Challenges of Our Day

Introduction 

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1. We live in unprecedented world evangelization days​​

 

a. I cannot see that any “people” are not geographically close to a group of Christians who can, should and must be compelled to take responsibility for their evangelization.

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2. But, we also live in a day when global connection and therefore influence threatens the faith of many Christians

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a. Coke, MTV, banking, etc. have all gone global. Ideas hostile to God have been unleashed on a largely unthinking, overly eager mass of people in the world. Sin, to often, finds no push back

 

b. The Church too suffers the globalization of ideas, marketed by those claiming to belong to God, to an unthinking, overly eager mass of people confessing to be followers of Jesus. Heresy has found a global channel!

 

3. I don't think that any globally engaged theologian would disagree that we have lost the battle for the soul for America.

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a. Money, sex and power have overwhelmed our society, and sadly the Church stands on the forefront of this decay into the morass of God rebellion. 

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i. Just another way of stating: “For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life —is not from the Father but is from the world”

 

4. I feel more like a prophet that at any time in my life. As such let me call you to reflection and pro-action. No matter what the outcome. 

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5. My prayer is that you will turn out to be a generation of compassionate contrarians!

 

I would like to suggest three reflections on our greatest challenges, and two pro-actions that could dictate a renewal that would result in a new generation of Jesus followers. You will write the history of the gospel in our nation!

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OUR CHALLENGES​

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1.  Acknowledging that God is the focus of our life and pursuits. Not the ministry, not the church, not success, not even our marriage or family.

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a.  Genesis 1-3, is an outline of the answer to the ontological question: Who am I” as well as the missiological question: Why do I exist?

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i. Created by God for God

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1. Relationship

2. Representation.

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b. “What do I mean by "calling"? For the moment let me say simply that calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.  Os Guinness. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Kindle Locations 69-70). Kindle Edition.

 

c. The industrial/technological and rationalistic world around us works to dup us into believing that this world is all there is, therefore, to be pursued and enjoyed at all costs

 

d. Galatians 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”​

 

e. There is immense power in Samuel's brief but pointed reply to Saul, "Hath the Lord as great delight in burn offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord! Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" ( 1  Sam.  15:22 ). Saul's word was "Sacrifice." Samuel's word was "Obedience." No doubt the bleating of sheep and the lowing of the oxen were most exciting. They would be looked upon as substantial proofs that something was being done; while on the other hand, the path of obedience seemed narrow, silent, lonely, and fruitless.  The Bible Its Sufficiency and Supremacy by C.H. Mackintosh

 

f. Deuteronomy 30:19-20 - “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days,”

 

g. Questions

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i.  How did we miss this most basic of Biblical starting points?

ii.  What is the ontology of most people, in contrast to the one God Himself has given to us?

iii. Do most Christians believe that I exist for relationship and representation of my Creator?

iv.  What happened to leave us in conflict with something so fundamental?

 

2. Believing the Bible to be the breath of God and therefore our rule of faith and therefore life: correcting what is in practice a weak view of Scripture.

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a. In 1742 John Bengel observed; "Scripture is the foundation of the Church: the Church is the guardian of Scripture. When the Church is in strong health, the light of Scripture shines bright; when the Church is sick, Scripture is corroded by neglect; and thus it happens, that the outward form of Scripture and that of the Church, usually seem to exhibit simultaneously with either health or else sickness; and as a rule the way in which Scripture is being treated is in exact correspondence with the condition of the Church.

 

b. Under the dominion of rationalism the soul is like a vessel broken from its safe moorings in the haven of divine revelation, to be tossed like a cork upon the wild watery waste of universal skepticism. The Bible Its Sufficiency and Supremacy by C.H. Mackintosh

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c. Question

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i. Why has this most basic of Biblical truths been such a challenge to so many Christians to embrace, believe and obey?

 

3. Embracing regular time with God each day with the whispers of the Holy Spirit calling us to submit and obey.

a. Psalm 40: 1-3 (The Message)

A David psalm

“I waited and waited and waited for GOD. At last he looked; finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God--song, a praise song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to GOD.”

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b. This invitation from the Psalmist is a challenge to enter into relationship with God our Father that deepens more each year. But, all too often, the world around us serves as an ever-increasing opiate on the minds and hearts of those who would desire deepening relationship with God. It may be that the culture we live in is more sinful, or it may simply be that through the proliferation of media, it has become more ever-present and accessible. Whichever, it seems to me that more people than I can recall are experiencing relationship crisis with God.

