WHY ARE THE NATIONS IN AN UPROAR?

One thing is certain as we navigate our way through the twenty-first century: "The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might he increases power" (Isaiah 40:28-29).

The God who created history saw the twenty-first century coming long before we could even begin to imagine it. He is not caught off guard by the ways of the world in these busy and stressful days. He is not caught off guard by the philosophies and religions and ideologies that inundate and saturate the cultures of the world. He is not caught off guard that people still hate His Son and still seek to crucify Him at every opportunity. He is not caught off guard at the runaway passions that dominate the human heart, the addictions that imprison countless millions of people, or the inner hatred that drives individuals and political powers to decimate those in opposition. He is not caught off guard at how His Name is used and abused, ridiculed and profaned, slandered and ignored. He is "the Creator of the ends of the earth," and, "His understanding is inscrutable."

Psalm two asks the question, "Why are the nations in an uproar and the people devising a vain thing?" (vs. 1). A few verses later it says of God, "He who sits in the heavens, the Lord scoffs at them" (vs. 4). It is sort of silly how mankind has such an exaggerated view of its own self-importance. I think sometimes we human beings really do believe we are the center of the universe and that our ways are flawless beyond comprehension. What a farce. How sad. How silly.

To complicate things we live in an age of unprecedented technology, which has given to us the capacity to destroy the world. We haven't always had this power, but we do now; and its presence cannot be denied or ignored. Most of us would not use this power to destroy, but there are those in the global community who would. Some people crave power so intensely, seek to control so forcefully, and are so committed to bringing others into submission to their ways, that they will stop at nothing, even bringing a world down, in their efforts to get their way.

This is the world, at least a part of it, in which we Christians are honored to live and to serve our God. It is the world that has been handed to us. It is the arena into which God has placed us at this time in history to tell the wonderful story of Jesus; and His story is, indeed, wonderful. It is the one story that speaks to the very core of the human experience and brings there the redeeming love of God.

This moment in history has not been forgotten by God but is a front and center chapter in an unfolding movement of grace, “God's grace …Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace; grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt, grace that points to the Refuge, the mighty Cross…the marvelous grace of our loving Lord.”(“Grace Greater than Our Sin” by Julia H. Johnson and Daniel B. Towner, 1910)

WE REALLY DO HAVE A STORY

In the letter of Colossians we learn that in His Church God is raising up an alternative community where truth is told and people matter and persons as persons are not disenfranchised. In Christ, God birthed a new community, a new way of doing life; an alternative to living in a world where words are a-dime-a-dozen and talk so often comes to nothing.

In Christ we live "transferred." We are in the world but we are not of it. We are here but Paul says our lives are "hidden with Christ in God" (3:3). So, we live our lives from within the embrace of God's divine life.

As the Church we live in a community of transformed and transforming people; a community where people are the first priority, and Jesus Christ is in charge of the whole thing; a community where immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech and lies (3: 5, 8-9) have no place; a community where compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, love, the peace of Christ, thankfulness, and the Word of God rule the day (3:12-16).

As the Church we are a community where “Christ is all, and in all” (3:11); a community created on the cross of Christ and enabled by the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

The Church is the community that proclaims Jesus because we believe that Jesus is God’s response to the deepest needs of the human heart.

We proclaim Jesus because “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (2:17).

We proclaim Jesus because there is no other person in the world (no religion, no philosophy, no ideology, no ism) of whom it can be said,” whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

We proclaim Jesus because not only did He die for our sins; He was raised up from the dead to show us just how much of a Savior He is. And, now, in His life we live and in His victory we share.

And, as His Church, we now live as the community of renewal, extending the message of hope to all who will hear it.

It is crucial that we get out to the world the story of Jesus. Crucial.

In about 99% of life one size doesn't fit all. It takes imagination and variety and exploration and risk and a thousand methodologies to lift up Christ in a world in desperate need of God. God seems to work within the context of situations and events and conditions, using gifts and talents and motivations and drives and training of a myriad of people to carry out His work. It is fairly obvious that God doesn't work in the same way in every situation. Still, with all that being said I do wonder about how He worked in the early church from the promise stage to the fulfillment stage. And, I wonder if the Church ought always to pay extraordinarily close attention to what we are given in Scripture when it comes to matters like these. Let me explain.

In Acts 1:8 Jesus gave His followers a promise that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. In that power, He said, they would become witnesses of Jesus and the Christ event.

Whatever that promise did in them it, at minimum, motivated them to a new level of expectation. They took the promise seriously, entered into a room in which they waited together in prayer and the Word and fellowship.

In the spirit of waiting and praying and being together, the Holy Spirit came into them, and led them out into their world to be the witnesses Jesus said they would be.

Empowered witness drew people to God, and God, in the people, set a movement into motion that is still under way 2000 years later.

I don't believe we can straitjacket God with some kind of airtight formula that guarantees the same results should we re-enact Acts Chapter one and beyond today. However, I am thinking that in this resurrection story we do have divine insight into the way God seems to work in the Church. Maybe we ought to pay close attention to that divine insight.

Here are some thoughts about the story behind the story at the birth of the Church, the story that bursts out of the first century into all the centuries of obedience to follow.

1. The need for Holy Spirit energized power.

2. The need to wait, to be still in the presence of God, so as to pray and give careful attention to His Word.

3. To wait and pray in one spirit, as one body, on one mission, for the one and true living God.

4. To expect and believe and obey, not in isolation, but in community.

5. To get out among people and there, live out the meaning of the Faith, living it in such away that any words we might speak will have the power of a lifestyle behind them, a lifestyle energized by the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the story of Acts might mean today, it at least means that the Church is a Holy-Spirit-empowered-movement or it is nothing at all. The work of God without the power of God is an exercise in futility. The work of God empowered by the Spirit of God is an awesome sight to behold and to experience.