends, he’s chosen that over the other.

Jesus gave up his freedom not because he needed it but in order to set us free—to set us free from the great enslavement, that we might be free from the just judgment of God for our sins. Because we will face God. How can you be free from that? You understand why people say, “Well, of course, there is no God.” It’s much better to believe there is no God than to figure out that you’ve got a God that you’re going to face.

Free from guilt. Free from a guilty conscience. Free from meaninglessness. Free from the prison of self-centeredness. Freed from the shifting sands of subjectivity and being contemporary. Because biblical freedom, under the yoke of Jesus, is paradoxical. To be myself, I have to deny myself. To be free, I have to give up my freedom. To live, I have to die to myself. To find myself, I have to lose myself.

George Matheson, who was a Presbyterian minister and also blind, wrote a number of hymns. One was “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” and another one he wrote that we’re not going to sing, but I have it on the screen, and I’d like us to say it. I think we might remember it better if we just say it. And so, while you’re seated there, here is the paradox wonderfully done. We’ll say it together:

Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within thine arms,
And strong shall be my hand.

My heart is weak and poor
Until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure;
It varies with the wind.
It cannot freely move
Till thou hast wrought its chain;
Enslave it with thy matchless love,
And deathless it shall reign.

My will is not my own
Till thou hast made it thine;
If it would reach a monarch’s throne,
It must its crown resign.
It only stands unbent
Amid the clashing strife
Till on thy bosom it has leant
And found in thee its life.

Well, let’s end where we began. We will sing a hymn. But let me go back to the prayer that we prefaced this study with:

O Almighty God, who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men and women, grant to your people that they may love what you command and desire what you promise, that so, among the many changes of the world, our hearts may be surely fixed where true joys are to be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (1958), chap. 6.

[2] Philippians 3:20 (ESV).

[3] John Ernest Bode, “O Jesus, I Have Promised” (1869).

[4] 1 Timothy 6:1 (ESV).

[5] 2 Corinthains 6:14 (ESV).

[6] Matthew 5:21–22 (ESV).

[7] Matthew 5:17 (ESV).

[8] Matthew 5:27–28 (ESV).

[9] John 14:21 (ESV).

[10] John 8:31–32 (ESV).

[11] The Westminster Confession of Faith 19.7.

[12] Psalm 119:44–45 (NIV).

[13] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:360.

[14] John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Paraphrased.

[15] Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1999), 408. The quoted words are Colson and Pearcey’s summary of Leff’s speech.

[16] Romans 1:22 (Phillips).

[17] See Romans 1:20.

[18] 2 Peter 2:19 (paraphrased).

[19] 2 Peter 2:19 (ESV).

[20] Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody” (1979).

[21] Deuteronomy 6:4–7 (ESV).

[22] Roger Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, “Let It Go” (2013).

[23] Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Paraphrased.

[24] Keith Getty and Kristyn Getty, “There Is a Higher Throne” (2006).

[25] McKinsey & Company, “What Is Gen Z?,” March 20, 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-gen-z.

[26] Genesis 8:22 (paraphrased).

[27] McKinsey & Company, “What Is Gen Z?”

[28] Luka Modrić, My Autobiography, with Robert Matteoni, trans. Tomislov Kuzmanović (London: Bloomsbury Sport, 2020), 27.