Post Election Power For God’s People
I’m just simply bursting at the seams. I’ve never been so joyful and excited in a long time. Didn’t start out so joyful though. Last Sunday we watched a video that Mike Main lent us and it’s on the European community and all of the culmination of forming the new central government over there appears to be right in line with Biblical prophecy. We watched that last Sunday and the sense of awakening was kind of signifcant. Sally looked at me at one point and she just said, “Birth pangs.” And the Scripture tells us in Thessalonians in the last days that when the end began that no one would need to tell the children of God, that they would know. So the world is not going to know. The world is going to be taken like a thief, but God’s people are going to know.
When you compare it to the birth pangs of a woman, when they set about, there’s no turning back. The most stunning thing to me was that all of my attention had been focused on the American election and it’s probably the least significant event on all that’s going on. What’s taking place in Europe so quietly in the last 20 years that I’ve been saved is unbelievable and Monday we went to the midwife, (we’re expecting number nine for those of you who don’t know yet) and there was a Time magazine quarterly that was dedicated entirely to the next millennium. And it just struck me that we’re not just going to change a century here in a couple years, but we’re going to change a millennium. We’re moving into the third millennium after Christ. Biblical scholars sight that this is the seventh millennium, it’s the beginning of the seventh millennium since Creation and the seventh day of the week so a lot remains to be seen. But this Time magazine, now I don’t know if you know about Time magazine, but it doesn’t generally strike me as a Christian-oriented periodical. They had this page where they had done a lot of polling of people you know like to see what people are interested in doing and like 47% of the people polled believe that Jesus Christ is coming back in the next millennium. I was shocked they even had the question let alone that they would post some kind of results like that and quite a few other interesting things in there. I think the most stunning thing was the article on religion in the next millennium. It showed a picture of some Japanese businessmen, I guess before they went to work they went to the temple or something. They were all dressed in their business suits and they had this modern Japanese Buddhist temple. It was a series of gigantic video screens in a big panorama and everybody’s kneeling down on carpet and they’re meditating on the beautiful scenes that the video screen would play for them and for doing their meditation. The article goes through quite an interesting discussion of religion, probably the most succinct article I’ve ever read in a secular magazine on religion at all. But towards the very end of the article, it said something to the effect that since the advent of computers that natural selection in it’s mechanism for explaining the rise of all of life has been issued utterly preposterous and science which used to be thought of as a great enemy of religion, is now religion’s greatest ally and it’s no longer a question in the next millennium whether there’ll be religion, the question is simply “Who’s religion?” And of course those words just thunder through the article, now whoever wrote the article had some sensitivity because they gave some choices between the different religions of the world and the last choice they gave made a clear description of Christianity and it was quite a powerful statement the way it was listed. The Bible has always told us that in the last days that Satan is going to reign as god and the world is going to worship him and the world is going to worship on the basis of miracles and power displayed. It was just kind of interesting and then of course Tuesday we had the election and I had sensed a foreboding for a long time.
John 16:20, “Verily, verily I say unto you, ye shall weep and lament but the world shall rejoice and ye shall be sorrowful but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail has sorrow because her hour is come, but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembers no more the anguish for the joy that a man is born into the world. And now ye therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you. In that day you shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily I say to you whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it to you.”
If we’re careless, we’ll make a quick application of this passage and we’ll say well yeah now we have sorrow, now things are not turning out the way we would like them to. Yeah we’re going to have sorrow but one day we’ll be joyful and that isn’t the message at all. The message that is here for us is a message that I think Christiandom, especially in America, perhaps has lost a natural part of their heritage. This verse is in an absolute setting relating to Jesus Christ being taken and put to death on the cross and at that moment in history, the disciples who sought after Him, they were extremely discouraged. At that moment, the world rejoiced because it looked like He had been done away with. And the disciples at that moment had no capacity for hope and if you remember the accounts of the death of Christ and the interrelating period with the disciples and the little stories about Him, the road to Emmaus, those two guys that’s probably the most classic story, those guys were going back alone, leaving the troop, they were walking along the road sad and when Christ came upon them He said, “What’s the matter with you guys?” And they said, “Are you the only one that hasn’t heard what’s taken place?” And they were totally without hope. They said, “We had hoped,” it’s already a matter of passing, “We had hoped that He would be the One that would come and redeem us, but He’s been put to death and now three days have passed and this rumor is about that He’s risen or something.” But that was the moment of sorrow and when the disciples in that day met the risen Lord, that was when the fulfillment of this verse, “your joy shall no one take from you.” And what the Lord taught me this week is that now we live in the day of joy for Christians. We today have a joy that cannot be taken away. We have a joy that must fill our lives. The joy of the Lord is our heritage. There’s so many things to share let me see if I can sort through some of them.
