The Good News Church

Posted on January 13, 2021 by salooper57

Our lives can be proof both of God’s existence and his relevance. We we can make the good news about God attractive to the people around us (Titus 2:9). God intends you and I to be living proof. Our lives – and our lifestyles – are meant to be attractive. We are the clickbait. We are the draw. We are the five-star ratings on God’s Amazon page.

But isn’t that is a lot of pressure to put on ourselves? What if I mess up … again? I’ve done it before and I’m sure to do it again, so how can I talk to others about Christ and the Way? They’d see right through me. Besides that, there are things in my life that still haven’t been straightened out: relationships, past mistakes, current habits. What if people knew about these things? Better to keep quiet.

That is wrong thinking. God wants to use our lives not because they’re perfect but because they’re his. He doesn’t want us to shut up in shame or cover up in hypocrisy but to be ourselves; or, rather, to becomes our truest selves in full view of family, co-workers, and friends. It is not the perfection but the direction of our lives that draws people on to Christ.

Maybe you are deeply spiritual, morally superior, emotionally balanced, and genuinely loving – not to mention good looking. Your life is so far beyond the lives of your neighbors that the possibility of being like you doesn’t even occur to them. But the guy who isn’t all that different from them but is headed in your direction – they’ll follow that guy.

Here is what we need to understand today. We don’t do this alone. We’re not on our own. Drawing people to Christ and his kingdom is a shared task. We accomplish it as part of a group of people who are all going in the same direction. The people in that group are all imperfect and incomplete, but together they picture a better way to live and a better God to serve. Isolated, their lives are not convincing, even if they are appealing. But together they provide a compelling picture of life under God’s rule.

Let’s say you are that deeply spiritual, morally superior, emotionally balanced, and genuinely loving (not to mention good looking) Christian. People think of you as incredibly special – one in a million. But they think of themselves as one of the million. The idea of being like you won’t even cross their minds.

But if they see a group of people, including some who look a lot like them, living a different and better way, the idea will cross their minds. They won’t say, “That kind of thing is not for me,” because they’ll be wondering if it could be for them—especially if we invite them to see for themselves.

If this sermon were an essay, this would be the thesis statement: The church, not the individual, is the primary lure God uses to entice people into his kingdom. The church is uniquely important to God’s overall purpose and is irreplaceable. Deeply spiritual, morally superior, emotionally balanced, and genuinely loving – not to mention good looking – individuals are no substitute for the church. There is a dynamic present when the church is together that is missing when the church is disconnected (which is why the racially segregated church in America is so regrettable).

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Ahem, Your Assumptions Are Showing

Posted on January 9, 2021 by salooper57

We are normally not aware of our own assumptions. It they show up, it is usually someone else who notices them first, like a shirt collar tag or the spinach in your teeth. Human beings cannot function without assumptions any more than a body can function without a skeleton, but their assumptions are normally as invisible as their bones.

There are times, however, when people’s arguments are so thin that their assumptions show through, like the ribs of a famished child. This has frequently been the case during this past election cycle. When people engage in thinly veiled ad hominem arguments, their assumptions show right through.

Assumptions may be true or false, solid or porous, a helpful support or a useless frame. The beginning of 2021 is a good time to check our assumptions, make sure they are solid and are where they should be. To do this will almost certainly require a friend to look us over and tell us if our assumptions are showing. An enemy might be even better.

Inaccurate assumptions can lead to improper actions, painful emotions, and harmful results. A woman was stuck in the airport, waiting for a delayed flight. As her layover stretched into hours, she got hungry. Because she had pre-purchased an inflight meal, she bought only a bag of cookies, hoping they would tide her over. She sat down at a corner table in a crowded snack bar, opened a newspaper, and began to read.

She scanned the world and national news, then flipped through the lifestyle section. Just as she took up the business section, she heard the rustling of plastic. She lowered her paper to find a well-dressed man sitting across from her eating one of the cookies. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

She glowered at him, pulled the cookies to her side of the table, and conspicuously ate one. She then raised the paper to check what was happening in the markets. Almost immediately, he was back into the cookies. She lowered the paper again and glared at him but, the moment she raised it, he was at it again. This time she stared long and hard at him. In response, he broke the last cookie, slid half across to her, put the rest in his mouth and walked off.

