The Age to Come
The book of Revelation describes the cosmic battle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness. In the midst of this battle we realize that God is holding back on our enemy so that the nations of this world might have the opportunity to become the nations of our God and King by giving their allegiance to Jesus, creation’s true Lord. The book of revelation uses the pallet of metaphors from the prophets of Israel’s past to describe this new thing God is doing. At the end of this beautiful and mysterious book we read this passage.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
Each line is filled with meaning. We see the language of the “new” heaven and earth being used. The old heaven and earth had been broken by man’s rebellion and sin and by the enemy’s deceits. But the enemy and his lies are being dealt with once and for all and the sins of mankind are being judged. Now we have a new heaven and a new earth, joined together as they were intended to be. This new creation will not know the touch of evil. It’s described as having no sea. In the Old Testament the sea symbolized chaos and disorder; this has been done away with, overcome by Jesus.
The apostle John sees the heavenly Jerusalem, the true royal city of God, descending from Heaven and coming to rest on earth. Heaven and earth are joined together in relationship as they were always intended, and God says that He has made His home among humanity. When this happens there is no more need for faith, because God dwells with us. We are able to see Him and experience Him face to face.
And what does that mean for us? What happens when Heaven and Earth unite under the rule of our loving God? It means everything is set to right!
REV 21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away."
REV 21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."
The power of these words is incredible. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. As a pastor I have been with people during some of their worst moments. I’ve had to tell children that one of their parents has died. I’ve had to sit with parents after the death of their children. I’ve had to help people work through the pain of a murdered loved one. I’ve consoled women who have been raped, women who are dealing with the pain of an abortion, or who have felt their heart ripped out as they’ve given their child away for adoption. I’ve counseled many soldiers dealing with the pain of what they witnessed and participated in on the field of battle. I’ve watched marriages dissolve, people ruin their lives, fortunes come and go. I’ve watched people live pay check to pay check; maxed out in debt, lose their jobs and be cast out onto the streets; the list of pain that I’ve seen has been staggering. When people find themselves in the midst these situations, they are the marginalized. They are the least, the last, the lost, and lonely.
The Bible says that at the end of the age, when Jesus sets all things to right, that He will wipe every tear from our eyes. He will comfort us in our pain, and our pain will be no more. He goes on to say death will be no more. No longer will we have to contend with the loss of loved ones. Mourning, crying, pain will all be things that were part of the old creation. In the new creation no one will be marginalized. There will be no least, last, lost, or lonely because these things will have passed away. There will be no more poverty, murder, death, war, sin, or sickness because these things will have passed away. God will have made all things new.
This is the trajectory of the Kingdom. One day through Jesus there will be no under performing schools. Children who want to learn will all have the opportunity to learn. There will be no need for ministries to the homeless, there will be no need to speak up for the enslaved or the oppressed. These people will be free.
As the church, we are the community of this coming age. We are already residents of this time. When we hear Paul use language that we are foreigners or aliens to this world, or when he says we are in the world but not of it, he is describing the fact that we are the people of the coming Kingdom. So wherever we are, there should be visible signs of the old order of things being set to right; poverty, sickness, slavery, and the marginalization of people disappearing as the world and its systems encounter the people of the Kingdom; the people of the future age.
What we have to understand is that the conditions of poverty, marginalization, sickness, slavery, and violence are all reminders of the brokenness of the world. Followers of Jesus are to serve notice to the world that these conditions will come to an end completely one day by working for their eradication now. Every time we feed the hungry, comfort the mourning, befriend the lonely, heal or care for the sick, or bring peace to areas of violence we pointing towards the future God is bringing. We are demonstrating the life of the “age to come”. This is the life that will be normal when Jesus sets all things to right; it’s the life we give our broken world a glimpse of every time we act to bring the Kingdom’s order to the broken chaos of this age.
This is our duty. This is our message. This is our privilege! Paul in Roman’s 8 says that all creation literally stands on tip toe waiting for the revealing of the children of God. Every time we love the marginalized we are giving creation a sneak peak of what it’s longing for!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Value 2: Ministry to the Marginalized Part III - The New Testament
The New Testament
Like the Old Testament before it, the New Testament is not silent on the issue of the poor. The New Testament continues to affirm God’s love for the marginalized as being foundational and that His people are to incorporate caring for them into their lifestyle. In the ministry of Jesus we see his care for the marginalized as a sign of the in breaking of His Kingdom.
