FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Romans 1:16; 1 Timothy 1:8-14

Promises – Continued

The second important thing the Christian faith promises to do is to put you in a right relationship to others. The Christian church is an amazing institution, isn’t it? Our critics say the church is responsible for much of the cruelty experienced in the world. It’s true that the organized church’s history is undeniably imperfect. The amazing thing to me is that, with all our imperfections, neither I or anyone else would wish to live in this world without the church as Christ intends it to be.

God has come in Christ to show us how to love and respect one another and to live free of a spirit of revenge toward those who have wronged us.

Recently, I heard a story which illustrates the spirit of revenge:

A fellow was driving down Hollywood Boulevard looking at the homes of movie stars. Passing by one attractive home, he saw a new Mercedes parked out front with a sign on it which read: “For Sale, $100.” Stopping, he went to the door and inquired about the Mercedes. “Is it true you are selling it for $100?”

“That’s what the sign says!” said the woman who answered the door.

Without hesitating he proceeded to purchase the car. When the transaction was complete he asked, “How is it that you can sell this new Mercedes for $100?”

Angrily she said, “Last week, my husband ran off with his secretary. He called this morning from Hawaii to tell me he had run out of money. He asked me to sell his car and send him the cash. So, that’s what I’m doing!”

Now, that’s revenge. Such behavior however, doesn’t need to be our response to mistreatment. The Christian faith promises to empower us to release our feelings of resentment and positively seek reconciliation with those who may have wronged us.

It promises to give us victory over our personal sins. All of us wrestle with a skeleton in our closet. Perhaps it’s a bad habit, a loose tongue, a debilitating lust, or an insatiable greed. Christ has come to help us with our “sin” problem and empower us in dealing with our personal sins.

Promises, promises, promises. They are everywhere. The Christian faith however really does deliver what it promises. It will help you know God’s forgiveness, learn to be forgiving, and experience victory over sin.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Romans 1:16; 1 Timothy 1:8-14

Promises

To begin with, we can be proud of the Christian faith because it does not disappoint.

By nature and experience we tend to be a suspicious people. For the most part, we have a right to be because we are bombarded on every front by promises which usually turn out to be disappointments. Consider, for example, the average television advertisement. An announcer reminds aging women with encroaching facial wrinkles that, if they will use a certain product, they will likely live to be as old as Methuselah, and even more beautiful. Granted the advertisers don’t quite go that far, but they do promise a youthful appearance for the duration of your life. Any thinking person, however, knows that’s just not true.

We’ve been promised so much, and the return has been so little that most of us feel a little like Spike who wrote Snoopy a letter in one of the “Peanuts” episodes:

“Dear Snoopy, I’ve just purchased a magic cape from a door-to-door salesman who promises me that, if I wear the cape, I will be instantly transported to a land of paradise. So, by the time you get this letter, I’ll be in paradise.” Several frames pass and in the final scene, Spike is standing right smack in the middle of a desert surrounded by cactus plants. In the caption below, Spike is complaining, “Somehow, I think I’ve been had.”

Spike’s problem is our problem. We’ve been “had” too many times. We are understandably suspicious. The unfortunate thing is that it affects the way many people look at the Christian faith. However, the Christian faith does not disappoint. It does produce what it promises.

What does the Christian faith promise? First and foremost, it promises to put you in a right relationship with God. A popular Christian song by Steve Green, says that “people need the Lord.” That is so very true. They most certainly do. When we come into the world, something goes horribly wrong. All of us fall subject to the effects of what theologians call “original sin.” What is original sin? Theologians say that original sin means we all originate out of a sinful nature which taints us from the very beginning of our existence. We don’t have to learn to sin, we just do. We all tend to make ourselves the center of the universe. When we make ourselves the center of the universe, then we’re lost to Him who is the origin of the universe. That’s what it means to be lost. In our lost state, God comes to find us. Like a celestial “Hound of Heaven,” He pursues us until we find Him. That doesn’t mean everyone will find the Lord, however. Some will be like the fellow who woke up in the middle of the night hungry. Opening the refrigerator door, he stood there feeling hungry but not knowing what he was hungry for. Those who do find the Lord and are found by Him, however, will discover their deepest hungers satisfied.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Romans 1:16; 1 Timothy 1:8-14

“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” shouted the apostle Paul. He might not have been, but sadly, the truth is, most of us are.

At school? At work? Or, the bridge party? The discussion turns to religion or the latest clergy scandal, and everyone speaks disdainfully about the church’s hypocrisy. Is it possible in these situation you feel like a fool at times to admit you’re a Christian during these times?

Why is there such little boldness these days about the Christian faith? While there may be many reasons for our feelings of timidity, one reason is often the Bible itself. Many people today view the Bible simply as a collection of myths and fairy tales, clever to read and full of morality tales but hardly acceptable to the scientific mind.

