Stan Moody, Ph.D.
The Apostle Paul is alone in a Roman prison at the dawn of Christianity. This is his second imprisonment, the first having been resolved by Caesar Nero in his release and freedom for 1-2 years. The time for his execution is approaching. Most of his Christian friends have abandoned him. Some have even testified against him at his second trial.
Paul’s perspective on his predicament is this: I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure (2 Tim 4:6).
He marvels at how the Lord has stood by his side when nobody else has done so. He revels in the strength given him so that the message of the Gospel might be fully preached and all the Gentiles might have it. …I was delivered out of the lion’s mouth (v. 17). Our text this morning is a shortened version of v. 17: But the Lord stood by my side and gave me strength…and I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.
What we see here is a movement, not bursting with success, but showing all the signs of failure. And yet, Paul seems to be satisfied that the keel has been laid and the strength to conquer every obstacle belongs to the faithful.
I want to take a minute and share with you what brought me to this topic today.
On Friday morning, I had my second interview for the chaplaincy job at the Maine State Prison in
What impressed me, however, was the conflict in worldviews. As a Christian, I see myself, along with the Apostle Paul, as a “sinner saved by grace.” But for the grace of God, I stand in the same place as the inmates of a prison. Jesus made it clear that it is not the physical act of murder or adultery that condemns the person. It is the lustful thought that makes the person guilty of adultery; it is the emotion of hate that makes the person guilty of murder.
The difference, then, between the person who lusts and hates and the person who fulfills the lust and hate in such acts as adultery, rape and murder is in stepping over that invisible line in the sand from which there is no return. Those in prison, for the most part, have stepped over that line and are paying the price.
I kept being told by one of the interviewers, however, that there were rapists and murderers there, the implication being that they were something of inferior beings. It reminded me of the focus by the Christian Right on isolating those who violate certain select moral absolutes. As the rules are tightened, I could envision a day when many now acceptable lifestyles or actions would condemn a person to incarceration along with the rapists and murderers.
I went to my office and checked my email as soon as I got back from
The thrust of his questions concerned the nature of this tax-exempt status that we as churches enjoy and confusion over why Americans continue to support these megachurches that are being led by people living the life of the rich and famous on the donations of their constituents.
I explained the system of tax-exemption to him as best I could. The question as to why Americans support these high-flying preachers who use ministry funds for their own comfort and pleasure was easier because there is a little something deep down in all of us that longs for that kind of impact. They do it, I explained, because success and prosperity are the essence of the American Dream, and the American Dream is thought by millions of shallow Evangelicals in
The Christian life, then, is less about hope and service and more about reaping its benefits now. It is all too much about living the good life on the backs of Jesus, the apostles, the early church fathers and all those martyrs down through history.
The reporter asked me if I thought it was changing, and I told him that not only did I think it was not changing but that it would be getting worse as the lines between church and state, now blurred, became more defined. He asked me if people would rebel against this kind of abuse as it was made public. My answer was “No” – that because of the persecution complex nursed by most Evangelicals, they would simply assume that their leaders were being persecuted by the government and dig in their heels. Every attempt by the state to restrict the unbridled freedom of the church even to interfere with the state is pounced on as religious persecution.
The Apostle Paul had something to say about this kind of culture in which we
find ourselves today:
…the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths (v. 3).
This is not about the pursuit of truth or the free exercise of religion. It is an abuse of privilege by large, cohesive groups of people who share a common fear of becoming irrelevant. In the safety of large groups, individual pathologies take on the semblance of normality. Privileges become rights. Worship becomes entertainment. As long as there are people who want to be entertained, there will be hired guns to entertain them and give them just enough Gospel to legitimize these lucrative but dangerous enterprises.
The sad part of this is that at the end of the day, the little church in the heartland of
The third thing that happened goes to the root of both previous two things. I received a letter from some outfit in
You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry and fig trees…amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus and hollyhocks.
The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.
A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings you breakfast in bed.
For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.
But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle...as it would to stay in your own home!
For those of you to whom this might appeal, you can get more information by calling International House,
As for me, I live in mortal fear that Jesus will make a physical appearance while I am sitting in my house on the shores of some otherwise squalid paradise, watching some poor, struggling soul prune my bushes or carry my golf bags.
Who is this gardener, and what do I owe to him as a fellow human being? That is the question worth asking. This company has portrayed the reality of paradise now over the Christian hope of paradise yet to come. The first paradise is “real,” while the second is, by inference, unreal.
I had the thought that every minute I sat there watching one of Jesus’ disciples prune my hedge, I would be dying in “paradise,” a quarter inch at a time.