Let’s read the words of Jesus as he is getting ready to set out on his public ministry.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
LK 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captive
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
LK 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
LK 4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Jesus said that the Spirit of God was empowering him to proclaim the message of the Kingdom through both word and deed to those who had been marginalized. He is to preach the good news that God has remembered the plight of the poor. He is to heal those who have been crippled, restoring them to the worshiping community of Israel. He is to release those who have been enslaved, and proclaim to the debtors that their debts have been canceled, and that is exactly what He did.
Jesus came to an impoverished world in poverty through his birth. Think about it, he was born the child of a teenage peasant in ancient Israel. He was born in a barn! He grew up like any other average child in Israel going to synagogue school and learning the trade of his earthly father. He did not grow up in the metropolitan hustle and bustle of Jerusalem. He grew up in the sticks. He was probably considered a country preacher with a rural accent. They made the same jokes about where he was from that we do about north Georgia or Kentucky here in Tennessee.
Yet these experiences gave him an ability to identify with the common people of Israel. They gave him the background he needed to communicate deep truths to them in a way they could grasp and understand. Just think about how many of his parables pertain to farming, fishing, family, and weddings, topics the ordinary people of his day would be familiar with. Jesus was one of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. Yet he was full of the Kingdom of God, and wherever he went he brought hope and life with him.
In his public ministry he healed the sick, related to prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers. These were outcasts; people who were outside the worshipping community of Israel. Every time Jesus touched one of these people lives it was an object lesson in how his Kingdom operates. The good news is proclaimed to the poor, the sick and diseased are healed, the captives are set free, and debts are forgiven. Those who were outside were invited in, because Jesus’ kingdom is accessible to all.
I bet as you read this you are saying to yourself, “Yes and amen!”, after all this is what Jesus does and as His followers we should be doing the same. Not so quick. Do you understand what this looks like? I remember when we first started feeding the homeless in Miller Park. One of our members began to really invest in the people that they were feeding. He attended our small group and began to bring some of the people to whom he was ministering. These folks might not have had a shower for several days and they smelled really bad. They were hungry and would absolutely devour all the snacks, and they didn’t really know how to appropriately interact with people. This was an uncomfortable experience and I really wrestled with it. What are you going to do if the outcasts are invited to the party? Do you think you could handle it? I really struggled and honestly I still would.
We’ve been reaching out to a middle school where many of the children have been raised with a different set of values than a bunch of suburban white kids. What if all of a sudden fifty of those kids decided to start coming to our youth ministry? What would you do? Would you pull your kids from the youth ministry? Would you think the Vineyard is just not what it used to be, and quietly slip out to the church down the street where you don’t have to wrestle through the same uncomfortable feelings? Does Jesus really desire for us to be an invitational people and love the poor?
Being an incarnational presence in the schools is just the first step. If you think the wooden seats in the auditorium are uncomfortable, just wait until we start making serious head-way into our mission. I’m not saying this to scare you, but I’m asking are you really willing to follow Jesus wherever he might lead?
Jesus loves the poor. He loves the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. He has commissioned his church to do the same.
When we read about the New Testament church, we read about a group of people who continued to love those no one else was willing to love. One of the first things the early church did was minister to the poor. They organized a feeding ministry for widows and orphans in Jerusalem. God blessed this ministry by empowering the followers of Jesus to do many signs and wonders as they blessed the poor and marginalized. In the letters of Paul, we read of him encouraging the church to remember the poor. Paul writes a whole letter in the Bible on behalf of a slave. The early church was marked by a love for the poor. This love for the marginalized permeates the New Testament scriptures and is always a sign pointing to what Jesus will one day do all in all.
One of the ways the early church grew was due to their care for the marginalized. The Roman culture had a practice called exposure. When parents or a person had a baby that they did not want they would take the child and place it on the city walls so that the child would die of exposure. This was a very common practice in the ancient world. Christians, however, believed that every life was sacred, even the lives that nobody else wanted. The Christians would go to the city walls at night and rescue the exposed infants and raise them as their own. Many of these children became the backbone of the church as they grew.
In the name of Jesus, the church has championed the cause of the marginalized for two millennia. The first hospitals were started by the church to take care of the sick. The church built orphanages to care for children without parents. The church started public education so all might have the opportunity for a better life and people could read the Bible for themselves. The church has faced down infanticide twice in its history. The church abolished the slave trade once, and as it raises its ugly head again, it is the entity on the frontlines of modern abolition. I cannot even begin to list the difference the church has made in the lives of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely over the last two thousand years. Why has this been part of the church’s historic witness to the world? It is because God loves the poor, Jesus loves the poor, and his church has loved the poor. These are all signs of the future Jesus is bringing. The question for us is are we willing to follow Jesus and love the poor as well?
