Pastor Marty Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 7:52PM This is a 13 week series that will not be posted on our website. If you would like an audio of the sermon or a written article on the sermon contents then please contact the church at AbundantLifeEverett@frontier.com. You can also leave a message at 425.438.1500. Thank you for your interest.
Pastor Marty Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 12:29PM Mark 6:45-52. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, October 20, 2019.
In our story today, we have a miraculous event that makes it easy for some to scoff and discount it as a myth, at best. There are even some Christians who will say that this didn’t actually happen, but that the story is designed to teach what the writer believes is the truth about Jesus. To them, these mythical and miraculous stories are merely vehicles to take us to the truth. They are not the truth themselves.
All of this may seem good in some halls of academia (note: not all schools of higher learning teach this), but these men were not university professors with the desire to make up and use myths in order to teach truth. They were humble fishermen, hated tax collectors, and men who did not think in such ways. Their world had been turned upside down by an almost incredible man named Jesus.
Something else we should keep in mind is this. God does not present himself as an “ends justifies the means” being. His Holy Spirit was not encouraging these disciples to spin mythic yarns in order to get some people to believe the truth. This is important in our day and age because it is becoming an increasingly common method of “persuasion.” In truth, such methods are actually manipulation. No, God really is as great as He is presented in the Scriptures, even the miracles of Jesus.
In this life, we will face much difficulty. Some of it is simply life; some of it is the effects of our choices; and some of it is spiritual opposition. Regardless of what we are facing today, may God help us to trust His power over the natural and the supernatural creation that He has made by His power.
Jesus walks on the water
Last week we stopped with Jesus and his disciples picking up 12 baskets of leftovers from a miraculous provision of food for over 5,000 people. We are then told that evening was upon them and dark was approaching.
There are two other narratives of this event in the other Gospels in Matthew 14, and John 6. In John 6, we are told that Jesus recognized that the crowd wanted to take him by force in order to make him king. This leads to Jesus doing two things.
First, Jesus makes his disciples leave in a boat without him. Most likely, he doesn’t want them to get caught up in the fervor of the crowd, and he has other plans for why they will be on the water in a boat without him.
Second, Matthew records that Jesus sent the multitude away and went up on a nearby mountain alone in order to pray. It was not the time for Jesus to present himself as king, and he was destined to be rejected by the nation. Jesus was not looking to crowds as an opportunity for self-advancement. He was looking to His Father for the proper advancement that comes from Him alone. This is why it is a common theme throughout the Gospels that Jesus would get alone to pray. Believe me, he had even less time to pray than you do. Yet, he took time to commune with Father God late at night and early in the morning.
In light of the rest of this story, we must also recognize that Jesus knew that his disciples had not completely understood the magnitude of the miracle that had just happened with the feeding of the multitude. He is setting them up to see just who he really is in an unmistakable way.
It appears from the different accounts that the disciples took off in their boat across the Sea of Galilee as it grew dark, and began rowing across the large lake. It is around 6 to 7 miles across. At some point, the winds begin to pick up and they are not tail winds. Now, oaring is difficult enough without the resistance of the wind. However, this wind becomes very hard and the waves very large.
This account is very similar to the storm we saw earlier in Mark 4. There the storm was swamping the boat and the disciples feared that they would perish. However here, the storm seems different. It is impeding their progress and exhausting their efforts more than it is jeopardizing their lives. This is important because, when you think about it, we face exhaustion and giving up far more often than we face physical threats against our lives. When we become physically exhausted, it commonly leads to emotional and mental exhaustion. This can then lead to spiritual exhaustion wherein we simply give up and quit. It is a good thing to guard against spiritual exhaustion by taking care of ourselves physically, and making sure we are not physically exhausted. We can be our own worst boss, driving ourselves harder than is good for us, and harder than God desires for us. Yet, sometimes life does not give us a choice in this matter. We can be assailed by ill winds that just won’t quit, and by things that sap our strength in every way. The good news is that Jesus knows this.
