| Called to Invest Our All |
Note: This message followed and refers to a presentation by a well-known former New York Times reporter,
John McCandlish Phillips. He spoke about a recent series of articles and editorials appearing in major
American newspapers, which described evangelical believers as a “dire threat” to the nation. Mr. Phillips also
mentioned a recent e-mail describing the appearance in public of a t-shirt with the words, “So many
Christians, so few lions!”
rebuke from the Lord through King Joash regarding that failure, and finally of Judah’s active investment with
right priorities. Reading from verse one,
This description of Joash as “doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord” stands in sharp contrast to the
behavior of many of Judah’s other kings, and certainly with what the kings of Israel were doing at the time.
Nevertheless, we must note the caveat, “He did what was right…The high places, however, were not
removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.” Joash was a good king, but not a
completely faithful one.
the right thing as far as they understand. They do this in part because they hold dear the very values that so
enrage some newspaper columnists: family, traditional marriage, children, and so on. Nevertheless, one of
the key dynamics of the Kingdom of Heaven is that it is not enough just to do what is right! It is not enough
just to store up treasure. We must actively invest what we store up in order to advance the purposes of the
Kingdom of Heaven!
over these last several decades. But damage has also been done to people’s understanding of the Biblical
nature of the church of Jesus Christ. God is restoring His church, with emphasis on the fact that it is His
church, not ours, just as the Biblical temple belonged to God, not to Israel or Judah. Rather than have us
pile up riches, I believe that the Lord is calling us to invest all that we have and are to build His kingdom, His
church.
entrusted to him or her always has a return. Granted, that return may not come right away, or even come in
that person’s lifetime, but there is a return! There is never a failure of that return in God’s good time. John
Phillips could have decided that there was nothing he could do in response to this recent series of articles
attacking evangelicals. Instead, as a gifted writer, he prayerfully prepared a response, which was published
in The Washington Post, and is now being talked about all over the country.
medical bills, the breakdown of cars that never break down except the day before an outreach, the flooding of
our basement on the opening night of our first New York City campaign, and the vandalism of one of our cars
during the second day, we were thinking to ourselves, “This is getting too expensive!” But there was a verse
from a song that the Lord reminded me of repeatedly, “And all thou spendest, Jesus will repay!”
outreach, someone crashed into one of our cars a few days before the event, and someone else hit our
second car as we entered our driveway on the way home from the event. Again I was thinking, “Lord this is
getting too expensive!” We can take that view; it is both easy and understandable to do so.
invested large amounts of money in missions in the Middle East. In God’s good time, young lives were sown
into Middle Eastern soil in faithful obedience to the call of Heaven. Prayers were prayed on the ground in
Lebanon, in Smyrna, in Egypt, in the region that would later become Palestine and Israel, and elsewhere.
Prayers were sown into rock hard soil, prayers that had not been prayed in those parts of the world for many
hundreds of years.
that this was too great a cost, and they pulled up roots in the Middle East! Though their action may have
seemed reasonable under the circumstances, it nevertheless represented a failure of vision. Breaking into
strongly held enemy territory is always costly, but our nation may now be paying the much higher price of
failure to reach the Middle East two hundred years ago. Only God knows what the long-term fruit will be of
those seemingly futile efforts of the 1810’s and 20’s, that “wasted” investment of New England’s treasure.
we see the battle and draw back! We say, “It’s too much,” or, “It’s too costly.” When you stretch the
boundaries of the Kingdom of Heaven, there is going to be a fight, and a cost. But it is worth all the cost!
“Therefore King Joash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and asked them, ‘Why aren't you
repairing the damage done to the temple?’” Now Jehoida was a man of God! He was the very instructor who
had made Joash the godly king that he was. And yet, the still very young Joash had to rebuke his personal
instructor, Jehoida, saying to him,
Reading this story recently, I saw something that I had never noticed before. This passage is a powerful
illustration of the way God works in His church, in the Body of Christ! The priests had a critical role and
function, but they were not carpenters, they were not builders. They were not workmen! As long as we allow
only one particular type of ministerial function and vision in the church, there are whole areas of need and
opportunity that remain unseen, and unmet.
