King's Business - 1965-12

a deep sense of God, conviction, confession, cleansing from sin, is still rare. There is a wave of successful evangelism for which we thank God but a mighty mov­ ing of His Spirit within the church has not yet come on a large scale. What follows is that we have a host of believ­ ers, old and new, who are poor disciples. Just here emerges another wile of Satan. Following Christ used to mean a clean and complete break with the world, the flesh and the devil. It still does in the sight of God but not in the sight of men, even of some Christians. No doubt there has been much extremism on the subject of separation until there has grown up in some churches cliques of “ more spiritual people” whose separation means little more than that they no longer play cards, dance, smoke or go to the movies. The reaction to that has produced a new brand of Christianity that claims to be able to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness and testify to Christ at the same time. There seems to have been achieved a symphony of Christ and Belial of which the New Testament knows nothing. This approach would have the rich young ruler come along without forsaking his besetting sin, on the argu­ ment that “ those things will clear up as you go.” If the present state of affairs continues we may yet behold the strange sight of a professed Christian pickpocket who declares he can pick a pocket with one hand while with the other he deposits a gospel tract in the victim’s pocket. Where is the New Testament clearer than in its challenge to a clean break with this world. Such a call today is very distasteful to most church members so we have doctored it up until being a Christian means no radical difference in the way one lives. The outsider says he sees no difference between the average church mem­ ber and himself. He is quite right. He doesn’t because there isn’t! Satan has had no greater success than in robbing the saints of their white garments and robing them in ambiguous gray. The early Christians were different . . . not queer but different. Their Lord had said they were in the world but not of it and they lived that way. Not being of the world they shook the world. But a lot of water has run under the bridge in the past few years. All this suggests a final consideration. The early Christians expected nothing of earth but much of heav­ en. They looked for their Lord to return. They were citi­ zens of an invisible commonwealth and were strangers on the earth. So long as they kept their pilgrim char­ acter they were invincible. But Constantine professed to become a Christian and Augustine envisioned his City of God . . . right here on earth. Instead of bringing back the King later they began to build the kingdom now. Thus there came that view of Christ’s plan and program of which A. J. Gordon said, “ Though the doctrine of the Lord’s return is not ignored in this system, it is placed in such a setting as to render it quite impractical as a theme for preaching and quite inoperative as a motive for Christian living.” With such a twisted perspective it is not surprising that so much else is out of line. On the other hand, a correct understanding of the times will enable the “ chil­ dren of Issachar” in any generation to “ know what Is­ rael ought to do.” A boy can see a whole ball game through one hole in a fence and a right view of this one doctrine will bring all others into clear view. In this hazy age the humblest Christian if he yields to the Spirit and if he knows how to pray can take his New Testament and find his way, if Bible explainers will let him alone long enough. Nor will Satan beguile him unawares for such a Christian will not be ignorant of the devil’s devices.

But the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Our wisdom is from above, our gospel is foolishness to this world and our entire ministry—the man, the message, the motive, the manner, the method—does not follow the pattern of this age. There is grave danger that we end up merely matching wits with men. Sanctified intelli­ gence is of high importance but as Pascal said, “ The heart has its reasons of which the reason knows noth­ ing.” When our heads outrun our hearts we are in a bad way. The deepest need of many a minister today is not one more post-graduate course and an extra degree. More than one Apollos for all his Alexandrian back­ ground, though he be eloquent, mighty in the Scrip­ tures, instructed in the way of the Lord, fervent in spirit and a diligent teacher, still needs to sit at the feet of Aquila and Priscilla and learn God’s way more perfectly. Young Pauls do well to sit at the feet of Gamaliel but they still cannot preach unless they have somewhere a session in Arabia with God. Satan has another device of which we seem to be woefully ignorant: he emphasizes size above sort. We Americans worship bigness and the church falls easily into the same idolatry. God is. not primarily interested in quantity production but we are and at the expense of quality again and again. More than one church roll is padded with the names of members who could not be found with a search warrant and all in a mad endeavor to keep up with the statistical race. Progress is meas­ ured by an adding machine and in order to make the grade we aim at size with little regard to sort. Gideon’s army was useless until it was reduced to what looked like pitiful proportions. God had too many on His hands. Lenin is said to have declared that he would rather have a hundred fanatics than a thousand indifferent followers. The children of the Lord are clut­ tered with so many slackers that even the loyal soldiers are seriously hampered. A spiritual purge is in order. It would be well if we could trim off the fat to a hard core of effectives who really mean business. Our Lord was after disciples, not joiners, and He lost a good many prospects we would readily take in today with no ques­ tions asked. The rich young ruler was a good catch but Jesus did not catch him. Unless we match our extensive program today with something more intensive we are going to extend the stakes of our tent until we bring down the centerpole. We are intent on expanding our borders and taking in more territory. That is good if along with it we strengthen what we have. Otherwise we gain width at the expense of depth and become shallow. Vast ingath­ erings bring peril if we do not properly teach, indoc­ trinate, build up in the faith. The average church, to use A. J. Gordon’s illustration, is often like a congested lung with only a few cells doing the breathing. There is usually a faithful nucleus surrounded by a mass of nominal Christians. We must fix the point of our compass properly before we describe our circles. “ Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes” is the Biblical injunction and if we do not strengthen our stakes the length of our cords will be our undoing. We go farther only as we go deeper. Our size can be our ruin if we gain it at the expense of sort. These conditions we have been describing are due in part to the fact that we have had much evangelism with but little revival. To be sure we use the word revival every day but real revival is not often in mind. The term is generally employed to designate a series of spe­ cial meetings with a view of winning converts. That is a worthy goal but it is not revival. Real revival — a powerful work of the Spirit among Christians, bringing

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