God's Purpose (12/12/02-12/14/02)
For the Cross (12/12/02)
God died on the cross to unite us as one people. This should give us an idea as to how important this is to Him! He who had divided the nations at Babel now moved to reunite His creation. First and foremost, this clearly applies to the divide between Jew and Gentile. In Paul's writings it is made clear that this divide is to be ended. God had called Israel to be a people set apart, a unique people, standing out as something different. He gave to them the task of being caretakers of God's own revelation to man. But the caretakers became jealous, and horded His revelation. Meanwhile, they pursued every habit of every man around them, all the while proclaiming their uniqueness. The light was succumbing to darkness.
When the true Light came into the world, He came to His own chosen people, but these people rejected Him. He was not the king they were expecting, yet He insisted that He was the king they would have. They rejected Him. They conspired with their overlords to have Him killed. Sadly, this was probably the height of unified action between Jew and Gentile. Both were equally involved in killing the Son of God. But why? Why did God choose this road? He chose it in part because His people were failing to stand out, were failing to attract the Gentiles around them to faith in the true God. He required another way. But this way required the rejection of the caretakers, that He might seek out fresh fields. Until the contract was broken, He would hold to the contract. In that act of crucifixion, the contract was voided, and God was free to leave.
So He comes to the Gentiles, and He comes with the same purpose. Just as the Jews were to have made us jealous to the point of desiring God, now it is our task, our duty, to make the Jews jealous enough to return to God in full. It cannot be denied that there remains many a devout Jew today. Nor can it be denied that the God they serve is our God and Father. Yet, they have fallen short of the glory of God. They continue to reject the very Messiah for which they wait. They know not the fullness of the Holy Spirit, but that can be said of much of the church as well. A great part of the Gentile mission, according to scripture, is to restore His people to Him. That's part of our job!
Yet, the call to be one people, at this stage in the life of the church, goes beyond the Jew / Gentile divide. We have created any number of divisions. We have created race divides, age divides, music divides, and denominational divides. We have divided His body into so many pieces it has become almost impossible to discern Him in any part. God died to unite us as one people! What are we doing breaking that whole back up? How can we call ourselves the people of God and yet reject His other children simply because they either don't look like us? How can we reject them because they worship funny? Or because they're too stodgy?
How can we allow hair-splitting differences in understanding to come between us as brothers? How can we allow even large differences to do so? Yes, there are fundamental matters of belief. Yes, there are things that masquerade as Christianity but are nothing but false religions. Yes! But amongst the majority of denominations, or non-denominations for that matter, the differences in belief are not of a nature that threatens salvation. Baptist or Methodist, Protestant or Catholic, correct or mistaken, it is the same God we seek to serve. Sure, we can disagree. Sure, we can call each other to task when one of us has wandered from truth, and God help us if we refuse to hear simply because we don't like the source of that correcting voice! But even in the face of disagreement, we must stand as a united people of God.
We must learn to place the battle lines where they matter, at the divide between true Church, and false god. Behind those lines, further fighting can only be self-destructive. God died to unite us. Can we not follow His desire and stand united? So long as we bicker amongst ourselves, we will have little to no positive impact for the kingdom of God.
The people of Israel were to be unique. The Church which God has adopted is given the same call. We are to stand out, to be unique, to be in the world yet clearly not of it. We are to be aliens and strangers in the land, just as Israel before us. The cross is our passport, the mark of our true nationality. Unity with our fellow natives of the holy kingdom is supposed to be a national trait for us. Love for each other, love in spite of differences, love where love is most improbable, this is the visible mark of a native of the kingdom of God. This is the habit that will declare us unique before men. Jesus Himself has told us this. Love one another that the world might know. Such a love is totally other, unheard of in the world, it defies expectations.