“You believe the Bible?” one man asked me a long time ago as if surprised. “It’s so outdated and full of nothing but myths and fables. How can you honestly believe all that stuff you read?”

He had a point, to a degree. The Bible can be hard to believe, even harder to explain. Since the dawn of the Freudian era, we have come to think about the world in ways different from our ancestors. Due to this, I believe, is one source of our embarrassment.

The Jewish rabbi Harold Kushner touches on it in a story he tells of a boy who was asked by his mother what he had learned in church school that day:

The boy described the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, but when he came to the dramatic portion about the crossing of the Red Sea, he edited the story saying, “Moses took out his walkie-talkie and called in the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Egyptians, while the others built a pontoon bridge to cross over the Red Sea.”

Perplexed at his version of the story, the boy’s mother asked, “Is that how they told you the story?”

He dropped his head and muttered, “Well no, Mom, but if I told you the story the way they told it to me, you’d never believe it!”

That’s truly the sum of our problem, isn’t it? Whenever we read the Bible, we are suddenly thrust into a world which seems so foreign to us, especially in the western world. A world where seas part and folks trek across on dry ground; bushes burn but are not consumed; manna drops out of the sky to feed hungry people; folks walk on water; the blind are given their sight; paralytics, and quadriplegics are made to walk; and the dead are brought back to life. How do you explain that kind of world to a people who live in a world accustomed to analyzing itself under a microscope?

My point? You can’t explain it! The stories of our faith live on from generation to generation, not because skilled practitioners of religious truth perfect better ways of explaining the stories but because the stories themselves have a life of their own. Yet that is the key; they are stories and accounts of faith! They need no explanation. They need simply to be told. The more we seek to reduce the Christian narrative to a carefully categorized set of propositions, the greater our anxiety will be about the Bible and our faith. In short, the more we try to explain the Bible, the less confidence we have in the Bible.

It’s time we let the Christian story speak for itself. Its story is our story. If our interest is in strengthening the believing person’s confidence so he or she can say with the apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel,” we will come closer to accomplishing that objective, not by wrangling over whether the hare chews the cud (see Leviticus 11:6), but by affirming the truth of the Christian story. Do we need to be ashamed? Absolutely not!

With that in mind, I’ve listed a few reasons why we do not need to be ashamed of the Christian faith. To be continued over the next several days.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture Reference: Matthew 9:35-38

II. The Necessity of Enlisting the Layperson – Continued

Satan’s strategy in our world today is to convince the laypeople of the church that Christianity is complicated, winning people to Christ is too complex, and only ministers can do it. What if someone could convince us that wars are too complicated, dangerous, and only generals can fight wars?

You and I are to penetrate the society in which we live with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Great Commission begins with the phrase, “Go therefore and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19).

There’s an illustration of a lady disembarking from an airplane after talking with a handsome man. Her jealous husband asked, “What did you talk with that man about?”

“Nothing in particular, but he asked the strangest question, ‘Are you a Christian?’ ”

The husband responded, “Why didn’t you just tell him it was none of his business?”

Hugging her husband she said, “Had you heard him speak, you would have known that it was his business.”

That is the spirit you and I must have as we share the gospel of Christ in the world in which we live. We need to be like the elevator operator who would say to people in the elevator, “Make sure your last trip is up.” We must never be contented as keepers of the aquarium when Jesus has commanded us to be fishers of men.

III. The Urgency of the Task

One of the great secrets of Jesus’ ministry and success was His comprehension of the urgency of the task. Listen to Jesus, “Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:35). When the fields are white, they must be harvested immediately, or they are lost. Normally, the farmers reap the fields when they are yellow unto harvest, not white.

As Jesus looked out at lost humanity, He saw them perishing as sheep with no shepherd, as a field ready to be reaped with no harvester. That is a picture of our world today.

According to the 2022 world population sheet, in 2021 there were approximately:

• 5 births per second
• 270 births per minute
• 16,200 births per hour
• 388,800 births per day
• 2,721,600 births per week
• 11,823,408 births per month
• 141,912,000 births per year

Every year there are 141 million new people born into the world; and as of 2024 there are approximately 8.1 billion people in the world. All churches of all denominations under the Christian umbrella win less than five million of these people a year to Jesus Christ. We must aggressively seek out those who are unsaved and do our utmost to lead them to our Savior.

The Bible in every one of more than eleven hundred editions says “come” six hundred times. Let us not go about in this world saying to everyone who will listen, “Look what the world has come to.” Instead, let us say to them, “Look Who has come to the world!”

According to the Word of God and the signs the Lord left with His disciples, it is apparent the time we have to evangelize is getting shorter, day by day. We need to intercede in prayer for the lost and we need to pray for anointing to evangelize. Soon, for the lost, it will be too late.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.