She bristled with anger until her flight was called. At the gate, she reached into her purse for her boarding pass and found the package of cookies she had purchased earlier, unopened.

Unexamined assumptions can lead us to misjudge others’ motives, think ourselves superior, and create unnecessary conflict. Such things have been the hallmark of 2020. Democrats are naïve. Republicans are stupid. Mask-wearers are cowards. Mask-less COVID-deniers care only about themselves. Joe Biden is senile. Donald Trump is just a narcissist.

If, while reading that last sentence, you thought, “But that one is true,” your assumptions are showing – and they are about as attractive as spinach between your teeth. But what if we were to challenge our assumptions, to hold them provisionally until they were confirmed? Such a change could transform our relationships and our country. If, instead of assuming people from the other party are naïve or stupid, we were to question whether there might be something they see that we have missed, our attitude toward them would change.

This is not only true when we are considering other people. It is also true when we are considering God. For example, some people run from God because they assume that his demands on them would be unreasonable and would spoil their lives. Yet the testimony of both Scripture and people throughout history suggests the opposite: that God wants people to be joyful and fulfilled.

To look at our circumstances, we might assume that God has forgotten or forsaken us, or even that he opposes us. Even saints have at times struggled with such thoughts. But if we challenge that assumption and provisionally substitute the supposition that God intends to bring good to us and to the world, we might discover divine activity even in the midst of great difficulty. And once we find it, we might become part of it, and that would change everything.

(First published by Gannet.)

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Living Christian, Living Different.

Posted on January 8, 2021 by salooper57

Christians are not only different in who they are but also in what they do. I know a young woman who, after her first baby was born – I’d never heard of this before – ate the placenta. I’m sure someone will rush to tell me why that is a good thing (and maybe it is) but it is different, at least by my standards. But it is not doing unusual things that makes Christians different.

One difference is our habit (it’s not just an occasional thing) of doing good deeds. Jesus taught us to let our light so shine that people “will see [our] good deeds and glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Peter echoed this: “…they may see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12). Paul taught that God has prepared good deeds in advance for us to discover and perform (Ephesians 2:10). Most people try to get out of doing anything they don’t have to do. We go out of our way to do good for all people, especially our fellow Christians (Galatians 6:10). It’s a habit.

One of the big things we do that is different – countercultural, even – is we forgive. We don’t forgive because someone deserves it – forgiveness, by its very nature, is never deserved. We forgive because God forgives. We are different because he is different. When we forgive, we reveal what he is like. Forgiveness makes the teaching of God our savior attractive. When we forgive, we make it possible for people to believe that God will forgive.

When the people of Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston forgave Dylan Roof for the murder of their loved ones, they were different. That difference evoked a backlash from people who cling to unforgiveness as a kind of power. But how attractive Mother Emmanuel made the teaching of God our savior! If they can forgive, then maybe God can forgive me.

Think back to the passage in Titus, only this time substitute the words “employee” for “slave” and “boss” for “master”. (Titus 2:9-10) Teach employees to be subject to their bosses in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”  In the workplace, that kind of employee is different. That’s the kind of employee God wants us to be.

We could go one listing examples. I’ll just mention a couple of relatively easy ones that have biblical sanction. First, simply joining other Christians regularly for worship (which the Bible instructs us to do) makes us different. In an average week, only about 20 to 25 percent of our neighbors go to church (this was pre-COVID). If we go, we are different. Exploit the difference.

Another thing: the use of profanity has increased dramatically in American life, especially among religious people. If we will just refrain from using that kind of language (which the Bible instructs us to do), and from the anger and condemnation that underlie them, we will be different.

Christians need to remember the mission: to attract people to the king and his kingdom, where people live differently, live better, live forever.

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Christians Should Be Different: Here’s Why

Posted on January 7, 2021 by salooper57

How do we make the teaching about God attractive to people who have never given it any thought – don’t even know there is anything to think about? How do we help them trust the unseen God, when there are so many things they can see that everyone else trusts?