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c. Some of these people are nominal at best. They seem to be the ones to whom Jesus refers in that He never knew them. They are the ones who practice the forms of Christianity but demonstrate none of the transformation or power promised by Jesus. The greatest danger of these people to the life of the Church today, is that they remain in it. Where once we may have seen them only in “liberal” churches, today they fill many “evangelical” churches.

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d. Some of the people who desire a deeper relationship with God are genuine but too preoccupied. These are the ones who most suffer under the opiate of the culture. And, their reward is a growing sense of dryness with the truth of Scripture that they still hold. For these people, a stark reappraisal of their lives and expectations is in order, if they ever want to experience anything more than the largely meaningless forms of Christianity offered up by the programs of too many churches.

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e. To the rest of us the call by the Psalmist to enter into the mystery and abandon ourselves to God remains a promising invitation. When we remember moments with our Heavenly Father, we recall them with warmth, encouragement, and challenge, and yes, even correction. It was at those moments we knew that He was fully trustable, and that to abandon oneself to Him was no risk.

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f. But, even for us, there remains the constant need to preserve the time and discipline necessary to deepen the abandonment. Deepening our relationship with God does not just happen. It must be worked on. I say worked on and not at to make clear the distinction between the legalism of the Christian program as it is preached by too many churches, and the relational disciplines necessary to build upon the reconciliation given to me by the Father when I believed upon Jesus.

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g. Questions

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i. Why do so few Christians find regular time with God our Father

ii. How can you improve the regularity of their engagement?

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OUR NEEDED PRO-ACTIONS

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4.  Embrace the new task of aggressively engaging people with a God focused, Biblically consistent and transformationally expectant Gospel.

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a. God focused means that we recognize that the Bible is the story about God acting unilaterally to offer mercy in Jesus, through the Spirit so that people created once in His image, can be restored (recreated) to that design.

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b. Biblically consistent means that the message is a true reflection of the whole message of Scripture and not a truncated redacted version built from extracted Biblical texts or human experience. 

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c. Transformationally expectant means that we understand and expect that salvation anticipates transformation into the righteous of God, especially as seen in the life of Jesus.

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"For at the threshold of the third millennium of its existence, the church of Jesus Christ confronts the greatest challenge it has ever faced. This challenge touches on behavior every bit as much as belief, yet it requires belief to inspire and stiffen that behavior. What is the challenge? From one side, followers of Jesus Christ confront in the modern world the most powerful culture in human history so far as well as the world's first truly global culture. This culture has unprecedented power to shape behavior, and its damage to faith has already proved far greater than the malice and destruction of all the Christ-hating persecutors in history, from Nero to Mao Tse Tung.”

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Os Guinness. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Kindle Locations 666-667). Kindle Edition.​

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d. The Implications of the Gospel

 

i. The Bible is one story running from Genesis to Revelation. It is in the beginning that we see most clearly the divine design. And, from that design, all of the other issues that we read in the Bible must be answered.  From one point of view, they are explanatory, preparatory, and corroborating sub-plots of the primary story. In order to fully appreciate what God has done, and is doing, one must constantly move back and forth - or better said, up and down - between the story and its many sub-plots. It is with eternal significance that the story opens with creation.  

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ii. Genesis 1 is the starting point of the story, and Revelation 22 the end of the story. In between is the story, traced across human history, of how God Himself is carrying out His purpose. Nothing in the universe bears the uniqueness of the human creation - not the animals, not the natural, not even the angels. Unlike everything else in the universe, God creates Adam and Eve, and by extension their offspring, for two bold purposes. The first is that humanity is created to live in relationship to God. And the second purpose is that humanity is created to represent God. This is the calling of the Bible, to be reconciled to God and His purposes in creating us.

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iii. Of the first, Eric Sauer, in the Dawn of World Redemption, says: “But the essence of such spiritual life, and the essence of all true morality in general, is not only an outward, objective carrying out of law and a merely legal freedom from sin and guilt, but a personal, organic participation in the moral life of the Deity itself. For God, as the supreme lawgiver, has appointed the moral ordering of the world according to His nature, and He is love, the most perfect love (I John 4: 16). Therefore the moral appointment of free creatures must also be an appointment to love, and the supreme final purpose of world creation must consist in the self-unfolding and self-displaying of God as the Perfect, Holy, and Loving One, in the establishment of a fellowship of life and love between the Creator and the creature. But this means that God has called the world into existence so as to be able to love it, and that it should love Him in return. His goal evermore is to lead it to an eternal share in the enjoyment of His holiness and love, and thereby to blessedness and glory” (From the online edition of Dawn of World Redemption, chapter two)