I want to talk for just a moment about the Great Awakening back in the days prior to the prohibition. If you remember your history just a little bit there was a period of time when there was a significant awakening through the preaching of the Gospel by certain key men and what resulted from those men preaching was a genuine process of conversion taking place. What happened, especially down South which is what they call the Bible belt, what would happen is evangelists would come into town and he would begin holding meetings and people would come to these meetings and they would be so completely converted that they immediately turned from the path of sin. And what literally happened in town after town down south was the town would turn out and people at the tavern each night would grow in fewer and fewer numbers and in many many cases after several nights, not a single soul would come to the tavern and the man’s [tavern owner’s] livelihood would be totally ruined. There was no law passed, there was no one standing outside of the bar saying, “Don’t come here, protest the drunk machine.” It’s just that people got converted and they had no appetite for sin and they turned away. That is the most significant statement of the power of the Gospel. And I want to talk about the word “power” in a couple minutes, the power of the Gospel. So what happened is, the angry bartenders began going to the meetings to find out where everybody was and see if he could get them back and bartenders then would get converted and many many bars in the South were translated into small chapels and prayer houses. There are to this day many little towns down south that are what they call “dry towns” where you can’t find any place in town that will sell a drop of alcohol. Now historically what took place though, I’m not going to go into all the details because that would take too long, but the prohibition movement began to grow on the tail end of this revival. The prohibition movement was a political agenda to put a Constitutional amendment into our government that prohibited the production and the sale of alcohol anywhere in the United States. And the revival of that period had grown in such a traumatic manner that the majority of the people became converted over to this personal kind of righteousness, walking in truth and when the issue got fanned into flames through the press and all whatever went on in those days, it passed across the nation and they passed an amendment, a political amendment in an election and I can’t fully imagine because I wasn’t there, but I can almost imagine the joy in Mudville that night when the election results came in and the Christians had won a major political victory. They had passed an amendment to the Constitution. That meant that the Supreme Court couldn’t do anything to change rules or whatever they had to uphold this Constitution. And in every of the 50 states it was illegal to produce or sell alcohol. Does anybody know how long that amendment lasted? Anybody know? Well I can say anything I want to. Two years? I thought it was a little longer than that. It didn’t last a real long time, but it did last a while and it needed to be changed through another kind of election. But here’s what happened: once it was passed, you had certain parts of the land who were constantly both disobeying the law and creating a public cry that was just creating too many problems, “we’re making criminals out of common people” and then there became gradual public outcry that this was a terrible way to control the morality of people and another Constitutional amendment several years later, I’m not sure if it was two or if it was twelve, but another amendment was passed and the prohibition was lifted and from that time on it’s however you wish and liquor in every place. But that’s a picture of what I see as the greatest, has been the greatest temptation especially in American politics and it’s the greatest temptation for Christians.
There’s two kinds of powers to go after and the prohibition started with the only power that the Christian has in their hand and it ended with the power of man in a Gentile governing system. And what I want to share this morning is the tremendous need we have of waking up because the power that we have as Christians has never been taken from us nor has it ever changed it’s course from God’s purpose and destiny and neither do we have any excuse for not walking in it. And for us things haven’t changed. I want to think in terms of this power because in our country we have to admit one thing: we have a political system that calls people to be involved; it calls for the whole population to be involved and so we have to vote our conscience, we have to vote our sense of right and wrong- that’s the way it is in our country and that’s part of giving to Caesar as being involved in the political system. But there’s a difference between being involved and hungering after the power of the Gentile structure of government. I want to focus on two words relating to power. Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God to salvaltion to everyone that believes, the Jew first and also to the Greek.” That is our calling card. That is our power. If you’re smart when you’re in any kind of warfare, you use your most powerful weapon. We’ve just been through Ephesians, and we’ve heard the verses of Scripture that warn us that our fighting isn’t against flesh and blood but it’s against spiritual forces and principalities, darkness and high places, but we have a true form of power that is ours.
