When Jesus Wins We All Win
Notes
Transcript
Hope
Hope
We always have hope.
Faith is confidence of what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Heb. 11:1)
No matter what happens around us, we can always have confidence about our future getting better.
We just came thru an election and there was a lot of hyperbole about the end of democracy or the end free elections. It will never be the same. We will never return to the glory of the past. It’s over.
Is it? Really?
If you believe everything you read on FB or hear in the MSM, then, yes, you are probably in the camp that something horrible happened on, or after, Nov. 8, and we’ll never be able to recover from it.
Truth is, the government has influence on how we do church. There has never been a socialist country that is friendly w/ the church and pro-God.
According to Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto, and I’m paraphrasing here, the government can do for the ppl everything the communist believes God does for the ppl. They’re wrong in what they think God does for the ppl.
But, in the communist system, they don’t believe the church, or God, is necessary, b/c the gov’t provides peace, joy, satisfaction, a reason for living and working, happiness, the necessities of life, etc.
Of course, God provides life itself. Lives change from the inside out for the better when we come to faith in God. They don’t get that.
No gov’t or nation has ever given christians and churches the freedom to pursue God more than the US.
However, is the church dead in socialist nations like China, Russia, and Venezuela? Is the church non-existent in Muslim countries in the Middle East?
No. In fact, there is evidence that the church is growing and ppl are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers in countries that oppress the church.
How can that be? God is more powerful than any government restriction or limitation.
It may seem like we’re losing in those countries. But things are not always as they seem. Faith is the assurance about what we do not see. Like God at work in the lives of ppl who are hidden from their gov’t oppressors.
There’s another context where Christians can believe the end of the church as we know it is arriving. I’ve been on both ends of this one.
When one church in town is growing, becoming a mega-church, while other churches are struggling.
The struggling churches can be jealous, angry, accusatory toward the bigger churches.
You know the criticisms. They’re watering down the gospel. Easy believism. Tickling ears.
The bigger churches are critical of the smaller ones, too. Irrelevant. Bad preaching. Ancient music.
Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Assembly of God, Presbyterian, Bible Church, Lutheran all have doctrinal differences. And we can be critical thinking everyone else is doing it wrong. If they are the only church left, then Jesus is losing.
Jesus is not going to lose. The votes have all been counted. Jesus has been declared the winner.
Jesus is going to win no matter who’s in the Whitehouse, who controls congress, who’s in the governor’s mansion, who’s the majority of the Supreme Court, which church is the largest, which pastor has the most influence and written the most books, if there’s a choir singing or rock band rocking the church, if the people are speaking in tongues or reciting liturgies. It won’t matter.
Substance over style. If Jesus is the substance, then it doesn’t matter what the style is.
We need to make sure we are on board with everyone who worships the substance of Christ and not allow the style of worship or the style of political party affiliation to become a divisive issues.