We make the teaching about God attractive and motivate people to join his side both by who we are (or by who we are becoming, since who we are now is still so very incomplete) and by what we do. What we do is the outworking of who we are (or who we are becoming).

First, who we are (or who we are becoming). This only works if we are different from the people around us. God’s plan depends on it. It is the difference that attracts people to God.

A magnetic field depends on having a north and south pole. It is the opposite poles that attract. Likewise, our power of attraction depends on us being polar opposites to those around us. That doesn’t mean being weird or hostile but it does mean being different.

In Leviticus 19:2, God says to his people, “Be holy for I, the LORD your God, am holy.” More than one famous Bible scholar has pointed out this could be translated, “Be different for I, the LORD your God, am different.”

Because the LORD is different from other gods (both those in the ancient and the contemporary world), we who serve him will be different from people who bow to other gods, including money, political power, science, and education. (By the way, Christians should be involved in all those things. They are good things as long as they remain humanity’s servants. They are devilishly evil things when they become humanity’s gods, which is something we have seen played out before our eyes in recent months.)

But what makes us different? The fundamental difference is that we are God-oriented. If somehow God could be removed from our lives or we could be removed from our God (thankfully impossible), we would no longer be us. God is not just a part of our life, not even a big part; he is our life (Colossians 3:4). I’ve known people who have left the faith, moved from professing belief in God to professing disbelief in him, and the curious thing is that nothing really changed. I don’t see how that is possible – if they were really God’s people. Our lives, put bluntly, are about God.

Our values are also different. Most people’s chief values are: current comforts and pleasures (what St. John calls “the lust of the flesh”); future acquisitions of comfort and pleasure (“the lust of the eyes – gotta have that!”); and a position of status or prestige (“the pride of life”). I don’t say they enjoy those things – they don’t time; they’re too busy trying to acquire them – but they value them.

Our values are different. When we are granted pleasures and possessions and positions, we enjoy them; but we don’t need them and we won’t let them derail us from our pursuit of God, of love and of truth. That makes us different.

We don’t fear – or at least the person we are becoming is starting to overcome – the fears that control most people’s lives. They fear loss, humiliation, weakness, age, and death. It is ironic: in Western society, people lead the safest lives in the history of the world, yet they experience more anxiety than ever before. People have been taught to fear the next snowstorm, the next president, next market reversal, virus, disease, and internet outage. Unbelievable amounts of money are spent to protect people from their fears. But we fear God and, because we do, we are getting over our fear of everything else.

Another difference is our hope. In our day, distraction has usurped the place of hope, but that is not so in our lives. Even when we are nearing the end of life here, we continue to look forward. Our hopes transcend the next election, the end of COVID, our next vacation. The vacation may get cancelled; COVID may not get cancelled – it may continue; the election may usher the wrong party into power; but our hopes remain undiminished. Even immanent death cannot take hope from us.

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The Wrong Metaphor for Christian Mission

Posted on January 5, 2021 by salooper57

Ideas are always context dependent. They make sense within a context. Outside of that context they may have a different meaning – or no meaning at all. The words I just used to describe our role (salespeople, promoters, advance team, marketing team) are found in a marketplace context. Salespeople coax shoppers to spend money on their product. Marketing teams try to capture market share. But the marketplace is not the best context for understanding our role.

Let’s try a different context that might help us gain a more biblical understanding of our mission. Instead of the Madison Avenue executive who attracts dollars, or the social media influencer who attracts followers, let’s substitute the revolutionary who attracts recruits.

I realize how controversial that image is in our day, when extremists are radicalizing young people and recruiting them to perform atrocious acts of violence. But I prefer it nonetheless because it has biblical resonances the other images lack. The good news we have been investigating is the gospel (the announcement) of the kingdom and of the king. It is the good news, as was said in ancient Thessalonica, “that there is another king, one called Jesus” (Acts 17:7).

