We’re human beings. We’re living on this planet, in a city or town, in a neighborhood. We have jobs, many of us, where we engage daily with corporate politics, personalities, infrastructure. We have hobbies and groups and clubs. We are involved.
Sometimes we get so busy and so involved, we become unwisely invested in the systems around us. It’s good to be involved, but not to the point that we become so embedded that we forget about the kingdom.
We are on this earth to advance the kingdom. We are supposed to be ambassadors for Christ. We’re supposed to reflect His likeness through our holy living, our kindness, our faith, our witness.
If we become SO involved in world systems we incorrectly focus on that and shunt to the side our real job, which is involvement in church and in spiritual practices.
Here is what my pastor had to say about the advancement of the kingdom in a recent sermon:
Well finally, it should go without saying but it needs saying. That the Kingdom of God advances only by His Gospel. The Kingdom of God advances only by the Gospel. That truth should be so obvious, but it is so frequently cast aside. The Kingdom of God is not advanced by any other means.
It does not advance by political power. Or by turning nations into theocracies. Or by winning elections. It does not advance by military might. Or coercion. Or a legal mandate. It does not advance by entertainment. Or by acquiescing biblical truth in order to find common ground with sinners. He does not advance by having more children, or by educational practices, or by withdrawing from society.
When Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world, He meant just that. We cannot and must not use the world’s means to advance His kingdom. Many false teachers have come who exploit believers and pervert the mission of the church for selfish gain. Throughout the history of Christianity, wherever and whenever people have hijacked the church in order to advance their conception of the Kingdom of God by means of the world’s methods, it has not only failed, but it has soiled the name of Christ, produced an abundance of false converts, and wrecked the [local] church.
Where is the Christian nation today? Where are its holy leaders and humble people? It’s nowhere to be found because the kingdom of God will not be established as a government on this earth until the King returns. Jesus is the King, not us. It’s His kingdom, not ours. Therefore God’s people must use only God’s methods to spread God’s message in order to advance God’s kingdom while we wait for our King. And so let’s wait for our King. –end
When 12 year old Jesus stayed behind at the temple and his parents could not find Him, His reply to his mother as to why He had treated His parents that way, was,
And He said to them, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). NASB
Or as the NKJV says more familiarly, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?“
We must prioritize our charge on earth that we have been given. Not that we neglect the daily things we must do. I mean, dishes must be done, salaries must be earned, children must be tended to… but the priority of our lives is Jesus, and being about our Father’s business. We advance the kingdom in only that way.
Allen S. Nelson IV @cuatronelson said on Twitter/X,
It doesn’t matter what you accomplish in this life, how big an empire you build, how many great things people say about you — if God doesn’t know you, it’s a life wasted.
Conversely, it doesn’t matter how little you have, how unpopular you may be, how insignificantly the world thinks of you — if God knows you, it is a life well lived.
That got me thinking again about what an upside down lifestyle Christianity is. It’s the opposite of what the world teaches us. It’s the opposite of what our flesh tell us. It’s the opposite of that you would expect.
The path to eternal life is narrow, as opposed to the broad path to destruction. The first shall be last. The last shall be first. Humble yourself and you will be exalted, but exalt yourself and you will be humbled. Love your enemy, do not hate your enemy.
God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. When man makes a religion, as all others are (Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Islam, Wicca etc) we see that it focuses on man. They are religions that show our works, our strength, our thoughts. Who could think up such a plan as the Gospel? That our Very God would incarnate into human flesh? Teach, preach, live sinlessly, and die? The Gospel itself is upside down, unexpected, wholly outside of man’s imagination!
Yet, it is true.
And aren’t we glad that God is not a God we can ‘figure out’? He is transcendent. That means He is outside of us, outside of the creation. Wholly other.
Psalm 40:5 says, Many, LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is no one to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count.
I was finishing my book by Scottish Puritan, James Durham, The Scandal of False Teaching. I love the minds of the Puritans, deep thinkers, and as a result, it was an excellent book.
