No matter what time it is, the gospel is priority.

And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations.

Mark 13:10

Would scripture give us any indication that we are indeed living in the end days? Well… “yes”… and “I don’t know.” 

From the teaching of Jesus it is clear that the world is certainly troubled and filled with disaster as He says it will be near the end. And His followers have indeed stood before high rulers… from the first generation of apostles all the way to today. Martyrs still die for loving Jesus. Christians are often hated, cancelled, or at best ridiculed by many cultural powers worldwide.

Yet there are many places, many people groups who have not yet had a gospel witness. There are closed borders for Christian activity. It would seem that we have not quite filled the globe with the good news that Jesus died and rose again to bring us peace with God and home forever with Him. There is still a lot of work left to preach Jesus to ALL people. Until we love people and the world like God does to bring the gospel everywhere, we haven’t quite fulfilled this prophetic call of Jesus to proclaim Him to ALL people everywhere.

I’m somewhat of a gospel pragmatist. Sure, it is interesting to know what Jesus taught about end times. But I can’t live my Christian life exclusively fixated on that. Eschatology never is bigger than the gospel’s first priority! We need to make Jesus known, not hunker down and wait for the judgement of the Great White Throne. My task is to help people passionately follow Jesus. And if you are a Christian… that is what should wake you up every morning. You should hit the floor each morning figuring out what to do to make Jesus known! Let’s love like Jesus. Let’s live like Jesus. Let’s tell others the good news about Jesus. 

Fixating on our culture and its faults is the wrong focus because it is the GOSPEL that fixes hearts. And when Jesus reclaims hearts this WILL reclaim what is broken in our world. Don’t worry about if these are the last days… it doesn’t change the hard reality that we have much gospel work to do RIGHT NOW!

the reception to expect

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

Matthew 24:9

Christians, when following Jesus sincerely, will inevitably be counter culture. The further a society explores its own self-driven compulsions in order to celebrate the triumph of the modern self, unrestrained by God’s Law and the Holy Spirit, the more counter-culture Christianity will appear. This is what Jesus warned His followers about when they pressed Him to teach them about “the end of the age”. Three words describe a world culture at war with Christian discipleship at the end of the age.

Tribulation. Literally the word means “pressure” or “oppression”. As the light of the gospel and the call to holy living shines in Christians who are serious about living like Jesus, the culture will push against the truth. Just like a sinful system worked to silence Jesus by confronting, beating, putting Him on trial, and crucifying Him, so an oppressive world will press in against His church when we truly follow Jesus. Christians should expect to get heckled, cancelled, maligned, ridiculed, “re-educated”, mocked, lied about, and pressured to relinquish their convictions and conform to the cultural “norms”. This pressure is promised by Jesus to be worldwide by the time of the end, with no safe haven from persecution.

Death. Martyrdom has existed from the beginning of the church. The blood of the martyrs has throughout history watered massive growth of the seeds of the gospel globally. In the past there have been pockets of safety from those who might kill Christians. This blood-oath against Christ however will be global in the time of the end. By Jesus’ own prophetic word, there will come a time that the killing of Christians will be the acceptable way to silence the gospel and will be seen as a benefit to society.

Hated. This is the root of the response against Jesus. It is as old as Cain’s hatred of his brother Abel for pleasing God. A sinful world running from accountability before a holy God will hate any who choose to live like Jesus, be changed by His work, be led by His Spirit, and who call others to such transformation by faith in the gospel. All Christians should realize that though we respond in love to ALL PEOPLE… no exceptions… we should expect hatred in return. We MUST love even if we are hated. We CANNOT hate back! Just as Jesus prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, so we must appeal to mercy and grace even if we are treated this way. It is what Jesus wants us to do.

religion’s damning influence

So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 23:28

The twenty-third chapter of the gospel of Matthew is a scathing sermon by Jesus on the evil of human devised religion. In every section Jesus denounces the way the organized legalistic ritual-keeping of the scribes and Pharisees damns them before God. Their outward “righteousness” was not motivated by the inward work of God in their hearts. It is entirely possible to be sinfully motivated into religious pursuits. It is actually all too common. And the result takes the soul far from God, not near to heaven, but actually into the fires of hell.

