What Now?

Adapted by Tom Loghry [1]By Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies - https://www.facebook.com/JCCIC/photos/a.160320590777112/1976386252503861/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99049160 [2] Original by TapTheForwardAssist - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98668026

With all that has gone on over the last week or so, what do we do now?

I do not think that there are any of us who have grown up in the United States who have any idea what it is that we are supposed to be doing in the aftermath of riots and murders at the seat of our government. Perhaps people from other times or places might have some frame of reference, but we have none.

Having no clear path forward, I have often found it to be helpful to return to the basics. When Jesus began his preaching ministry in Mark 1, he said "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." This proclamation of the arrival of the Kingdom of God has carried forward, from faithful believer to faithful believer, by grace upon grace, in an unbroken chain from Jesus Christ to us today. The kingdom that Christ proclaimed is the kingdom that we are called to proclaim; the repentance that he called people to is the repentance that we call for; the gospel that he taught is the gospel that we hang our hope on, for this life and for eternity. But before we proclaim it, we must first possess it; before we call others to it, we must have it ourselves.

The past week, the past months, the past year have given us ample time to consider and ponder what it is that we are holding up as most important, and I fear that what has been revealed has not been to our credit. I fear that the pandemic has revealed that some have been too willing to disregard the authorities put in place over us and trusted too much in their own wisdom; in others, I fear that it has exposed a fear of sickness and death that should be foreign to a believer. I fear that the political season has exposed that some have placed their faith in the deceptions of those who claim the election has been stolen but is also bringing to light those who believe that the inauguration of Mr. Biden (or the departure of President Trump) will be the salvation that they have been looking for.

I fear that these sins that have been exposed are going to prove to be a stronger pull on all our hearts than our love of the Kingdom that was born out of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My friends, this should not be so. There should be no place in our hearts or in our lives for these sins.

Instead of making room in our hearts for these sins, we must be constantly repenting of them, turning away from them, and placing our hope and faith in the gospel of Christ crucified. We must repent of these sins. The US Constitution cannot save; medicare for all cannot save; the covid vaccine cannot save; reopening the country cannot save. Even those very good things that we can all agree on cannot save. It is only Jesus Christ who can save, and so he and his gospel should be our primary, even exclusive, concern.

That is one of the patterns that we see throughout the New Testament: the apostles seemed to be treating the systems of this world - political, economic, military - as incidental. They do not seem to be concerned with advocating or effecting change in any of them, and when they do mention them, the general theme of their responses seems to be somewhere between "Make do the best you can" and "These things are here for God's glory and for your good."

Why would that be so? They were relatively unconcerned by these things because they were concerned with something greater - the salvation of people from eternal destruction. Anything less important than that has the potential to be a dangerous, even deadly, distraction from that work. All the struggling and fighting around the presidential election, all of the quibbling over the covid restrictions, have sought to distract and divide us so that we would be crippled and hamstrung, too busy fighting over things that will eventually dissolve like snow to be doing the work that will last forever.

Our willingness to be distracted by these things, to pour our energy into these things can be a warning light, a Check Engine light on our souls, warning us that we have something wrong that needs to be addressed before we make a shipwreck of our faith; warning us that this world has caused us to forget the heavenly kingdom that Christ calls us to.

My friends, this should not be so. While we squabble and argue over things that are both temporary, and entirely in the control of a God who promises to work all things together for his glory and our good, there are people who are dying bereft of hope because we have failed to share it with them. We may not see the full price of this until the day of Christ's return, but when we do, I weep for what we will find. I fear that we will find that our earthly victories have come at a terrible eternal cost. "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"

There are a few tangible ways that every person can begin to refocus themselves away from the temporal and onto the eternal. One of the most helpful things for me has been a simple Rule of Life: Bible before Phone (you can substitute Screen if your preferred source of news is the TV, Paper if it is the newspaper). Before I let anyone else tell me about what is going on in the world, what the latest hot take is, I want to immerse myself in what God says is going on in the world. With his eternal perspective providing the grounding for my heart, I am better prepared to face whatever challenges the day may bring, knowing that the same God that saw Israel through the Red Sea and fed them in the desert is the same God who walks with me; the same God that closed the mouths of the lions, the God who protected in the fiery furnace - this is the God I serve, too, and his power is not lessened one iota by the passage of time.

Second, we need to be aware of the diet-and-exercise regimen of our minds. When someone is looking to improve their physical health, there are some things that they cannot control, but what they can control is what they put into their bodies (what they eat) and what comes out of their bodies (exercise). Very broadly speaking, if we are careful to eat better things, and intentionally move our bodies more, we will be healthier. In the same way, we must be careful to monitor which thoughts from which sources we are putting into our heads, and which thoughts we are repeating out into the world. If we are spending 10 minutes a day reading God's word, and 10 hours watching Fox News, which one is going to shape our thought patterns more? If we spend all day discussing conspiracy theories with a coworker and only pray when it's supper time, which activity is molding our hearts?

On the output side, we need to be mindful that the output of our mouths (and keyboards) are the things that those around us are putting into their heads - are we helping them to come to a greater knowledge of Christ, or are we simply passing along the junk that we took in earlier? To put it another way, we are teaching them to be disciples of something - is it Jesus? It might be that we are teaching them to be disciples of Q, or of Bernie Sanders, or even disciples of ourselves, and in doing so, we fail to uphold Christ's command to Make Disciples of him. If we are teaching those around us to be disciples of something other than Jesus, then that means that we are failing to Love Others the way that Christ has loved us, and it means that we do not Love God the way we should either, because we have failed to hold him up in our hearts and in our lives as the single most excellent, wonderful, glorious thing in our lives. We are teaching them to be disciples of something, and if that something is something lesser than Jesus, then that should be of grave concern for us.

Friends, each day that passes is a crossroads for each one of us - an opportunity for us to choose whether we will love, serve, and glorify the things of this world, or whether we will love, serve, and glorify God. Either we will hate the one and love the other, or we will love the one and hate the other. I pray that as we walk down this path, that every one of us will choose to follow Christ, and not just follow him, but invite others to follow him as well.

2 Corinthians 4:7-14 [ESV]
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.