Jesus wasn’t only praying on the mountain. Verse 48 tells us that he was also watching the progress of the disciples across the lake. Of course, he wanted to spend time with the Father and would not forgo that. However, he also allows them to oar, and oar…, and oar, for hours against the wind. Yet, he eventually does come to them in the last watch of the night. The last night would be anywhere from 3 AM to 6 AM. Clearly, these guys had been oaring for a long time and were not getting very far.
Do you ever wish that God would show up sooner than he does? Of course, we all do. Yet, the testimony of saints through the ages is that God’s timing was always for their good in retrospect. The problem with hindsight is that you don’t get it until you reach the other side of the story. Can we keep faith and trust in Christ in the midst of difficulty, or will we quit oaring the direction Jesus sent us and go back? These stories, the stories of other believers today, and our own past experiences, all teach us that God can be trusted to take care of us.
This time, Jesus is not going to dramatically tell the storm to stop. He is going to come to them in a way that will help them understand that the storm is not bigger than him. This may seem cliché, but God help us to hold on to the truth that He really is bigger than all of our problems. We don’t have to fear. He doesn’t always help us in the way that we want, or in the same way, but help He will and none too late!
The disciples are rowing as best they can, probably taking shifts, but they are making little progress if any. It is at this point that Jesus comes walking on the water looking as if he is going to pass on by them. This is an important point. Jesus is coming for them, yet they need to recognize his presence and call out to him. We can get so caught up in our difficulties, with our head down towards the ground, and not see him in our situation, and not cry out to him.
The comedy of this situation should not escape us as these grown men think they are seeing a ghost, and give a cry of fear. This is not anything they would expect to see. Someone is walking on the water, and, as if that wasn’t enough, it is in the middle of a storm. Another boat would have been surprising to see, but normal. However, this scared them.
When we come face to face with the mighty power and ability of God, it can be a hair-raising experience. He is more powerful than we can imagine, and we definitely do not want to be His enemy. Yet, even His children can be caught by surprise and have a sense of fear at how great His power really is. It is not God’s intention to cause us to fear, but it will happen nonetheless. Thus, Jesus states, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” Ah yes, the classic statement of angels, and now Jesus, to those freaked out by their presence. “It is I” is the promise Christ makes to all who trust him. “I will never leave you nor forsake you…I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” These are the words he gives to us. God help us to hold on to them in our storms, and even when we are exhausted.
We should note that the episode of Peter, sort of walking on the sea, happens at this point, but only Matthew 14 records this event, and so we will not go into it now.
Essentially, the disciples go from fear that Jesus is a ghost (some kind of shade from the Hebrew equivalent of Davey Jones’ Locker) to amazement at what they had just witnessed. The waves, the wind, and the water that impeded them so greatly were no such impediment to Jesus. We can almost hear those words again, “What manner of man is this?” Mark uses three different ways of telling us their minds were blown: they were “greatly amazed,” “beyond measure,” and “marveled.” That is our God, and we must never forget it. When He needs to do so, He can blow our minds with His power and ability.
When Jesus gets into the boat, the winds cease. There was no command of Jesus. It just simply calms down. There is a good historical reason to believe that Peter was the main source for Mark in these stories. So, it is interesting that Mark’s account is the one that points out that their inability to grasp that Jesus was more than a man was due to their hearts being hard. After they saw Jesus speak to the storm, cast out the legion of demons, feed the multitude with a paltry amount of food, surely then they should have understood the power of Christ and what it says about him.
We are used to seeing the phrase “hard hearts” with unbelievers like Pharaoh, but not with believers. They were believers in Jesus, but they were also disciples, which implies that they had much to learn (that we have much to learn). Discipleship is not easy, and is filled with moments that challenge our faith to step up to the next level. May God help us to understand that no force of nature is greater than He is.