God’s flock, God’s people. It is not the title of pastor that I am concerned with here. Many Christians put too
much emphasis on titles! In the Body of Christ, a person’s calling and function are much more than a title.
Genuine pastors have a heart for the believers, they have a heart for the welfare of God’s people, and they
are watchmen! There are people like this, but if that is the only vision you have in the church, other critical
elements get lost—because God never gives all His gifts, or the entire ministry, to one person—or even one
group of people.
because the priests were keeping all the treasure in their own hands! As Joash wisely perceived, part of the
solution was to get the money out of the hands of the priests, and into the hands of the workmen. What a
beautiful illustration of what Ephesians 4 is describing! I never noticed some of this before, but I have now—
in part because I just finished leading a series of Bible studies at Manhattan Grace Tabernacle. Those
studies focused on God’s calling of every believer to be a disciple, and on His calling to all of us to take our
places in the Body of Christ. This is one of the great needs as well as opportunities in our generation!
apostle. I would seriously doubt that anyone walked up to Paul and said, “Apostle Paul…,” it is not even in
the Bible! Believers in that generation would have said, “Brother Paul…,” or if they were unbelievers, they
might have added a few choice epithets to Paul’s name.
to build the church, and that is what the Greek word apostolos (ap-os'-tol-os) means: a delegate; specially,
an ambassador of the Gospel. An ambassador is literally one who is sent!
of the First Degree,” or “Senior Chief Evangelist,” or all the other titles that the world loves to bestow. In
Jesus’ own words from Luke 22:25-27: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise
authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among
you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” Not only are we called to
serve, but note that every ministry in the list is plural, not singular! God is not looking for one-man bands.
Paul himself always labored with at least one other brother, and Jesus sent His disciples out two by two.
He, the Lord, gave “some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.” I
am pointing out these things because, when living functions in the church are changed into stale titles, the
church has already begun to be transformed from a living organism into an organization. And when you turn
the church into an organization, you have stepped away from the direct working and daily inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. You have begun to enshrine living faith as a display piece in a museum, something to be honored
and remembered, rather than experienced first-hand! As John Wesley stated on his deathbed, he was afraid
that his fellow “methodists” would take a remarkable work of God, and turn it into another denomination.
Methodism was born in revival and the powerful moving of the Spirit of God on people from many
denominations. But now, a lower case m was about to became a capital M, and the power of an entire
movement began to fade.
individually represents the fullness of the ministry of the church! In fact, Paul goes on to say what the chief
purpose of these five-fold ministries is: “to prepare God's people for works of service.” The work of these
ministries is to deliver the counsel, the whole counsel of God, into the lives of the members of the Body, so
that the members may do their work. That is what the Bible says, “to prepare God's people for works of
service.” That word service is the same word as ministry, because that is what real ministry is! To be a
minister in the Biblical church is to be a servant, and all the members of the Body of Christ are called to
serve, each in the capacities the Lord has given them. As Ephesians 3:10-11 states, “His intent was that
now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in
the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Open your hands and see all the people.” Biblically, the church is the people. It is a spiritual building, not a
physical one. In the Biblical church, the role of God’s ministers is to prepare God’s people to minister, and to
take their places as functioning members in the Body of Christ.
about those little crustaceans in the middle of the ocean whose beauty so puzzled Charles Darwin: “Many of
these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms and rich colours. It creates a
feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.” (from Darwin’s
Beagle Diary, quoted in Randall Keynes, Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, p. 26)
us have that God is not going to give to someone else. We either invest them, or they will not be invested—
and the church will be the poorer because of our failure to invest. But there is something else that is striking
in 2nd Kings 12, and this was the part I found most heartbreaking. As I was reading this passage, I heard a
kind of a drum roll of horse’s hoofs in the distance. The clock of history was ticking toward Judah’s conquest
and going away into exile. Yet seventeen years were lost for the temple to be repaired and for Israel to be
the nation, and example to the nations, that God wanted her to be. You cannot put a price on that loss, that
loss was real!
attacks on believers make abundantly clear is that the devil desires to tear apart everything that Christians
hold precious in this country. It can happen! Before the meeting this morning, I was praying about a
message that I recently heard on James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family.” A Christian from Germany who
grew up during the years of the Hitler Youth and the Second World War was saying to Americans, “Don’t think
it cannot happen here!” He pointed directly at the failure in the 1930’s of most German Christians to see the
battle for what it was. Most dismissed the Nazis as crazy people who would never amount to anything.