Anyway, in the book the author related a story from old church history. There was a man named Tyrannius Rufinus, born around 345AD in Italy. He died around 410/411. He was a Roman priest, writer, theologian, and translator of Greek theological works into Latin at a time when knowledge of Greek was declining in the West, says Encyclopedia Britannica. Rufinus is known for translating Eusebius’ works from Greek to Latin. When Rufinus completed the translation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, Rufinus went on and added two more chapters of church history where Eusebius left off. Those were books 10 and 11.
In book 10, chapter 3, Rufinus related a story about the doings during the Council of Nicea and a certain event that happened there.
Durham said that back in the days of the Council of Nicea, there were debates and talks. There came a climax of a showdown between a simple man and a skilled philosopher. Note: a dialectician is a person skilled in philosophical debate.
By Bloemaert, Frederick, From: 1614-1669
The story goes like this, from Rufinus:
Now we may learn how much power there is in simplicity of faith from what is reported to have happened there. For when the zeal of the religious emperor had brought together priests of God from all over the earth, rumor of the event gathered as well philosophers and dialecticians of great renown and fame.
One of them who was celebrated for his ability in dialectic used to hold ardent debates each day with our bishops, men likewise by no means unskilled in the art of disputation, and there resulted a magnificent display for the learned and educated men who gathered to listen.
Nor could the philosopher be cornered or trapped in any way by anyone, for he met the questions proposed with such rhetorical skill that whenever he seemed most firmly trapped, he escaped like a slippery snake.
Icon depicting Constantine the Great, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea 325
But that God might show that the kingdom of God is based upon power rather than speech, one of the confessors, a man of the simplest character who knew only Christ Jesus and him crucified, was present with the other bishops in attendance.
When he saw the philosopher insulting our people and proudly displaying his skill in dialectic, he asked everyone for a chance to exchange a few words with the philosopher. But our people, who knew only the man’s simplicity and lack of skill in speech, feared that they might be put to shame in case his holy simplicity became a source of laughter to the clever.
But the elder insisted and he began his discourse in this way: “In the name of Jesus Christ, O philosopher,” he said, “listen to the truth. There is one God who made heaven and earth, who gave breath to man whom he had formed from the mud of the earth and who created everything what is seen and what is not seen with the power of his word and established it with the sanctification of his spirit.
This word and wisdom whom we call Son took pity on the errors of humankind was born of a virgin, by suffering death freed us from everlasting death and by his resurrection conferred on us eternal life. Him we await as the judge to come of all that we do. Do you believe that this is so, O philosopher?”
But he as though he had nothing whatever that he could say in opposition to this so astonished was he at the power of what had been said could only reply to it all that he thought that it was so, and that what had been said was the only truth.
Then the elder said, “If you believe that this is so, arise, follow me to the church and receive the seal of this faith.”
The philosopher turning to his disciples and to those who had gathered to listen said “Listen, O learned men: so long as it was words with which I had to deal, I set words against words and what was said I refuted with my rhetoric. But when power rather than words came out of the mouth of the speaker, words could not withstand power nor could man oppose God. And therefore if any one of you was able to feel in what was said what I felt, let him believe in Christ and follow this old man in whom God has spoken.” And thus the philosopher became a Christian and rejoiced at last to have been vanquished.
Source Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, Book 10, ch 3; Excerpt on the First Council of Nicaea, published in year 402-403.
Now, the First Council at Nicea ended in the year 325 and the translation and addendum by Rufinus was published in 402. As with any history that’s separated by such a gap of years, the Bible being the exception, there may be embellishments or errors. Maybe it happened that way, and maybe it didn’t. It doesn’t matter.
Yet it is true, “but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,” says 1 Corinthians 1:27. The power is not in our delivery, the power is in the word of God energized by the Spirit.