Like the Old Testament before it, the New Testament is not silent on the issue of the poor. The New Testament continues to affirm God’s love for the marginalized as being foundational and that His people are to incorporate caring for them into their lifestyle. In the ministry of Jesus we see his care for the marginalized as a sign of the in breaking of His Kingdom.
Let’s read the words of Jesus as he is getting ready to set out on his public ministry.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
LK 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captive
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
LK 4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
LK 4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Jesus said that the Spirit of God was empowering him to proclaim the message of the Kingdom through both word and deed to those who had been marginalized. He is to preach the good news that God has remembered the plight of the poor. He is to heal those who have been crippled, restoring them to the worshiping community of Israel. He is to release those who have been enslaved, and proclaim to the debtors that their debts have been canceled, and that is exactly what He did.
Jesus came to an impoverished world in poverty through his birth. Think about it, he was born the child of a teenage peasant in ancient Israel. He was born in a barn! He grew up like any other average child in Israel going to synagogue school and learning the trade of his earthly father. He did not grow up in the metropolitan hustle and bustle of Jerusalem. He grew up in the sticks. He was probably considered a country preacher with a rural accent. They made the same jokes about where he was from that we do about north Georgia or Kentucky here in Tennessee.
Yet these experiences gave him an ability to identify with the common people of Israel. They gave him the background he needed to communicate deep truths to them in a way they could grasp and understand. Just think about how many of his parables pertain to farming, fishing, family, and weddings, topics the ordinary people of his day would be familiar with. Jesus was one of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. Yet he was full of the Kingdom of God, and wherever he went he brought hope and life with him.
In his public ministry he healed the sick, related to prostitutes, tax collectors, and lepers. These were outcasts; people who were outside the worshipping community of Israel. Every time Jesus touched one of these people lives it was an object lesson in how his Kingdom operates. The good news is proclaimed to the poor, the sick and diseased are healed, the captives are set free, and debts are forgiven. Those who were outside were invited in, because Jesus’ kingdom is accessible to all.
I bet as you read this you are saying to yourself, “Yes and amen!”, after all this is what Jesus does and as His followers we should be doing the same. Not so quick. Do you understand what this looks like? I remember when we first started feeding the homeless in Miller Park. One of our members began to really invest in the people that they were feeding. He attended our small group and began to bring some of the people to whom he was ministering. These folks might not have had a shower for several days and they smelled really bad. They were hungry and would absolutely devour all the snacks, and they didn’t really know how to appropriately interact with people. This was an uncomfortable experience and I really wrestled with it. What are you going to do if the outcasts are invited to the party? Do you think you could handle it? I really struggled and honestly I still would.
We’ve been reaching out to a middle school where many of the children have been raised with a different set of values than a bunch of suburban white kids. What if all of a sudden fifty of those kids decided to start coming to our youth ministry? What would you do? Would you pull your kids from the youth ministry? Would you think the Vineyard is just not what it used to be, and quietly slip out to the church down the street where you don’t have to wrestle through the same uncomfortable feelings? Does Jesus really desire for us to be an invitational people and love the poor?
Being an incarnational presence in the schools is just the first step. If you think the wooden seats in the auditorium are uncomfortable, just wait until we start making serious head-way into our mission. I’m not saying this to scare you, but I’m asking are you really willing to follow Jesus wherever he might lead?
Jesus loves the poor. He loves the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. He has commissioned his church to do the same.
When we read about the New Testament church, we read about a group of people who continued to love those no one else was willing to love. One of the first things the early church did was minister to the poor. They organized a feeding ministry for widows and orphans in Jerusalem. God blessed this ministry by empowering the followers of Jesus to do many signs and wonders as they blessed the poor and marginalized. In the letters of Paul, we read of him encouraging the church to remember the poor. Paul writes a whole letter in the Bible on behalf of a slave. The early church was marked by a love for the poor. This love for the marginalized permeates the New Testament scriptures and is always a sign pointing to what Jesus will one day do all in all.
One of the ways the early church grew was due to their care for the marginalized. The Roman culture had a practice called exposure. When parents or a person had a baby that they did not want they would take the child and place it on the city walls so that the child would die of exposure. This was a very common practice in the ancient world. Christians, however, believed that every life was sacred, even the lives that nobody else wanted. The Christians would go to the city walls at night and rescue the exposed infants and raise them as their own. Many of these children became the backbone of the church as they grew.