Here is the truth from Jesus: All the “rule making and rule keeping” piety in the world will not save your soul. Dressing up in outward devotion, ritual, customs, and the notice of others people around you will not clean up our decaying dead souls. God wants to change the inside, not whitewash the outside. The corruption from within us is what needs the real spiritual attention. It matters not how we look when it is who we are that must be changed!

Lest we think Christianity is immune from the need to apply Jesus’ sermon here, let’s remember how easy it is to rest on legalistic self-efforts. We can easily do it. Faking righteousness is very easy. Just go to church. Just show up. Just make minimal effort to let people know you are “in”. Then sin all you want. Being truly changed so that we fight sin and root it out, trusting the Word of God and the Spirit of God, dealing with our basest sinful motivations…. That is a work we MUST surrender to Jesus to help us do! There are too many times my own life drifts to being a “white-washed tomb full of dead man’s bones”. I’m a Pharisee in recovery! It is easy to let fake piety keep up appearances. It is necessary though to humbly admit the simple prayer of the publican: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Lord,

It seems the more Christian activity I busy myself with, the easier it is to whitewash things. Forgive my praise and self-exalting arrogance. I don’t want to be damned by religion. I want to be dazzled in relationship with my Lord, delighting in You, transformed by Your renewing grace… always reaching further to be more like Jesus! And so I humbly repent of pride about what I know about You and I commit to being truly changed, honestly and humbly admitting my failures, so that You can lead me and truly love me!

Amen

God of the living

He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.

Mark 12:27

There is so much more to this story than Jesus silencing His Sadducee critics. It’s more than a shrewdly played theological argument that shattered the liberal mindset of a sect of Jews that denied an afterlife. Jesus is giving hope and that hope was at the heart of His ministry and was His ultimate mission. Jesus would eventually be crucified and then be raised from the dead three days later to make certain for all who believe the reality of the resurrection.

When you think about the Sadducee’s scenario that they presented to Jesus, it is so cold-hearted. A widow loses seven husbands in succession, all brothers, one at a time, over her lifetime. There is no tragedy in the tone of the Sadducees as they lay out their weird scenario. There is just absurdity. And Jesus points it out, telling them in effect from the start, “You are just wrong”. Human experience is not the stuff of philosophical/theological thought experiments. Death and life, love and loss, time and eternity aren’t algebraic equations. The Sadducees missed knowing both the Word of God and the power of God. It showed most in their calloused setup question.

Jesus rebukes them shrewdly. They have got it all wrong. Marriage is an earthly design, not an eternal heavenly experience. And their core belief of denying the resurrection is shattered by scripture in its earliest and simplest expressions. Jesus points out that in God’s presence, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob existed in the present tense as God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Resurrection is real. Eternity is our destination. God’s saints reside in His presence after earthly death. There is hope in the resurrection. Jesus would die and be raised Himself to guarantee that truth for us!

God of the living,

You know how this truth comforts and strengthens us in the face of death and losing those we love most. I come to You quite encouraged in the true and certain hope of eternity with You and Your holy ones redeemed in Jesus our Lord! It is a glorious certainty! And I long for its completion in Your time.

Amen

no “gotchas” with Jesus

And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him in what he said, but marveling at his answer they became silent.

Luke 20:26

You can’t “gotcha” Jesus. It is impossible! Just ask the scribes and chief priests who tried it. His truth and wisdom shut down their deceit and hatred every time. In this episode recounted in Luke 20:19-26, they tried their hardest to get Jesus into a political trap. The hot button topic they wanted to see Him flub up: paying the very unpopular Roman tribute tax. They felt that any answer He gave would hurt His growing popularity. To refuse the tax put Him in trouble with Rome and would be grounds for handing Him over to civil authorities. To agree with the tax was to anger the oppressed Jews. It appeared to be the perfect trap. Except… this was Jesus!