Don’t be hesitant to share God’s truth, no matter how faltering or stuttering you believe you are, (Moses, anyone?) God will use you in some capacity or another.
Paul said, “and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power“, 1 Corinthians 2:4
It seems that every day we awaken to a new tragedy. Maui fires, extreme heat, store shooting, hurricane…
How can this happen, people wonder. Why does this keep happening, people wonder. It happens because of sin. Man is born a sinner, and it is only God’s common grace that retrains every man from murdering every day. However, God’s restraining grace is lifted as He abandons a nation.
So, man turns to false religion to help him restrain the evil in him. But this does not work, either. The harder man tries, the more he fails.
“False religion cannot restrain sin in the heart, although it can mask it with self-righteousness.” Principles of God’s Judgment
When an individual or a nation resists the Law, the conscience, and common grace in creation long enough, God gives them over to the lusts of their heart.
“God will abandon sinners to their own choices and the consequences of those choices. And just what is this abandoning act on God’s part, it is the removal of restraining grace. It is when God lets go and turns a society over to its own sinful freedoms and the results of those freedoms. No Scripture more directly confronts this abandonment and its consequences than Romans 1 does.” When God Abandons a Nation
Three times you have the statement, “God gave them over.” This term paradidomiin the Greek can have a judicial sense. It can be used of a judgment made on a criminal who was then handed over for punishment. Each of these phrases expresses the fact that the wrath of God has acted judicially to sentence sinners. It is God officially giving them over. It is God letting them go to the uninterrupted cause and effect their sinful choices produce. When this judgment falls, there is a depriving of restraining grace and sin runs rampant through a society. When God Abandons a Nation
And false religion includes the atheist and agnostic, the ‘no-choice’ person, because those are just religion of self. This is why we need Jesus, all people do. The sin of man is inherent in his heart and only Him from above who is without stain can resolve our sin problem. All men need the Gospel.
The Gospel is not “having purpose in your life”. It is not “accepting Jesus” or praying a prayer. The Gospel which everyone needs is good news, as Ligonier explains:
“The gospel is called the ‘good news’ because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I’m not. And at the end of my life, I’m going to stand before a just and holy God, and I’ll be judged. And I’ll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness–or lack of it–or the righteousness of another. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn’t possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God.”
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
The sad truth is that man is not good. This is not an anomaly. The man who shot the elementary students at Sandy Hook, the man who shot the movie-goers in the theater in Colorado, the who shot the homosexual club-goers in Orlando … at Dollar General… this IS man.
It’s ‘pride in one’s homosexual sin’ month. Mother gets a day but sodomy gets a month. Hm. That’s normal in a world where evil is called good and good is called evil, light is dark and dark is light, bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter, says Isaiah 5:20.
Sometimes when mentioning that homosexuality is a sin that needs repenting for, else the person practicing it will not inherit heaven, (1 Corinthians 6:9), the person defending it as natural appeals to nature. They say, ‘What about the gay penguins? Hmm? Hmmm?’
There are only two problems with appealing to nature when defending homosexuality: they suppress the truth that God trumps nature, and most importantly, nature (or the natural world) is fallen. It is under the curse of the fallen nature of things, the same as the rest of us. Any aberrant behavior AKA sin, is due to that fall.
In fact, the creation groans for release from its curse:
For the anxious longing of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. (Romans 8:19-22).
You weren’t born gay. Homosexuality is not a natural state. Jesus can release you from this sin.
Appealing to nature as a defense of unnatural behavior fails, because the natural world is unnatural at this point. To be sure, seasons progress along their given lines, leaves change, tides sweep in and out, people are eating and drinking and marrying and living lives. A vast majority of the world looks normal. And it did before the Flood, too (Matthew 24:38). But we stagger under the fall of Man, knowing the very ground is cursed and everything that springs from it has the potential to be abnormal. Everything and everyone.
Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5).
All creation groans. All is under pain and disorder. All things share that curse in common misery. And what comes from disorder is more disorder, such as homosexuality.