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iv. Of the second – to play out the reality of our true humanity by representing God - Sauer says: “Thus the extending of man's rule on the earth, provided he remained subject to God, signified a drawing of all things earthly into the sphere of the moral world-purposes, an increasing resumption of the earth for God and therewith a progressive leading forward of the creation to redemption and perfection. Paradise was thus the fixed point from which the uplifting of Nature into the sphere of the spirit should take its beginning. It was appointed by God to that purpose, "so that from here the whole earth should develop into a Paradise. The garden is the Holy of holies, Eden the holy place, the whole surrounding earth the vestibule and court. The climax is, that the whole shall be transformed into the glorified likeness of that Holiest." In this regard Adam himself counted not only as an individual, but at the same time as the primary ancestor and organic representative of the whole of his descendants, then already seen in principle "in" him (I Cor. 15: 22; Rom. 5: 12-21). Therefore is it said first "Be fruitful and multiply and people the earth ", and only afterward, "and subdue it to yourselves and rule it" (Gen.1:28). So then the Paradise garden is beginning and end, start and goal, basis, programme, and type of the whole task of man on earth.” (Ibid)

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v. This same message is traced across the pages of the Bible. In the giving of the law, Moses writes in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” And, in Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

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vi. Jesus asserts the same when asked two different questions on two separate occasions – the first question being about the greatest commandment, and the second about what a person must do to have eternal life.  Of the first question, the Scripture teaches the following:  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied:  “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:36-40). 

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vii. And to the second question the Scripture teaches, “On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus ”Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live" (Luke 10:25-28).

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viii. The apostle Paul says the same: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

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ix. Nothing in the universe bears the uniqueness of the human creation, for we are made in the image and likeness of God.  Made in the image and likeness of God?  What should we expect? Unlike all of the rest of God's creation, we are created with an abundance of abilities that come from and are in the likeness of God Himself: cognition, verbal communication, relational ability, invention, appreciative ability, deductive ability, concern ability, rational expression, and governing ability, to name a select few.  So, what does this have to say about the gospel?

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x. The answer to that question is directly related to the impact of sin on these creation likenesses. How far, how deep, and to what extent can they be corrupted by the effect of sin and the impact of sinful choices?  As well, how does God solve these corruptions in His gospel? 

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xi. The original untested but righteous compass that God gave to Adam and Eve in creation before the fall, has been displaced by the sinful choice of Adam and Eve ending in a lawless human spirit and marred image of God (Romans 5), thus leading to corrupted: cognition, communication, relationships, inventions, appreciations, deductions, concerns, emotions, rationalizing, governing, etc. (Romans 3).

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xii. When God restores the originally intended compass through our regeneration in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, the residency of the Holy Spirit, and our growing understanding of these through regular engagement of His Word, we see restored likenesses of God's original creation (Romans 6). The drag of whatever still exists of the leftover flesh we have from our creation likeness to Adam has to be progressively dominated by the new creation likeness to Jesus (Romans 6).

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xiii. For the child of God, all of the Adam likeness is left behind upon exit from this world into a new world to be created by God free of the sin of this world (2 Corinthians 5). Even for the world, the representative governing ability of Man over the Earth is someday to be restored (Romans 8).

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xiv. What are some of the more tangible characteristics of a restored God likeness? 

 

1. Abounding appreciation towards all things. Paul says that in all circumstances he learned to abound (Phil. 4). He says to the Thessalonians that we are to give thanks in all things. 

 

2. Relational acceptance. Jesus says pray for your enemy (Matt.5). Paul says bear with one another (Romans 8). Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 5). Paul says for husbands to love their wives as their own bodies (Ephesians 5). 

 

3. Released cognition so that we see and think more clearly. Nebuchadnezzar says twice in Daniel 4 that God’s sovereignty extends over all things. Paul says that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8). Jesus says that no one can take us from his hand. He says that if God cares for such small things as lilies and birds, won't he care for us (Matt. 6)? 

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4. Renewed communication. Paul says to lay aside all course jesting (Ephesians 5). He says to encourage one another with the resurrection and return of Jesus (1 Thess. 5). Jesus says that every word we speak will be heard and judged (Matt. 12). 

