Category Archives: kingdom of heaven

What would you give up to see the Kingdom grow?

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Worship at a congregation in Matanzas

Worship at a congregation in Matanzas

All right, it’s time to get this blog started again. My planned post about Christmas seems a little out of place now, so we’ll move on to another topic. How about a thought question? If you had to choose, would you opt to live in a country where you could practice your religion comfortably or live in a place where the church was growing by leaps and bounds?

Now don’t jump to conclusions, I’m not saying that everyone everywhere has to choose between those two. I was thinking about my friends in Matanzas, Cuba. In a lot of ways, their lives are nothing to envy. Many of them live in poverty. They don’t enjoy many of the freedoms we do. Opportunities for the future are limited. But on any given Sunday, they baptize 4-5 people at church. Over the last few years, the main congregation in the city of Matanzas has started 19 churches and has averaged 200 or so baptisms.

Would it be worth it to you? Would you give up personal comfort, civil rights, etc. for a chance to live in a place where the Kingdom is growing rapidly?

Living in Meshech and Kedar

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protestA few weeks ago I shared some thoughts from the songs of ascent, that group of psalms from Psalm 120-134. Psalm 120 expresses the anguish of one who lives away from God’s people, away Jerusalem, living among a deceitful, violence-loving people in places like Meshech and Kedar. I said then that we live in just such a place. The problem for many of us that live in the United States is that we want to view our land as Israel, the biblical Israel, a place of people who are under the covenant, even if they aren’t living up to that. It’s hard for us to accept our role as strangers and aliens, as ambassadors of God’s kingdom.
One way in which that manifests itself is our attempts to change the behavior of those around us. We seek to make our nation more godly by making those around us live more moral lives. We fail to recognize that what people need, what our society needs, is the lordship of Jesus. If they don’t have Jesus as their Lord, it doesn’t matter how much we improve their morality, we haven’t really helped them.
Years ago I worked one summer in a Peugeot bicycle warehouse in Compton, California (yes, I know… it’s everyone’s dream job). Among the group of guys I worked with, there was only one who professed to be a Christian. His idea of witnessing to the others was to go around telling them to stop cussing. (Meanwhile, he was the laziest worker there) He didn’t achieve even that small goal because his attempt to control the behavior of the others only met with irritation. Joseph Aldrich said something like “Don’t expect regenerated behavior from non-regenerated people.” I would have put it more simply, but the point is well made. If someone hasn’t been born again, we can’t expect them to live a new life.
We have to accept the fact that our society needs change from inside out. This is not a Christian nation in need of moral correction. This is a nation away from God in need of a Savior. We can get artificial prayers reinserted in schools, but that won’t make our kids more godly. We can get copies of the 10 Commandments plastered on every building across the country, but that won’t give people the motivation to live them out. We could make it a law that everyone had to go to church on Sunday, but until people accept the lordship of Christ, everything else they do is in vain.
If we want to change our nation, we need to bring them to the Lord. He’ll take care of changing them.

Governments: The natural outgrowth of cities

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When men banded together in cities, they found it necessary to have an increasingly formal social structure. Before there were nations, there were city states, with each city having its own king. Some strongmen, like Nimrod in Genesis 10, came to rule over several such cities, but the original organization in the ancient world was the city. Later nations like Egypt were formed, groups of cities and their outlying areas that joined together for mutual protection and cultural advancement. Abraham and his family lived apart from such kings (Lot being the exception, choosing to live in Sodom). They had dealings with kings like the Pharaoh, Abimelech, etc., but God’s people were organized by families and clans. It wasn’t until they were led to Egypt for their 400 years of slavery that God’s people came under the authority of a human king.
In a discussion on another blog, someone commented that God invented government. I disagreed then and still do. I think that human government grew up out of man’s rebelliousness, his desire to rely on men instead of God. God would eventually permit his people to have a king, but that wasn’t his desire nor his plan. God has used human governments for his ends, but his plan for mankind was other. God wanted to be king and will be king; he sent his Son to usher his kingdom into this world. The rebellious sinful kingdoms of this world will eventually be absorbed into this kingdom, as announced in Revelation: “The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”” (Revelation 11:15) Satan has been at work in the nations, deceiving them (Rev. 12:9; 20:3, 8, 10). But God’s kingdom has erupted in this world and is displacing those nations and their deceiver.

Abraham and the city builders

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The contrast between Abraham and the city builders of Genesis is stark and, I think, intentional. Abraham left Ur, one of the most advanced cities of his day (with a great tower), to go and live in tents for the rest of his life. He left his culture and his family to go and live as a stranger in a foreign land. He built neither cities nor towers nor even a house; the only thing we see Abraham building is altars. He invoked the name of God, lifting up his name rather than seeking to make his own name great.
In Genesis 6, we see the powerful “sons of God” becoming “men of a name”; this seems to mean that these powerful kings were famous throughout the region. They dominated men and lifted themselves up. Abraham neither served kings nor became a king himself. Yet he achieved what men throughout Genesis sought. Look at God’s promises to Abraham in Genesis 12: ““I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”” (Genesis 12:2-3) We can easily argue that no human being has become more famous than Abraham; three major religions count him as “father.”
All of this because he rejected the power-seeking, city-building lifestyle and chose to live a life of dependence on God. “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16)
God blessed Abraham and made his name great. God is not ashamed to be called Abraham’s God. Sounds like he found the right road to follow.

Living as ambassadors

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Spruille Braden was U.S. ambassador to Argentina in 1945. With the U.S. government accusing Argentine presidential candidate Juan Perón of having close ties to Nazism, Braden went about the Argentine countryside, campaigning against Perón. Some accounts tell of him traveling with a brass band, making whistle stops here and there as if he himself were a candidate. The strategy backfired terribly. With the slogan “Braden or Perón,” Juan Domingo Perón easily won the election.
Can you imagine the reaction today if a foreign ambassador openly campaigned for one of our politicians? Such an action would definitely hurt that politician’s cause more than help it. What if they campaigned for a certain political position? Wouldn’t the reaction be the same?
“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)
We are ambassadors of the kingdom of God here in this world. When we get involved in the comings and goings of the kingdoms of this world, especially as part of our official duties as ambassadors, our actions will surely backfire. I particularly apply this to politics, yet the applications are many. When Christians involve themselves as Christians, as the church, in political affairs, our actions are doomed to backfire. When an ambassador begins to do things that do not correspond to his role, those activities detract from his diplomatic mission. When a Christian gets embroiled in worldly affairs (2 Timothy 2:4), he dilutes his Christian witness.
Let’s remember who we are: Christ’s ambassadors.