Believers failed to respond to the situation; they failed to stand up in the face of what was happening.
Therefore, the few who did stand up were easily picked off and locked away. Believers failed to respond
sufficiently to the challenge of the rising flood of immorality which poured into Germany during the 1920’s and
30’s.
and I am not just speaking of physical funds because it really comes down to lives—our lives and our funds
must be invested at the front of the battle. The reality of our generation is that the hoof beats of war, famine,
flood, persecution, extremism, and destruction are heard in the distance. I will not sit here and try to put a
definite time on the matter, especially since the Bible warns us that no man “knows the day or the hour.”
no longer have religious liberty, when we will not be able to broadcast, when we will be forbidden to publish,
and even when we will no longer be able to stand up to preach in the public square. In the 1970’s, on any
Sunday afternoon that we wanted to, we could go to Central Park, or to Fort Tryon Park, or wherever we
wanted to preach and have people respond to the Gospel. You cannot do that anymore! You have to get a
permit—and they can say no to that permit! Who knows how much farther it will go?
market, but as Ted Williams pointed out about baseball, “One thing you do know, you will never hit the ones
you don’t swing at!” If you swing the bat, you are going to miss, and miss a lot! Often those misses are the
very things that discourage you and me from trying again. “Oh, but I am not there yet!” “Oh, but I don’t have
the necessary gifts!” “That person over there has so much more than I do!” You will never have God’s gifts
until you use them!
woman of God who has made a difference and you look at their life early on, that life probably looked like a
little pea, just a little seed with not much to it! The difference between the ones who make a difference in this
world and the ones who do not is that they both start out like the little pea. But one person guards the little
seed, holds tightly onto it, and maybe lives a good Christian life. I am not trying to put anyone down here;
there are people who do just that! They live a good life and do the right thing, but they never invest their life,
they never put themselves at risk, something every investor has to do. They never give God the chance to
take their little pea, bury it into the ground, and make of it something that was never there before!
not born, they are made, and they are made because they allow the working of the cross in their lives. As
Jesus declares in John 12:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (KJV) As men and women of God let go of their
lives and allow Jesus to do His great work in them, their whole beings are transformed and invested for the
advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the words of the song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,
“There is something there that was never there before!”
president! But the difference with Lincoln was that whatever he had, he used, he invested! He made use of
what he had, and what he was, seeking God’s help every step of the way—and made an immeasurable
difference in this country’s history. His mother taught him the Scriptures when he was a little boy, day after
day praying for God’s purposes for her beloved child. There was no immediate fruit from her prayers.
Lincoln himself testified that he did not come to love Jesus Christ personally, until he stood on the bloody
ground of Gettysburg in November 1863. The sacrifice of all those lives loudly spoke to him of Jesus’ bloody
sacrifice on the cross. He told a reporter afterwards that it was there, on that battlefield, that he consecrated
his life to Jesus Christ. “Sir, I do love Jesus Christ.”
deposits into the bank that are affecting lives, and morally undermining the nation. I see it in my students and
even in some of my fellow teachers. There are topics you cannot even touch without a hot response! How
did they get into that mindset? They have heard the same message over and over again. They have been
evangelized into accepting certain politically correct perspectives, and they have never heard the other side
of the story.
the battle? One evangelist cannot do it all. The Word of the Lord needs to be invested in the public square
by many hands. It needs to out there in the hands of the carpenters and builders, the masons and the
stonecutters. The work of the priests is important, but if you don’t have masons, you haven’t got a temple in
which the priests can function! You can look down condescendingly on any spiritual gift and say, “That
doesn’t matter…That’s not so important,” but part of the revelation of the Body of Christ is that every gift
matters. Every gift that comes from the Lord makes a difference, and it is often those that seem smallest to
us, which are most important in God’s sight. Let us not despise what God has given us of treasures, nor let
us belittle what God can do with the treasures He has given us—if we will take the risk of investing them!
