judgment

Jul

2020

We are his witnesses

by David Sellnow

A message referencing readings for the 7^th Sunday after Pentecost: Isaiah 44:6-8, Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30

“Do you promise that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” We would expect to be asked a question like that in a courtroom, if we were asked to give testimony. That’s probably what we picture as what it means to be a witness. We think of it as something formal, something done in an official setting. I wonder if that image of what it means to be a “witness” confuses our understanding of what Jesus meant when he said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).

I knew a church that had an evangelism committee that hadn’t yet done any evangelizing. The congregation knew they had a mission to tell God’s good news to others. So, they established an evangelism committee. That committee began meeting and studying about communicating the gospel. They continued in that study for two years and had not yet made any visits to anyone. The members of the committee were dutifully concerned that they would do everything right, say everything right. But their fear of speaking something inaccurate kept them from fulfilling their intention of giving witness to the Christian message. Do we maybe think that we must have specialized training before we can serve as witnesses?

I wonder also if we consider what we do inside the church as the primary witness of the church. Have we been depending too much on the church itself (as an institution) to be the witness, rather than we ourselves, the people of the church, as the witnesses? We’ve probably worried that the current health emergency (COVID-19) will reduce the church’s witness. We look at our church buildings, which now must limit the number of persons in attendance, as the main place of witnessing. But at the time when God spoke through Isaiah and said, “You are my witnesses” (Isaiah 44:8), there were no churches, no synagogues. For the half of history when the nation of Israel was called upon to be “a light to the nations,” and extend God’s salvation “to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6), they did not do so through local congregations. Solomon’s temple had been built as the singular place of worship. It was not until more than a century after Isaiah, after Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians (six centuries before Christ), that the Jewish people began to establish synagogues as places for religious instruction. Israel was God’s witness in the world long before they had local synagogues to spearhead that effort.

So also, when Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), there were at that time no Christian church buildings. Christians in the first decades after Jesus’ ascension met together in people’s homes, in public spaces, in whatever meeting place they could find. The people themselves were a driving force of the spread of Christianity in those early days, along with the activity of the apostles. They were his witnesses. Even when believers in Jesus were persecuted and scattered, they continued to live their faith and speak about Christ wherever they went (cf. Acts 8:1-4).

Maybe the present difficulty for churches gathering inside our own buildings will remind us of the essential role each of us has in our everyday contacts outside with people–wherever and however those contacts can occur within a socially distanced environment. In Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9), we hear how God sows his word liberally everywhere–almost seeming like someone who is wasting his seed because so much falls in places where it doesn’t take root. But it isn’t a waste. It’s how God’s word works. It finds its way into hearts according to God’s timing, not ours, according to his will, not ours. As witnesses of God’s truth, we sow seed in that way. We spread our witness all around us, all the time, every day, wherever we are, in whatever we do or say. Being a witness is, in many ways, about simply exuding who we are as God’s people. Our identity as God’s people will be something others will notice.

Think of the way our daily existence was described in Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:12-16): “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh … If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Paul went on (Romans 8:18-25) to describe the constant hope in which we live as children of God, hope for the future, hope for redemption, enduring hope even in the face of whatever suffering we may suffer now. That kind of hope, that confidence that God is good and always cares for his people–that’s what we witness to others by the ongoing attitude we embody and demonstrate.

But what if the attitude evident in people who say they are Christians is not consistently illustrating God’s redeeming grace? About a dozen years ago, Barna Group president David Kinnaman, partnered with Gabe Lyons, another leader in looking at trends concerning Christianity and culture. They engaged in three years of research across the United States. They surveyed and interviewed thousands of young adults (ages 16-29) outside of the church, asking about their perceptions of Christians and Christianity from an outsider’s point of view. In the book detailing what they learned (Baker Books, 2007), Kinnamon and Lyons said: “Christianity has an image problem. … Our research shows that many of those outside of Christianity, especially younger adults, have little trust in the Christian faith, and esteem for the lifestyle of Christ followers is quickly fading among outsiders. … [Outsiders] reject Jesus because they feel rejected by Christians.” Kinnaman and Lyons titled the book unChristian because that “reflects outsiders’ most common reaction to the faith: they think Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind” (p. 11,15). One of the biggest perceived problems is that Christians are not, for the most part, loving people. According to the research, “nearly nine out of ten outsiders (87 percent) said that the term judgmental accurately describes present-day Christianity.” They elaborated: “To be judgmental is to point out something that is wrong in someone else’s life, making the person feel put down, excluded, and marginalized. … Being judgmental is fueled by self-righteousness, the misguided inner motivation to make our own life look better by comparing it to the lives of others” (p. 182). One of the young people interviewed summed it up this way: “Christians talk about love, but it doesn’t feel like love. I get the sense they believe they are better than me” (p. 192).