Considering, then, some of the examples the world has shown, the heights to which worldly man has occasionally been able to rise in this matter of love, we have a high standard indeed. For our love for each other to stand out, it will have to surpass what the world has seen amongst its own. It will have to surpass that example both in magnitude and in duration. Faith, hope, and love abide. These are the kingdom traits. Faith in a God who is faithful; without this we cannot please God. Hope and a future, a hope that is sure because He who has given us the promise is Righteous and True; this remains our strength in trying times. Love: love for God, love for our fellow believers, love for the lost; this is to be our motivation, our focus, our distinctive nature. And the greatest of these is love! Why? Because it is love that will serve to increase the kingdom. Love is the currency with which we buy the redemption of those still in captivity. Faith and hope are ours, and serve our need. Love alone is ours, yet serves those around us. And that love cannot operate fully where unity is being destroyed.
One people, one Spirit, one purpose, one God. A holy catholic church, united in single-minded pursuit of kingdom purposes. That is our calling. Will we take the call?
For the Church (12/13/02)
The call Jesus issued was hardly a 'seeker friendly' call. His call consisted of things like, "Leave everything and everybody you have, and come." His call warned, "I have no place to call my own; no bed, no house, nothing. Join me." His call said, "Take up your cross. Walk to your execution with me. Join me in dying, in being ridiculed, in being humiliated." Where we got the idea that the church is supposed to make the sinner feel good about himself, I have no idea.
A look back at the real revivals of the past will reveal men under great conviction, people with a greatly heightened sense of their own sin and their own eternal peril. This was not the sinner feeling good, this was the sinner feeling the weight of his sin, perhaps for the first time. This is the sinner sharing in some small portion of the agony Jesus knew on the cross. There, He was experiencing for the first time the weight of sin, not His own, but the sins of every man that ever was, is, or will be. It all came crashing down on Him at once. When the church is doing its true work in a true fashion, sinners feel a small part of that. They feel the full weight of their sin crashing in on them all at once. Finally, something breaks through their defenses. Finally, the scales are removed from their eyes, and they can see the cliff edge they've been walking along.
Only then will a man truly seek out his Redeemer. Only then, will he cry out in earnest for the help he now knows he needs. And, in that extreme, the call of Jesus, as discouraging as it is to ears of flesh, sounds very good indeed. He shows us that pearl of greatest price, a way through our judgment, back into life - and that a life more real and lasting than we have known to date! With that before us, will we not leave behind everything we used to think we owned? Knowing it was all His to begin with, can we not now allow it all to be used as His purpose requires? Seeing a life of true freedom placed before us, and knowing an eternal home awaits in heaven, is it such a bad thing not to have a home in this alien land in which we sojourn? Knowing that we will be brought into the very glory of the Son, can we not accept what humiliation and derision the world may throw at us? Knowing that He who gives us life eternal has called us to our course, can we not face the small and fleeting troubles presented to us in earthly death?
Take up your cross. The cry of the church must return to this. We must return to faithfully relaying the word of our Master. We must warn the sinner of his peril, rather than tell him it's all right if he keeps going, so long as he stops by to visit once a week. God's not looking to put sinners on parole. He's looking to justify them in the courts of heaven, so that they can truly be free. He's looking to save men from their sins, and we've been satisfied to simply keep them company, or worse yet, to build our savings upon their sins. Count the cost, He warned. It's not an easy road to follow Christ. Count the cost, and then, take upon yourself the conviction, the boldness, to face every single trial that may come of your decision. Be prepared, and know that Jesus will never leave you nor forsake you on the road you have chosen to travel towards home. Never. "Though He slay me, yet I will hope in Him." Whatever may come, I know my future is in His hands, and in that I can rest.
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. In the valley of death, no turning back. When the world is laid out before me, no turning back. When the world reviles me, no turning back. When death stands between me and home, no turning back. The one correction I would make is that the cross is not before me, it is upon my back. If there is a cross before me, it is but the shadow of the cross I bear with Him, marking the next crossroads I must pass through, pointing ever towards my heavenly home.
For Man Towards Man (12/14/02)
By our actions, we will have a direct impact on how people view the Church, and God. What are our actions telling those around us? If we are not as serious about our faith in the workplace, on the streets, in the malls, as we are in the church, we probably won't tell them anything good. We may leave them with the understanding that the church is an extensive social club. We may leave the impression that it's more like group therapy. Perhaps it will come across as no more than a form of entertainment.