John McCandlish Phillips. He spoke about a recent series of articles and editorials appearing in major
American newspapers, which described evangelical believers as a “dire threat” to the nation. Mr. Phillips also
mentioned a recent e-mail describing the appearance in public of a t-shirt with the words, “So many
Christians, so few lions!”
- Let us turn to 2nd Kings 12 to look at a passage that describes a time near the end of the Kingdom of
rebuke from the Lord through King Joash regarding that failure, and finally of Judah’s active investment with
right priorities. Reading from verse one,
- In the seventh year of Jehu, Joash became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His
mother's name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the
LORD all the years Jehoiada the priest instructed him.” (NIV)
This description of Joash as “doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord” stands in sharp contrast to the
behavior of many of Judah’s other kings, and certainly with what the kings of Israel were doing at the time.
Nevertheless, we must note the caveat, “He did what was right…The high places, however, were not
removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.” Joash was a good king, but not a
completely faithful one.
- Here is Joash, a young, inexperienced ruler beginning his reign at the tender age of seven. Yet he
- Collect all the money that is brought as sacred offerings to the temple of the LORD—the money
collected in the census, the money received from personal vows and the money brought voluntarily
to the temple. Let every priest receive the money from one of the treasurers, and let it be used to
repair whatever damage is found in the temple. But by the twenty-third year of King Joash the
priests still had not repaired the temple.
- What struck me when I read this passage were the similarities between the behavior of Judah, and
the right thing as far as they understand. They do this in part because they hold dear the very values that so
enrage some newspaper columnists: family, traditional marriage, children, and so on. Nevertheless, one of
the key dynamics of the Kingdom of Heaven is that it is not enough just to do what is right! It is not enough
just to store up treasure. We must actively invest what we store up in order to advance the purposes of the
Kingdom of Heaven!
- The two commands the king gave were, “Collect the money,” and then, “Repair the damage.” Damage
over these last several decades. But damage has also been done to people’s understanding of the Biblical
nature of the church of Jesus Christ. God is restoring His church, with emphasis on the fact that it is His
church, not ours, just as the Biblical temple belonged to God, not to Israel or Judah. Rather than have us
pile up riches, I believe that the Lord is calling us to invest all that we have and are to build His kingdom, His
church.
- A believer may think in his or her mind, “What little thing can I give, what little thing can I do? What
entrusted to him or her always has a return. Granted, that return may not come right away, or even come in
that person’s lifetime, but there is a return! There is never a failure of that return in God’s good time. John
Phillips could have decided that there was nothing he could do in response to this recent series of articles
attacking evangelicals. Instead, as a gifted writer, he prayerfully prepared a response, which was published
in The Washington Post, and is now being talked about all over the country.
- In (my wife) Pilar’s and my first few years of trying to find our way into public evangelism, it was striking
medical bills, the breakdown of cars that never break down except the day before an outreach, the flooding of
our basement on the opening night of our first New York City campaign, and the vandalism of one of our cars
during the second day, we were thinking to ourselves, “This is getting too expensive!” But there was a verse
from a song that the Lord reminded me of repeatedly, “And all thou spendest, Jesus will repay!”
- Now, Pilar and I do not normally get parking tickets, except around the time of evangelistic campaigns!
outreach, someone crashed into one of our cars a few days before the event, and someone else hit our
second car as we entered our driveway on the way home from the event. Again I was thinking, “Lord this is
getting too expensive!” We can take that view; it is both easy and understandable to do so.
- Yes, there is a cost to investing in the Kingdom of Heaven, and that cost is sharpest when you are
- There is an excellent historical illustration of what investment in unconquered territory costs. In the
invested large amounts of money in missions in the Middle East. In God’s good time, young lives were sown
into Middle Eastern soil in faithful obedience to the call of Heaven. Prayers were prayed on the ground in
Lebanon, in Smyrna, in Egypt, in the region that would later become Palestine and Israel, and elsewhere.
Prayers were sown into rock hard soil, prayers that had not been prayed in those parts of the world for many
hundreds of years.