In the name of Jesus, the church has championed the cause of the marginalized for two millennia. The first hospitals were started by the church to take care of the sick. The church built orphanages to care for children without parents. The church started public education so all might have the opportunity for a better life and people could read the Bible for themselves. The church has faced down infanticide twice in its history. The church abolished the slave trade once, and as it raises its ugly head again, it is the entity on the frontlines of modern abolition. I cannot even begin to list the difference the church has made in the lives of the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely over the last two thousand years. Why has this been part of the church’s historic witness to the world? It is because God loves the poor, Jesus loves the poor, and his church has loved the poor. These are all signs of the future Jesus is bringing. The question for us is are we willing to follow Jesus and love the poor as well?
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Value 2: Ministry to the Marginalized II - The Old Testament
The Old Testament
God's heart for the poor and the marginalized permeates the pages of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we see God's plan to fix a world broken by sin unfold, and one of the primary ways we see this plan in evidence is through the way He cares for the poor and calls his people to care for the poor. We see it in the way He protects Cain even after he has murdered his brother Able. We see it in how He calls this nomadic tribesman, Abraham, and promises to make him a mighty nation that will bless all the nations of the earth. We see it in the way He cares for Abraham’s slave, Hagar, and the child, Ishmael, that she bore him after Abraham left them for dead in the desert. We see it in how He takes a spoiled child like Joseph and refines his character through horrible circumstances until he is made steward over all Egypt. We see it in His protection of Joseph’s brothers and their families even though they had meant him harm. We see it in how He hears the cries of Abraham’s enslaved descendants in Egypt. We see it in how He rescues an enslaved baby boy condemned to death by a fearful pharaoh. We see it in how this baby boy is found by a princess of Egypt in his basket of reeds where they have hidden him. We see it in how this baby boy grows up as a prince of Egypt. We see it in God’s calling him to deliver His people from slavery in spite of the fact that he has been so beaten down by the world that he can’t even speak without stammering. We see it in the way He frees a community of slaves and turns them into a nation of priests. We see it in His patience with the nation of Israel’s habitual sinning and running to idols. This list could go on and on. The Old Testament is filled with stories about God’s love for the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, and about how he expects his people to care for them.
Read what He says through the prophet Isaiah:
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
ISA 58:2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
ISA 58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
The Lord is coming to the nation of Israel with a word of judgment. He tells Isaiah to announce boldly to the nation that He is not pleased. Yes, from the outside they look religious. They put on a good show, but there is a reason He is not responding to their fasts. There is a reason He is not noticing them.
God’s words to the nation of Israel through the prophets always seem to hit me right between the eyes. He could speak these same words to the church, at least the church in the United States. Why, oh church, do I not seem to respond to your call? You make million dollar cathedrals dedicated to me, and put my name on t-shirts and in your popular music. You send your children to private schools that cost thousands of dollars a year that are run out of these same churches. You support entire industries based on the selling of books, videos, music, and movies that tell you how to better please me, but I’m not pleased. I’m not pleased with this.
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
ISA 58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
ISA 58:5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
ISA 58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
ISA 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
God tells us exactly what he wants from us. He wants us to bring the light of His compassionate kingdom to the forgotten of society. The fast the God chooses for his people (a fast is the act of denying oneself to draw close to God) is that we do the work of the Kingdom by championing the cause of the marginalized; the cause of the least, last, lost, and lonely. God wants our acts of self denial to be acts that care for those who have been beaten down by the broken condition of the world. When we do this we are anticipating the day when poverty, loneliness, and abandonment will be undone.
I’m going to call some things out here, and I’m not doing it to be mean, but I feel that God has called me to speak with a prophetic voice on this issue, and I feel we (The Vineyard) have the right to be that prophetic voice because we’ve chosen to walk a different path. Every day I pass by a church that has a huge private school attached to it. This church and school is literally a quarter of a mile from the school our church meets in. They are just finishing up a multi-million dollar expansion to their sports and recreation fields; fields that could rival a college campus. Just a quarter of a mile down the road the three minority, public schools we meet in are playing on ball fields that are so desperately in need of renovation that it is just sad. Last fall the coach of the baseball team from this high school was literally begging the community to invest ten grand in the ball field so it would be playable. It floods every year. These kids can’t play home games because the condition of their field is so poor. Not only that (I know this is going to sound unbelievable but it’s true), these kids are wearing uniforms that were new in 1968! I wish our church had the financial resources some of these churches have because I would have written the check on the spot. Do we profane the name of our God when just a quarter of a mile down the road the wealthy, who can afford to invest the thousands of dollars a year, have college level ball fields, provided for them in the name of Jesus, when the poor are left behind? Is this where God wants His resources spent? Is this the fast God chooses for us?
