Persecution of Christians around the world is going up. The persecuted have one thing we do not tend to have - clarity. They know the Gospel is meant to be lived. They know living the Gospel is not seeking worldly wealth, prestige, or power. They don’t seek governmental power because they know the government is against them.
Here white evangelical Christians are the largest and most powerful voting block and this makes it hard for us to have clarity. This means we are of this world.
We see the Church as one more purveyor of goods and services. God serves us - we don’t serve God.
We need to accommodate - preaching the Gospel in a way people can understand. But we’ve gone too far in this direction and made an idol of God. We need to confront - but if we go too far, we become like Pharisees. In every age, the Church needs to find a balance between these two extremes.
Exhortations don’t always call a person to do something they aren’t doing - exhortations are also meant as encouragement. See how Jonathan Edwards exhorted his children in letters to them.
Philippians 1:27 is an exhortation to live a life worthy of the Gospel. The Gospel is not an accounting system - viewed only as Christ paying our debts. The Gospel is the story of how God came among us and what God did for us. Do not minimize it. The Gospel is too big for one interpretation.
There are four interpretations of Atonement. The pastor sees it as God finding us because we couldn’t find God. The cross and resurrection is the victory of Jesus over death and sin.
He brought up the restaurant that refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He said Paul would not have called for that. He said it would be better to have served her abundantly and then explain why she did so.
Emperor worship in Rome was worshipping the State - it was patriotism. It was a way to bring far flung Romans together.
The Gospel should be provoking tension in your life. Is it?
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