There is a final point to be made with this story. Jesus literally walked on water and that is a tribute to His power as the Son of God. Yet, there is some purposeful symbolism here that also gives tribute to His power over supernatural forces as well.
Revelation 17:15 clues us in to the fact that the waters of the sea are sometimes used as symbols of the peoples of the earth. The waves picture the forces from within humanity and beyond it that cause a turbulent movement of societies in every which way. Ill winds blowing upon the waters is often a picture of supernatural forces, whether good or evil, interacting and affecting the nations of the earth. Also, there is a theme of the Bible that is explicitly seen in Isaiah 27:1, where the devil is pictured as an aquatic reptile, or a water dragon. He is like a sea monster, slithering throughout the peoples of the earth, mastering the chaotic seas, and causing havoc wherever he wishes.
These are the kind of things that scare us and make us feel puny, but Jesus is the Lord of all creation, both its natural aspects and its supernatural ones. He will slay the fleeing serpent and we need not fear even when all the forces of hell are marshalled against us. How? We can know that Christ is always watching over us, and praying for us. He will come to us at just the right time, and we will grow to know His power and grace even more.
Pastor Marty Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 9:11AM Colossians 1:1-14. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 29, 2018.
The book of the Bible that we call Colossians was a letter written by the Apostle Paul to believers in the city of Colosse (sometimes spelled Colossae). Like all new believers, the Colossians were in danger of listening to false teachers who would take advantage of their new faith in order to manipulate it towards a mixture of Christian beliefs with those of the Greeks or Jews. The word that we use for such a mixture is “syncretism.”
In many ways this word describes much of the world today, who treat religion like a buffet table. When we “cherry-pick” from different religions all the things that make sense to us, several things happen. First, we have set ourselves up as the judge of what is truth, and yet by searching we confess that we do not know what is true. So how could we be the best judge? What guarantee is there that I will somehow choose wisely? There is none. Second, we end up with a number of ideas and lifestyle choices that are not coherent, or do not logically tie together (in fact they are often downright contradictions). We end up with a philosophy of life that is inconsistent and even hypocritical.
Take for instance the reality that modern philosophy promotes a humanistic materialism. The evolutionary theory that comes from such a view has no true basis for ethic or morality. There is no such thing as absolute truth. Who am I to tell a serial killer that what they do is wrong? We are all just accidents that do not have true thoughts, but only a neuro-electrical version of the old Plinko game. Yet, we cannot escape the fact that people find it impossible to live out such philosophies with consistency. The first time someone steals something of yours, a deep inner compulsion pushes you to declare it as wrong. To remain true to our philosophy we would have to recognize it is just a trick of our bodies and that it has no true validity. Thus modern man finds himself clinging to a humanistic, evolutionary view of the world, while inconsistently absconding with views from Christianity or any other religion, hoping that know one notices (usually not even noticing ourselves). Some sense of morality is helpful to a society regardless of whether or not we can make a logical case for the necessity of it without God.
As we look into this letter, we will find that God has spoken into the world and Jesus is that Word that He has spoken to us. Man's attempts to find meaning outside God are barren.
Before we get into chapter 1 verse 1, it would be helpful to know exactly where Colosse was. This city was in what we call Turkey today. Here is a link to a map that will give you an idea (Thank you BibleAtlas.org). It was very close to another city mentioned in the book of Revelation, Laodicea.
From what little information that we have in the Bible, it appears that this was not a city that Paul had evangelized. A convert named Epaphras, who was from Colosse, seems to have brought the gospel to them and a church developed.
We also know that Paul wrote the letter from one of his imprisonments. He later tells them to remember his chains (4:18). It is believed the letter was written around AD 63 +/- several years. While in prison, word had come to Paul about this community in Colosse and some of the doctrinal issues that had cropped up among them. Thus Paul writes a letter concerning those issues, so that the believers of Colosse could have confidence in what they should believe and how they should live.