The wages of all sin is death. This includes homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, other sexual immorality like fornication outside of marriage, lust, pornography, and adultery. Homosexuals who practice their sin will not go to heaven when they die, but are headed for hell to endure eternal punishment for their sin. Just like the rest of the unrepentant sinners.
But if you want to escape this reality, this sure ending, then you have the hope of the Gospel. Repent (turn away; repudiate) your sin of homosexuality and appeal to the Lord & Savior who died on the tree for this sin, enduring God’s wrath for it, so you will not endure the wrath for it. You will be washed clean, given pure robes to wear in this earthly life, and you will go to meet your Savior in blissful heaven when you die. But you must repent of it first.
If you do not want to repent of your homosexuality, you have the Law facing you. God will be your Judge. He will open the books, examine your life, bang that gavel, declare you unfit for heaven and sentence you to hell, according to His law. The wages of sin is death, this means death in hell. The punishment is eternal because you will have sinned against an infinite God.
Homosexuality in penguins is aberrant, and it’s definitely aberrant in humans. Repent, a Savior is waiting to take you out of that hellish life of diminishing returns and expand it in joy and freedom from that sin.
I wrote a few days ago in my essay The Forgotten God: His Wrath, that preaching and teaching on God’s wrath is an essential part of the Gospel. Yet in our day there has been such a dampening of this important attribute of God that we have marginalized it in Gospel proclamations.
I’d said I love God’s wrath because it is one of His attributes and I love everything about God. It is also part of His justice and how He will right all the wrongs in the world. I do mourn those who live under God’s wrath (Romans 1:18) and those who have already passed and will eternally be enduring God’s wrath (John 3:36). But God IS angry with sin. He WILL punish sinners.
Then after I posted my The Forgotten God essay I came across this tweet thread by D. Michael Clary. It touched me greatly. His humility, clarity, and emphasis on the wrath prompted me to ask if I may repost his thread. He said yes.
Please take a quick read of his confession. Wherever and whenever I can promote the balanced Gospel, one that includes all the elements such as law, grace, justice, wrath etc, I will. What follows is from Mr. Clary.
I learned an important ministry lesson years ago from an unbeliever I was trying to evangelize.
I was on staff with CRU & he was a brilliant & thoughtful student. Over the next few years, I shared the gospel with him many times, answering objections & using all the tools. 1/10
To answer his more complicated moral, philosophical, and theological objections, I took him to meet one of my theology profs at SBTS. Despite all this, he could never commit to Christ. He was a classic “always learning but never arriving at the church” kind of guy. 2/10
Eventually, I moved away to plant a church, and I continued to pray that someday he would come to faith.
Fast forward a few years, he calls me out of nowhere to tell me he’d become a Christian. I also spoke to his new wife, who was also a solid believer. 3/10
Not only that, but he had begun taking seminary courses to explore church planting.
I was floored. What finally broke through? What book, apologist, or intellectual finally convinced him? So I asked him. 4/10
Someone invited him to a church service and the preacher preached about hell and eternal judgment. It scared the crap out of him and he surrendered to Christ at that moment.
Like, he legit got saved. Radical, immediate conversion. 5/10
Looking back, I’d spent the better part of four years appealing to his intellect, talking philosophy & theology. I wanted to prove to him how intellectually satisfying & philosophically robust Xnty is. All that is well & good, but I missed the one thing he needed most. 6/10
He needed to know what many Christians want to avoid talking about with unbelievers. He needed what I was too afraid to mention bc I was embarrassed. He needed to know about judgment & hell, the unpleasant doctrines that demonstrate, by contrast, the beauty of the cross. 7/10
God gave me a huge part to play in his conversion, for which I’m grateful, but the honor of seeing him cross the finish line went to another man who was faithful in an area where I’d failed. 8/10
I’d spent years showing him a “respectable” Christianity, which kept him comfortable in his unbelief. In scripture, however, we learn that “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Co 1:18). 9/10
One plain spoken sermon, that clearly laid out God’s wrath against sin and the grace of the cross, had more power than my years of trying to reach him by the human means of appealing to his intellect.
