sibility in witnessing. We talk about witnessing but we seldom ever do it. We’re embarrassed about it. We confess in moments of honesty that we’re ill at ease in this process of trying to witness to someone else and talk to them. We confess we don’t know how to do it. We’re supposed to be imitating our Master who gave up all things, who pleased not Himself, who laid down His life in order that He might win these lost worldlings to Himself. When it comes to us, we don’t want to give up an afternoon of golf, a night of bowling, an afternoon of tea or open our homes or give up some time on Sunday to do something to win these lost ones. Isn’t that the truth? Doesn’t that describe us? When I think sometimes of the comfortable, easeful, luxurious lives that many of us lead and then read in the Scriptures about those early Christians who loved not their lives unto death, I sometimes grow sick with the very shame of it. Why don’t we have the spirit of sacrifice? Well, I think it's because our view of separation has built a shell about us so that we don’t see the need of sacrifice. And that’s the terrible tragedy of it. We're living in the midst of people who are dying for what we have, who are hungry, who are putting bullets through their heads, and jumping off bridges, and turning on the gas, and living in utter misery year after year after year. And they don’t live 10,000 miles away! They live two blocks down the street, two houses down the street, right next door to us, behind us, all around us, and we don’t see the need for sacrifice! We’ve become deaf to the cries that surround us. We’ve become hardened to all the hands that reach out from every side. We take the place of the Pharisee and the Levite in that parable of the Good Samaritan, who passed by on the other side of the road when they saw the wounded traveler lest they become defiled themselves by helping him. We’re there really. That’s not the modernist and the liberal. That’s the fundamentalist Christian who is so concerned about being defiled with worldliness that he’s lost his touch with the world. He’s no longer interested in helping worldly people, in meeting their problems, in learning to
become friends with them and meeting their needs. That's where we stand. Now there are many people who sense the hypoc risy of this kind of Christian living and they try to remedy it, and the result is that they go to the other extreme. They rush out and they begin to mix with the world in every way. They begin to drink cocktails and take up card playing and small gambling, and they learn to dance, and so they move in with the world. I’m not making lists of things; please don’t mis understand me, I’m simply trying to characterize some of the thinking of a life like this. They adopt the world’s standards and the world’s values in the hope of being some influence to the world in some small way for Christ. The result of that is always tragic. When we become like the world, we lose all our power to influence the world. A boy had a cageful of sparrows and he thought it would be nice to teach the sparrows how to sing like a canary. So he bought a canary and put the canary in the cage with the sparrows. After a couple of weeks he came running in to his mother and said, “ Mother! The sparrows are not singing like the ca nary. The canary is now chirping like the sparrows!’’ That’s always what happens. If you want to see the folly of a life like that, go out and stand by the shores of the Dead Sea and look at that cheerless, dreary, lifeless waste, the most desolate spot on the face of the earth. Then go read the story of Lot who moved into Sodom in order to try to win it and influence it by being like it and see what he lost as a result. That dreary, desolate place stands as a mark of the folly of moving in to be like the world. Well, now, what’s the answer? How do we reach the world and still not be like it? We must learn to walk and to live on a frontier between these two extremes. We must be in the world, we must seek worldly friends, deliberately become friends with them, invite them into our homes, go into their homes. We’re going to have to ignore some things that are irritating to us, some of their habits, some of their ways of thinking and talking. We have to ignore it for a while.
24
THE KING'S BUSINESS
Made with FlippingBook Online document