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Discovering God — Last things Acts 17: 16 – 34 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 20 Apr, 2008 |
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THERE IS ALMOST a Monty Python paradox in the idea of judgment. The worst news in the world is also the best news. Sadly, it has not always been presented this way. In the movie, The Life of Brian, Brian joins the terrorist People’s Front of Judea, which aims to overthrow the hated Romans. Reg, one of the terrorists, says, “They’ve taken everything we had. And not just from us, but from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.” Loretta adds, “And from our fathers’, fathers’, fathers.” “Yeah...” Reg says, “And what have they ever given us in return?” Someone says,“The aquaduct?” Reg is startled. “What?” “The aquaduct.” “Oh yeah, yeah. They did give us that,” says Reg “That’s true, yeah.” “And sanitation,” adds another rebel. Loretta is excited. “Oh yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.” “Yeah, all right, I’ll grant you the aquaduct and the santation are two things the Romans have done...” says Reg “And the roads!” says Mathias. “Well, yeah. Obviously the roads, I mean the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aquaduct, and the roads...” “Irrigation!” someone calls out. “Medicine!” adds another. “Education...” And so it goes on. Just about every convenience they are enjoying comes from the Romans. But the terrorists are still determined to chuck out the Romans. It’s not a question of what the Romans have done for them, they just don’t like the Romans. They will do anything to get rid of them. In a way, that conversation reflects the Christian doctrine of last things. “What good is there in stories of judgment? Why would we want to hear about hell? How could a loving God be so cruel as to confine people throughout all eternity to a place of torture?” We’ve all heard the complaints. Yet, as soon as the complaints are heard, there’s a reply: “Well, there is the promise of an end to injustice.” “Well, there is that,” say the accusers. “But we aren’t all so unjust. What’s the good of judgment for the rest of us?” Another one says, “Maybe God has to vindicate those who stick by him through all circumstances. That is a good thing...” And so the argument goes. The story of judgment and heaven and hell is always going to be a mixed blessing, and there will always be controversy between those who see it as a monstrous injustice and those who see it as the final triumph of justice. There was a time when preachers were known for their dismal obsession with judgment. After all, it got results. People were scared into heaven. There’s the story Ian Paisley preaching, “There shall be weeping... And the little old lady in the front row says, “But I ain’t got no teeth.” “Teeth will be supplied!” declares the preacher. The pastor of one of the larger nearby churches was talking to me about evangelising. He said, “You can do it in one of two ways. You can preach judgment and hell and scare them into a decision for Christ, or you can love them into a decision for Christ. If you scare them, once they are converted, they lose their fear, and see no point in keeping up a Christian commitment. Many of them will leave the church altogether. But, if you love them into faith, they will stay forever, because everyone needs love, and love reflects God to them each time they receive it.” Sounds pretty wise to me! But that doesn’t mean we should soft pedal judgment. Paul told the Athenians 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”
The truth is that a just God has to judge. He can’t say, “I’m committed to justice, but, if you have a different attitude, that’s alright.” It doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. And it is quite appropriate for preachers to declare that fact. We would fail in our duty if we did not warn as well as comfort. Someone said that our job is to trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled. There can be no comfort when injustice prevails in the world. One of my friends said, “When I look at how bad things are in the world, all I can say is that people have become too comfortable. They have jobs, they have two cars and regular holidays, they have health and home, and they can’t see what is happening to the poor and the sick.” She is not a Christian. She just has a keen eye for what is happening in the world. Once upon a time it was Christians who lamented the sorry state of the world and the luxury of those who didn’t care; now it is often people who haven’t even heard the gospel, but who can see the world as it is. This brings us to the other side of the message of judgment. In Revelation, we read, REV 6:7 When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8 I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. REV 6:9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.