Instead of a Madison Avenue context, try picturing a Majority World context where upheaval and discord have been the norm for a generation. The leader in power has been there for over 30 years, ever since a popular uprising and military coup landed him in office. But his government is corrupt. Tax monies, which are bleeding the nation dry, end up in the pockets of a dozen powerful men, along with vast sums of misappropriated foreign aid. Those men live in luxury while the rest of the nation is hungry and hurting. Whenever common people go to the streets to protest, the military is ordered to mow them down like grass.

But now a great national leader who has been abroad for decades is planning to return to put an end to the corruption and injustice. His advance team is in your town, and they tell you about him. He is a great man who is humble and kind, honest and just, wise and powerful. They tell you about his plans to install a government that will protect its people, not feed on them. You have questions. They have answers. At some point, they challenge you to join them, to come over their leader’s side in anticipation of his return – and you do.

Now it is your turn to recruit others. This is not about market share or follower stats. It is about freedom, justice, truth, mercy, grace. What hangs on this is the future. You are advertising for a ruler, not a dollar.

That is roughly the position in which we find ourselves. We are not trying to corner the ecclesial market. We are not fighting for our share of religious dollars. Our only competition is with those principalities and powers that have usurped God’s place. We have news of a king and his coming kingdom. He will change things and make them right – and is already making things right in our own lives. Our lives provide the proof – the cosmetological proof – that he knows how to make things right. And we can tell people with confidence that he accepts everyone who comes to him, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what side they have taken in the past.

This acceptance is known as the reconciliation. Listen to how St. Paul speaks of it (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of the 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 the 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.”

This is an important passage that deserves careful study, which is not within the scope of this article (but we will come back to it). At this point, we just want you to grasp the context: God has begun the reconciliation and has given Christ’s people the role of his advance team, promoting God, appealing to people to join the coming kingdom, to come over to God’s side.

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The “Cosmetological” Proof for God

Posted on January 4, 2021 by salooper57

In philosophy, there are five principal arguments or proofs for the existence of God. One of those is known as The Cosmological Proof and argues there must be a sufficient and non-contingent cause for the contingent beings and processes that exist; and God is that cause.

We could talk more about the Cosmological Proof, but some of you are already nodding off; so, instead of the cosmological proof, let’s talk about what I call the cosmetological proof. This might be the first time those words have ever been used together, so they may require some ll explanation. Cosmetology is the study and practice of applying beauty treatments. Christians are called to be cosmetologists. We are to make the teaching about God attractive.

This is Titus 2:9-10: “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” Later, we will think about the instruction in these verses but, at this point, note their purpose: to “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”

That is what we do. Make the teaching about God attractive. The Greek word Paul uses here is “cosmeo,” from which we derive not only the word “cosmos” but also the word “cosmetics.” Cosmeo has the idea of ordering or arranging something, whether the universe or a person’s face and hair. When used of people, the thought is to make them attractive.

Some Christians are poor cosmetologists. Instead of arranging the teaching about God our savior to bring out its beauty, they derange it and make it look clownish and ugly. Take the hypocrite (someone who suffers from reality detachment). Going to him for teaching about God is like going to a stylist who suffers from a retinal detachment for a haircut. The end result in both cases will not be pretty.

For the last few months, we have been thinking hard about the gospel: what it is, what it means, and what we should do about it. Here is one thing we should do: make it attractive. Bring out its beauty. In Paul’s words, “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”

That idea is present in many places in the Bible. We are to be “wise in the way we act toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity” (Colossians 4:5). Paul tells the Thessalonians to order their daily lives in a way that is becoming (that is what the word he chose means) to outsiders (1 Thessalonians 4:12). St. Peter suggests a way for wives to make themselves – not just their bodies – beautiful (same word we have here) so that their husbands can be won over to God’s side.

In the same letter, Peter calls on all Jesus’s people to live in a way that will attract others to God, that will cause them (in his words) to “glorify God.” Peter was simply echoing teaching he heard from Jesus about being the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Salt brings out the flavor in food. Light reveals the beauty of a place. Jesus wanted his people to reveal the beauty of God and the remarkable flavor of the life spent with him.

