A political
election year gives rise to much debate regarding the present state and future
of our country. Given the vast array of
contrary opinions on a host of matters, the climate of tension and uncertainty
in our country is palpable. People align themselves with various causes
and work to vocalize their sentiments.
In an “end justifies the means” manner, political debate is generally
accompanied by ugly tactics including insults, character assassination, and
prediction of doom if the opposing side gets its way. A cultural war is taking place in America and
we, as believers, need to be careful how we engage in it.
The believer
in Christ enjoys a dual citizenship, as a citizen of both Heaven and America
(Philippians 3:21). But the value and
responsibilities associated with the one far outweigh the transitory benefits
of the other. My citizenship in Heaven
is eternal. My citizenship in this
country is for as long as I’m here on earth, or until such time that America is
no more. Our country is a physical
entity in which I enjoy certain freedoms and rights and a degree of earthly
protection. The Church is the
blood-bought bride of Christ. It is
destined to eternal glory. Its mandate
since its inception has been to bear witness of Jesus (Acts 1:8).
Just before
His ascension, Jesus had these parting words for His disciples: “But you shall
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the
remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
These parting words of our Lord represent the marching orders for His
church. But Jesus addressed the matter
in terms associated with our limitations—the fulfillment of the mission is
dependent on the empowerment of the Spirit.
Jesus had previously spoken of such things, “When the Helper comes, whom
I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds
from the Father, He will bear witness of Me, and you will bear witness also”
(John 15:26-27). The Spirit works to
bear witness of Jesus and He bears witness through us.
Peter
wonderfully illustrates the truth of this dynamic. We read in the gospel accounts of Peter in
his three-fold denial of His Lord (Luke 22:54-62). He denied even knowing Jesus (Luke 22:57). He denied Jesus to a slave-girl. Before that, when Jesus was laboring in
prayer, submitting Himself to the Father’s will (Matthew 26:39), Peter and the
disciples were sleeping. Jesus responded
by saying, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). The truth of Jesus’ words was borne out in
Peter’s experience. The flesh was indeed
weak. Jesus was arrested. Cowardly Peter denied ever knowing His Lord.
But it is a
different kind of Peter, a courageous one, which we read about in Acts chapter
2. As Jesus had promised, the Holy
Spirit was poured out on the disciples.
And Spirit-empowered Peter responded by boldly bearing witness of Jesus
before a great multitude of people.
There was no shrinking back or fear or timidity in that first sermon;
instead, he did just what he was told to do, He bore witness of Jesus. And if you examine the second half of Peter’s
sermon (the first half was an explanation as to why the disciples were speaking
in tongues), you will find that that sermon was all about Jesus—His life, His
death, His resurrection, and ascension (Acts 2:22-36).
The gospel
message of salvation through faith in the One who died for sins and rose from
the dead is there in that first sermon (Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). And after the message was preached, people
were Spirit-convicted of their sin. Three
thousand souls were saved and the church was born. What happened on that day established a
template for what God expects from us, His ambassadors here on earth (Cf. 2
Corinthians 5:20). We are here for a
short while to bear witness of Jesus by our lives and with our lips. But we can only do that as we are led and
empowered by the Spirit of God. There is
no suitable substitute for the inner working of the Spirit. As Jesus said, “It is the Spirit who gives
life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63).
That doesn’t mean, of course, that we won’t try to fulfill our mission
mandate through fleshly means.
Entertainment, church growth methodologies, and various techniques have
all been tried. But God has made the
matter very simple—we are to bear witness of Jesus and we do that through the
leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. By that God-approved means, the gospel has
spread from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. It has spread in spite of suppression,
opposition, threats, and persecution.
People have made great sacrifices and, sometimes, suffered martyrdom
that they might take the gospel message to people who needed to hear.
