Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Called to Be World Changers, by Pastor Ed Evans
28:16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.
28:17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted.
28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
28:20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Today is Trinity Sunday, so it is fitting that we begin at the new beginning for Christ’s disciples, following his death, burial and resurrection, where they received Christ’s instructions that involved the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have come a very long way in the thousands of years since those fearful, frightening and yet exciting days. And yet, in some ways, not very far at all. Our feet are still stuck in the muddy sinfulness prevalent at the time of that new beginning for human beings.
There are two verses I would like to key on. Verse 17 and the last half of verse 20. Let’s begin with the last one first.
Verse 20 reads: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
So I must ask, if that’s true, that Jesus Christ is always with us even to the end of time yet to come, how is it that we are so mired in the sinful catastrophe that we now see taking place in this nation? What has happened? How did we get here?
On May 23-24 Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., began teaching children in grades kindergarten through fifth grade that there are more than two genders. The two day classes were entitled “Gender Spectrum Diversity Training.” In documents released by the school, students were taught “gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one’s physical anatomy.” Further, gender is a “complex interrelationship between [physical traits] and one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to that perception.” Another document from the school advises parents: “When you discuss gender with your child, you may hear them exploring where they fit on the gender spectrum and why.” Of course, I don’t know too many kindergarteners through fifth graders who would understand what they are talking about. But that’s part of the problem, that age group is far too young to be exposing them to sexual issues they are not prepared to comprehend and deal with.
Seeing this story someone asked me, rhetorically, what that third gender might have been in the Garden of Eden? My answer was “snake.” For this kind of cultural misinformation to kindergartners comes from the same place Adam and Eve heard that God didn’t really mean what He said about what happens if you disobey Him. A lying snake told them that. God did mean it, and He still means it.
By now nearly everyone has heard of how a Congressional Representative from the state of New York resigned his seat after being caught sending electronic pornography of himself to several women, including a female teenager, only weeks after being newly married. One disturbing aspect is that the majority of his constituents in New York City urged him not to resign, and he did so only after being urged to by senior members of his own political party in Congress.
Also in California, in Ventura County’s city of Thousand Oaks, a woman attempting to make arrangements with Macy’s Department Store not to work on Sunday so she could go to church, was fired.
In Sacramento, Calif., a group of atheists and anti-religionists filed suit in the Ninth Circuit Court challenging the constitutionality of centuries-old tax exemptions for parsonages and other ministerial housing.
And in southern California atheists sued to have an ancient cross removed from a federal cemetery of military veterans. When the federal court ruled against them, the cross disappeared overnight and has not been found.
Our government is allowing Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru to file a federal class action suit against the state of Georgia because they passed a state law to curb illegal immigration stating the federal government has failed to secure the nation’s borders. Illegal immigrants, say supporters of Georgia’s new law, are burdening the state’s taxpayer-funded resources, including public schools, jails and hospitals.
A Congressional Representative from Texas announced that there needs to be an investigation regarding “Christian militants” who might destroy America.
Our federal government sent thousands of guns across the Mexican border in some sort of misguided and botched investigation of foreign drug cartels. Several of these guns were later used to kill American border guards.
Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, mud slides, fires kill thousands across America.
Lack of jobs, unemployment, and high medical, food and fuel costs are causing thousands of Americans to lose their homes.
Naturalistic materialism rules academia today, and the grace of God lies lightly on the church in America.
Depraved individuals dance lewdly through the streets, celebrating their sinfulness, while churches who claim Christ appoint them to positions of authority within the church.
What is happening to our nation? Where have ethics, morality and integrity gone? What has happened to our commitment to the Christ? To the inspired word of God?
Has Joshua 24:15 been forgotten? “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The ancient Israelites knew, and we should be wise enough to know today, that serving anyone except the Lord God carries with it a price no one really wants to pay.
Still God is snubbed, forgotten, and mocked across the land. Pastors of liberal churches advise their congregants that the Muslim name “Allah” is merely another name for God, even as Islam refuses to recognize the deity of the Son of God, calls the Bible a perversion of God’s word, and denigrates the female half of the human race.
I turn now to that other verse I said was key in today’s scripture, verse 17, which says of the disciples, after they had arrive at Galilee as Jesus had instructed them, “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted.”
Think about that for a moment, they saw Him, and yet some doubted. What did they need to convince them of the reality of the risen Christ? Did they, like Thomas, need to put their fingers into the holes in His crucified hands? Did they need to put their hands into the sword wound in His side? How could they see Him, and not know?