You can see where I am going with this, I hope. The megachurch now offers what is the hope of the world in which we live – paradise now instead of or in addition to paradise later. This is the very opposite of the message of the Gospel. In the words of Jesus, He who would come after me, let him take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23). He who saves his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:39).
These bedrock principles of the Christian faith have been lost in our insistence on living the American Dream of success and prosperity. Inasmuch as the trappings of success are considered by shallow believers to be the evidence of faithful living, there will be enough charlatans to go around for everyone. This is the best of all worlds - an anti-Christian worldview with a Christian emphasis.
In my book, I call this “Christian Atheism.”
If we look at the life and witness of the Apostle Paul, we see how life ought to be lived – directed toward and dedicated to the global picture of spreading some kind of Good News other than what we can gain for ourselves.
This Good News is a consistent theme throughout the Scriptural account of modern man. It is presented as a force rooted in love rather than in military power. It stands human logic on its head.
From the Old Testament:
All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations (Psalm 22:27-28).
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” (Psalm 96:3-4).
And in the New Testament:
All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20.
I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man’s foundation; but as it is written, “They who had no news of him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand (Romans 15:20-21).
God’s purpose in calling a people to Himself is not to build His kingdom on earth but to fill the earth with the vibrancy of hope, especially in those places where hope has not been offered.
Today, we have tens of millions of American Christians who have built for themselves little paradises on earth in the form of professional success and wildly successful ministries. They build on the groundwork laid by faithful pastors in god-forsaken areas of the world like ours and prostitute the mission of the church that calls for making disciples where none are found.
They do this with tax-free revenues, just like the greedy leaders, teachers and politicians they support.
What has happened to the
Can we as Christians risk rising above our own immediate concerns? Have we become so mired in the ability of God to work for the good of those who love Him that we no longer concern ourselves with the good of those who don’t love Him? Have we become so enamored with the trappings of the American Dream that we prefer to live an insular life, watching the gardener prune the hedges while we admire the view?
Those American Christians that the reporter was asking me about have become content to hire their own gardeners to prune their Christian lives so they can sit back and enjoy the ride. To some degree, we all are guilty of that, aren’t we? We don’t want to see the world the way God sees it and to accept the seriousness of our mandate.
Paul saw the big picture. Somehow, his Lord had stood beside him when nobody else would. Somehow, he was given the time and opportunity to finish the job of reaching the Gentiles with this Good News. Now, his job was about over. If they wanted to see him before he died, they would have to hurry, he tells them in v. 9. What he has learned is this: …the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.
Here is the summation that Paul offers about his ministry:
I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award me on that day – and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearing (vs. 7-8).
Paul views his efforts as something of a foot race with which he has kept faith. This isn’t just any old “stay the course” kind of race, however. The course had been set before him; the task had rung down through redemptive history. He picks up the baton and pushes on in a direction set, not by himself or some other disciple, but by God alone. There is no room in Paul’s life and witness for Pop-Christianity.
Many of us here are getting on toward finishing the course. Is it a course that commends itself to our souls, or is it a course that has commended itself to our comfort and our entertainment? When the Lord has stood beside us in our hour of need and has given us strength, were we delivered from the lion’s mouth, or did we just camp out in there, kick back and let somebody else worry about where we were going?
The strength that God gave to Paul was for a final burst of energy to proclaim the Gospel – to finish the job he had started in bringing Good News to those who had not heard.
We as Christians are called to be living witnesses to a faith that triumphs not only in times of success but even in times of failure. That’s why they call it “faith.” The strength given to us is to press forward not toward a preferred goal but through thick and thin. To do that is to transform the believer into a living, breathing example of hope.
That doesn’t mean that there are no comforts in this life for our enjoyment. It means that our comforts, and they are many, are incidental to the bigger picture.
John Piper tells this story of William Carey, known as the “father of modern missions,” that flies in the face of the power church:
William Carey left for
Carey was out of town in
In one short evening the labors of years are consumed. How unsearchable are the ways of God! I had lately brought some things to the utmost of perfection of which they seemed capable, and contemplated the missionary establishmenet with perhaps too much self-congratulations. The Lord has laid me low, that I may look more simply to him.
Carey discovered painfully that the mission of Church goes forward by looking more simply to Christ and not to some self-styled guru. In his losses, the Lord stood with him. He never forsook him.
(www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons?ByScripture/9/)
The Christian Right has become extremely skilled in anticipating the cutting edge of popular sentiment and marketing itself to the disenfranchised and powerless. You might say that their target is the shrinking Middle Class that is increasingly losing control and hope in a fragile American Dream.
The Gospel for which the Apostle Paul and William Carey gave their lives, however, is a beacon of light through the murky maze of smoke and mirrors. The lesson that we must take from both is that to touch a life – to make a disciple – is of far greater value than all the power and glory of one moment in the spotlight.
