Easter Devotional - Day 27
"Anyone who belongs to Christ Jesus and wants to live right will have trouble from others. But evil people who pretend to be what they are not will become worse than ever, as they fool others and are fooled themselves." 2 Timothy 3:12-13
This is just not the part of the gospel we want to hear. It is not a good selling point in the marketing of our evangelism. "Come to Jesus and suffer!" I have not seen that slogan on too many billboards recently. "Think your life is hard, try Jesus!" just does not sound very catchy. Maybe that is why we ignore this part of the New Testament witness to Jesus and the gospel preached by folks like Paul. It's just not cool or catchy.
So what do we do with this aspect of the gospel message? Mostly, we just ignore it and hope it will go away. After all, books like The Prayer of Jabez sell the gospel people flock to buy. Joel Osteen is the preacher with the trendy message people are craving: "Come to God and be rich!" "God wants you to have a life of ease, success, and wealth!" "Oh, Lord, expand my borders and make me wealthy, great, prosperous, and famous!"
Jesus preached about success from a starkly different standpoint: "If you want to be great, learn to be the servant of all." He defined success and blessing radically different from the way we do. "Blessed are those who mourn." "Blessed are those who thirst." "Blessed are the poor." "Blessed are the hungry." "Blessed are you when all men revile and curse you because of me."
Why did Jesus have to make all those comments, anyway? It's a lot more pleasant to assume he did not really mean them. It is easier to spiritualize their application and ignore any purposeful intent on Jesus' part. It is easier to overlook the suffering Jesus and Paul spoke of as real, intentional, and actually part of the gospel. It runs far too contrary to our own aims to lend it any validity. Certainly, Jesus was only speaking of those times when the church is facing persecution, of times long ago when faith was not acceptable within a society like ours, of a context we have finally overcome.
Then we read that the geographical center of Christianity is now south of the equator. We hear that the church grows the most during times of persecution, than times of peace and prosperity. We find in our own history that as Americans became more affluent we left the church behind. We exchanged the glories of comfort for a gospel message of sacrifice, devotion, and dedication beyond the limits of personal comfort.
School now claims more importance for our families than church, faith, and discipleship. We give our social contracts more priority than our contract of faith with Christ Jesus. We want faith to alter our political and social arena to makes our lives easier. The result of our efforts, however, is that we exchange the demands of faith for the comforts of our social contracts, leaving the gospel behind in the balance. We fool ourselves and become the evil society we were taught to abhor, exchanging the gospel of Christ for a message of comfort, a lullaby to help put the gospel to rest. If it awakens, we'll just give it a sleeping pill.
Consider what the gospel has cost you and where you may have neglected to bear its burdens.
"Lord, grant me to understand the blessings of the gospel beyond the costs I would refuse."
—©Copyright 2009 Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/
This is just not the part of the gospel we want to hear. It is not a good selling point in the marketing of our evangelism. "Come to Jesus and suffer!" I have not seen that slogan on too many billboards recently. "Think your life is hard, try Jesus!" just does not sound very catchy. Maybe that is why we ignore this part of the New Testament witness to Jesus and the gospel preached by folks like Paul. It's just not cool or catchy.
So what do we do with this aspect of the gospel message? Mostly, we just ignore it and hope it will go away. After all, books like The Prayer of Jabez sell the gospel people flock to buy. Joel Osteen is the preacher with the trendy message people are craving: "Come to God and be rich!" "God wants you to have a life of ease, success, and wealth!" "Oh, Lord, expand my borders and make me wealthy, great, prosperous, and famous!"
Jesus preached about success from a starkly different standpoint: "If you want to be great, learn to be the servant of all." He defined success and blessing radically different from the way we do. "Blessed are those who mourn." "Blessed are those who thirst." "Blessed are the poor." "Blessed are the hungry." "Blessed are you when all men revile and curse you because of me."
Why did Jesus have to make all those comments, anyway? It's a lot more pleasant to assume he did not really mean them. It is easier to spiritualize their application and ignore any purposeful intent on Jesus' part. It is easier to overlook the suffering Jesus and Paul spoke of as real, intentional, and actually part of the gospel. It runs far too contrary to our own aims to lend it any validity. Certainly, Jesus was only speaking of those times when the church is facing persecution, of times long ago when faith was not acceptable within a society like ours, of a context we have finally overcome.
Then we read that the geographical center of Christianity is now south of the equator. We hear that the church grows the most during times of persecution, than times of peace and prosperity. We find in our own history that as Americans became more affluent we left the church behind. We exchanged the glories of comfort for a gospel message of sacrifice, devotion, and dedication beyond the limits of personal comfort.
School now claims more importance for our families than church, faith, and discipleship. We give our social contracts more priority than our contract of faith with Christ Jesus. We want faith to alter our political and social arena to makes our lives easier. The result of our efforts, however, is that we exchange the demands of faith for the comforts of our social contracts, leaving the gospel behind in the balance. We fool ourselves and become the evil society we were taught to abhor, exchanging the gospel of Christ for a message of comfort, a lullaby to help put the gospel to rest. If it awakens, we'll just give it a sleeping pill.
Consider what the gospel has cost you and where you may have neglected to bear its burdens.
"Lord, grant me to understand the blessings of the gospel beyond the costs I would refuse."
—©Copyright 2009 Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/
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