But I want to warn you, this is not a theology class. The power of the Gospel is not an argument; it’s not a correct doctrine, the power of the Gospel is literally the indwelling Spirit and the purposeful will of God changing the carnal nature of men, setting us on a new course and bringing about that which could never occur through any other power in Heaven and earth. The power of God is the ultimate weapon of God, the Gospel. Now I want to accent that with this contrasting view real briefly in Galatians because what we fail to do as Christians often is remember that in our system, we fail to remember that God wants us to operate as Christians not as politicians. I am not saying that He doesn’t necessarily give us opportunities to work in politics, but we will talk about that hopefully in a minute using [Old Testament prophet] Daniel as an example. But when we operate in the political realm, the government has the completely limited role. The government of every nation has an absolutely limited role. There is something that the church of Jesus Christ is called to do that is completely and entirely beyond what any government can ever do. And it is the difference between external government and internal government. The power of God through the gospel brings internal government into the hearts of man. Whereas the power of government simply brings an external government on man through force.
If you look at Romans chapter 13, the Bible tells us the basic nature of God, and His purposefulness of government. You know, there is one thing about God’s principles or His laws in His creation, when He sets them forth, they are neither voted on by man, nor are they in any way able to be removed by man. He puts them there and they function, and they function in spite of all of the vileness or all of the good intentions of man. And human government from God’s purpose, has one primary focal point, one primary purpose: it has the purpose of abating evil. It has the purpose of controlling that which is bad, that which is evil. And it has a primary motivational factor of external control, that is all that human government is able to do. They have the power of the sword. And I want you, at least in your mind, to create a picture of comparison between us as the children of God, and what mere men have in the realm of men. We have the power of gospel which changes lives and it produces internal government, “Behold, old things are passed away, and all things have become new.” We are new men in Christ Jesus. We went through the part in Ephesians, where the Scripture said, “take off the former things, and put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” We have a power of internal government that is based upon the gospel and that is based upon Grace, but it brings a genuine and a permanent change.
Government has the power of the sword. That is all the government has. The sword always represents a negative activity. It is designed to cut somebody’s head off basically. Human government, by God’s design, is entirely a negative venture. It is an encroaching prevention of the breaking out of evil. And from that economy, and I challenge you to disprove this because you will get a great history lesson, it makes no difference what the ideology of a government is.
From the time Jerusalem was sacked and taken to Babylon, from that time, God has established what Scripture called the time of Gentiles. And the time of the Gentiles is the time of the Gentile government controlling the earth. And there has been so many varied forms of government on the earth. And it has always been unstable, it has always been imperfect, and it always gets changed. And it always gets changed because the basic nature of man is sinful, and human government has no power over that element, that is the realm entirely of the Gospel.
Now I want you to think of the human government, and I want you to think of the eternal gospel, and the warning from Scripture concerning the Gospel. The gospel says this, Paul speaking in Galatians, “ If there could have been a law passed that would have brought righteousness, it would have been passed.” It would have. God has left an absolute, irrevocable record through His Word, and through the testimony of the church, that there is no power in the law to change man’s most basic need. To reverse our sinful nature. Human government only surrounds wickedness, and contains it from the outside, and the nature of human government then is the multiplying of laws, because there is no law that could ever be passed that could contain righteousness, and so you pass a set of laws, and out leaks, (they call it technically down in Annapolis), loopholes, out leaks through the loopholes the people who escaped the first set of laws, so they come back with a new set of band-aids and “fpppit”, put it on again, and out escapes some more. And you will never have the ending, the cessation, of multiplying of laws in human government. The goal and the purpose of human government is only to externally contain evil. The Bible makes it clear that in the end times, when that basic motivation of containing evil is going to be completely ripped away from human government. That is the time of the end days when Anti-Christ is going to be setting himself up. And at that time everything that was ever considered good will be evil. And everything that was ever considered evil will be made accommodations for as OK and good. And I dare say that we can see that reflection pretty clearly in our country and our government, and in even the leaking out of early proposals of the new government coming. Government is a carnal, temporary constraint by God, and its primary purpose is to provide sufficient security so that during this time of the waiting period, the church can be alive and prosperous with the gospel. Go to Timothy, what does Paul say? I would that men everywhere would lift up holy hands, and to pray, remember to pray for kings, authorities, that we might lead a peaceable and a quiet life. Because God wants the message of the gospel to go out so that men might be saved. The whole motivational drive of our government is so that we can carry on with the eternal work of the power of the gospel.
