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They’ll Know We are Christians …

Loud is the world in its various forms and cluttered is our landscape with signs and advertising. It’s so hard to escape the bombardment–and still we fill our quiet time with TV in our homes and the radio in our cars.  Yet God tells us, “In returning and rest (or repentance) you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength …” Isaiah 30:15.  Must we compete with the world to reach out with the gospel?  And how do we be IN the world without being OF the world?  They hymn, “They’ll Know We are Christians” helps us to know:

I.  Ephesians 4:1-6.  They’ll know we are Christians by our warfare.  As the first stanza goes:

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, And we pray that our unity may one day be restored

Unity in Christ is a big factor in being to wage war not as the world does but with divine power to demolish strongholds and take thoughts captive for Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).  When Elijah was struggling after Jezebel threatened his life, God restored him with hot food and quiet rest, told him he was not alone, and reminded him that He was found not in the ways the world defined power but in “thin silence” (1 Kings 19:9-13).

II.  1 John 1:5–2:6.  They’ll know we are Christians by our walk.  The second stanza continues:

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand, We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand, And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land

First, we must walk with God in the light because His very nature is light.  Then, we find Jesus’ blood washing us clean as we walk in fellowship with others who are also walking in the light.  This means walking in obedience to truly know God and walking as Jesus did as an imitation of Him.  Only then are we in a position to teach the gospel as it comes from the same compassion for the lost that Jesus had (Matthew 9:35-38).

III.  Luke 18:35-43.  They’ll know we are Christians by our worship.  The final stanza declares:

All praise to the Father, from whom all things come, And all praise to Christ Jesus, His only Son, And all praise to the Spirit who makes us one

After a blind beggar, who had faith to be made well, was healed by Jesus, he “followed him, glorifying God.”  The passage concludes with the people who saw this giving praise to God as well.  We must give praise continually to God (Psalm 99:1-9).  When we live our lives as a living sacrifice, others see our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1-2) and give God praise and glory too.  This subtle advertising is the best billboard for the gospel.

The song concludes by telling us that it is by our love–even for those hardest to love–that the world will know that we are followers of Christ … just as Jesus told us (John 13:34-35, Matthew 5:43-48, 1 John 3:11-24):

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Do they know that you’re a Christian?

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From the Beginning

Since God is eternal without time, then what we know of time from creation to consummation is the smallest speck of dust on forever.  And yet, the humanists of our culture have cancelled creation to rid our existence of sin and consummation to rid us of judgment.  In their arrogance, they have declared themselves gods over a never-ending present time when we can all “do what feels good” without repercussions. Anyone who disagrees with them is cancelled or persecuted in other ways.

I.  Matthew 19:3-9.  When the Pharisees tested Jesus on the subject of divorce, He gave us a strategy of how to deal with the humanists in our culture today.  Twice, He referred them back to how God intended for things to be “from the beginning.”  For all of their insistence that their legalistic righteousness and standards they had established were the ones to follow (Romans 10:1-4), Jesus let them and the Jews who had believed Him know that slavery was found in sin and freedom in truth (how our culture has this backwards!).  Though they insisted that God was their Father, Jesus told them that their works and their inability to bear His words revealed their true parentage (John 8:31-47).

II.  Matthew 24:36-39.  The One who is from eternity confirms in these few verses the attitude of the culture before Noah and how similar it is to the attitude of the culture before He comes again.  He confirms the judgment on Noah’s world by a global flood by comparing the judgment to come on this present world.  Thus, Jesus confirms the salvation and covenant God made with Noah and his family we read about in Genesis 6-9 by comparing it with the salvation and covenant He makes with us through the water of baptism into Christ (1 Peter 3:18-22).  And yet through Peter, God also tells us that scoffers–mockers, humanists, evolutionists–will cancel us in the last days (2 Peter 3:3-7).

III.  John 1:1-3.  The eternal Christ is in the perfect position to tell us how things were “from the beginning.”  After all, He is God while being with God, and it is through Him that all things were made.  He was there “from the beginning” because He was “in the beginning.”  Here’s where the Pharisees or certain Jews of Jesus’ time on earth in the flesh are so like the humanists of our culture today.  Although they are finite in their limited existence, they nevertheless shake their fists at God when they declare themselves to be gods.  In their arrogant attitudes, they make earthly standards and then insist that all others adhere to them–or else (Romans 10:1-4).  It will not go well for them in the end.

Still, we need to know that the everlasting God (Psalm 90:2) is in control of our seemingly out of control world.  And we need to let Him and His Word control our attitudes more than the culture does.

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In This IS Love

As more see the current trends in our culture, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 have been selling well.  What the Catholic apologist, Peter Kreeft, once said is quickly coming true: control language and you control thought; control thought and you control action; control action and you control the world.  Sadly, many who profess to follow Christ are more influenced by the world than they are God.

I.  Isaiah 5:18-23.  Whether it is 1st Century paganism or 21st Century humanism, Christians have been persecuted for not following culture’s god, the state.  Increasingly, those who stand for truth in a politically-correct world find themselves as labeled “intolerant” by the “tolerant” because their beliefs differ.  The means of control and cancellation the state uses is language (James 3:1-12).  Terms such as ‘love,’ ‘gender,’ ‘marriage,’ ‘life,’ and ‘equality’ are hijacked to punish the populace into conformity.  The ramifications for Christian athletes, colleges, businesses, and churches are great.