There is an Old Testament text that can help us understand the cosmetological proof. God tells the prophet Jeremiah to buy and wear a linen belt. This was not like men’s leather belts today but a kind of sash that was worn around the waist and was meant to be stylish and attractive.

Then God told the prophet to take off the sash and hide it in a crevice in the rock. Jeremiah buried it in the crevice. When God later told him to dig it up, Jeremiah found it ruined – stained, mildewed, nasty. God used the ugly belt as a metaphor. He said, “…as a belt is bound around a man’s waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,’ declares the LORD, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor” (Jeremiah 13:11).

As Christopher Wright put it, “God wants to wear his people.”[1] They make God look good, enhance his renown, praise, and honor. His people – that is, we – are intended to live in a way that brings out the goodness, glory, and beauty of God for others to see.

The Cosmetological Argument does more than prove the existence of God. It proves him to be desirable. It is not advanced by philosophers’ dialectic but by our delight in God. We attract people’s attention to God by the attention we give God.

[1] Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People, p. 137.

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COVID-19: We Could Have Done Better. Why Didn’t We?

Posted on January 2, 2021 by salooper57

We could have done better. COVID-19 might have been a uniter, bringing Americans together to deal with a common threat and to preserve a shared interest. We could have done what America has done before in the face of such threats: put aside what divides us and work together for the common good.

But COVID-19 has not be a uniter. Or rather, we have not been uniters. We have retreated from each other into our political, racial, and religious corners, like prize fighters, impatient for the next round so that we can deliver our jabs or maybe even a knockout punch.

Writers and social commentators are calling 2020 “The Year of COVID” and “The Year of the Coronavirus,” but this is a misnomer. 2020 was “The Year of Division.” The coronavirus merely alerted us to how deep our divisions are.

Before the coronavirus, the division between the races, always painfully present, was front and center. The division between the sexes was also highlighted by the Me-Too movement and the trial of Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men. The division between the wealthy and the poor became glaring in the light of growing income inequality.

The divisions have further divided us. Somehow Black Lives Matter turned into an argument about the value of Blue Lives. The pain and humiliation suffered by the sexually harassed led to the defamation of victims. Instead of raising concern, the income inequality numbers became a sword in the hands of political swashbucklers. COVID didn’t divide us. We were already divided.

We can blame COVID-19 for the current state of affairs, but the real blame falls back on us. We have not been people of peace but people of strife. We have not tried to see the good in others but have looked for the bad. We have not mended divisions; we have intentionally deepened them.

These divisions did not happen because of COVID. They happened because of us. COVID, like a societal microscope, merely magnified it. A coronavirus cannot kill the American way of life, but these other diseases, which are diseases of the soul, can.

These diseases of the soul go by long-established names and the wise have always been aware of them. They are known as greed, lust, anger, sloth, envy, gluttony, and pride, the so-called seven deadly sins. Division is one of their chief symptoms.

COVID-19 will eventually go away but what about these diseases of the soul? Is there any cure for them? For this disease has not only infected individuals; it has spread through human society all across the globe.

There is an island in the South Pacific where everyone is profoundly colorblind. Natives to the island all see in grayscale. They neither see nor understand color. How could this colorblindness ever be undone? By introducing a color-sighted person into the genetic line.

Christians believe that God has followed a similar route in curing the diseases of the soul. He introduced a human who was free of sin into soul-ravaged humanity, the one person who had not been infected. Someone “like us in every way, yet without sin.” But if every human had been infected, as the Bible teaches and Christians believe, where on earth would this person be found?

Not on earth. In heaven. This person was, as St. Paul put it, “the man from heaven.” Christians know him as Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Ironically, it took God to be truly and healthily human. Jesus did not merely bring the cure; he is the cure.

That cure is already available. Unlike the COVID vaccine, no one must wait in line. This cure, however, must continue to be taken over a lifetime, which is another way of saying one must persevere in faith.

This cure relieves the painful side effects like division, fear, violence, and hatred that are associated with the soul-diseases of greed, pride, anger, and lust. However, symptom relief generally takes time and requires the continuing application of the cure, as directed. While immediate benefits are frequently experienced, the eradication of soul diseases is progressive and occurs over a lifetime (and even beyond).