Now in America, we have had the most wonderful privilege of government ever known in the history of man. It is the only government that has ever existed, and you will never be able to tag another one in any point of history, a form of government whereby the men who founded the government recognized first and foremost that men are enately corrupt, cannot be trusted with authority and power, and therefore these men who had their wits about them because they were believers, recognized that any form of government is in the realm of Gentile corruption, and they created a system that worked on distrust. And the four primary elements of that system we are all very familiar with: you have your administrative branch of government, which the President governs over; you have your legislative branch of government, the Congress; and you have your judicial branch of government and you have the free press, which is ability of people to hear the government constantly being criticized for its corruption. All built on distrust. Now, those founding fathers of ours, they left a tremendous legacy because they warned us and they said, “ You know, this form of government will not produce righteousness; this form of government can not even preserve its health. This form relies entirely on the fact that the individual citizens walk in internal government subjecting themselves to the laws of God on their own free will, and that the churches are allowed to flourish according to the purposes and working of God. And the government system that we had in America depended upon the quality of the bottom line citizen and their alertness and their carefulness to that which is really holy in the eyes of God. And this form of government on the outside promoted freedom of the maximum sort for one purpose, because the gospel calls us to have freedom, Galatians 5 “ Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set you free. And don’t use your liberty to consume it on your own lusts, but use it rather to do the will of God.” (Ed- One of the David Barton videos, I like that quote that came out of a Supreme Court case about school and how they wanted to teach the values of Christ, the quote was “The enemy of Jesus Christ is the enemy of this country because this country was founded upon the principles of Christ,” something to that effect.) (Pastor Gary): From what I’ve heard from some of the founding fathers writings I don’t ever get the impression that anybody ever expected the government to maintain itself by the situation or by the laws that were made. If they did they were foolish because the Bible said you can’t ever form a law to do that. Our Constitution isn’t itself infallible, it’s an instrument men set forth so that people could pursue that which was right. But because it’s only an instrument based upon the righteousness of people, you change the base of the righteousness of people and the Constitution is changed in its application.
Now, when President Reagan was elected 12 years ago, the Christian community got totally possessed by carnal power. They liked having somebody up there that was on their side and they wanted more things out and they were satisfied that something was happening but they were focused on the power of government. And the sad and ridiculous thing about Christians getting caught up in the power of government is that it changed their focus from the reality of what was really needing to take place. Our nation has lost its power base, not because Republicans aren’t in power [as of 1992], our nation has lost its power base because the Christians have lost their power. There is no way that our nation was founded on intellectual thinking; it was founded on the fear of the corruptness of man and the awareness that men need the freedom to pursue God without interference. We may see in our own lifetime, like the freedom seeking of our founding fathers, where we once again find ourselves in that state and start looking for a place to have freedom.
