Russell Moore's sermon manuscript, Joseph Is a Single-Issue Evangelical: The Father of Jesus, the Cries of the Helpless, and Change You Can Believe In, is now online. Here's how it closes:
The question for us, then, of whether we are truly pro-life or not, has very little to do with how many signs are in our yards or what bumper stickers we put on our cars. Indeed, it may be the case that after this election the abortion debate will be over in this country politically.You can also listen to the MP3 online.
But even if that's the case, it's not over. Our churches are to follow in the walk of faith, which means that--like Joseph walking away from stability and comfort--our churches must be different, they must be counter-cultural, the kind of place where the teenage mother is welcomed and loved, where abandoned children are received, and where a culture that is in love with death can come and hear a message saying that life is better than death because there is a man, an ex-corpse, a former-fetus, who is standing as the ruler over all the nations and the universe. And he is not dead anymore.
What we must have is a church in which the gospel we give is the kind of gospel that leads people out of death and despair and toward the kind of life that is found in confessing a name--a name that was first spoken by human lips by a day-laborer in Nazareth, "Jesus is Lord."
If we follow this kind of pure and undefiled religion, it doesn't mean we will be shrill. It doesn't mean we will be culture-warriors. It doesn't mean we'll be belligerent. It will mean that we will have churches that are so strikingly different, that maybe in ten or fifteen years the most odd and counter-cultural thing a lost person may hear in your church is not, "Amen," but is instead the sounds of babies crying in the nursery.
And hearing the oddness of that sound, when they look around at the place in which all of the Lord Jesus' brothers and sisters are welcomed, protected, and loved, the place in which the lies of a murderous and appetite-driven dragon are denied, the lost person might say, "What is the sound of all these cries?" And maybe we'll be able to say with our forefather Joseph, "that's the sound of life. That's the sound of hope. That's the sound of change."
You might even say, it's "change you can believe in."
Thursday, October 30, 2008
This Blew Me Away
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2 comments:
Incredible words from Russell Moore-- and nothing more, and nothing less, than following out the implications of the fact that every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, should be protected from slaughter before birth.
Russell is right-- Christians don't have to be "culture warriors" (although we should joyfully, seriously resist the pull of an unGodly culture which prizes convenience over unborn lives).
Rather than culture warriors, we should be *God lovers*-- ones who love God so much that we will choose to put unborn lives, created in His image, and the mothers who hold those lives within them, above a culture of convenience which would kill those lives -- *and* above a culture of supposed "Christian" self-righteousness that would look down upon (or just indifferently refuse to help) unmarried pregnant women.
Wow. I am reminded of a few verses that may come much more into the attention and use of truly redeemed American Christians than they have in generations. Such as:
If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up (Dan 3:17-18).
Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:19b-20).
We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. (Acts 5:29b-32)
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