Coming Out

"John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were GOING OUT TO HIM and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins." (Mark 1:4, 5)

The people of Israel were supposed to be God's covenant people.  They were the nation that God inhabited.  Jerusalem was the "city of God" and there was a temple in the city that was the very house of God.  Everything about that city within that nation was focused on that temporal dwelling place that had been built for the God that they continually sought. 

But before the time of Christ, God had been silent for 400 years.  People were starved for a word from God.  They wanted to know Him, and see Him move and work in ways that their fathers had experienced.  This desire to know God made them do the unthinkable.  They left the city, the temple, their traditions, and went out to the desert to see God work through one of the roughest figures that many had ever seen.  Have you ever considered what they were leaving behind in order to experience God?

They left behind the traditional places that God had lived.  The Jews believed that the temple in Jerusalem was the exclusive dwelling place of God.  It was the only place that one could go to be anywhere near His presence.  The rituals that were practiced by the priests and pharisees were rituals designed to bring about the presence of God. At one point these rituals had been valid - even commanded by God -  but by this time Israel had come to the point where they were simply going through the motions.  The ritual had become just that, ritual.  They had ceased to be about pleasing God and had become nothing more than a method for man to manipulate God.

I say these things, not to run down tradition, but to point out that sometimes tradition grows cold.  Those who went out into the desert were not leaving behind tradition simply to do something new.  Far too often we change just for the sake of change.  This was not the case.  These people were not leaving behind the commands of God.  They were simply tired of the ineffectiveness of man's interpretation of God's commands.  They wanted explanation, they wanted substance rather than formality and legalism.  These people wanted to experience the holiness of God.  They wanted to see Him work, they wanted to know Him.

This scripture has an interesting parallel in our day.  We go through the motions, and do what we've always done, and we don't experience God, we don't experience holiness, and we seldom experience anything more than those of the world experience.  We are generally pretty ignorant of the commands of God, why God gives them, and what we need to do with them.  We don't experience God because we've become very good at performing ritual and ignoring the substance.  I think this is probably a "form of Christianity that denies the power."  Scripture gives us the information that we need to experience God.  If we earnestly seek Him, He will be found.  The Bible gives us an abundance of proof that if we are seeking God, and not simply a free ticket to heaven, we will experience His presence in our lives.  We will see Him work among us, and within us, and around us.  The question is, how much dead ritual are you willing to give up to experience Him?  Are you willing to come out from among the cold, dead ritual that we practice to experience God through prayer, His Word, and His Holy Spirit?  It had taken the people of Jerusalem and Judea 400 years, but by the time John the Baptist came onto the scene they were finally willing.  Are we? 

Following at a Distance

When Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane most of His disciples scattered.  They fled in fear for their lives.  After having vowed allegiance to Him, they showed the great value that they placed on their earthly lives.  However, Luke tells us that Peter "followed at a distance (22:54)."  He had made the bold claim that he was willing to follow Jesus to the death, but after seeing Him arrested was only will to look on from afar.  Doesn't this seem like a familiar scene?

We have people in the church today who just can't understand why they don't experience the power of God in their lives.  They follow all the popular speakers and preachers, they read the most promising books, they go to the most up to date conferences and worship seminars, yet God just doesn't move.  Why?  I wonder if it's because so many are following at a distance.

There are thousands of professing Christians today who want to see the miraculous and the exciting, but they are not committed enough to their Savior to see it up close.  They follow those who are doing God's work and hope to see God move from a distance.  They're just close enough to see the fireworks, but not close enough to be scared of the bang.  We function within a church today that largely embodies this mentality that was displayed by the Apostle Peter so many years ago.  They want the benefits of following Jesus, but they don't want to make the sacrifice necessary to walk with Him.  So they think that if they follow far enough behind they can see the exciting work of God and simply be dragged into heaven along with the wake of those who are following God.  They want to see the results of a holy life without actually living one.  They want to see the results of an uncompromising biblical life, but they don't want to take the ridicule that may come with it.  They want to spend eternity in heaven, but they don't want to have to prepare for it during their time on earth.

As I was meditating on this scripture a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that this is the case with many more "Christians" than we would like to admit.  They'll come to church and participate in some of the activities, but it's always from a distance.  They'll only come so close.  Can it be that one of the reasons that we don't see God move in a mighty way in our day is because we're afraid to get to close to His work?

Blessings of the Holy Spirit

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. (Gal. 5:22)"

When Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, He empowered His people with the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit cleanses us, sanctifies us, and conforms our character to that of God. He can provide us with all of the things (and more) listed by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians. Not only can He provide those things, but we fully expect Him to. God has promised these things, and He should provide them in the way that we want them.

Something occurred to me along these lines this week. Can we really expect the blessings of the Holy Spirit if we are unwilling to stand in the truth revealed by Him? The Holy Spirit inspired the Word of God, interprets the Word, and teaches us about the Word. He is God's witness to us in the world today. There are things that are clearly revealed (such as the call to be holy) that are largely ignored by the church in our day. We explain them away and try to diminish the importance of many truths by making lists of "essentials" and "non-essentials" but the fact remains that the Spirit of God inspired these truths.

I think that if we are ever going to see revival among God's people it will come first and foremost through the prayers of God's people; but I also suspect that many of our prayers are in vain because we are not praying from the proper foundation. We do not see the blessings and power of the Spirit in the church because it is not sought with a proper foundation. The truth that is revealed by the Spirit is something that must be applied to our lives as a foundation for everything that happens spiritually.

We have tried for far too long to get by on what we think and what we want. It is time that the church stand on the truth that has been given by God. Look around you. The world, and especially our nation, is in turmoil. We have compromised too many times. We have ignored the truth far too often. If we are to be the holy people that God has called us to be we must be people whose desire is to know the truth that will set us free.