Let me try and turn a corner here. The power of the Gospel is in changed lives. The method of extending that power into another base, extending our power base, is extending the fragrance of Christ. I want to share a little story that happened with one of our home school families on the Eastern Shore. He showed me a little log that he has and he’s written the name of every government official or a person of stature in the community that has visited his farm in the last 18 months. He has a little eight acre farm, and he’s doing a project on the Eastern Shore that God put on his heart and he’s earning his living from it. He’s composting everything coming out of Perdue chickens and another hatchery, prison ashes, he gets all the leaves of Salisbury brought to his little farm, and he’s taking all this biodegradable stuff and gives them a discount for disposal. The dump charges them $22/ton so he charges them $16 a ton and they dump their garbage on his land. And then he has a little formula that he takes a scoop of chicken bones, takes a scoop of ash, scoop of leaves from the city, the leaves of Salisbury, and he stirs it all up with a little machine he has for composting. And when he’s finished in about 3 months he has this luscious, near top soil stuff and it has a high dollar value as well as soil enrichment value. He’s the only guy doing this on the Eastern Shore and so all the eco-freaks, they’re everywhere, they’re coming out of the woodwork to see his little project and he has all kinds of people visiting him, none of them believers. Their most interesting visitors were, he got a call from the University of Maryland chairman saying, “Can we bring some visitors up, we have a couple of people that came over from China and they want to see your compost pile, can we bring them by?” They said, “Sure.” Well they’re a home school family so whenever they have visitors, their school work for that day is to go over to the compost pile and work in the compost and put on a good display of how we make manure work for us. Anyway this little troop gets here, the University of Maryland van brings them out. The daughter of this family walks up to one of them and says, “How long have you been in the country?” He says, “About 8 years, I’m the ambassador from China to America.” She said, “That’s nice.” It took them off guard a little bit. When they got there though, they did not talk about composting at all. I don’t even think that got to show them how they did it. These Chinese people just started asking questions a mile a minute about their family. “Such a big family.” They have five kids, four boys, [one girl]. “Such a big family. Why, I can remember my great-great grandmother a long time ago had five,” and they were just so drawn in. “Why aren’t the kids in school?” “Well they’re home schooled.” “They what?” They were just so drawn in. The family said that when they left that all these officials, they had their wives with them, all these officials had their faces pressed against the van windows and they were waving goodbye like [little children.] They had given them a business card and so after they left they looked at the business card: “the Cabinet of the communist party – Bejing.” Now that was what God used to catch my attention. This is the power base of the Gospel and this is what I want to make a point of: they came over to look at the compost and they kept getting their heads turned seeing this family. Relationships begin to form.
I don’t think Clinton has done anything nearly as atrocious [in 1992] yet [compared to Communist China], but you know we’re talking about the real battle isn’t between our political views and their political views, the real battle is between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness, and those who are in the kingdom of darkness, they are blind. What did Paul say in 2 Corinthians?, “And if our Gospel be hid, it is hidden to those who are lost in whom the god of this age hath blinded the eyes of those who believe not.” We do not have any enemies in any position of government, in any walk of life. We only have dear, eternal souls who are caught and trapped and blinded by the enemy and God has only had one plan since He left and went up to Heaven.
Let’s talk about power again for a second. The apostles were so disappointed that the political goals that they had for Christ were not attained. And that was their greatest disappointment. After Christ had risen and they got over the shock, they finally got together with Him in Acts chapter 1 verse 7 and they said [paraphrased], “Lord, now are you going to run for office? Now are you going to establish the kingdom? That’s what we really want Lord, we’re waiting for that.” And the Lord set a pattern at that point, and brothers and sisters that pattern has not changed for you and I today.
He said [paraphrased], “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, but you will receive power, you will receive government inside that the whole world needs. And your job? A simple job, you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” That is the call of the people of God. Look briefly at the history of Acts and you’ll see something marvelous take place. These people were fixed on the joy of Jesus Christ, the joy of their salvation, the power of the resurrection and they had no fear. When they were brought before the magistrates, [the magistrates] scratched their beards and they took notice that these were ignorant men but that they had been with Jesus. There was a clear reality. Nothing else was in their hands. What’s the picture of them sharing all things in common? Their hearts had no possessions because they possessed an eternal city and nothing on this earth was their goal. They had no ambitions. All of the power of earth involves ambitions relating to earth and the children of God have no business pursuing the powers of earth because we have no inheritance on earth. Our inheritance is in Heaven and it’s an eternal, secure place. Our call is to spread the Gospel. But I want to remind you of the first method that the Bible shows in Acts and I want to remind you of the last method that He promises in Revelation and that’s the method of oppression by Satan through earthly powers. That’s the method of God spreading the Gospel.