Those folks
understood these realities. They had a
godly worldview through which they gauged the affairs of men. God is our creator. Sin is the problem. Jesus is the Savior. These truths stand whether they are believed
or not. They stand today. We sometimes have difficulty getting to the
root of a problem. There is a debate
ongoing whether we should call the terrorist threat we face “radical Islam.” And some argue that we need to clearly
identify the threat. But at the heart of
that threat and every other threat and problem is the problem that besets us
all, sin. Sin is the universal problem
that is at the root of every problem. We are born into this world with a heart to
sin (Romans 5:12). And from that heart
of sin flow a host of problems. As Jesus
said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matthew 15:19).
There is
only one God-approved and tried-true remedy for sin, and that is the
gospel. Politics, education, psychology,
economics, social engineering, peace-initiatives, interventions, and any other
human effort to resolve that which ails man cannot work to resolve what lies at
the heart of man’s problem. The gospel alone can do that. We are born sin rebels, thinking that we can
somehow get along fine apart from our Creator, but that’s not true. Something must be done to save sin rebels
from their doomed cause. The only thing
that can do that is “the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11),
which is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans
1:16). This matter of first importance
(Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3), the message of Christ’s death for sin and resurrection from the dead is “of sin the
double cure,” cleansing both of “guilt and pow’r” (“Rock of Ages”).
In this
regard, I’m concerned for myself and my fellow Ambassadors for Christ. Amidst all the rancor and insults, I wonder
how effective we are in fulfilling our mission mandate. I’m pretty sure that no souls will be saved
as a result of anyone’s complaining about the current state of affairs. America is as needy as it has ever been, but
the problems are not mainly political or economic—they are moral. We live at a time in a country that bears
responsibility for the murder of 60 million of its most innocent and vulnerable
citizens. Truths regarding our Creator
cannot be taught in school classrooms by and to those who were created by Him. We are so bold as to attempt to redefine
God’s definition of what constitutes a marriage. And we are so prideful and arrogant in all of
this, that we believe we will face no evil consequences for such things. These are all symptoms which speak to the
reality of sin, the consequence of the Romans 1:18-32 dynamic. The gospel alone can work to rescue anyone
out of that downward spiral. Secular politicians have no heart to address a
moral problem that they themselves don’t understand. The only God-approved solution for what ails
us all is Jesus.
We are prone
to fight the wrong battles with the wrong weapons. If “our struggle is not against flesh and
blood,” why do we fight against flesh and blood (Cf. Ephesians 6:12)? We are engaged in a spiritual struggle for
souls—ours and our fellow man’s. If “we
do not war according to the flesh,” why do we attempt to engage the wrong enemy
and in our human strength (Cf. 2 Corinthians 10:4)? Would it not be better to
utilize the weapons which are “divinely powerful for the destruction of
fortresses” (2 Corinthians 10:4)? Faith in
God, the Word, and prayer are weapons empowered by God Himself. They are “nuclear-bomb-like” in comparison to
the humanly-wimpy weapons we so often prefer.
Slander, insults, and character assassinations will not work to win any
of God’s battles. They are not in His
arsenal. They will not work to move the
hearts of men to look to Jesus. They can
do nothing to resolve what lies at the heart of man’s problems. God forgive me in my foolhardy efforts to
utilize them!
We have a
problem in the modern day church. We
like to point the finger at some human entity and say, “Therein lies the
problem.” But as our Moms taught us, we
need to be careful when we point the finger at someone, because there are three
more pointing back at ourselves. It is
time for the church to take personal responsibility for things. According to His mission mandate, Jesus has purposed
to use us, His ambassadors, to bear witness of Him until the time of His
return. The church
of the living God is “the pillar and support of the truth” in this world (Cf. 1
Timothy 3:15). It is not the
government. It is not the school system. That privileged position is not invested in
the worldly rich and powerful. The
church is that. The church is here now
to have an influence for good in this world, to be, as Paul put it, “children
of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among
whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life” (Philippians
2:15-16a). If society is slipping, it
will do no good to point to lost souls and put the blame on them. They are no different than we once were and how
we are still prone sometimes to behave.
They are lost. To expect lost
people to lead and behave as saved people is oxymoronic.
In taking
responsibility, we need to get back to basics.
We’ve been given a mission and we err when we lose track of it or of the
resources that have been availed to us that we might fulfill it. Years ago, noted theologian Francis A.
