The apostles were tasked with selecting someone to replace Judas, who had betrayed Jesus and subsequently hanged himself. In their selection process we gain an insight into the reason for the selection: the need to have another witness among the people.
And this reason gives us an insight into the focus of their witnessing.
Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection. Acts 1:21-22
The apostles were not focused on the fact that Jesus was a great teacher, or that following Him meant a better lifestyle, or that He was a pretty nice guy. They were witnessing to the fact that Jesus is God, that He had risen from the dead, and that He had walked among them, alive, and ascended miraculously back into Heaven.
To them, the truth that Jesus is God the Savior was an overarching, all encompassing, wonderful, powerful truth.
As church leaders, we often preach and teach our people about having fellowship with God. But how many of our people really know what we mean by that? Do we really know what we mean by that? What is our fellowship with God?
Whenever I tell people we are adopting, I usually get two types of responses: very excited and somewhat interested. Whatever group you fall into, I thought I would take a moment to explain why we are adopting and why we fall into the “very excited” camp. This list is not exhaustive, but these are nine great reasons why we believe in adoption (and maybe you should too).
When I was a child, I wondered about eternity and time (I was a weird kid). And I would get frustrated because I could not logically come up with an answer to this: if God existed before time, going all the way back as far as one can go, with no beginning, how did He arrive at the point in time to begin creation? In other words, if there was no starting point, how would you arrive in the present? If the past is infinite, the present would never be arrived upon. My little brain could not comprehend this.
In Hebrews 4:12, the Bible describes itself as being alive. Yes, alive as in living. It is this facet that gives the Bible its inexhaustible nature. But what does this mean, “alive” or “living”? How can a book be alive?
Let me give you an illustration: suppose you had a choice of spending every day for the next fifty years with your spouse vs. spending every day for the next fifty years with a stuffed animal.
After awhile, you would grow very bored with one (insert marriage jokes here) and fall more and more in love with the other.
What is the difference?
The difference is interaction.
Things that are alive, generally speaking, interact with us. That’s why we have pet dogs and not pet cement bags. Even live plants have some unspoken advantage over fake plants – they are interacting with us through our shared environment and stimuli we provide them.
Living things engage us in ways non-living things do not. There is something about life.
There is something about God’s Word that makes it different from any other book in my library – life. Interaction. Engagement. Because of this, people can devote their entire lives to studying and learning the Bible, never exhausting its resources.
Living things communicate, respond, interact with us.
The Bible is alive, and it speaks to us and teaches us as a living, breathing instructor before us.
What in the world is going on? What is happening? It seems much of our world has gone off the rails. There seems to be the prevalence of…..well, chaos.
I am blessed to have grown up in one of the most gospel-laden cultures on the planet: the Bible-belt of the Southern United States. While not a perfect place by any means, the presence of the gospel has made a positive impact on many facets of the community. In the South, what your Jesus-loving Grandmother would say about your actions still influences you. That’s a silly illustration, but it makes a point. The gospel has impact in that part of the world.
The Impact of the Gospel
The more the gospel is present in a culture, the better off that culture will be. It’s what Elmer Towns calls the “redemptive lift” of the gospel: when the gospel is present, all points of the society are lifted.
The reverse is also true.
The less the gospel permeates a person, family, group, or nation, the more debased in all points they become.
The gospel is light and it pushes back the darkness. The gospel is love; it repels hate. The gospel is hope; it banishes despair. The gospel is truth; it lays waste deception. The gospel is victory; it dismisses defeat. The gospel is success; it prevents failure.
It’s very common to hear people say “I just don’t know what the world is coming too” or “I can’t believe how far we’ve fallen”. But when you understand the principle that to remove the gospel is to invite in debauchery, you will not be surprised.
The Gospel and Nations
I live in what is considered a “developing” nation – the Philippines. The old terminology for countries like the Philippines is the “Third World”. I have also visited developing countries in the Middle East where poverty is rampant and frankly unbelievable from a Western perspective such as mine.
What is the reason for the poverty, violence, and dis-organization found in so many places on earth? It is the absence of the gospel. More specifically, the gospel is not present in large enough terms to “lift” the culture.
What is the only ultimate answer to the violence of ISIS and radical Islam? It’s not laser guided bombs. It’s the gospel.
This is why I am afraid for America. The gospel is retreating from the United States. It is moving to other places, like the Philippines, at incredible speed. My heart aches for my country when I think of the future of a gospel-less society. I’ve seen what the absence of the gospel does to people, families, communities, and nations. It’s not the place you want to be.
This is why I believe church planting to be the most important task in our world today. A gospel-centered church in a community is a light that drives away debauchery and promotes healthy communities.
The absence of the gospel will be our ruin; its presence is our salvation.
I enjoy reading Ann Coulter’s columns. Agree or disagree, she is entertaining and always clearly defends her position. But her latest column is off base. Coulter questions in her most recent post, titled “Ebola Docs Condition Downgraded to Idiotic”, why Dr. Kent Brantly, an American missionary, chose to go to Africa to combat the Ebola outbreak when there are people suffering in America. She makes the argument, through sarcasm, that there is much to do in America – why leave home?
My appreciation for Thomas Jefferson has forever been altered. I recently complete the book by John Meacham titled Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Jefferson has long been my favorite “founding brother” (as Joseph Ellis would term it). This book served to solidify Jefferson’s lofty state in my mind, particularly as I discovered the following principles of servant leadership in his life.