God forbid! Yet, I know many have these very concepts, and some of them are in the churches precisely because they have this impression. I know my own example has not always been what it should be. It's all too easy to speak of worship as if it were no different than any concert you might choose to go to. It's all too easy to discuss the temporal challenges of church order and completely leave out the important spiritual issues. We've been trained by our world to keep our faith private. But, Jesus has told us to be light in the darkness. Who will we listen to? Whom do we truly serve?
We are called to work while it is still day, to bring in the harvest while there is yet time. And yet, there's that passage in John's gospel, telling us that it had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come (John 6:17). Where were the workers? In the world around us, there are any number of people for whom it has already become dark, and Jesus has not yet come to them. Why? Do they for some reason not deserve His presence among them? Who does! No, the problem is not so much with them as with us. The harvest has been left rotting in the fields, and we who should have been busy in the harvest have been hanging out at the barn drinking coffee and playing checkers.
When we have truly aligned ourselves with the purposes of God, it's going to hurt to look upon that rotting harvest. It's going to hurt to recognize the death and suffering that's going on in that field, and it's going to hurt to realize that we who should have been carrying life into that field are instead the reason for its bedraggled state. When we have truly made His purposes our own, the cheerful faces that those around us put on will not fool us any longer, the masks will hide nothing, as the God of all compassion allows us to see behind the masks, to see the hurt within, that we may bring healing. As His compassion fills us, it's going to hurt us to see the rebelliousness that has destroyed those around us, a rebelliousness so ingrown that it's not even a conscious effort any more.
It's already dark out there, but behind their masks, they don't notice the darkness. There's been no light to compare that darkness to. It's just always been that way. Jesus has called us to be the light in their darkness, He's calling us to take off the masks that hide their pain, so that their pain can be healed in His marvelous light. He has called us out of that very darkness! We know what it's like. How can we stand to think of others left in that mess? How can we not follow His prompting and tear away the masks that keep them in it? For the wound to heal, it must be exposed to the light. Otherwise, it will simply fester until death has had its due.
Jesus commands that we love one another. This is the badge that declares us His own. Much like the God we worship, it is no matter of graven images, no matter of any visible marking. He will not suffer Himself to be represented by images, because those images will inevitably become more important to His people than He is. He will not suffer His people to be represented by images either. Only the reality will be acceptable. Jewelry and bumper stickers are not the marks of a true believer, although the true believer may very well display such things. No, the true mark of the true believer is love; love not just for the members of his own local church, not even reserved solely for the membership of the Church at large, but love like God's love - extended without prejudice to one and all, deserving and undeserving, desiring and undesiring.
How can we claim such a love, and yet suffer those around us to remain in their sins? How can we claim such a love, and yet leave the poor and dying around us unchanged, unaided? How?
It's already dark out there, and still Jesus has not come to them, because none were found willing to bring word of Him. Do you care? Do you care enough to change? Are you willing to do what you signed up for? Are you moved enough by this to begin fulfilling your vows to a holy God? How many times have you said "Thy will be done?" How many times have those words become hollow, as we refuse to do what we told Him we would do? Lord, have mercy.
Father, I know these questions are every bit as much for me as for any other. I have been most unwilling to testify of Your goodness to those that most need to know it. I have been satisfied to serve within Your courts, within Your house, to keep things private as the prince of this dark world would have me to do. Forgive me. Change me. Do I care enough to change? Sadly, I fear the answer. How I cry out to You for change, yet where is my own effort, Lord? How hollow is that cry? God, I know I'm guilty of wanting to see Your will done, but preferably by others, more equipped to handle the things that come with such a job. Like Moses, I'm guilty of saying, "Great plan, but don't send me." Bring me to the place of Samuel, of Isaiah! Bring me to the place of, "Here I am, Lord! Send me!" Bring me to the place of Mary, saying, "Let be unto me as You have said." Bring me to the place of full obedience, Father, that You may have the benefit of Your labor in my life.