We also see that Paul instructs the Colossians to share this letter with the believers of Laodicea, and to read the letter that was written to the believers of Laodicea (4:16). This helps us to see how the word of God was spread throughout these early churches. It wasn’t until later that large groups of the Gospels and letters were put together and circulated more widely.
In verses 3-8 Paul mentions several things for which he is thankful. First, he is thankful for their faith in Jesus. The reports of how they had embraced the truth about Christ, and the larger body of believers that they were joining, had come to Paul. Their faith had expressed itself in a love for the saints. Now remember that “saints” here does not mean an elite group of believers. It is a term used of all believers that emphasized that each one had been set apart by God for His own purposes, a holy purpose.
He also reminds them that this faith in Jesus gives them a hope that was laid up in heaven. Peter uses the phrase, “reserved in heaven for you (1 Peter 1:4).” Our inheritance is for us to be transformed into glorified bodies and to inherit the world with Jesus at His Second Coming. We can see a familiar theme of Paul’s here with the three great virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love.
He is also thankful that the word of truth was bringing forth fruit. It is not enough to hear the word of the Lord, it must bear fruit to be of any value to us and to the world. Part of that transforming fruit is their “Love in the Spirit” mentioned at the end of verse 8.
Love is an important principle among any people who are going to accomplish something together. However, without the Holy Spirit, human love continually falls short. It is here today and gone tomorrow. For the believer, it is the presence of the Spirit of God that stirs us up to love one another. When we refuse to listen to the Spirit, then dissension and divisions break out. Such Spirit-led love has a strength that overcomes all adversity and human frailty that we may find within each other. our love for one another is not based upon each other, but upon the Spirit of God that is teaching us how to love one another. Thus the fruit of the Spirit are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. This affects our relationship with other believers and with the world. Paul is welcoming these new believers and rejoicing for their presence within the greater body of Christ.
As we look over this list, we may notice that Paul placed an emphasis on things that are not possessions and wealth. It is good for believers to be thankful for the material blessings that they have in Christ. But may we also learn to be even more thankful for the things that Paul listed. Are you thankful for the people that God used to bring the gospel into your life? Are you thankful for other believers? Are you thankful for the grace to believe in Christ and become part of his family? Are you thankful for the growth of the fruit of the Spirit in your life? These are the things that we need most and for which we ought to give thanks to God most.
In verses 9-14, Paul lets them know the things he was praying for them. It is good for us to hear this list because our prayers can become only a list of the material things that we are seeking from God. Here Paul lists things that are far more important than new cars, houses, business deals, money, etc.
Paul prays that they would be filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Of course the will of God is to embrace Jesus as our Lord, but it is clear that Paul is thinking more than just our initial acceptance of Jesus. The phrases, “all wisdom” and “spiritual understanding” speak to living out our lives as believers in Jesus. We run into all kinds of situations and temptations, in which we need the wisdom and understanding of the Spirit of God in order to do what God wants us to do. In a nutshell the letters that Paul and the other apostles wrote were doing just that. Paul was helping them to understand what God’s will was in every situation. Yes, God wants us to embrace Jesus and to be a person in which His Spirit can dwell. But, then, through a dynamic relationship, He wants to transform our minds and our lives into the image of Jesus Christ.
Paul also prays that they would walk worthy of the Lord. Paul is using the phrase to emphasize that we are capable of not listening to the Spirit from time to time. The believer should never be comfortable with this. The works of the flesh are obvious and believers need to recognize that the Lord Jesus is so glorious that we do not want to tarnish Him before the world. Many might fear that this will tend towards legalism. But, Paul’s point is not to create a legalism, but rather, to inspire us to proper actions. Like a coach reminding students that they represent their school, Paul reminds us that we represent Jesus and our actions reflect upon Him.
