Sun 9:30a Class; 10:30a Worship; 11:35a Communion
Bible Bites
It Is Time To Gospel!
E. Stanley Jones told about watching “a man at a large switchboard directing the traffic of a vast railway system stretching for hundreds of miles. The position of every train was shown and he directed them when to move and when to stop. I said to him, ‘Suppose these trains should decide to be free and move as they please, regardless of your orders. Would that complicate your work?’ ‘Complicate it? It would ruin it. We’d be a mess in an hour.’”
Update this story to air traffic controllers sitting in front of computers where every plane in their sector is represented by a blip. The safety of those on the planes is dependent upon each pilot following the directions sent out by the tower. None of us would fly if there wasn’t such a system or if pilots routinely disregarded the system; it would be too risky.
But isn’t this the risk God took in giving man free will? God made man to be good, but man chooses to be bad. In various ways, heaven tries to limit man’s capability for anarchy, but the fact remains that God created a system wherein train engineers and airplane pilots can ignore the controller and move about as they please—even if horrific crashes result.
In a world of free will, planes are flown into skyscrapers, children are massacred, homosexuality and abortion enjoy government support, and a trip to the mall or theater becomes a nightmare. What’s particularly unsettling, at least to me, is that our recent spike in inhumanity seems directly traceable to the secularism that pervades society. Wherever God is ruled unconstitutional, get ready because the unthinkable will become the norm (Judges 17–21).
In a recent essay on the Connecticut tragedy, Jim McGuiggan reminds us that the Christian response to evil should never be hopeless handwringing or pulpit calls for increased sequestration (sanctification doesn’t mean isolation!). Rather, the response to evil is “to gospel!” Amen, Jim. Now isn’t the time for increased preaching to the choir—now is the time to speak without stuttering in the community and to the community. Now is the time to show forth the praises of Him who calls men out of darkness into marvelous light. Now is the time for consciences and conduct to be confronted with the return of Christ (1 Peter 1.13), the holiness of God (1.15), the word of God (1.16), the judgment of God (1.17), and the love of God (1.18–19). Now is the time to do as Paul did in Athens in declaring that God created man, sustains man, and will judge man by the One He has raised from the dead.
I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that more government or laws will cure what ails us (over 500 people were murdered last year in Chicago, the town with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation). In his valuable work, Modern Times, historian Paul Johnson noted that the twentieth century is the pathetic story of man’s attempt to live by political bread alone (a truth Samuel Johnson had in mind when he wrote: “How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which kings or laws can cause or cure”). Listen, it is impossible to bring about genuine societal reform without reforming the individuals who make up society. “There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves” (Margaret Thatcher). The laws passed by legislators may regulate behavior but they cannot regenerate the heart. Only the word of God can do that (1 Peter 1.23–25); only the gospel calls us to something greater than ourselves. “All history,” said Arnold Toynbee, “once you strip the rind off the kernel, is really spiritual.”
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are fully capable of destroying the enemy’s strongholds and bringing every thought under the authority of Christ.
So let us gospel!
— In "The Prairie Papers", #92