- After about ten or fifteen years of those efforts, however, about half to two-thirds of the young
that this was too great a cost, and they pulled up roots in the Middle East! Though their action may have
seemed reasonable under the circumstances, it nevertheless represented a failure of vision. Breaking into
strongly held enemy territory is always costly, but our nation may now be paying the much higher price of
failure to reach the Middle East two hundred years ago. Only God knows what the long-term fruit will be of
those seemingly futile efforts of the 1810’s and 20’s, that “wasted” investment of New England’s treasure.
- Considering again this passage from 2nd Kings, the priests failed strikingly to invest funds gathered
we see the battle and draw back! We say, “It’s too much,” or, “It’s too costly.” When you stretch the
boundaries of the Kingdom of Heaven, there is going to be a fight, and a cost. But it is worth all the cost!
- In this situation, we see King Joash giving a command to the priests to collect the money and then
“Therefore King Joash summoned Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and asked them, ‘Why aren't you
repairing the damage done to the temple?’” Now Jehoida was a man of God! He was the very instructor who
had made Joash the godly king that he was. And yet, the still very young Joash had to rebuke his personal
instructor, Jehoida, saying to him,
- ’Why aren't you repairing the damage done to the temple? Take no more money from
- your treasurers, but hand it over for repairing the temple.’ The priests agreed that they would
not collect any more money from the people and that they would not repair the temple themselves.
- Jehoiada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in its lid. He placed it beside the altar,
- on the right side as one enters the temple of the LORD. The priests who guarded the entrance
put into the chest all the money that was brought to the temple of the LORD. Whenever they saw
that there was a large amount of money in the chest, the royal secretary and the high priest
came, counted the money that had been brought into the temple of the LORD and put it into
bags. When the amount had been determined, they gave the money to the men appointed to
supervise the work on the temple. With it they paid those who worked on the temple of the
LORD-the carpenters and builders, the masons and stonecutters. They purchased timber and
dressed stone for the repair of the temple of the LORD, and met all the other expenses of
restoring the temple.
Reading this story recently, I saw something that I had never noticed before. This passage is a powerful
illustration of the way God works in His church, in the Body of Christ! The priests had a critical role and
function, but they were not carpenters, they were not builders. They were not workmen! As long as we allow
only one particular type of ministerial function and vision in the church, there are whole areas of need and
opportunity that remain unseen, and unmet.
- In our generation, God is restoring all of the ministries in His church, all of the gifts! When someone
God’s flock, God’s people. It is not the title of pastor that I am concerned with here. Many Christians put too
much emphasis on titles! In the Body of Christ, a person’s calling and function are much more than a title.
Genuine pastors have a heart for the believers, they have a heart for the welfare of God’s people, and they
are watchmen! There are people like this, but if that is the only vision you have in the church, other critical
elements get lost—because God never gives all His gifts, or the entire ministry, to one person—or even one
group of people.
- Other elements get lost, including elements of teaching, elements of evangelism, elements
because the priests were keeping all the treasure in their own hands! As Joash wisely perceived, part of the
solution was to get the money out of the hands of the priests, and into the hands of the workmen. What a
beautiful illustration of what Ephesians 4 is describing! I never noticed some of this before, but I have now—
in part because I just finished leading a series of Bible studies at Manhattan Grace Tabernacle. Those
studies focused on God’s calling of every believer to be a disciple, and on His calling to all of us to take our
places in the Body of Christ. This is one of the great needs as well as opportunities in our generation!
- Verse eleven of Ephesians 4 reads, “It was he who gave some to be apostles…” Being an apostle is
apostle. I would seriously doubt that anyone walked up to Paul and said, “Apostle Paul…,” it is not even in
the Bible! Believers in that generation would have said, “Brother Paul…,” or if they were unbelievers, they
might have added a few choice epithets to Paul’s name.
- Being an apostle was not a title for Paul, it was who and what he was! 1 Corinthians 1:1 states, “Paul,
to build the church, and that is what the Greek word apostolos (ap-os'-tol-os) means: a delegate; specially,
an ambassador of the Gospel. An ambassador is literally one who is sent!