So it would be wise to start now.

(First published by Gannet.)

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The Role of Witnesses: What Have We Seen?

Posted on January 1, 2021 by salooper57

We haven’t seen what the apostles saw, but we have seen other things. We’ve seen God change our lives for the better, give us hope, bring us peace, transform our relationships, free us from addictions, replace unforgiveness with love, anger with goodwill, save our marriages and much more. We have seen for ourselves that serving the Lord Jesus is the best thing we’ve ever done.

Trusting Jesus (and not just believing things about him) and living for Jesus (so that our life choices are centered around him) will change us and impact those around us. We willsee things we haven’t seen before, our confidence will grow, and our hope deepen. That doesn’t mean life will get easier. It didn’t get easier for those first gospelers—it got harder … and better. Jesus promised trouble and joy – and his people get both.

Before Karen and I started dating, we each had dedicated ourselves to the Lord Jesus. When we got married, our plan was to go abroad and work among the poorest of the poor, sharing the good news of Jesus in word and, especially, deed (since neither of us had any public speaking skills).

We applied to our denomination for licensing and began the process of becoming overseas workers. That included fulfilling a two-year term of service in our own country. I was given the job of pastoring a church that was on the brink of closing. I didn’t want to be a pastor, had no idea how to be a pastor, and was afraid to speak in front of people. But Karen and I were trusting King Jesus, to whom we were committed.

Three months after my pastoral duties began, the biggest giver in the church died. It was her money that kept the bills paid – including my salary. Then began an odyssey of trust in God and learning what he is like. Within a year-and-a-half, we had used up all our personal savings. Not long after that our first child was born and we had no insurance and no money. We had to apply for Hill-Burton Act funds to help with the hospital bills.

Things got harder as time went on. One winter, the suede leather coat my dad had given me was at the dry cleaner and I had no money to redeem it. Because the garage door was always coming off its track, I got a big glob of grease on my other winter coat, so it was at the dry cleaners too. The bill for both coats was just short of $50, which we didn’t have. So we prayed.

It was January, Sunday was coming, and I needed a coat. Right after praying for the money with our young son Joel, I went down to the mailbox, hoping that God would supply as he had at other times, through the post.

But there were no checks in the mail. There may have been some bills, I don’t remember. However, when I went outside a few hours later, I found an envelope stuck in the door with a $50 bill in it.

During those years, people we didn’t know and had never met stopped, got out of their cars, and gave us money, saying that God told them to do it. Not once, but multiple times – and never the same people.

When our car was giving me fits, I prayed what in spiritual formation circles is called whining prayer: GOD, I NEED A NEW CAR! And that evening we were given a new car. Well, it wasn’t new, but it was new to us and that is what I meant when I prayed.

I was invited to speak at a prayer retreat 40 miles away. The night before I left, I was up, pacing the floor, and questioning whether I should continue as the pastor of this church. We had no money, no groceries, and two kids to feed. I was having a crisis of faith. I was a dad who couldn’t take care of his family. But that night God helped me and I renewed my commitment to him. I told him he was still my portion and my very great reward and that I would trust him.

At the retreat, a woman I didn’t know asked if she could speak with me. She handed me a check, already filled out, and said, “God wants me to give this to you.” When I got home that night, I learned that people from church had dropped off groceries, which was the first time I remember that happening.

Those in-the-moment-of-need provisions became a common occurrence and, the thing is, we never told anyone (except God) of our need, not even our parents – especially our parents. We have seen how God acts in this world for the people of Jesus.

But money is just a little thing (as Jesus himself pointed out), a first-year introductory course. More important is what God is doing in our lives and our family. He has been changing us, even while – even by – allowing us a small part in what he is doing to change the world. Karen and I are satisfied. We are satisfied with life. We are satisfied with God. And with the things we are not satisfied – usually ourselves – we trust God to keep working until he is satisfied!

The first disciples told people what they had seen and, because they had experienced these things for themselves, their words had power. When we can tell people what we have seen for ourselves; when we can tell them about the Lord we have experienced and about whom we are excited, our words will also have power.