So is it possible to be fully pleasing to the Lord? We are fully pleasing to the Lord when we listen to the Holy Spirit in regards to how we should live. Of course this also involves those times when we fail. Too often people forget that the Holy Spirit also leads us to repentance and forgiveness for those times when we fail. It is not a phrase that seeks to disqualify and kick us out. Rather, it is intended to motivate us.
Paul also prays that they would be fruitful in every good work. This is another way of looking at the concept of walking worthy of the Lord. A person who follows the Spirit of God will be fruitful in their life. They will also be beneficial to others much like a fruit tree is beneficial to those who come upon it. We will be a tree of life and a fresh water spring to the people around us because the Life of the Spirit will flow into us and through us.
Paul also prays that they will be strengthened with all might. All of this talk about being like Christ and following the Holy Spirit requires much inner strength. Intestinal fortitude, or “guts” for short, cannot come from our flesh. It must have a spiritual source. The closer we get to following Jesus the more our flesh gets queasy and weak. We need the strength of Christ's glorious power working in us in order to put the desires of the flesh to death. This daily dying to self and living in Christ is empowered by the Holy Spirit, if we yield to Him. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 Paul was reminded by the Lord that “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” In that passage the weakness is that which we have in our flesh. When our flesh is weak, the powerful strength of the Lord will shine through and do its perfect work. People will recognize that the power is of God and not of me.
Lastly, Paul prays that they will be thankful to God with Him. We should be thankful that God has qualified us to be partakers in the inheritance of the saints. This is what Daniel saw in chapter 7 verses 21-22. “I was watching and the same horn was making war against the saints and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days came and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.”
We are also to be thankful that God has delivered us from the power of darkness (spiritual darkness and spiritual powers) and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Wow! Talk about a new immigration status. Without Christ we are stuck under the powers of darkness that rule over this world. Their kingdom will never bring peace and joy to the earth. Yet, mankind continues to operate in league with them. Through Christ we are able to break out of that spiritual matrix that enslaves the whole world. We are then enabled to participate in the kingdom of Jesus. That kingdom exists in part already. But the fullness of it will be known when He returns to earth to set up an earthly kingdom.
We should also give thanks to the Father that we have been redeemed and have had our sins forgiven. Jesus paid the price with his blood that purchased us back from the auction block and slavery of sin. His death made it possible that our sins might be removed from us as far as the east is from the west.
Now as I close, be honest. Are these the things in which you are most thankful and most likely to be praying for? May the word of God instruct us in the things that truly make for our joy and that we truly need. Of course we are instructed to pray for our daily bread. But let’s pray for the things that Paul is praying, both for yourself and for fellow believers. We all need these things even more than we need the material.
Email Article | Print Article | Share Article | tagged Christians, Faith, Fruit, God's Will, Prayer, Strength, Thankfulness, Truth Pastor Marty Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 8:52AM Matthew 10:24-26. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 22, 2018.
Is it possible to have joy when difficult things are happening to you? According to Jesus in his “beatitudes” of the Sermon on the Mount, we are blessed when people revile us, persecute us, and say all manner of evil things against us falsely for Christ’s sake. Then he goes further and tells us to rejoice and be glad for great is our reward in heaven (Matthew 5:10-11). These are not the words of a man who was protected by privilege and position in this world. He had grown up labeled as an illegitimate child, and then rejected and mistreated by entrenched religious leaders. Ultimately he was headed to a cross and yet he tells us we are blessed in such cases and should rejoice and be glad. How is such an incredible response possible?
It may be easy to dismiss this by saying that it was easy for Jesus because He was God. But such arguments are themselves a cop-out. How are we to know that it wasn’t actually harder for Him because He was God? We can’t because we can only know for sure what it is like to be human. Jesus was fully human and yet fully God. So we should dispense with such intellectual dishonesty and recognize that Jesus expects this to be our experience in times of persecution or suffering. How could he expect this of us?