- Ephesians 4 continues, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
of the First Degree,” or “Senior Chief Evangelist,” or all the other titles that the world loves to bestow. In
Jesus’ own words from Luke 22:25-27: “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise
authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among
you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” Not only are we called to
serve, but note that every ministry in the list is plural, not singular! God is not looking for one-man bands.
Paul himself always labored with at least one other brother, and Jesus sent His disciples out two by two.
- A believer is a prophet because that is what he or she is. It is not a title; it is what the person is in the
He, the Lord, gave “some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.” I
am pointing out these things because, when living functions in the church are changed into stale titles, the
church has already begun to be transformed from a living organism into an organization. And when you turn
the church into an organization, you have stepped away from the direct working and daily inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. You have begun to enshrine living faith as a display piece in a museum, something to be honored
and remembered, rather than experienced first-hand! As John Wesley stated on his deathbed, he was afraid
that his fellow “methodists” would take a remarkable work of God, and turn it into another denomination.
Methodism was born in revival and the powerful moving of the Spirit of God on people from many
denominations. But now, a lower case m was about to became a capital M, and the power of an entire
movement began to fade.
- All of the ministries described in Ephesians 4 are essential parts of the life of the Biblical church. They
individually represents the fullness of the ministry of the church! In fact, Paul goes on to say what the chief
purpose of these five-fold ministries is: “to prepare God's people for works of service.” The work of these
ministries is to deliver the counsel, the whole counsel of God, into the lives of the members of the Body, so
that the members may do their work. That is what the Bible says, “to prepare God's people for works of
service.” That word service is the same word as ministry, because that is what real ministry is! To be a
minister in the Biblical church is to be a servant, and all the members of the Body of Christ are called to
serve, each in the capacities the Lord has given them. As Ephesians 3:10-11 states, “His intent was that
now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in
the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- In much of traditional Christianity, you find the separation, “Here are the ministers, and here are the
Open your hands and see all the people.” Biblically, the church is the people. It is a spiritual building, not a
physical one. In the Biblical church, the role of God’s ministers is to prepare God’s people to minister, and to
take their places as functioning members in the Body of Christ.
- God is so marvelous! We were talking about whales this morning in our car. You could live your whole
about those little crustaceans in the middle of the ocean whose beauty so puzzled Charles Darwin: “Many of
these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms and rich colours. It creates a
feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.” (from Darwin’s
Beagle Diary, quoted in Randall Keynes, Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, p. 26)
- Clearly, God thinks a lot about many things, including what we call little things! And He does think
us have that God is not going to give to someone else. We either invest them, or they will not be invested—
and the church will be the poorer because of our failure to invest. But there is something else that is striking
in 2nd Kings 12, and this was the part I found most heartbreaking. As I was reading this passage, I heard a
kind of a drum roll of horse’s hoofs in the distance. The clock of history was ticking toward Judah’s conquest
and going away into exile. Yet seventeen years were lost for the temple to be repaired and for Israel to be
the nation, and example to the nations, that God wanted her to be. You cannot put a price on that loss, that
loss was real!
- Anyone of us here today who is honest has to say that we have lost time. We have in some measure
attacks on believers make abundantly clear is that the devil desires to tear apart everything that Christians
hold precious in this country. It can happen! Before the meeting this morning, I was praying about a
message that I recently heard on James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family.” A Christian from Germany who
grew up during the years of the Hitler Youth and the Second World War was saying to Americans, “Don’t think
it cannot happen here!” He pointed directly at the failure in the 1930’s of most German Christians to see the
battle for what it was. Most dismissed the Nazis as crazy people who would never amount to anything.
Believers failed to respond to the situation; they failed to stand up in the face of what was happening.
Therefore, the few who did stand up were easily picked off and locked away. Believers failed to respond
sufficiently to the challenge of the rising flood of immorality which poured into Germany during the 1920’s and
30’s.
- Where were the people of God? Sinners are not the ones who are going to rescue the nation. It is
and I am not just speaking of physical funds because it really comes down to lives—our lives and our funds
must be invested at the front of the battle. The reality of our generation is that the hoof beats of war, famine,
flood, persecution, extremism, and destruction are heard in the distance. I will not sit here and try to put a
definite time on the matter, especially since the Bible warns us that no man “knows the day or the hour.”