II.  Exodus 4:10-12.  God reminds Moses that He made man’s mouth, and therefore controls the definitions of our language.  All man can do is choose to follow his own will or God’s in regard to this (Hebrews 13:15).  God alone defines love (1 John 4:7-12), gender (Genesis 1:27), marriage (Genesis 2:24), pre-born life (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 139:13-16), and equality.  Like the culture, He defines it as sameness in regards to sin (Romans 3:23) and the need for salvation (Galatians 3:26-28), but we are each different according to His sovereignty (Hebrews 2:4) and our abilities (Matthew 25:15).

III.  Romans 1:16-32.  The culture wants the church to remain complacent and compromised, but we know that the righteous live by faith.  We must wake up to the sin that we have so readily accepted in our lives and know the wrath that is coming because of it.  We must recognize how the bad company we’ve kept has corrupted our morals (1 Corinthians 15:33) and ask who has influenced us more–God or the culture?  Nearing the time of his death, Joshua asked the Israelites to choose God or the cultures of the land they had refused to eliminate from their lives (Joshua 24:14-15).

This same choice is before us.  What will you choose?

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You Troubler of Israel

Are those striving to live for God the problem in today’s world or those who have left His standard for their own?  The wicked king Ahab tried to label the prophet Elijah a “troubler” but was quickly told that it was his evil that was troubling the nation.  Who’s the real troubler in our humanistic culture today?

I. 1 Kings 18:17-19.  In his 1989 hit, Billy Joel famously sang, “We didn’t start the fire.”  This is where Ahab and the leaders and influencers in our humanistic culture believe they can call those who live by the Lord’s commandments “troublers.”  After all, Ahab didn’t introduce the worship of foreign gods; that was Solomon and Jeroboam before him.  He was just a product of the culture he inherited (1 Kings 16:30-33).  In the same way, humanists believe that Christians stand opposed to their commandments to live within the fire we’ve all inherited.

II. 1 John 1:5-10.  Billy Joel’s song continues, “No, we didn’t light it, but we’re trying to fight it.”  Ahab and today’s humanists excuse their actions because their intentions are good, but they do not step into the light to let their deeds be known for their darkness (John 3:19-21).  Thus, they judge evil as good and good as evil (Isaiah 5:18-23).  No excuses will do (Luke 14:18-24), and they truly believe that they render a service to the gods of their making (John 16:1-3) while they persecute God’s people.  We can know them by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20).

III.  Romans 1:18-32.  Judgment is coming for our humanistic culture whether they acknowledge it or not (Matthew 7:13-14).  As those who profess to follow God, we must be careful not to get caught up in it and live a compromised, lukewarm faith like Ahab believed about himself in his time.  The “tolerant” who follow the false religion of Humanism today believe that only man can be man’s savior and so government is god, and so they are intolerant of any who deviate from their politics and edicts, labeling them like Elijah was–troublers!

Are you a proud “troubler” according to the culture?  Or does the world not even know that you once professed to oppose them when you obeyed the gospel?  Have you compromised with the culture and think yourself better than those around you by degree of worldliness?  What would you have to change to no longer live by the excuses you make and be called a “troubler” by the world?

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Up from the Grave He Arose

Last July, six year-old Bridger Walker threw himself in front of a mean dog to shield his little sister from certain death.  After the dog tore open his face, he still got her to safety.  When asked why he did it, he said that as the big brother, “If someone had to die, I thought it should be me.”  Isn’t this what Jesus determined at Gethsemane and Calvary that He must do for us?  Just as the scars that Bridger carries are a reminder of the love he has for his sister, Jesus, being fully God, shields us from certain death by rising from the grave.

I.  Luke 24:1-7.  At the tomb, Jesus conquered our death problem.  Because we’ve all sinned (Romans 3:23), we’ve all earned death, but the gift of eternal life can now come to us because Jesus conquered death (Romans 6:23).  He was fully man to be our sacrifice, yes, but He was fully God to be our Savior.  We no longer need to be held in slavery to our fear of death because Jesus conquered (Hebrews 2:14-16).

II.  1 Corinthians 15:1-26.  At the tomb, Jesus had to be fully God to be our Savior.  The leaders of every other world religion died; only in Christianity do we serve a risen Savior.  Jesus reveals His divinity by promising to raise Himself from the dead (John 2:18-22).  On Pentecost, Peter confirms this by stating that God raised Him (Acts 2:22-24).  Because Jesus was fully God, the gospel can save us.

III.  1 Corinthians 15:42-57.  We can rise with Jesus who was fully God to be our Savior.  We, who die in Christ, will also live in Him.  Because death has been conquered, we can have victory in Jesus.  But we must obey.  Jesus’ work at the cross and at the tomb is ours to obey (Romans 6:3-5).  Because Jesus overcame death, He became our source of eternal salvation if we obey (Hebrews 5:7-9).

As noble as Bridger Walker’s saving of his sister was, Jesus’ conquering of death for all who obey the gospel is a better salvation story.  Have you obeyed it?