Focal Point

     A spear without its head is pretty close to useless. A sword without its blade isn't much of a weapon. Try hunting with a rifle but no ammunition. When the deer has a decent chance of winning, you know something's wrong.
     What about the gospel without the cross? What about the miracles without the sacrifice? What about the magnitude of God's love without the appeasement of God's wrath? Our message is powerless without its thrust. If the cross is removed, what are we left with? A worthless spear, an broken hilt, and a futile mission. Sin has won, we are still objects of God's wrath, and the gospel is rendered ineffective to reconcile love for the sinner and hatred for sin.
     Yet the gospel is not rendered ineffective. In Galatians 6:14, the apostle Paul says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (emphasis mine). Matthew 27:35 says "And they crucified Him..." Our message is not futile because Christ was sacrificed; God was appeased. I am probably not sharing any new information here, but I think that it is necessary for a Christian to revisit Calvary and remember what took place there over 2,000 years ago.
     It all starts in the Garden of Gethsamane. Jesus has revealed to his followers that the time for His sacrifice has come. He also foretells that they will abandon Him to the Romans. In Matthew 26:34 Peter emphatically states "'Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee.' Likewise said all of the disciples." They were all standing with Him when Judas came over the hill to "greet" Jesus, but when the Romans topped the hill with their swords drawn and torches held high, all that stood behind Jesus was a cloud of dust. They had all abandoned Him at about 40 miles per hour. The ultimate irony? Jesus died hours later for sins the disciples had committed.
     Christ was brought before the prominent religious and political leaders in that area. False witnesses hired by the Pharisees came and testified against Christ. They accused Him of being who He was, the Son of God. For the crime of saying exactly who He was, He was condemned to die a murderer's death, although innocent.
     In preparation for His crucifixion, Christ was handed over to Roman soldiers to suffer at their hands. He was mocked, spat on, beaten, slapped and humiliated. Pilate ordered Him scourged with a whip called a scorpion. Secured to the handle were nine leather strands embedded with pieces of bone or metal. It was laid across the victim's back and torn away, ripping away pieces of flesh. Thirty-nine times this instrument of torture was laid across the Messiah's back and torn away. As a final token of derision, the soldiers fashioned a crown of two-inch thorns and twisted it onto Christ's head.
     This done, the soldiers loaded a 100-pound crossbeam, His crossbeam, onto His back to be carried a mile outside the city gates. he was so weak from the beatings and loss of blood that He could not go the distance. He had to be helped the rest of the way.
     When He finally reached Calvary, nails were driven through His wrists and feet, securing Him to the cross. Ropes were attached, and the cross bearing the Christ was pulled to an upright position. It is believed that the joints in His shoulders and hips were thrown out of socket from the jolt. But the worst was yet to come.
     All humanity past had waited for this very moment; all humanity to come would look back at this crucial event. These minutes were the focal point of all history. "All have sinned..." (Rom. 3:23). "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins" (Heb. 9:22). The "fulness of the time" had come. God, as His Son hung on a cross, gathered together the guilt of all sins, past, present, and future, and placed it on Christ. As God's wrath towards ungodliness was unleashed against His Son, "Jesus cried with a loud vioce, saying 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' which is, being interpreted, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:34) "...He said, 'It is finished:' and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." (John 19:30). By Christ's death, the wages of sin had been paid. A spotless Lamb had been sacrificed for our sake. Of His own volition, God became man and died for our redemption. That was the price for our freedom. As a result, how now shall we live? 