In other words, the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
–end D. Michael Clary’s words.
That was the content I come for! May God bless pastors such as Pastor Clary and all who unashamedly proclaim the balanced Gospel in love and truth.
Our own limited spheres may seem calm and fine, but it’s a false calm. The world is baking soda. Once we step into the world and speak truth- whether at work or to unsaved family or in public- we’re vinegar (not the honey of the Gospel that can only be appreciated after salvation). What happens when vinegar is sprinkled on baking soda? It bubbles, foams, makes a frothy storm.
Vinegar to the world is “There’s only two genders”. Vinegar is “Transgenderism is sin”. Vinegar is “Women are biblically unqualified to preach”. Oh! Watch the foaming and the bubbling in anger when THAT vinegar truth bomb is poured onto the baking soda!
We as believers do not go around purposely stirring up the baking soda of the world, but it is a truism that speaking truth to a heretical world will stir it up. Some people avoid saying the truthful things because they fear man, or they’re tired and don’t want to deal with the fallout, or they ‘need’ the job, and so on. Being winsome and pleasant is wonderful, but if you are getting pushback because you’re speaking truth, that is all right too. It’s going to happen. You did nothing wrong and probably did everything right.
When Philip asked the Ethiopian Eunuch if he understood what he was reading, Philip received a courteous and open reply. Sometimes that happens. When Paul told the Ephesians the truth of God, they beat him almost to death. That happens sometimes too. It’s not that you’re doing something wrong if you never receive an open and calm reply. When Paul shared with the group of women at Philippi, Lydia listened and converted. But you notice it wasn’t because of persuasion or artfulness or winsomeness that Lydia converted. The Lord is the Lord of Salvation. It was He who opened her heart to receive the Good News. (Acts 16:14b).
We just don’t know who is one of the elect. We simply need to keep speaking truth to a lost and dying world. Sometimes people listen attentively. Sometimes they gnash their teeth and revile us. Sometimes they simply laugh and go their way.
Charles Spurgeon is said to have printed more words in English than anyone ever. In print he published some eighteen million words. His sermons sold over fifty-six million copies in nearly forty languages in his own lifetime, and that steady pace continues today. Today, there is available more material written by Spurgeon than by any other Christian author, living or dead. He is said to have preached to more than 10Million people.
Charles Spurgeon said,
If God would have painted a yellow stripe on the backs of the elect I would go around lifting shirts. But since He didn’t I must preach “whosoever will” and when “whatsoever” believes I know that he is one of the elect.
Charles Spurgeon
And so we continue to be the vinegar whose truth stirs up the world’s baking soda. But out of that foamy stir, emerges Spurgeons, and Bunyans, and Warfields, and MacArthurs, and Riccardis. And Joes and Sallys and Petes and Janes who turn around and preach and teach and bring ever more people into the fold. Vinegar poured on a wound of sin will sting at first. Then it turns to the sweetest honey when one believes in Jesus. Sweeter, even:
The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of Yahweh are true; they are righteous altogether. 10They are more desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:9-10 LSB)
The prosperity gospel has sunk in deep and permeated every corner of the US. The American church has a lot to answer for when we all meet Jesus. Now it’s exported abroad, and polluting churches in India and Africa and elsewhere. The prosperity gospel is no gospel. It teaches congregants to indulge their flesh, seek worldly things, and keep their eyes focused laterally instead of vertically. Joel Osteen is a master of this kind of gospel.
Joel Osteen flatly laid out the main precepts of Prosperity gospel out in a 2005 letter to his flock. “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us,” Osteen wrote.