As we look at the words of Jesus in our passage today, we will find that it is the knowledge that there will be a day when all that is hidden will be brought to light. This is a scary thing for those who have ulterior motives. But, for the believer, the day of revelation will be a joyous moment in which all that has been slandered against us will be cast down by Christ Himself. Let’s look at the passage.
Jesus never promised us a rose garden in this life and this passage is one of many that prove it. The apostle tells us in 2 Timothy 3:12, “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” They had been warned by Jesus. A pernicious mentality has developed among some Christians today. It is the idea that if we were more like Jesus in faith and power, that we could fix the ills of the world and save everybody. As wonderful as that idea is, it is not a biblical one, nor is it particularly Christian. It is not a Christian idea because it purports to put us and the power of our faith above the Lord who bought us with His blood. Here Jesus makes it clear that those who follow Him are going to encounter persecution in this world.
This will happen precisely because we are not greater than Him. Jesus uses three different relationships to help us see why we will be persecuted as well. There is the relationship of the teacher to the student, the lord to a servant, and the master of a house to the members of that household. The student learns from the teacher in order to be like his master. If a servant’s master is hated by the world, then so too will the servant. Ultimately, Jesus is pointing out that if we are in relationship with him then we will experience whatever it is that he receives. Whatever lot comes to Jesus also comes to us. The only way to avoid it is to reject Him, or at least to minimize his lordship in your life.
In the end it was the lot of Jesus to be persecuted in this world. Thus those who follow Him will also encounter persecution. Sure, it will vary depending on the place and time that you live. Jesus points out that just as they accused Him of being in league with the prince of demons, so they will accuse His disciples of being evil. They also called him a heretic that was causing dissension. He was labeled an insurrectionist and revolutionary. All of these were false accusations.
Herein lies the problem. The above mentioned relationships between us and Jesus, and the Scriptures themselves, teach that the Spirit of God is laboring to make us more like Jesus. Romans 8:29 says, “For those He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” So how can it be that Christianity can convert the whole world and create a Utopia by having the power and faith that Jesus had? Such power and faith led to Jesus being persecuted and killed. How can it lead us to anything new? Yes, if Jesus so determines, it could be so. But here he promises the opposite. Perhaps the only way it can be is if I am not operating in the same faith and power that He did.
Regardless, notice how verse 25 is worded, “It is enough...”. Jesus puts it in a statement form. But we should ask it as a question. Is it enough for me to simply be like Jesus? Clearly it is enough from God’s perspective because Jesus states it so. But is it enough for me? Charles Spurgeon, an English Baptist preacher, said, “God was slandered in paradise, and Christ on Calvary. How can we expect to escape?”
It is each thing that Jesus was not that draw our hearts away from Him and towards the world; away from the relationships of Teacher-student, Lord-servant, Master of the house-household member. We are drawn either completely away from Christ, or we are deluded with the fanciful notion that we can have Christ and the world as our teachers. Friend, recognize today that Jesus really is enough for you. However, your flesh will not think so, and the world around you will not tell you so. When the Christian Corrie Ten Boom came out of the German concentration camp of WWII, she had a message for the world. “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” He is enough.
In some ways modern society has become “more righteous” than God Himself. It makes accusations of conspiracy, and rejects biblical ethics and morality. Don’t listen to those voices that seduce you with becoming greater than Jesus, whether from within Christian circles or from the world. When Jesus is enough for us, then we will know the peace and rest that God has for our souls and the joy of His Holy Spirit in times of difficulty.
In verse 26 Jesus reminds us of a principle that is as sure as any law of physics. The hidden things will come to light. This is both a warning and an encouragement. It is a warning for those who would conceal evil, and an encouragement to those who are falsely accused of such. All things that are done leave evidence behind. Even when a person is framed by planted evidence, there will always be some evidence that it was planted, whether we are able to recapture it or not (God can recapture it). Truth has a way of coming out in the end, precisely because it is real. So it will be in eternity as all that has truly happened comes to the surface and God gives His judgments based upon reality, truth.