That’s a stinging indictment, and maybe we feel that’s unfair. But the impression that Christians are more judgmental than they are loving was something even young people within the church said was true. According to the research, more than half (53 percent) of 16 to 29 year-old Christians also agreed that “the label judgmental accurately fits present-day Christianity” (p. 183). And in the years since unChristian was published, those trends have continued. Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of young adults (those in their 20s and 30s) who identify as Christians declined by 16% in America, a greater drop-off than any other age group, according to findings by the Pew Research Center.

How is it that the church’s witness is giving off such a negative impression and turning away even many of our own young people? Maybe churches too often have forgotten what Jesus taught in the parable of weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30). In an overzealous desire to keep the church pure of any “weeds,” churchy people point out anything they see as unrighteous in anyone else and try to rid the Lord’s harvest field of any plant that isn’t perfect. Jesus told us not to do that. “No,” he said, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:29,30). It will be God’s responsibility at the final judgment to separate “weeds” from “wheat,” those who are faithless from those who have trusted in him. Exercising final judgment over another human soul is not our responsibility; it is in God’s hands. Our task is to nurture and tend to every person as someone who may grow to be one of God’s children.

Our witnessing isn’t about us. It’s not about how tidy and well-groomed we can keep our little corner of the whole earthly garden where God is seeking to grow believers. It’s about extending God’s goodness to all people. It’s about God’s Spirit inspiring a spirit of mercy in us, not a judgmental spirit. As Jesus’ brother James taught us: “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” understanding that “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:8,13). Being witnesses of the good news of our God means letting his gospel grow unimpeded, without letting ourselves and our judgmentalism get in the way.

There’s another way that we stumble over ourselves and get in our own way as witnesses. When we hear Jesus say, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) – what do we think of as the “good deeds” that people are to see in us? Do we think people are watching to see how often our cars are in the church parking lot? Do we think people are listening to make sure no foul language ever slips out of our mouths?

It’s like the church committee I mentioned before that thought they had to prepare a flawless script if they were going to do witnessing. It’s not about whether we say everything perfectly. In our own less-than-perfect ways, we just keep pointing to the one who is perfect for us. It’s not that we know all the answers. We show others the one who holds us in his mercy even when we struggle to answer life’s hardest questions. The same principle holds when it comes to our behavior as God’s witnesses in this world. It’s not about showing our neighbors how righteous we are. It’s not about how much we pray in public places. You may recall that Jesus said, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5). Jesus called out people who tried to look perfect in public as “whitewashed tombs — which on the outside look beautiful” but inside they are full of deadness and hypocrisy (Matthew 23:27-28). That’s not the sort of witness Jesus calls for.

What did Jesus say? “Everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). The witness we give to the world of who God is and what God is like is shown by the love we show to others. How much grace is in our souls, evident in the way we treat every person we meet? After all, if we could speak as perfectly as angels, but do not have love, we are like banging gongs or clanging cymbals (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1). The world doesn’t need self-congratulatory noise from Christian people. The world needs our consistent, faithful, loving witness. The world needs embodied, lived, expressed testimony of God’s grace in action through us. “God is love” (John 4:16). Living in love thus is the primary ingredient in our witness. By our love we give witness to a Father who loves the whole world so much that he gave us his Son. By our love, we give witness to Christ, who gave up his own life, “the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Peter 3:18). By our love we give witness to the Spirit of God, whose fruit–the things the Spirit produces–are “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22,23).

Isaiah’s prophecy announced the truth centuries ago. There is no other god besides “the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer” (Isaiah 44:6). There is no other rock, no other solid ground to stand on, no other source of love so strong and so deep. And the Lord, the King, our Redeemer says to us, “You are my witnesses” (Isaiah 44:8). May we, as his witnesses, live up to what we sing in a familiar song:

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord,
And we pray that all unity will one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love;
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

– Father Peter Scholtes, “We Are One in the Spirit” (1966)

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Dec

2019

Judgment Day – books are opened

Originally published on The Electric Gospel on November 15, 2014.

I once was asked to deliver a chapel talk on a college campus concerning Judgment Day. This was the message I offered.

