No Apologies

I read an article a few weeks ago that was written by a Nazarene preacher.  He was lamenting the fact that we are so often apologetic about holiness.  People ask us what we believe and we tell them as if we're sorry for it.  We try to avoid the fact that Scripture does not condone sin in any form.  We do everything we can to keep from having to teach that we must live a sanctified life.  We don't want to have to tell people that God has called us to be holy.

My new year's resolution for this year is to teach the truth of the Bible (yes, we must be holy) without making apology for it (Not that I've ever been accused of apologizing).  I am well aware that those who are living in sin can't stand the idea that God has called us to live above sin and made provision for us to do so through Jesus Christ.  I know that they call those who teach that truth arrogant and prideful.  I make no pretense about the fact that the church culture of our day looks down on those who endeavor to live "in the Spirit." 

Since when did those people set the standard?  When did the truth of the Word of God become contingent on whether or not we like it, or agree with it?  The culture may be changing around us.  We know that the culture within the church has changed.  We like to water things down to the point that nobody really knows what we stand for.  Doctrinal teaching may or may not drive people away (I'll never be convinced that it does), but the truth is still the truth.  The words that have been inspired by our Holy God are still our sustenance.  They still keep us and for that fact we should make no apology.

A Prevailing God

Every year during the holiday season it becomes more and more apparent that man has succeeded in making Christmas (the celebration of the birthday of Jesus) about us.  We make our lists of what we want so that they can be distributed to all of our friends and family members.  Stores have taken any reference to Christ out of their advertising and displays, and schools have replaced Christmas concerts with Holiday concerts.  Man has done everything in his power to overcome the presence and power of God.  The time has come for us to pray the prayer of David.  "Arise, O Lord!  Let not man prevail..." (Psalm 9:19)

How many of us can honestly pray such a prayer?  We fill our days with activity after activity that will allow us to accomplish our ambition and meet our goals while giving little - if any - thought to what God desires to accomplish through us.  We wonder why the church seems impotent and powerless in our society today, and why our influence has diminished to the point where we are looked at as a fringe group of lunatics.  It's because our desire is not for God to prevail over man.  We want to see man get his way.  We want earthly success and great accomplishments to be admired by generations to come. 

If we are ever to be the church that God has called us to be, and the Christians that He wants us to be, it will be because God has arisen and prevailed over man.  This will never take place until we can honestly pray, as David prayed so many years ago, "Let not man prevail..."

What If?

I'm looking out the window at the rain this afternoon and wondering what Noah must have thought the first time he experienced this.  He had likely never seen rain before, and God had told him that this rain would flood the entire earth.  (I know that some of my more liberal friends don't believe that the entire earth was flooded, but the Bible says it was and you and I weren't there to prove otherwise, so we'll look at it as truth.) 

Consider the place from which Noah saw the rain.  He was in a boat.  He had never built a boat before, but there he was.  He didn't know if it would float, and this particular boat had no rudder to steer (check out the instructions God gave, there's not rudder or helm).  Of course, that was probably better for everyone since Noah was not a sailor and his sons were not navigators. 

Imagine the submission to God's command that it took for Noah to be in this position.  We talk about holiness as a consecration to God and His love and commands, and this is a clear example of such a commitment.  When God calls us today we always have a list of "what ifs" a mile long.  Whether it is finances, or resources, or support from others we always want to know "what if?"  Do we really think that the Old Testament prophets were without these same questions?  They probably asked every question that the human mind could imagine when God called them to do the improbable, and in most cases the seemingly impossible. 

Maybe if we are to see God's power at work among us we need to forget about the "what ifs" and just allow God to work.  We serve the same God who parted the seas, kept Jonah in a fish, defeated the prophets of Baal, and made the sun stand still.  Why do we feel this need to incessantly ask "what if?"  Do we really think that God is incapable of doing what He said He would do?  If scripture teaches anything, it teaches that God has given His word, and He will keep that word.  He has promised to provide, comfort, free from sin, among many other things.  It is time that we quit asking "what if" and simply trust in the one to whom we belong.

Submission

As Ezekiel stood among the exiles by the Chebar canal he saw a vision.  He saw four figures, each with four faces.  They represented the people of God - each face representing the banners of the tribes of Israel.  The details of the creatures in the vision are important, but there is one that jumped off the page at me the other day.  "And each went straight forward.  WHEREVER THE SPIRIT WOULD GO, THEY WENT, without turning as they went." (Ezekiel 1:12) 

Even in this Old Testament vision given to the disobedient captives the people of God (represented by these images) are guided by the Spirit of God.  They go where they are led by the Spirit without turning to the side, without stopping to admire and  chase the worldly things around them. 

The whole of Holy Scripture teaches submission to God's Spirit, and as Christians we claim the Bible to be authoritative.  The Word of God, inspired by His Spirit.  I believe all of those things to be true.  But if that's the case, why are we so afraid to submit to Him?  Why do we continually refuse to give up our control of things and let God be God?  This is why we don't see the holy people of God.  Holiness is God's love and His character showing through our lives.  If we do not submit to Him, how can He make us something better than we were before?  Without a full submission we simply cannot live the lives that God requires us to live.

Our refusal and fear of submission make no sense whatsoever when we really take the time to think about it.  How many people have ever had everything turn out exactly like they wanted it to?  How can that be since "we're in control?"  No matter what methods we employ to control our circumstances, things never happen like we had thought, or hoped, they would.  Yet we have convinced ourselves that we know better than God.  He created the universe, sent His son to die for us, performed all of the miracles that we read in Scripture, and we still will not submit.  The danger is this:  Historically, when the people of God refuse to submit to God they are judged.  Over and over again this has taken place.  This is the place in which we find Ezekiel.  We can keep telling ourselves that we are smart enough and powerful enough and rich enough to guide ourselves, but history has proven different since the beginning of time.  If we are ever going to see a revival of holiness within the church, and awakening of God's people, it will be when we learn to submit EVERYTHING to God.

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.