That is God’s plan. He is ready to show himself to us as real, as Lord. The Jesus who died for our sins, was buried, raised, and seen, can be experienced in our own lives. But it is not the religionists who experience him. It is the revolutionaries. It is not the spiritual dabblers. It is the committed. It is not those who play at religion but those who trust the God they’ve found – the God who’s found them – in Jesus.

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The Role of Witnesses: Revolutionary or Religionist?

Posted on December 31, 2020 by salooper57

Once the disciples had grasped the big picture – that the kingdom of God had broken into our world with Jesus’s resurrection – they began telling others. They started functioning, just as Jesus said they would, as witnesses to him and the resurrection.

We will go wrong if we think those early followers of Jesus thought they were spreading a new religion. Nothing could have been further from their minds or more repugnant to their hearts. They were Jewish people who worshiped the God of Abraham, who had acted through Jesus to bring the world under his rule and would take further action still.

The apostles didn’t think of themselves as starting a religion but as carrying on a revolution. They announced that Jesus, not Caesar nor anyone else, was the rightful ruler of the world. They were expecting the kingdoms of the world to become the kingdom of God and his Messiah, just as the prophets had promised. The world had changed because of Jesus and would change even more, and they were spreading the news.

Whether you see yourself as a revolutionary or as a religionist makes a great deal of difference. The revolutionary goes into the world. The religionist goes to services. The revolutionary is committed to bringing heaven to earth. The religionist is satisfied with going to heaven. The mindset is entirely different. One has had an insight; the other has received a call.

So, how do you see yourself? It will depend, I think, on how you see Jesus. If you see him as his disciples did – the exalted Lord and kingdom-bringer – you will see yourself more as a revolutionary. If you see him as he is often represented today – an economy-class ticket to heaven – you’ll see yourself more as a religionist.

Our text says that the risen Christ appeared to Peter, then to the 12, then to more than 500 disciples at one time, then to James, then to other apostles, and finally to Paul himself. These witnesses found themselves caught up in the revolution. They were in the vanguard of the coming kingdom. They knew their announcement of what God had done was preparing people for what God was doing—and would do.

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The Role of Witnessing: Telling People What We’ve Seen

Posted on December 30, 2020 by salooper57

When people see some unusual event – whether a possible kidnapping or the return of someone from the dead – what do they do? They tell people. That is what we did when we heard the woman’s scream and saw her pushed into the car. We called the authorities and later told our friends.

That is what the apostles did. They told their friends, told the authorities, told everyone who would listen – and others who would not. You might think they would tire of telling the same story, but they had come (with Jesus’s help) to understand its relevance. The future of the world was wrapped up in what they had seen. People needed to hear about it in order to adjust to the coming reality.

At first, the disciples told only their friends. They knew what they had seen: Jesus, alive after having been crucified; but they didn’t yet understand what it entailed, the vastness of its scope.

But they did understand that the people who killed Jesus might kill them too. The authorities had grilled Jesus about his followers before they executed him. That was ominous.

Jesus had been executed as a revolutionary, and the disciples knew how their Roman overlords treated revolutionaries. During the slave revolt, Rome brutally executed thousands of – not combatants but – POWs. The same general who conquered Jerusalem had once lined the Appian way from Rome to Capua with crucified POWS. Every 2/10ths of a mile for about a hundred miles, travelers on that road saw a different dead slave nailed to a cross – 6,000 in all.

The Empire thought of crucifixion as an attention-grabbing billboard that would leave everyone talking about what happens to people who challenge Rome. The apostles had seen smaller copies of that same billboard many times.

Rome had killed Jesus … and yet here he was alive again, which meant God has veto power over Rome! Over the next forty days, the risen Jesus explained to the disciples the significance of what had happened: God was fulfilling his promises, bringing his kingdom. He told them that the next step in the Kingdom of God revolution was for them to announce the good news far and wide.

So they told everyone, even the authorities – and they pulled no punches. Listen to the Apostle Peter: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” (Acts 3:13-15).

Before the very people who ordered Jesus’s death, the apostles said, “The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:30-33).

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