There is an old, old gospel song that says when I see my Savior I will know Him by the holes in His hands. And yet, having had His love come so near to me all these years, having had Him open doors for me, protect me in truly deadly and frightening situations on the field of battle, having experienced His healing of diagnosed glaucoma, having known His nearness in moments of prayer and praise, how should I see Him and not know my Savior? Nail holes in His hands, the sword wound in His side, if I see none of it, I am confident I shall know my Savior’s presence should He come within 100 yards of me. I will know Him by the love that comes so near. How could they not?
And yet, there we have our answer to the question, how did we get here. What has happened to us?
He urges us to pray and not faint, to be led of the Holy Spirit, to love God. And as we realize the impact of the Holy Spirit in our lives, He tells us in Galatians 5:22-23 that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
With the fruit of the Spirit working in us, how could any of the incidents I have listed above, how could any of that transpire in the presence of the Holy Spirit? It could not. We would not do it. We would not allow it under His guidance.
Dr. Os Guiness, Christian critic, international speaker and author, spoke recently at Lausanne III in Cape Town about the condition of the church and the Christian in today’s world. He said, in part, “There is a social tension required by the Way of Jesus, as his followers are called to be ‘in’ the world but not ‘of’ the world (social dualism) or ‘not conformed’ but ‘transformed.’ When Christians truly live like that, rather than going to one extreme or another, it gives the church an unmatched leverage in culture – not just ‘faithful presence’ but ‘transforming engagement.’ Culture, after all, is simply ‘a way of life lived in common,’ so when Jesus called His followers to ‘live His way,’ it was natural that Christians together created a decisively Christian culture as the by-product of their faithfulness to the way of Jesus.
“Our central problem,” he said, “does not come from secularists, post-modernists, Islamists, gay activists, or any other purported threat from the fear-mongering machines. It comes from our own evangelical worldliness and our signal failure to live the way of Jesus.”
When asked how Christians were failing to live the way of Christ, Dr. Os answered, “Sadly, when we look at many movements within evangelicalism today, the world and the spirit of the age are dominant. I feel this very deeply as one trained in the social sciences. When I wrote ‘The Gravedigger File’ nearly 30 years ago, very few evangelicals knew much about sociology. It was considered a ‘dangerous’ field, along with psychology. Now it is cited almost universally, especially in the constant quoting of the latest statistics. I have heard megachurch sermons in which ‘Gallup or Barna says’ far out-stripped ‘God or the Bible says.’ But whereas sociology was once unused, it is now used uncritically. One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing ‘the world’ of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world. I have revised and updated my book under a new title ‘The Last Christian on Earth,’ but understanding the world through cultural criticism is unfashionable. Rather than use sociology that way, most pastors use it in a way that leads to adapting to the world, and they are encouraged to do so by half-baked versions of ‘seeker-sensitive’ mission, and so on.
“So we have to ask a question of the church at any moment: Is the Word decisive in the church, or is the world? Is the Spirit of God decisive, or the spirit of the hour?”
Today many are pessimistic about the ability of the Christian church to have a positive, changing impact on the world around us. But Dr. Os Guinness believes the Christian faith has changed the world in the past and can change it again, but only through a new Christian renaissance.
“What we need today is a new renaissance,” Guinness explains, “a fresh flowering of our faithfulness to Jesus, issuing in a fresh flowering of our enterprises in culture that are inspired by faith in Jesus.
“After a century in which evangelicals have swung between the extremes of an overly privatized faith and an overly politicized faith, this would be a better way forward, a way that is both faithful and influential at once.
Guinness advises, “The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes. As G. K. Chesterton once remarked, five times the church has “gone to the dogs,” but each time “it was the dog that died.”
Reformation, renaissance, revival, call it what you will, but Guinness’ belief is in keeping with the word of God that He has given us. In 2nd Corinthians 6:17, God tells us “Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate,’ says the Lord.” The life lived in Christ is the life others outside of Christ seek, and it will be used of the Holy Spirit to draw others to Christ.
The church – and we are the church, the body of Christ spoken of in 1st Corinthians and Ephesians -- has a mission yet to be completed, as set forth in the fourth and fifth verses of today’s scripture, Matthew 28:19-20a, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
How did we get into this ethical and moral hole in which we find society today? Where the well of the future is being poisoned and evil runs about rampant and unchecked? By ignoring God.
How do we get out of it? By obeying God, allowing Jesus to work through us through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We often say that we love God, but John 15:10-15 says that to love God is to obey Him.
God has made it simple for us. Just obey Him, and change the world. Amen.
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