They ask the question with false complimentary attitudes, calling Jesus Rabbi and saying He was teaching “rightly” without partiality. But Jesus was not impressed by their flattery. He perceived their intent right at the very start and used an object lesson to silence them.

He asked for a Roman denarius to be shown to Him. That was the coin needed to pay the tribute tax to Rome. He asked them to tell Him whose likeness was on the coin. Of course everybody knew, it was Caesar. He then shut them up with this simple observation: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Give to God what belongs to God.” And with that, He turned their trap back on them.

In so teaching, Jesus demonstrated principles that Christians still must use to discern the role of civil government even now. Taxes still exist and may feel oppressive. Governments do not always support the best things. Today Jesus would hold up a dollar bill here in America and say to us: “Give to Washington what belongs to Washington. Give to God what belongs to God.” And with that, the highest priority of the kingdom helps us live well under the authorities God ordains to rule over us.

evangelizing the many… discipling the few

For many are called, but few are chosen.

Matthew 22:14

The gospel is meant to go wide… our command is to take it to the entire world… to every ethnic group. The call that Jesus still makes is global in its efforts. The church should never forget this. We want every person to understand that Jesus died for our sins and was raised to give us new life. This is why Christians much plant churches globally.

We have no idea which people will respond to the gospel, which ones have not yet heard it, and which people God is preparing by His Spirit to believe. And so we assume every person needs to learn about this good news. We want to talk about Jesus as we can, where we can, with whomever we can. This is why evangelism, missions, and disciple-making among the nations must always exist until Jesus returns. He is still issuing the call in gospel proclamation to the many.

Though the effort is global, the effectiveness of it is very personal. Jesus Himself emphasized that even as the gospel goes wide, true saving faith and discipleship that goes deep is a much smaller response. The gospel is preached to many. Only a few really join the chosen. Only those who repent of sin, believe that Jesus is their only Savior, and commit to following Him truly join the ranks of His chosen ones. We can make disciples only of those who have chosen Jesus because He has chosen them. That is the reality of what we do.

We must embrace this balancing tension. We heartily proclaim Jesus everywhere. We seek to grow disciples among the few who will believe. We cannot identify those chosen ahead of time. We can only rejoice with them and welcome them once they believe, are baptized, and join the ranks of the faithful. So we keep reaching out to the many, and teaching the few until Jesus returns.

clear identification

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

John 12:42-43

Real faith in Jesus is not afraid to confess Him before others. John’s commentary on these Jewish authorities who were starting to secretly believe Jesus was Messiah is instructive for us on what motivates true saving faith. At least during Jesus’ Passion week, these people were not at all ready to publicly identify with Jesus. They wanted to believe Christ but not to a point that rocked their comfort zone.

All of this is told us in a broader context. Jesus has just invited a crowd that included Greek-speaking Jews to follow Him (John 12:26). He has announced His coming death and proclaimed it is for the glory of His Father (John 12:27). And the crowd has heard the literal audible voice of the Father speak out loud to them affirming Jesus (John 12:28-30). Jesus clearly announced to them that His redeeming death will draw the world to Him (John 12:30-36). Given the crowd, it would be sure to include some of these “authorities” mentioned in verse 42. They were among those who had just experienced all these things.

And despite an encounter with the voice of the Father… despite Jesus’ clear declaration of coming to save the world… they still feared people more than God. They wanted to believe Jesus, but it would take more. We would begin to see that change occur after His death when both Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea would reveal themselves unashamedly as His followers.

If we follow Jesus, we cannot hide it. There are no “secret saints”. We cannot try to be loved by those who hate Jesus. It will not work. We are going to be hated. But when we are called out, criticized, or canceled for our love of Jesus, we take heart. The glory of God is bigger and best. We lose nothing! We gain our soul’s eternal delight in Jesus!