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Balancing our Books

by David Sellnow

All of us have a natural tendency to be bookkeepers. We think like accountants, keeping track of things. We keep track of every sort of statistic for our sports teams. We use pedometers to log how many steps a day we are walking. We monitor how many likes we have on Facebook or how many followers we have on Twitter.

You see the bookkeeping tendency already at a young age in children. They like to keep track of the chores they have accomplished, get check marks on their chore chart or even better, little stickers or stars. Little bookkeepers like to see their accounts growing.

I see the tendency in college students. If you’re a college student, you may count up every point you can get on every assignment that you’re assigned. And if an assignment is graded and the professor didn’t give you as many points as you wanted, you go up after class and talk to him and try to argue for more points. Or you email the prof and ask, “Did you dock me for such and such? Because I think I did such and such, or your instructions didn’t specifically tell me I had to do such and such.” Or maybe you don’t have the nerve to complain to your professors, but you gripe among your friends about the grades you get. “His grading is so unfair. I deserve more points.” Students are eager bookkeepers, wanting a gradebook full of points.

Benjamin Franklin was a bookkeeper. He kept books to chart his own good deeds each day.

In 1726, at the age of 20, Ben Franklin set this goal for himself: “I conceiv’d the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time.”

In order to accomplish his goal, Franklin developed and committed himself to a personal improvement program that consisted of living 13 virtues, things like industriousness and temperance and sincerity and moderation.

In order to keep track of his adherence to his listed virtues, Franklin carried around a small book of 13 charts. The charts consisted of a column for each day of the week and 13 rows marked with the first letter of his 13 virtues. Franklin evaluated himself at the end of each day. He placed a dot next to each virtue each had violated. His goal was to minimize the number of marks, thus indicating a “clean” life free of bad marks in his book.

Franklin admitted he never got the book completely clean. (He liked beer too much, and flirting with women, and other foibles.) But he said, “Tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, … yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been.”

[Information taken from ArtOfManliness.com.]

I don’t know how happy Ben Franklin was at the end of life when it was time for his final accounting before the Lord of all virtues. But it seems he didn’t rightly understand how the Lord keeps books in eternity. And while Ben Franklin was more meticulous than most about his bookkeeping, I’d say the way he thought about the bookkeeping process of his life is the way too many people think of the books of their lives. And that’s a problem.

The Bible section for today is a vision from Revelation that talks about books. It’s also the section of the Bible that the website Listverse.com, which bills itself as “the original top 10 site” on the web, lists as the #1 Most Horrifying Moment in the Bible.

This is Revelation 20:11-15 …

I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Being thrown into the lake of fire is indeed a horrifying thought. But let’s talk about those books. What are those books? What’s in those books? Everyone – whether great or small – has a book. When Judgment Day comes, “the dead are judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.” Does that scare you? Have you done enough for your account book to be in passable condition?

Well, actually, you know what the Bible says about how much you have to do. You have to have a perfect book, a book that records flawless keeping of all God’s laws, impeccable and constant virtues. You can be as diligent as Ben Franklin and still your book comes up short of what it needs to be. So how can anyone be saved? Those who are saved are those whose names are found written in the book of life. If your name is in the book of life, the lake of fire poses no threat to you. Don’t be afraid, Jesus saves you.

You do have an account book with God in heaven. Think of it as a book that has two columns. One column is for credits to your account of virtue – all the good deeds you are expected to do in keeping with God’s commandments. The other column records your debits or sins – every time you have violated God’s commandments. When the books are opened in heaven, you need a book that has a completely clean record in the sin column – not a single sin standing against your name … and a completely full record in the righteousness column – that every opportunity you ever have in life to do the right thing, do a good deed, fulfill a commandment of God, you have done so.

Does anyone have a book like that? One person does. Only one person. One person who stood in our place and lived the life we ought to live, constantly and consistently obeying the Father’s will. One person who was “tempted in every way just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). One person has a record book with a completely clean, unstained column in regard to sin, not a single sin to list. One person has a record book with a completely perfect, full account of good deeds in the column marked for righteousness. Jesus Christ is the one person with a perfect book. But when we become connected to Jesus, when the Spirit of God, through the Word of God, brings us to trust in Jesus by faith, our names are written in the book of life. And for those whose names are written in the book of life, the book of Jesus’ life is credited to us also as the book of our lives – even though we didn’t do it, even though we didn’t deserve it, even though we haven’t lived it. We are granted all the credit of Jesus—all the goodness and righteousness of his life. We are forgiven of all the sins we have committed, on account of all that Jesus suffered in our place—even death on the cross under God’s horrible judgment. As one of Christ’s apostles summed it up for us: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And so when our books are opened, they reveal these sorts of things: Jesus will say to us, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matthew 25:35,36). We will wonder when we did all those things. But all that Jesus did will be already credited on our account. And on top of that, Jesus will say to those whose names are written in the book of life, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