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5. Renewed concerns. Jesus says that peace makers are like God their father (Matt. 5). James says that pure and undefiled religion is to care for the widow and orphan (James 5). The parable of the Good Samaritan reminds us that our neighbor's benefit is our concern (Luke 10). Jesus tells us that having been released from our "gentile" life we are to be like God in Jesus giving our lives in exchange for others (Luke 10).

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6. Renewed invention and communication. Paul says that everything we do (an aspect of invention) is to be done to the glory of God, as if we were serving Him. Jesus says that in our going we are to make disciples (communication) (Matt. 28).

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7. Responsible and compassionate stewardship of the created world. The book of Genesis calls those created in the likeness of God to care for and steward the world into which they were placed (Genesis 2).  As well, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus inaugurated a cosmic restoration in which we are called to participate (Romans 8, Colossians 1, and Revelation 21). 

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e. The Impact of the Gospel

 

i. The impact of this restored image of God is progressively and in a maturing way felt in: 

 

1. Our marriages

2. Our families

3. Our neighborhoods

4. Our church bodies

5. Our market places

6. Our decisions over assets

7. Our ultimate expectations 

 

b. The restored likeness of God sitting now at the center of our being in the new man, bounded by sin in the members of our bodies, is capable and expected to live life unto God, in a new/old way (Romans 6).  It is old because that is how God created it to be before the fall. It is new because it has been restored, partially in time, fully after death, in Jesus Christ, the last Adam. 

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c.  All of the ways in which the New Testament describes the relational incarnations of this new, restored life, are predicated upon the residency of this restored likeness and image of God (John 3), the residency of the Holy Spirit to give it power (Romans 8), and our willful cooperation with it (Romans 6). When placed alongside unrestored people, its witness is powerful because it demonstrates: the image of God, the likeness of how He created the world to be, and what is available to those who submit to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for and in them. (Matt. 5)

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d.  In all of their relationships, Christians are learning to release this new life:

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i.  Husbands love their wives as their own bodies

ii.   Wives respect their husbands

iii.  Fathers do not exasperate their children

iv.  Children obey their parents

v.  We forgive our neighbors random offenses

vi.  We pray for our enemy

vii.  We bear one another's burdens

viii.   We maintain peace among the brethren

ix.   We work as unto the Lord

x.   We live the blessedness of giving over receiving

xi.  We invest our worth and expectations in eternity

 

e.  The gospel (good news) cannot be extracted from this macro view. When it is, it minimizes the full extent of God's work and purpose. It runs the risk of nominalizing those who appear to act on the offer of salvation by short circuiting the full and miraculous work God has achieved in the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ; thus, it produces "faith still-borns" (people who say that they belong to Jesus, but never look or act like Him). 

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f. The only way to look like Him is to follow Him into death, burial, and resurrection so that the original relationship to God and His purpose can be restored. The lawless man is killed with Jesus on the cross, and the new, righteous man is resurrected with Him in His resurrection. He is now (re)created and able to live to (for, by and in) God. 

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g.  The affirmation of the Apostle John at the end of his life is an appropriate place for us to end as it encapsulates all of the above: To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father –to him be glory and power forever and ever! Amen.

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Questions

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1. What is the Gospel in this nation?

2. How can we reestablish the Biblical gospel in the midst of Christians and the Church

3. How can we evangelize your place?

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5. Find a new way to organize “church” and the content of what we do in that organizing?

 

a. The high media programs we create inhibit reflection, leading to superficial acknowledgement of words sung or listened to, leading to an apparent embracing, but containing no fruit of correspondent change.

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b. One of the key questions in determining the real impact of forms and content we create and use: What stops the indulgence of the flesh so that the life of Christ, placed through the new birth, can be formed in me? 

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c. God said to Cain “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:1-7 (ESV)

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d. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used) —according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self- made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” Colossians 2:20-23 (ESV)

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e. Why we can even consider controlling the indulgences of the flesh!!

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i. “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made 

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ii. without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,” Colossians 2:9

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iii. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:22 (ESV)

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f. How then is the flesh daily controlled?

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i. Seek the things that are above,

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ii. Set your minds on things that are above,

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iii. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:

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iv. Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new

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1. “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 

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2. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

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3. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

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4. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:1-17 (ESV)

 

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated the same point simply in his Ethics: "Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God-the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?" Os Guinness. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Kindle Locations 1063-1064). Kindle Edition.

 

Questions

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1. How can you begin to restructure the life of the people God has entrusted to you?

2. How can you raise up a group of men and women to serve with you in this task?

3. What needs to change in your thinking to make the two decisions above possible?