Challenges Facing the Church in Culture
Throughout December, we’re going to be talking about the uniqueness of Jesus. The Bible presents Jesus as a Son of Abraham, the Patriarch, a Son of David, the King. Jesus is also called the Son of Man and the Son of God. There are many reasons this series matters.
First, our culture is perfectly content divorcing Jesus from Christmas. Now, we shouldn’t be surprised by this, but we should understand the implications. When you divorce Jesus from Christmas, you can reinvent Christmas into whatever you want it to be. When it’s no longer about the uniqueness of Jesus, Christmas becomes all about fulfilling our material ambitions, revitalizing the retail sector or stock market, or enjoying another family celebration not unlike other holidays.
Confession: I love receiving gifts, especially ones I can use in my garage or on my bass boat. I love watching my ROTH IRAs grow because of a booming economy. I love my family, and realize each time were together is more precious than I ever imagined, because life is precious, and life is a gift, and at Christmas we have this heightened sense of grief knowing that life can be cut short. We want to make the most of our time together. But without Jesus, Christmas actually ends up feeling kind of sad and hollow. Because after the gifts are open, and corporate revenues end the year in black, and our family rooms fall silent, and the decorations are put away… we’re left wondering whether there is anything more to life than what we’ve manufactured all these months.
Doesn’t it make you feel sad to realize, that for probably most people, there is nothing transcendent about Christmas? There is no transcendent hope, no transcendent meaning or eternal life to celebrate. There is just the blackness of black Friday, with no light of the virgin birth, a resurrection Sunday, an ascendant Christ, or the promise/gift of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. We have an opportunity to weave Jesus into the very center of our Christmas, and we’re going to do it!
If our culture is guilty of divorcing Jesus from Christmas… the church is guilty of divorcing Jesus from his Biblical, theological, historical, and eternal identity. Churches present Jesus as a political activist, in lockstep with a national party. They present Jesus as a social activist, in lockstep with whatever issue of injustice is stealing the headlines. They present Jesus as a moral crusader, breathing threats of judgment and condemnation against the wicked and ungodly. They present Jesus merely as a good but dead teacher, who once dispensed good advice. They present Jesus as a good but dead therapist, whose insights can help you cope with the psychological pain of life. They present Jesus merely as a model human being, whose bygone life is still worthy of imitation after all these centuries. Churches present Jesus as a motivational speaker, as a superstar entertainer who came to seek/save super fans in super-domes everywhere, with state of the art technology and groovy music…
Do you realize you can preach all day and night about Jesus while totally rejecting his Biblical, theological, historic, and eternal identity as the Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of Man, and Son of God? Its one thing for our culture to get Christmas wrong, it’s quite another for we, the church, to get Jesus wrong!
This is the problem today. There is nothing unique about Jesus, not in the minds of culture certainly, but not in the minds of so many churchgoers either! God didn’t present Jesus for us to fashion him into whatever image we want to fashion him into. God presented Jesus to us as His very own life, His very own love, His very own righteousness and holiness, His very own power, and His very own image.
I want to know the “Hebrews 1:3” Jesus this Christmas. It says, “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” You see, that’s the transcendent… the super-natural… the living, resurrected, ascendant Jesus, from above! He’s the Jesus who fills Christmas with meaning, and fills the Church with his Holy Spirit. And if we lose hold of this Jesus, what else is there really worthy holding on to?
I want to conclude this series on IMPACT by talking about two unique challenges we face, in fulfilling the mission of Jesus. One way we could talk about our mission, is to speak of the Acts 2 (Jerusalem) challenge and the Acts 17 (Athens) challenge. You see, it was equally important for the Apostles to announce Jesus in Jerusalem as it was to the ends of the earth (places like Athens).
The Acts 2 Challenge :: How do we reach Jerusalem?
What’s the difference? Well, in Jerusalem, the Jews were well acquainted with their Bible, the Old Testament Scriptures. They believed in God. They well understood God’s promise to Abraham. They embraced the Law, given to Moses, and extended its application with legalistic man-made commandments and tradition touching on every aspect of daily life! They embraced King David, and understood God’s promise to establish King David’s dynasty forever/ever. They embraced the Prophets, who to the death, foretold the coming of a Messiah who would restore God’s Kingdom. In Jerusalem, the Apostles only had to show how Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises given to Abraham, Moses, King David, the prophets, and “spiritual” Israel.
And so an example of this is Peter’s sermon in Acts 2. An example is Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. Remember Luke 24:27? “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” If you share Jesus with a person in Jerusalem, your entire foundation is completely laid for you. The foundation of what faith is, who God is, who Spirit is, what Scripture is, who the Christ/Messiah is, who the Church/Kingdom of God is… you only to unveil the mystery, provide the interpretive key, who how it all points to Jesus.
I would liken the Jerusalem challenge to what most American churches, including Lakeside, experience. When we reach a person, we’re reaching people who believe they’re already familiar with Jesus and the gospel. But in reality, their more familiar with cultural Christianity than the real Jesus. So what do we do? We try to unload people of their cultural, and sometimes denominational baggage, and show them the Hebrews 1:3 Jesus, in all his biblical, historical, theological, and eternal glory.