So don’t fear the lake of fire. And don’t fear that when your book is opened on Judgment Day, you won’t have enough in it. You won’t need to beg the Father in heaven to give you more points because you didn’t fulfill his assignments well enough. You won’t be arguing that you didn’t understand his expectations and can he please just give you another chance. Believing in Jesus Christ, your name is written in the book of life. Believing in Jesus Christ, the book of your life that God opens on judgment day will show what Jesus has done for you and what you have done in Jesus. And all will be well.

Don’t be afraid. Jesus saves you.

Dec

2019

Welcoming Jesus’ return

Originally published on The Electric Gospel on May 22, 2015.

Jesus is coming back … Are you ready?

by Allison Wessel

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, in the seventh petition we ask God to deliver us from evil. The Small Catechism explains that in this petition, we are asking God to deliver us not only from the evils of this world, but also to take us to heaven. In part, it’s a prayer asking for the end of this world to arrive.

So are you ready to exit this world? Are you ready to leave behind the old familiar and enter the new and unfamiliar? As you pray the Lord’s Prayer, do you ever catch yourself thinking: “Quickly come, Lord Jesus, but, please wait until after I graduate from college,” or, “Quickly come, but please, Lord, let me get married first.” If we are honest with ourselves, sometimes we are tempted to place a greater value on the priorities of this world than on the perfect treasures of heaven. We find ourselves yearning to have all of the great experiences that this world has to offer. We think, “There are so many things I have yet to experience in this life, Lord. Could you hold off your second coming just a little longer?”

As human beings, we struggle with the tension between time and eternity. We sometimes feel that life is good, because it’s all we know. We get caught up in all the good things of this life, and we forget that we have something much greater coming to us. Or, when our faith is weak, we may even fear the coming of the Lord, fearing things that feel unknowable. We will live forever – how can that be possible? Our human logic can’t comprehend eternity, so, naturally, the thought of living forever may scare us.

Allow me to offer an odd analogy.

If you’re familiar with the storyline of the movie, The Matrix, you know that the basic plot is that—some two hundred years into the future—all humanity is enslaved by robots. The machines use the electricity produced by human bodies to create energy, since air pollution has gotten so bad that the sun’s rays are obscured from the earth’s view. To enable the robots to use the humans without causing them to rise up against them, they create a false reality into which the humans have been “plugged.” Those humans who are plugged into the matrix see and live in the world as they know it, which is only an illusion. They lead a false life, and it’s only after they’ve been unplugged that they can know what the world is really like.

I use this analogy not only to show how much of a sci-fi geek I am, but to make a connection with life on this earth. This earth’s life can be compared to life in the matrix, where everything we see and know is only a shadow or illusion. The reality of a perfect life can only be known beyond the grave. This analogy is flawed, I realize, because those of you who know The Matrix know that, once unplugged, the real world is horribly drearier and the living situation much worse than in the glamorous false world of the matrix. But the point is that everything tangible in this life doesn’t last forever. Sometimes, weakened in our faith, that great fear of the unknown will lead us to cling to the things of this life. In The Matrix, even Neo, who is the savior-character, is reluctant to respond to the call he receives from the real world, urging him to come to grips with reality and wake up. At first, he wants to go on living as he always has, in the world with which he is most familiar and most comfortable. He would rather remain ignorant and blind to the truth. But it’s after he’s been unpleasantly thrust into the real world that he discovers his full potential and becomes The One, the person destined to save the remnant of humans left on earth from the robots. Again the analogy is flawed, but in a similar way, we are not really of this world and can’t possibly know all that we will become in our true home in heaven. The Bible says that God “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Who knows what that entails? But it can only mean good, of course. The apostle John assured us, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

We can’t begin to comprehend the wonders and the treasures that God has in store for us. But we do know that the Lord’s coming will not be a day on which to tremble in fear, or a day that we wish would hold off for a little while longer. The day of the Lord’s coming will be a day on which to rejoice, a day leading to something better than anything we have here on earth. Isn’t that what being a Christian is all about, after all? Our short, little lives on this earth are merely a prelude to the life of perfect bliss that awaits us in heaven.

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Balancing our Books

Jesus is coming back … Are you ready?

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