Schaeffer spoke to this: “The central problem of our age is not liberalism or
modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the
threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus
which surrounds us. All these are
dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ, individually and corporately, tending to do the Lord’s
work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem
is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances
surrounding them.”
The central
problem is not “them” or our circumstances, the problem lies in our midst. And our attention, energy, and struggle
should be directed towards resolving this particular problem. In looking towards a solution, it is again
wise for us to look back to our roots.
For the early church, in fulfilling their mission mandate, soon met with
fierce opposition. The same Peter who
boldly bore witness of Jesus in his first sermon was arrested with John by a
group of powerful religious leaders. He
would not be moved from proclaiming the truth and said to them, “And there is
salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been
given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The religious leaders marveled at their
confidence (Acts 4:13), but nevertheless, commanded them to “not speak or teach
at all in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18).
After threatening Peter and John further, they let them go and Peter and
John returned to their companions.
And do you
know what they did? They didn’t
instigate an insurrection. They didn’t
hold a sit-in or political rally. They
didn’t plan a boycott. They didn’t hurl
insults at their oppressors. What did
they do? They prayed. And their prayer was not what we might
suppose. They praised God, the Creator
of all things (Cf. Acts 4:24). They
quoted from Scripture in prayer, reminding themselves that God has spoken
beforehand of the circumstances they were facing (Cf. Acts 4:25-26). They praised God in His sovereignty over the
affairs of men and how He even used evil rulers to accomplish His divine
purposes (Cf. Acts 4:27-28). And what
did they ask of God? Did they ask for
God to deliver them from these evil rulers?
Did they ask that God would keep them from adversity? Did they ask for God to somehow straighten
out this mixed up world? No, they only
asked that they would be emboldened and that opportunities would be availed to them
in the witness of the gospel. And what
happened? God shook the earth and God
emboldened them by the Spirit (Cf. Acts 4:31).
And the church was encouraged and the church progressed and was
ultimately used by God to turn that part of the world upside down (Cf. Acts
17:6). A careful examination of
Scripture will reveal that all of that which God has given for us to do is to
be done “by the Spirit.” In His
Christ-glorifying ministry, the Spirit mediates Jesus to us, in us, and through
us (Cf. John 16:14). He keeps us focused
and in love with Jesus. He fills us with
love, joy, peace, hope, and a host of other supernatural virtues (Cf. Galatians
5:22, Romans 15:13). He burdens us with
compassion for lost souls and a willingness to sacrifice of ourselves in love in
Jesus’ name. We are led and empowered in
all these things—and much more—by the Holy Spirit. The formula, then, is pretty simple: by the
Spirit, we bear witness of Jesus; apart from the Spirit, we cannot--at least
not in an effective way.
It’s time to
pray. It’s time for each of us to
pray. It’s time to pray in our church
gatherings. It’s time to join with other
like-minded believers in other churches to pray. And what should we pray? Should we pray only for our health and safety
and for a political situation that meets with our approval and is to our
earthly advantage? As heavenly citizens
and ambassadors for Christ should we not pray for ourselves, in our walk with
Jesus, and for our marriages and families and for our churches? Should we not pray that we might be led and
empowered by the Spirit to continue on in the legacy of our forebears who bore
witness of the gospel amidst far more difficult situations than our own? Should we not, before the throne of grace,
join with our persecuted brethren who pray, not so much for their personal
safety, but instead that they might be faithful and courageous in bearing
witness of the Risen Christ? Should we not pray for lost souls? Should we not pray for the church, the pillar
and support of the truth? Nehemiah heard
of the broken down walls of Jerusalem and “wept and mourned for days…fasting
and praying before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:4). Look there, beloved, the pillars and support
of truth in the church in America are cracked and crumbling. Grieve over it and take the matter to the
Lord in prayer. There are souls in
danger. We’ve got the truth the lost
need to hear lest they face eternal judgment.
We cannot do what needs to be done in our own strength. The mission is too big. The opposition is too strong. We are too weak. We need power from above. It’s time to pray.
