A Biblical Perspective on a Broken Bridge
We’ve all seen the images from Minneapolis. They are images we’ve seen before a thousand times of a thousand different tragedies and calamities. We’ve almost become numb to events such as this. That numbness speaks loudly of the deep problem facing all of humanity.
So here is the issue: How is God to speak when we are so morally dead and spiritually blind that the moral ugliness of the world does not faze us? How is God to get our attention and show us the deep need we have for Him when we have all turned away from Him? Pastor John Piper says that God gets our attention with the world, with the events of the world, with the tragedies of this world, with the sickness and death of this world. God is essentially saying: “This they can feel – pain they can feel – I will subject the whole creation to futility till they get the message sin is horrible.”
We find this truth in Romans 8: 20-22 as Paul writes, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
What we see in the world, what we see on the news, are the birth pains of this world. The world is heaving in pain as a testimony to the disorder of the moral world – as a testimony to the presence and awfulness of sin.
Again Pastor John Piper reminds us,
“Diseases and deformities are God’s portraits of what sin is like in the spiritual realm. And that’s true even if the most godly people bear those deformities. Calamities are God’s previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment a thousand times worse than New Orleans or 9-11.
Famine, pestilence, persecutions, these happen so that the world would see that the followers of Jesus count Christ more precious than everything they’ve lost, and discover that he can be that for them; because one day they are going to loose everything. Everybody looses everything on earth someday.”
Are we here at Westwood doing this? Are you showing your family, friends and community that Christ is more precious to you than anyone you love, everything you own, and anything this world has to offer? If the opportunity to show this with your life has not yet come, it will soon. May God be glorified when it does.
We’ve all seen the images from Minneapolis. They are images we’ve seen before a thousand times of a thousand different tragedies and calamities. We’ve almost become numb to events such as this. That numbness speaks loudly of the deep problem facing all of humanity.
So here is the issue: How is God to speak when we are so morally dead and spiritually blind that the moral ugliness of the world does not faze us? How is God to get our attention and show us the deep need we have for Him when we have all turned away from Him? Pastor John Piper says that God gets our attention with the world, with the events of the world, with the tragedies of this world, with the sickness and death of this world. God is essentially saying: “This they can feel – pain they can feel – I will subject the whole creation to futility till they get the message sin is horrible.”
We find this truth in Romans 8: 20-22 as Paul writes, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
What we see in the world, what we see on the news, are the birth pains of this world. The world is heaving in pain as a testimony to the disorder of the moral world – as a testimony to the presence and awfulness of sin.
Again Pastor John Piper reminds us,
“Diseases and deformities are God’s portraits of what sin is like in the spiritual realm. And that’s true even if the most godly people bear those deformities. Calamities are God’s previews of what sin deserves and will one day receive in judgment a thousand times worse than New Orleans or 9-11.
Famine, pestilence, persecutions, these happen so that the world would see that the followers of Jesus count Christ more precious than everything they’ve lost, and discover that he can be that for them; because one day they are going to loose everything. Everybody looses everything on earth someday.”
Are we here at Westwood doing this? Are you showing your family, friends and community that Christ is more precious to you than anyone you love, everything you own, and anything this world has to offer? If the opportunity to show this with your life has not yet come, it will soon. May God be glorified when it does.
Hi Gerald and Susan,
ReplyDeleteWe have been ferevently praying for you as well as Lisa's and my sister's congregations.
I confess since that Wed. night you asked for prayer to be still, I have been praying that for you daily....SORRY! Seriously, God knows best and He is working all this out for His glory and for your good. Praising God for the progress so far!
Susan, I'll be glad to help out in the nursery if needed and anything else I could help with.
Billy says hello and praying for you too!
"GAZE at God, GLANCE at the need, and trust it to HIS all-wise, all-loving care."
In His Love,
Sharon P.