The “prosperity gospel,” an insipid heresy whose popularity among American Christians has boomed in recent years, teaches that God blesses those God favors most with material wealth. Cathleen Falsani
The Prosperity gospel was preached so heavily on televangelist TV channels throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, that the 2010 David Platt book “Radical” touched a nerve and swept the pendulum rapidly in the other direction.
The Uncomfortable Gospel
The book blurb for Radical states:
It’s easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily…But who do you know who lives like that? Do you?
The book challenged Americans to reassess their commitment to the Gospel and make changes if necessary. Making sure that we are living biblically in submissive commitment to Christ is a worthy reassessment, but many people feel (me included) that the book made it sound like if you were living a normal life that happened to include comforts, you were somehow less committed Christian. Tim Challies reviewed Radical in 2011, saying,
First, I think our attempts to live radically can ignore the Bible’s concern that we be radically godly in character. There is no doubt that I am called by God to live sacrificially and generously. My first calling, though, is to know God, to be shaped by him and on that basis to preach the gospel and to live as if it is true. I am called to do all of this right where the Lord has placed me. This means that there is great dignity and great value in doing whatever it is that I want to do, like to do, and can honor God doing. We do not all need to be foreign missionaries and evangelists; we do not all need to move to faraway lands. We can (and must!) primarily honor God in whatever it is he has given us to do. I am concerned that it is difficult to read this book and believe its message and not feel that normal life is dishonoring to God.
However despite book reviews of Radical stating these same concerns, and a subtle rebuttal by John MacArthur titled An Unremarkable Faith, the pendulum swung hard toward ditching everything and running off to Bali barefoot to evangelize whoever happened to be along the way. The collateral damage of this pendulum swing included a backlash against Suburban Christians and suburbia in general.
I agree with Challies. I have not been called to be a missionary in Tonga. I am not called to be a preacher’s wife in the 10/40 belt. I am not a Bible smuggler living dangerously in China or North Korea. I am a white, older Christian woman living in rural Georgia. I go to a boring ole Baptist church with regular people who have a variety of jobs; some are farmers, some work in professional settings, some are blue collar. I drive 1 mile to school every day, assist children in the lower elementary grades, and drive home. I enjoy covered dish suppers, grocery shopping at the same place where I know all the checkout ladies, and banking at a small town bank where they know my name when I come in.
I live where there are rural farms all around including my own rental property where the lambs are about to be born any day! But horror of horrors, there are also ‘suburban’ subdivisions nearby, malls a half hour away, and a McDonald’s within a few minutes. Suburbia for sure.
I don’t make a lot of money and in fact have to watch every penny, but I know by global standards I’m rich. I am comfortable in every aspect of my life, from what I drive, to what I wear, to where I worship, to where I work. Suburbia has gotten a very bad rep. I live in suburban-ish America, and according to many liberal and hipster Christians, I’m doing Christianity wrong.
Here are a few of the most prominent Christian objections to living in the suburbs. How many of them hold up to even a slight bit of scrutiny?
Suburbs are inauthentic: I confess to not quite understanding what this means. Yes, suburban things are often newer and feature less exposed brick, but how is that a moral argument? Suburbs are consumeristic: No more than large cities. Suburbs are morally repressive: Wait, overt exhibition of immorality is a good thing? Suburbs lack diversity: The most diverse places in the country are suburbs. Suburbs are full of a lot of Evangelicals who vote Republican: Oh, wait, now we are getting somewhere…
Obviously, each of these charges deserves a post of its own to address these issues with the requisite nuance, but even the one-liner responses should cause us to think. Why are we down on suburbs? Do we have a biblically grounded objection rooted in our personal experiences, or have we merely baptized a secular prejudice and called it Christian ethics?
I think the second question is the answer: we’ve ‘baptized a secular prejudice and called it Christian ethics.’ I reject that notion because of one important factor. This is where God put me.
Justin Bullington said on Twitter today, I continually find comfort in this truth: I am where I am in life because God has sovereignly and wisely placed me here.