You see the important thing for the Gospel is not that you hold political office but it’s that God can reach into His pocket of salty Christians and He can sprinkle them around. You and I aren’t naturally motivated to be sprinkled around, we like to cluster together in little groups and have fun smiling at each other [saying], “Isn’t this wonderful?” And the early church did that, didn’t they? And what happened? Persecution came and they decided to leave Jerusalem only because their second option was to visit the grave prematurely.
Here’s the reality, the power of the Gospel must be in our lives. We have to be changed people because here’s what God’s going to do: we’re going to be a little salty grain and we’re going to get thrown down [loud bang] and we’re going to be nestled among people who are blind and without hope, without the Truth. And it’s not the power of our human argument that will change their lives. When I was a new believer I used to struggle with the words that said the Gospel was power, that the Cross was power because I would say things to people that needed to be saved like, “You need to be saved,” and I was thinking that would empower the Word to get them saved and it just seemed so unpowerful no matter how loud I shouted. The reality is it’s an internal power that changes lives and in it’s attraction. There’s an attraction that God’s people have.
2 Corinthians chapter 2 talks about the manner in which the believers were thrown out of Jerusalem into the world. They were in a triumphant procession. If you look closely at the passage you’ll discover they were running from those who would kill them. They were under extreme diress. But Paul said, “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession in Jesus Christ.” And he focuses on this reality that we are the fragrance of God and that is how you and I are going to win our power base, it’s how we’re going to extend it where we are.
Everyone of us has a different circuit that God drags our little salty crystals through. And the most important thing of your life is just how salty, just how fragrant you are as you get dragged through that place. God wants to attract people to Himself through you, through your good works. “Let your light so shine before men that they see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven.” That’s the nature of the Gospel from the beginning all the way through now. And you know things haven’t changed. We may have different circumstances to deal with on the surface, but things have not changed because the power base hasn’t changed. And the challenge for you and I is to regain the joy of what a privileged position that we have. I think of that Chinese delegation. How wonderful! And I’ve had this dynamic desire to pray for that specific delegation, “Lord, let them never stop thirsting from that taste of this family. Let them never stop thirsting. Cause them to seek out those in their land that might share with them more specifically about who You are.” That’s the struggle that’s going on the earth, the struggle for men’s souls. And for you and I to simply get caught up in the external government is about as foolish as it was in the days of prohibition for the Christians to say, “Wow since Christians turn away from alcohol, let’s make a rule that nobody can drink alcohol,” and immediately they cut off their nose to spite their face and they lost their power base because the Gospel brings righteousness, the law only tries to hedge it in sufficiently to keep it from totally destroying society. We have the real power and if we consume it upon the carnal plans and progress of earth and if that becomes our goal, we’re chasing after vanity.
I want to end with a challenge from our friend Daniel who visited the lion’s den and a few other interesting historical places. Daniel represents the life of a Christian from the day the Gentile powers took over and that day is not over. Daniel was a child of God in captivity and he did two things: [1] he maintained his personal purity at all costs. It’s not important for us to go out there and fight against abortion if we’re living back here lives that lead to the need for it in terms of human questions and suffering. We need to recover the power of righteousness so we can walk in a new and living way. That’s what Daniel did. He was a man of God. [2] The second thing that he did is he never allowed himself to ever be polarized by politics. Now if you think it’s hard to lose an election to Clinton, why don’t you read the book of Lamentations? And why don’t you listen to what it was really like to lose your political base in the world of nations? How about Lamentations chapter 3 for size. The Jews never knew any less grief than we might ever know. They were totally consumed by the loss of their power base. One of the Psalms says, “When we were travelling from Jerusalem to Babylon, our captors asked for songs for us and they said, ‘Sing for us some of the songs of Zion,’” and they said, “we hung our harps up on the tree and by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept for thee Zion.” Heavy, heavy loss but among those captured was Daniel and Daniel never forgot the reality of the King of kings and Lord of lords. And Daniel served different political systems, didn’t he? He served Babylonians, two kings that we know of, maybe three. And then when the Medes and the Persians took over, guess where Daniel was? He was still in power. He was still there. He was useful because he was fragrant. And this is what we need to remember, brothers and sisters, the world will never lose its need for the Savior. No matter what they think or believe in the political structure and the polarization of ideologies, the basic need of man never changes. And the basic opportunity of God’s people is never shortened. We have the privilege of serving the living God under any condition.
