By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish
with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says that the account of Christ dying on the cross for the sins of his people was an outrageous blasphemy to the Jews and simply ridiculous to the Gentiles.
Nothing has changed. Christianity requires people to think in ways utterly different than those to which they are accustomed. To say to men in the 15th century BC that they cannot worship idols was the most unlikely thing you could have said to
them. The entire world worshipped idols. To tell those people that there is only one God and that he could not be worshipped or served by means of an image was, the contradiction of what everyone knew and what everyone practiced. (RSR)
Or how about this from Richard Mouw, who recollects his once serving on an interreligious panel in which his counterpart, a Buddhist, representing a very ancient faith,
originating five centuries before the appearance of Christ, expressed very clearly her basic disagreement with Christianity. She said that the Christian view is that we are all sinners in need of redemption while her Buddhist view says we are presently ignorant
people who need enlightenment. [Mouw, Abraham Kuyper, 91]
For crying out loud, still today hundreds of millions of people throughout the world think that man’s problem is ignorance, not sin, we just need to learn a few more things
and all is well! And here comes Christianity that says, no, the problem is that you are so wicked and evil that nothing less than God Himself coming to your rescue could save you, that is how bad you are! Not only does this make no sense to them, it offends
them deeply.
Here is the point: Throughout time, the Christian message has been received as a direct assault on the conventional wisdom and practices of a given culture. The Christian message
has always flown in the face of what men want to think and believe, and more importantly, how they want to live their lives.
And it is no different today in our culture. For example:
Jesus is the only way of salvation and no one will see heaven apart from Him.
You realize of course that this is an outrageous idea to the typical American. One God, one way to God, one Savior, one salvation, one way of life??? If you believe that
you are likened to the extremists who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. If you don’t believe me try this: At the next gathering you find yourself in that is not related in any way to church, clink your glass and when you have everyone’s full attention
say to them:
“Jesus Christ is the only way to God; every other religion and philosophy that does not have Jesus at its center must be fundamentally mistaken because
Jesus is the center of reality as both its Maker and its Redeemer.” See
what happens.
Or how about these: Every one of us is guilty of Adam’s rebellion and born in sin.
It is morally wrong and an offense to God to have sex before you are married. In fact, as Paul put it, there should not even be a hint of sexual immorality among you.
All forms of homosexuality are sinful and wrong.
Abortion is murder.
Rebellion against the Lord and His appointed authorities, that is the church, is the same as witchcraft.
The average American worldview is antithetical to the message of the Bible and the Christian faith. My guess is that most evangelicals would agree with me and we could work
up quite a foment…but then I would become their enemy too because I would ask why we are all such hypocrites.
What I mean is that most professing Christians do the same thing. We have our ways, our ways of thinking and behaving and the last thing we will tolerate is God coming in, His
Word coming in and turning our lives upside down. How dare God contradict what I want! The life of faith, of trusting the Lord, of believing HIS word and HIS ways over our own, is just as odd and just as ridiculed in the church!
We betray our Lord more often in our behavior than we do in our belief system. Anger, arrogance, manipulation, slander, gossip, these things the Lord speaks to but we think
we are obedient to the Lord as long as we don’t commit adultery, well, actually adultery, that stuff Jesus says about lust is another issue and one we will just ignore.
Why would a watching world ever think to obey the Lord Jesus Christ when it is so apparent that the Savior’s bride isn’t in submission to Him either? We might be led to think
one way and then faith, trusting the Lord’s word leads us to a completely different action, and to the unbelieving mind and even to some professing Christians that action seems odd.
In the Revelation, we find an interesting pattern of John hearing something and then turning around and seeing something very, very different, than what we might expect.
For example: I heard the sound of a Lion and when I turned I saw a Lamb as though slain. Not what he thought he was going to see.
Faith called Abraham to sacrifice his one and only son. Faith told a 16 year-old boy he would defeat a giant and not just a giant but a seasoned military giant. But
let me give you one more example of the way the Bible twists us to understand things that only faith can grasp and again, this is from our context.
Look at the glory of God as revealed to Joshua and Isaiah. We spoke about the necessity of the glory of God being our starting point…not what we do, but who God is,
how He has revealed himself AND, and most importantly the distance between the sapphire throne and the cross of Calvary. We have to see just how far our Lord was willing to come, just what He was willing to leave behind that He might come to us for our salvation.
John starts his gospel by saying, “and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father.” But in chapter 12 Jesus is speaking about His death…how is
that glory? What does the sapphire throne, and the angels singing Holy, Holy, Holy, have to do with Jesus’ troubled soul and his death?
I thought He was talking about glory? Oh, He is…but this is going to take some relearning. You look up God’s glory or the glory of Xp in a theological dictionary or
a systematic theology, and you will not get this…we are to see something else.
“Jesus takes the brightest word in our vocabularies and plunges it into the darkest pit of experience, violent and excruciating death. Everything we ever associated
with glory has to be recast…”
There is a scene in the Passion of the Christ, that takes artistic license. Jesus is carrying the cross and he falls, his mother Mary somehow breaks through the crowd and falls
on her knees and the two, Mary and the beaten bloodied Jesus are face to face and Jesus says; Behold I am making all things new.
As far as we know Jesus did not say that there, but elsewhere. But, that IS exactly what He was doing. Scourged and so badly beaten…and yet He sees glory, He sees the renewing
of all things in and through His sacrifice. Can you see it? Because Abraham knew God, really knew Him, he raised the knife thinking to himself, “Well, this is an odd way to go about things, but God will just have to raise Isaac from the dead.”
David thought, I know what everyone is saying, I can hear them, and I know that no one knows it, but God has anointed ME king.
In Joshua’s case, we can almost hear the sons saying to their dads, “How are we going to win? Oh, you just watch son, we are going to shout and the walls will fall right to
the ground…because God said so and we believe Him. And the more we worship and then the more we live, because worship and life go hand in hand, the more we worship and live, the more we will be found trusting and believing the Lord and HIS ways…and the more
our faith will take hold of the promises, live the promises and celebrates the victory…even while we wait for it.
Prayer: Father, grant me the wisdom and discernment to know if my repentance is that of pretense or if it is deep and sincere. Do not allow me to go on fooling
only myself. Deepen my repentance and may I produce fruit worthy of repentance and worthy of the great work of grace that You alone work in the hearts of sinners, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Psalm 51