Amen, brother!
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, (Acts 17:26).
When you sprinkle salt into your dish the salt crystals go everywhere. With God, though, He sprinkles His elect all over the world and directs each one of us specifically to where He wants us to go. And when we land, here we are, doing the Lord’s work. One place isn’t holier than another. And definitely not holier because it’s rougher than other places in terms of living status.
God made the nations and all the peoples in the nations. He placed each one of us where He wants us, whether it be India or Canada, suburban Ohio or metropolitan Paris or the Faroes. He is sovereign and in His will and plan it pleased Him to give me this life. Who am I to speak back to God? Or worse, who am I to disparage His plan for me and many others He has set forth?
Yes- it would be sin if I lived in a comfortable environment and felt the call to become a missionary in Burma and refused Him because I was comfortable. Yes, I understand the original intent of the book Radical was to get us to reject sinking into a mealy mouthed Christianity because we’re surrounded by comfort. It was intended, I think, to jolt us out of The Prosperity Gospel’s insidious tentacles.
The true fact is, no matter where a person lives, if they are doing Christianity ‘right’, it is not comfortable. It takes commitment, energy, a proactive stance, and diligence. Christians can easily be just as hated in the suburbs than in the impoverished Third World countries.
The essence of Christianity is loving your neighbor. Suburbia needs loving neighbors reaching out in quiet ways just as much as the poor need help in Calcutta or the lost need help in Afghanistan. The daily grind of being a faithful witness for Jesus occurs all over the world, in jungles, mountain villages, cities, farming communities, and suburban plats. I reject the Prosperity gospel, and I also reject the radical ‘Uncomfortable gospel’. I accept and live by the only Gospel.
Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received—that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, 15:4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve…( 1 Corinthians 15:1-5)
I saw this arresting photo on Twitter. It’s from History Defined:
Hellenistic period: 323 B.C.E. and the rise of Augustus in Rome in 31 B.C.E
The first thing I thought was, man that guy had good teeth! The next thing that struck me were the verses about crowns in scripture:
Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable. (1 Corinthians 9:25)
in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing. (2 Timothy 4:8)
We are flesh, and flesh is but grass. Within 3 generations a person’s name is forgotten. No one remembers what that Greek man’s achievement was, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Was he fast? Strong? Agile? Who knows? Who cares?
Peter, quoting Isaiah 40:6, For, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, (1 Peter 1:24).
EPrata photo
And never was that verse brought more to life than the dead Greek’s skull with the gold leaf still sticking to it.
What matters is God’s glory! That is the ONLY thing that matters in this fleshly life and after resurrection for eternal life. How do we give God glory? By obeying Him, proclaiming Jesus’ name everywhere, being salt and light in submission to His calling us out of our perishable darkness into everlasting light, and so on.
Even if the crown the Greek received was the high point of his life, the skull it was placed on was perishable. Perhaps the Greek was a believer and if so, his skull will be remade new on resurrection Day. Probably wasn’t a believer though. For a few decades he enjoyed his crown, apparently was attached to it enough so that when his family buried him, they buried it with him. And that was the end of that!
What is not the end is that after our resurrection on the Day of Judgment, people will be divided into two groups, the sheep (Believers) and the Goats (non-believers). According to the Bible, this is what will happen:
“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. 32And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33and He will put the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left.
34“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38And when did we see You as a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’
41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you accursed people, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or as a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not [i]take care of You?’ 45Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for Me, either.’ 46These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46).
There are only two things that will happen to a crown: it will either be burned up in when the earth is remade new, or it will be cast onto Jesus’ feet in joy for His enabling us to achieve a crown of glory in the first place. Everything always goes back to Him, including all achievements.
To become a sheep instead of a goat, means to believe on the Christ and repent of your sins.
For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:3–4)
Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:14-15)
Repent and believe today. Your trophies won’t save you. Only Jesus saves.
the-end-time.org 