You know we need to take upon ourselves the mindset of the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul, Philippians chapter 1, where is he?- In prison. And this is what he says, “Now the things that have fallen out unto me, haven fallen out for the advancement of the Gospel.” What a vision! Everything that happened to Paul, he just calls it what it really was, another outbreak, it’s another advancement, God’s broken through another barrier. And Paul say the opportunity for his little crystal of salt to be place wherever God wanted it. Most of the places weren’t humanly endearing, but he said in Philippians, “I learned how to abound and I learned how to be abased. I’ve learned in whatsoever situation I’m in to be content.” Paul was a man who recognized that he was of all things a trooper for God. And everything that God did in terms of moving him to another place, was another advancement for the Gospel. Now the Lord warned us of that, didn’t He? He said we’ll be taken before magistrates and kings and we’ll have an opportunity to witness. Some of the most precious stories I’ve ever heard were from people who’ve been imprisoned. And while their tormentors are tormenting them, the fragrance of the Victorious Savior creeps out of their lives and affects their very captors, those who are hateful toward them, and the fragrance causes the light to penetrate the darkness. Brothers and sisters, it’s time for us to stand up as Paul did and recognize that the joy is ours. It cannot be taken away. Our calling will never be changed. God is giving us a chance, an opportunity, I believe in the next period of time, to purify ourselves truly as pilgrims and sojourners. Those who really say that we look for a city whose builder and maker is God. That’s our calling; that’s who we look for. And you know what? It is a wonderful, exciting opportunity because if we’re alert, wherever we go, whatever we do, we can cause someone else to hunger, and that’s our call. “You shall receive power and the Holy Spirit shall be upon you and you shall be witnesses unto Me.” That’s our job and it’s real and it’ll change lives.
Our government was developed so that Christians could maintain a salty base and promote continued opportunity for the Gospel to progress. Brothers and sisters, we didn’t lose an election, we’ve lost the foundation of a moral society, that’s what we’ve lost. Now none of us sitting in this room can be blamed directly for it, can we? Because many many years have unfolded where believers of other generations perhaps didn’t do their part and chased after carnal things. But you know what? You and I can continue the negative slide, can’t we, by being careless and by pursuing that which is vanity and that which is of the world; pursuing power of men instead of power of God. But we can also break the gridlock and we can simply be alive in Christ. And the thing that excited me more than anything else was to realize that God has His children spread all over this country, all over the world, and if we’ll just wake up, if we’ll just cast off that selfish pursuit of our own interest, and if we’ll just be enthusiastically excited about today, whatever it is that God brings across our path, and if we’ll be salty today, we can satisfy our calling and be filled with the joy of God and be a part of God’s eternal master plan and that’s our calling until He comes. He said, “Tarry until I come.” I submit to you this morning, He hasn’t come yet. It’s time to keep tarrying.
Let’s pray.
Lord I thank You that Your purposes do not depend on the successes nor the plans of ours. It’s not important for us to dream up schemes and create programs and to provide intricate organizational structures for the advancement of Your Gospel or any other cause. But Lord this is Your battle; this is Your love and You are the Commander-in-Chief. Lord today we thank You for where You have placed us right where we are. And Lord, even though we might not emotionally be fully satisfied that this is the greatest place that we would like to be, Lord grant that we might be like Paul and be content. And Lord grant that we might look upon this situation, our circumstances, truly as it is in Your eyes, a part of the advancement of Your Gospel. Thank You Lord that Your people are the only ones on earth that can look at defeat and see the fullness of victory in Christ. We can look at discouragement and recognize that our hope is sure and while we might be weak, Lord, we can lay a hold of the strength from the true power that is in us by Your Son. And Lord though the circumstances around us would cause any man to be sorrowful, we truly are joyful because You have completed Your task, Your Son is in Heaven and He’s about to come back. We thank You for the warning. We thank You that we’re aware, but Lord make us ready. Help us to lay aside every weight that so easily besets us and may we run the race with patience, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. It’s in His name we pray, Amen.