It is easy, if we are comfortable with life, to think that judgment is an unpleasant and an unworthy way for God to act. After all, would any good–natured middle–class gentleman be so churlish, so lacking in good manners and refinement? But what of those who suffer? Think of the thousands butchered in Africa for being of the wrong tribe. Think of the ongoing crisis in the Sudan, the persecution of Christians in so many nations. Think of all the hate in the world, the Untouchables of India who get murdered for not showing enough respect to the upper classes. Barry Maguire used to sing, Think of all the hate there is in Red China
We don’t think of Red China as being the land of the devil anymore. We’ve forgotten what Selma, Alabama, was famous for, but the truth remains that we live in a world where evil is done routinely, where the poor, the marginalised, the people who were born on the wrong side of the river, they have no redress; they have no power to right ths situation. Some of them — many of them — are our brothers and sisters in Christ, crying out from refuge under the altar, “How long, Lord? How long?” And it will not end until evil has done its job, until its real nature is fully exposed, and until it has had every chance to repent. Evil does not like to be exposed. It prefers to maintain its veneer of civilisation. Pilate drinks wine with his wife while his soldiers scourge Jesus. The rich man enjoys his banquet while Lazarus dies on the footpath outside. And Jesus says, Inasmuch as you did it to one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it to me.
He made no distinction between the saved and the unsaved. He didn’t say, “If you cared for yhour Christian brothers and sisters, then you cared for me.” That goes without saying. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, he says, MT 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. There is a separation between those who are destined for salvation and those destined for judgment and hell. And here’s the criterion: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Some of these who need our service have never heard. Some are from far away, and unknown to us, as we are unknown to them. Some are incapable of knowing whether we are Christians or of revealing to us whether they are. Some have failed in life and are justly imprisoned. All Jesus says is that those who have ministered to him through those in need go with the sheep into the shepherd’s pasture, and those who have failed to minister to him through those in need go with the goats to be cast from the camp into the outer wilderness. The final judgment is based on two almost identical issues. Have we loved God, and have we loved our neighbour? Hear, Oh, Israel: Yahweh your God, Yahweh is One, and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Love is something you do. God says, in effect, that we show our love for him by what we do for him; and the kind of thing we can do for him is to serve our fellow human beings. When Jesus divides the sheep from the goats, he is effectively saying, “When you fed the hungry, when you clothed the naked, when you visited the prisoners and cared for the sick, you loved your neighbour and you loved me, and that means that you loved God just as the commandment told you to.” Think about it! This puts an entirely different slant on what judgment is about! There is really only one criterion: what have we done with Jesus? The suffering of the saints pleads for God to act in justice. The wickedness of some is clear evidence that God will have to deal severely with injustice and unrighteousness or else become party to injustice and unrighteousness himself. But God is never going to have people arguing with him on that great and terrible day. God is never going to allow us to plead degrees of guilt or to compare ourselves with each other. He won’t have Stalin arguing that his millions of exterminated kulaks are still not as many as Hitler's six million Jews, and therefore he deserves less punishment than Hitler. The God who loves to communicate with us will communicate to the very last day, but he will not enter into discussion about his own righteousness. There will be a judgment, and there will be condemnation to hell, but the sole criterion will be, “What did you do with Jesus?” I have to be honest. Too often we Baptists have failed to be true to our Radical origins. We have spoken and acted as though a prayer and a handshake offered in Jesus’ name is enough to save us all at the Judgment. We have given people a false assurance. We have said, “Judgment will not touch you. You have decided for Christ. You have faith.” But is faith enough? Faith without works is dead. James tells us that. God is looking for people with faith to follow Jesus, not for people with faith to shake hands with a preacher, not for people who fall on the floor, not for people who recite creeds. Only people with faith to follow Jesus and to repent daily of our failure to follow. Anything else is only the trappings. All through this series, I have tried to show how our God is a God who communicates with us, a God who desires fellowship with us. This relationship is focused on and centred in Jesus. When you know Jesus, you know God. Those who remain in Jesus, those who are fruitful branches in the true vine, to use Jesus’ own metaphor, it is they who will never be pruned off and cast into the fire. And those who are apart from the vine, no matter how strenuously they do good, it is they who will find God a harsh judge, because whatever they did, they did apart from God, apart from Jesus and apart from the fellowship relationship that God desires for us. On that day, no one will be able to breeze in and say, “Hey, God, I’m here! I never wanted anything to do with you, but I did so much good that you have to accept me into your eternal kingdom anyway.” Then the King will say, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels...’
He will do that, because he will know the true motives of their hearts, that they loved themselves more than they loved God, and they exploited the needy for their own benefit. Our God is a just God, a God who must judge. But for all who will walk in his ways by repentant faith, he grants eternal life, a home in heaven, and joys ever more in the presence of the King. May we all experience it! AMEN |
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© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.) |
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