Service and Surrender

This post is brought to you by the mattress...striving to make the world a bedder place.
     All lame jokes aside, I want to share with you some thoughts from the life of a man who dedicated his life to God while lying in his bed at night. His name was Samuel, a young boy who would one day grow to accomplish great and mighty things for the Lord.
     While still young (probably early- to mid-teens), Samuel was dedicated by his mother to service in the temple. One night, while he slept, God called out to him. This event was rare; 1 Samuel 3:1b says that "the word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision." At this point, God did not directly speak to man, making Samuel's experience unique to his time. Why would God speak to a young boy when He spoke to no other? A couple of verses indicate God's reasons.
     Chapter 2 verse 21 says " the child Samuel grew before the Lord". "Before" in this instance bears the idea of an overshadowing or a close association. Samuel, though at this point he had never heard from the Lord, had grown under the watchful eye of God and had proved himself a faithful servant in the temple.
     The familiar story of Samuel's surrender to God is preceeded by the phrase "...Samuel ministered unto the Lord..."(3:1). God spoke while Samuel was busy serving. God saw in Samuel a boy who was obedient and faithful in service.
     So we see faithful obedience from Samuel prior to God's call. We also see total surrender. When Samuel audibly heard the voice of the Lord, he ran to Eli, thinking it was he who had called. This was repeated three times. Eli, at that point recognizing that it was God who had spoken, told Samuel to answer "Here am I". And when God called for the fourth time, Samuel did. God proceeded to give the boy a foretelling of judgment against the house of Eli. Samuel had a decision to make. Eli was the one who had, for all intents and purposes, raised him. No doubt Samuel felt some reluctance to proclaim God's message. Despite any reluctance he may have initially felt, the next morning, Samuel "told [Eli] every whit, and hid nothing from him" (3:18).
     Samuel not only was used of God that night, but when he answered "Here am I", he surrendered his entire life to God. "And all Israel...knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord." (3:20).
     What can we learn from Samuel? The first lesson is to be constantly busy serving God and putting ourselves in a place to hear from and be used by God. The Christians in Antioch put this principle into practice. "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, 'Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work wherunto I have called them'" (Acts 13:2). If we wish to be greatly used by God, in evangelism or in any other area, we must be busy wherever God has placed us. We must serve where He has put us and, at all times, be constantly nurturing our relationship with Him.
     Second is total surrender. Samuel was given a difficult message to relay. So are we. 1 Peter 2:8 refers to Christ and His words as "a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence...". 1 Corinthians 1:23 says "we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness:". The message that "all have sinned" and "no man cometh unto the Father but by [Christ]" will offend. You can take that to the bank. Yet we have been given this message to deliver by God Himself. Like Samuel, He has given us the message, but He will also give us strength as we deliver His words. We are merely called to service and surrender.

Power Unseen

Some time ago, I heard a sermon illustration using the following historical event. I decided it also had pertinent application to this area of evangelism.

     Almost 170 years before Christ's birth, a king by the name of Antiochus IV found himself heavily involved in a war of conquest against the king of Egypt. He was nearly victorious; all of Egypt had fallen to his army except for the city of Alexandria. Antiochus placed himself at the head of an army and marched against the city. On the road, however, he was stopped and confronted by a man named Laenas, an aged Roman ambassador. The Roman senate, concerned about Antiochus' growing power, sent the ambassador to give Antiochus' an ultimatum; withdraw from Egypt or face war against Rome. In an attempt to buy himself time, Antiochus told the ambassador that he would discuss the decision with his counselors. The Roman envoy boldly strode forward and drew a circle around the king. The ambassador told Antiochus that if he stepped out of the circle without agreeing to withdraw his armies, Rome would declare war.

     On one side stood a king, backed by a mighty and numerous army. On the other, a solitary old man. What was the result? The king backed down before the ambassador and agreed to withdraw. Why would a sovereign supported by a host of loyal followers surrender his will to that of an aged ambassador? Because Antiochus' feared the power of Rome. He feared the power the ambassador represented.

     The field of evangelism is a very literal battlefield. Ephesians 6:11-12 says "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Christians fight, not in a physical contest, but in a spiritual war for the souls of men. Those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb are arrayed on one side of this field. On the opposing side, marshalled against us are the world, the ungodly culture and unbelievers; the flesh, the inherent sin nature that still resists the work of God in our lives; and the devil, Satan and all his host. With governments, media, and popular feeling turned oftentimes against us, our efforts to reach "lives for whom [Christ] died" seems hopeless indeed...until the force supporting us is revealed.

     "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ..." (2 Cor. 5:20) Such are the words of Paul as he unveils the power by which we fight. We do not fight alone and by our own strength; we are sent as representatives, fully empowered, equipped, and enabled by God to do what He has called us to accomplish. The result? "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world." We fight with power unseen, yet so potent that victory is assured.