Jesus was not like the secret societies of our days. He did not teach one thing in public and another to his top 3 disciples. Sure they received more than the crowds, but Jesus was not publicly worshipping Yahweh, while privately promoting Beelzebub. The false slander of the religious authorities came from an attempt to hold to two irreconcilable positions: Jesus was doing incontrovertible miracles, and yet He cannot be the Messiah. Jesus was silent at His trial precisely because He had said and done everything out in the open. If they were still going to pretend He was evil, what could he say to overturn their minds? Christians reject those who use secret society techniques, who promote one thing to the masses and another to the inner elite. This is the way of Satan, not Jesus. The longer you are with Christ the more you recognize that His teachings do not become different as you draw closer to Him. Rather, it is you who becomes different, and the teachings of Christ become deeper than we ever imagined. This is what Corrie Ten Boom found in the depths of an earthly hell: Jesus was still with her and His love had not abandoned her, even though she was in a place destitute of love and faithfulness. So as the disciples of Jesus, we have nothing to hide, even though the world accuses us of hypocrisy, conspiracy, and idiocy (granted such do exist under the tent of Christianity).
Jesus tells his disciples not to fear those who make such unfounded accusations because the truth will come to light in some way. It might not come soon enough to keep me from being nailed to a tree, but it will come nonetheless.
There is a strength that can be derived from trusting the vindication of God Himself in your life. Think of it. God is your defense attorney and therefore you can’t lose. But when I am my own defense attorney and I am constantly fearful at what others think about me, then I will become trapped by my own double-mindedness. Draw strength from God’s promised rectification and wait for His timing.
In fact, worry and fear of what others think or say sidetracks us from the mission of Christ. Instead we pick up a futile mission of our own. We will never please all of the people all of the time, in fact not even a majority. Think of it. If I am working at “reforming my public image,” it puts me at odds with the Holy Spirit’s work of making me to look like Jesus. How proud we must be to remake our image so as to avoid what Jesus marched purposefully towards. The only choices that God gives to us is to embrace the image of Jesus and the persecution that goes along with it, or choose an image that the world will accept and avoid it. It is not our job to reform our image, but rather, in every way to yield to the Spirit’s call to become more and more like Jesus.
Sometimes God does bring the truth to light in the present. We will taste some vindication in this life in various ways. However, our hope goes beyond this. Few are ever completely vindicated in this life. Even Jesus has billions who reject His words. But a day of vindication is coming. God’s defense of Jesus and those who are following Him never rests. He will have the final word.
This final vindication will be brought to light when the Lord Jesus comes to reign upon the earth. As it was in the days of Jesus, so it is today. Often those who paint the devil on others are most manipulated by the devil themselves. Jesus and His apostles warned us against judging too quickly, and at the wrong time. Thus some things, like the hidden motivations of a person’s heart, have to be left up to God.
Humility is a part of following Jesus, and it teaches us to trust in the judgments of God that will be revealed at Christ’s Second Coming. Romans 8:18-21 says, “For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the Sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willfully, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” So just who are the children of God and what is their revealing? He is speaking of Christians and the day of resurrection when we will stand beside Christ in glorified bodies. It will be clear on that day just who chose wickedness and who chose truth. It won’t matter what any person thinks, or even if billions of followers shout your praises. What matters is the judgment of God Himself. Thus in 1 Corinthians 4:5 we are told, “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God.” Instead of fearing what people think, we can rejoice in knowing already what God thinks. In fact the life of a believer, is constantly having fellowship with God by His Spirit. Instead of worrying about what others think, we only worry about what God thinks. Thus the adage is true, “You don’t want the wrong people to like you.”
Let’s put our trust in the Lord and grow in living out His righteousness. This is enough for us, regardless of what the world around us might falsely say about us. We are in good company, for such they did to the prophets of old and especially our Lord Jesus. If we suffer with Him then we shall be glorified with Him!
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