Lest you draw the wrong conclusion, it can be a deadly proposition to wrestle Jesus from the clutches of religion. The Real Jesus is infinitely more threatening to the religious authorities and establishment(s) of our day as they were in Jesus’ day. Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem because his exegesis of Scripture, His theology, his sense of his own identity as Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God (in all its implications) proved unacceptable and indeed blasphemous! The worst persecution often arises from within, not without… from the religious, not irreligious.
The Church's Challenge of "RED-FISHING"
I like to think of the Jerusalem challenge as “Red-Fishing.” Red fishing is what you do in red waters. And why is the water red? The water is red because its been bloodied by centuries of religious infighting and division and turmoil and strife. The water is red because Christians are more protective of their creeds, traditions, denominational divisions, and denominational brands than are with knowing the real Jesus of Hebrews 1:3. The early parts of ACTS, you see the Apostles mostly navigating red water, red fishing, in geographical proximity to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria. Red fishing is not without its challenges.
The Acts 17 Challenge :: How do we reach beyond Jerusalem?
But the larger challenge facing the church is what might be called the Acts 17 (Athens) challenge. Athens was just one of many cities far from Jerusalem. There are quite a few others found in Scripture. Places like Rome, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica. Christ’s commandment wasn’t just that they would proclaim Jesus only in Jerusalem, or Judea, or Samaria. It was that they would take Jesus to the ends of the earth! We know in history that that gospel traveled from Jerusalem throughout the Roman empire, through modern day Europe, clear down to the continent of Africa (remember the story of the Ethiopian Eunich), and even the Far East (India, China, etc.).
The further the gospel spread from Jerusalem the LEAST FAMILIAR, and the FEWER ASSUMPTIONS people granted the Apostles regarding Jesus. For example, what is FAITH? In Jerusalem, FAITH is a sufficient/plausible/credible way of knowing truth. But to the outside world, FAITH seems ridiculous and foolish. People are much more apt to trust things like Philosophy or Science to the utter exclusion of Faith. Why? Because faith implies that which is supernatural. And science by definition limits itself to that which is natural, verifiable, testable, measurable, and can be sensed directly/ indirectly/ or by instrumentation, etc. How do we talk about FAITH to the modern mind without coming across as a bunch of fools?
The further the gospel spread from Jerusalem the LEAST FAMILIAR, and the FEWER ASSUMPTIONS people granted the Apostles regarding Jesus. In Athens, you weren’t granted the assumption that God exists. Maybe there was a God, maybe there wasn’t, or maybe there were many gods? In Athens, you weren’t granted the assumption that the Spirit of God has spoken, or impressed the thoughts of God upon the minds of men. You weren’t granted the assumption of moral absolutes, Biblical or Scriptural truth. In Athens nobody knew a lick about Adam & Eve, Abraham/ Isaac/ Jacob, Moses & Law, King David, Elijah/Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any other Prophet. They knew not the mighty deeds of Jesus in Jerusalem, nor his D-B.R. In Athens, they only knew the Kingdom of Rome, and knew not the Kingdom of God. The Church was nothing more than any other ecclesia, or gathering.
The Church's Challenge of "BLUE-FISHING"
I like to think of the Athens challenge as “Blue-Fishing.” Just beyond the shallow and familiar red-water, lay the infinite expanse of deep, blue, abundant oceans. Have you ever noticed whenever there is some epic event—like a Tsunami, or a massive Hurricane, some creature from the deep blue waters washes up in shallow red water? And the locals are always like, “What in God’s earth is that!”
You know, Blue-Fishing used to be the exclusive experience of missionaries. Remember missionaries? Those strange people who forsake all worldly attachments, assumed a life of poverty, and traveled to the edges of the earth to share Jesus? And then once in a while they’d come back to the USA with pictures of people with animals bones in their nose, or painted faces and tattoes and various body modifications, or different skin color, or different traditions, or language, or music, or cultural artifact? There are still missionaries who are willing to be “sent out” to edges of the earth.
But I would say the world we now live in is a Tsunami, Hurricane churned world… where because of the Internet, because of technology, because of the forces of diversity and multiculturalism, multi-culture corporations… the big blue world is literally being brought to our doorstep! You barely have to drive down the street to encounter a person, or an entire network, or an entirely unreached people group who’ve yet to even know the name of Jesus. The world is coming to us!
One quick example… a few years ago two Chinese men began attending our church. We invited them to Welcome to Lakeside, and after a short conversation, despite having attended Lakeside many weeks, it was clear they had absolutely no clue what kind of entity Lakeside was. Who is this God? What is this Bible book thing? Who is this Jesus? What is this Church, some kind of social organization? They knew nothing, nor had any frame of reference, for the Biblical, Historical, Theological, Eternal, the Jesus of Hebrews 1:3. The further from Jerusalem, the bluer the water, the LEAST FAMILIAR… the FEWER ASSUMPTIONS… we get granted.
But its this world that God so loved, he sent his one/only son, that whoever believe might not perish but have eternal life. How can we be faithful to these challenges today?