- We cannot know the times exactly, only the Father does! But we can have our ears attuned to know
no longer have religious liberty, when we will not be able to broadcast, when we will be forbidden to publish,
and even when we will no longer be able to stand up to preach in the public square. In the 1970’s, on any
Sunday afternoon that we wanted to, we could go to Central Park, or to Fort Tryon Park, or wherever we
wanted to preach and have people respond to the Gospel. You cannot do that anymore! You have to get a
permit—and they can say no to that permit! Who knows how much farther it will go?
- We need to invest our lives and whatever treasure we have while we can. Judah needed to invest in
market, but as Ted Williams pointed out about baseball, “One thing you do know, you will never hit the ones
you don’t swing at!” If you swing the bat, you are going to miss, and miss a lot! Often those misses are the
very things that discourage you and me from trying again. “Oh, but I am not there yet!” “Oh, but I don’t have
the necessary gifts!” “That person over there has so much more than I do!” You will never have God’s gifts
until you use them!
- One of the great truths in the Kingdom of Heaven is that God insists that we take the little that we have
woman of God who has made a difference and you look at their life early on, that life probably looked like a
little pea, just a little seed with not much to it! The difference between the ones who make a difference in this
world and the ones who do not is that they both start out like the little pea. But one person guards the little
seed, holds tightly onto it, and maybe lives a good Christian life. I am not trying to put anyone down here;
there are people who do just that! They live a good life and do the right thing, but they never invest their life,
they never put themselves at risk, something every investor has to do. They never give God the chance to
take their little pea, bury it into the ground, and make of it something that was never there before!
- But others take everything they have and are, and give it all away to God! Sometimes these people
not born, they are made, and they are made because they allow the working of the cross in their lives. As
Jesus declares in John 12:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (KJV) As men and women of God let go of their
lives and allow Jesus to do His great work in them, their whole beings are transformed and invested for the
advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the words of the song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,
“There is something there that was never there before!”
- None of us is there to start with; Abraham Lincoln was not there to start with! He was not even close,
president! But the difference with Lincoln was that whatever he had, he used, he invested! He made use of
what he had, and what he was, seeking God’s help every step of the way—and made an immeasurable
difference in this country’s history. His mother taught him the Scriptures when he was a little boy, day after
day praying for God’s purposes for her beloved child. There was no immediate fruit from her prayers.
Lincoln himself testified that he did not come to love Jesus Christ personally, until he stood on the bloody
ground of Gettysburg in November 1863. The sacrifice of all those lives loudly spoke to him of Jesus’ bloody
sacrifice on the cross. He told a reporter afterwards that it was there, on that battlefield, that he consecrated
his life to Jesus Christ. “Sir, I do love Jesus Christ.”
- This also is a time when believers, despite the threats and maybe because of the threats, need to be
deposits into the bank that are affecting lives, and morally undermining the nation. I see it in my students and
even in some of my fellow teachers. There are topics you cannot even touch without a hot response! How
did they get into that mindset? They have heard the same message over and over again. They have been
evangelized into accepting certain politically correct perspectives, and they have never heard the other side
of the story.
- One day I asked my seniors, “How many of you have listened to Billy Graham?” Not one of them had
the battle? One evangelist cannot do it all. The Word of the Lord needs to be invested in the public square
by many hands. It needs to out there in the hands of the carpenters and builders, the masons and the
stonecutters. The work of the priests is important, but if you don’t have masons, you haven’t got a temple in
which the priests can function! You can look down condescendingly on any spiritual gift and say, “That
doesn’t matter…That’s not so important,” but part of the revelation of the Body of Christ is that every gift
matters. Every gift that comes from the Lord makes a difference, and it is often those that seem smallest to
us, which are most important in God’s sight. Let us not despise what God has given us of treasures, nor let
us belittle what God can do with the treasures He has given us—if we will take the risk of investing them!
- Copyright ©2005 Christopher N. White
(Given Sunday, May 8, 2005 at the New Testament Missionary Fellowship)