Just a stone’s throw from our schools that were built in the late 1950’s, that have roofs that are leaking, where the air conditioning units don’t work properly, with more problems to their physical campuses than you could shake a stick at, goes up a multi- multi-million dollar church campus. This facility is built for the glory of God and hey, they are doing it debt-free. I promise you, people are being asked to take on financial fasts to see this thing built, but is this the fast that God wants when the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely who are literally sitting a stone’s throw from them are going severely without? Are these the acts of self denial that God is calling His people to? Are we seriously to believe that God wants us to invest millions and millions of dollars simply on ourselves? I don’t think so.
Now let me say, I think all of this happens through the best intentions. The leaders of these churches are good people who dearly love Jesus. They desperately want to see people come to know the Lord and live their lives for Him. My critique is in the American way of doing church. We have defined success in such terms that it takes mammoth facilities and budgets to be thought of as being relevant. This leads to a trap of catering to one particular group of people, the type of people who have the kind of resources that can fund this type of programming. I don’t think God has called us to compete with theme parks. I don’t think we are in the entertainment business. I think God has called us to partner with Him in seeing heaven touch earth.
I’m telling you right now, Chattanooga, arguably the most Christian city in the world, will not experience all that God has for it, until we, the churches, repent of this waste and turn our hearts to the true work of the Kingdom. It should be an affront to us that our school system is the worst performing in our state. Seriously, as Christians we should be embarrassed by what is happening to our city, because the presence of so many Jesus following people should be changing the very fabric of our society.
ISA 58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
ISA 58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
ISA 58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
ISA 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
This is but one of literally hundreds of passages where God talks about his heart for the poor. The prophets are all looking forward to the Day of the Lord, when the great reversal of fortunes takes place. When the tears of the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, will be wiped away once and for all. Those who thought of themselves as having been forgotten will realize that they were always very close to the heart of God.
The Old Testament teaches us that God loves the poor and He expects His people to love them too!
God's heart for the poor and the marginalized permeates the pages of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we see God's plan to fix a world broken by sin unfold, and one of the primary ways we see this plan in evidence is through the way He cares for the poor and calls his people to care for the poor. We see it in the way He protects Cain even after he has murdered his brother Able. We see it in how He calls this nomadic tribesman, Abraham, and promises to make him a mighty nation that will bless all the nations of the earth. We see it in the way He cares for Abraham’s slave, Hagar, and the child, Ishmael, that she bore him after Abraham left them for dead in the desert. We see it in how He takes a spoiled child like Joseph and refines his character through horrible circumstances until he is made steward over all Egypt. We see it in His protection of Joseph’s brothers and their families even though they had meant him harm. We see it in how He hears the cries of Abraham’s enslaved descendants in Egypt. We see it in how He rescues an enslaved baby boy condemned to death by a fearful pharaoh. We see it in how this baby boy is found by a princess of Egypt in his basket of reeds where they have hidden him. We see it in how this baby boy grows up as a prince of Egypt. We see it in God’s calling him to deliver His people from slavery in spite of the fact that he has been so beaten down by the world that he can’t even speak without stammering. We see it in the way He frees a community of slaves and turns them into a nation of priests. We see it in His patience with the nation of Israel’s habitual sinning and running to idols. This list could go on and on. The Old Testament is filled with stories about God’s love for the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, and about how he expects his people to care for them.
Read what He says through the prophet Isaiah:
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
ISA 58:2 Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
ISA 58:3 "Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
The Lord is coming to the nation of Israel with a word of judgment. He tells Isaiah to announce boldly to the nation that He is not pleased. Yes, from the outside they look religious. They put on a good show, but there is a reason He is not responding to their fasts. There is a reason He is not noticing them.
God’s words to the nation of Israel through the prophets always seem to hit me right between the eyes. He could speak these same words to the church, at least the church in the United States. Why, oh church, do I not seem to respond to your call? You make million dollar cathedrals dedicated to me, and put my name on t-shirts and in your popular music. You send your children to private schools that cost thousands of dollars a year that are run out of these same churches. You support entire industries based on the selling of books, videos, music, and movies that tell you how to better please me, but I’m not pleased. I’m not pleased with this.
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
ISA 58:4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
ISA 58:5 Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
ISA 58:6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
ISA 58:7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
God tells us exactly what he wants from us. He wants us to bring the light of His compassionate kingdom to the forgotten of society. The fast the God chooses for his people (a fast is the act of denying oneself to draw close to God) is that we do the work of the Kingdom by championing the cause of the marginalized; the cause of the least, last, lost, and lonely. God wants our acts of self denial to be acts that care for those who have been beaten down by the broken condition of the world. When we do this we are anticipating the day when poverty, loneliness, and abandonment will be undone.
I’m going to call some things out here, and I’m not doing it to be mean, but I feel that God has called me to speak with a prophetic voice on this issue, and I feel we (The Vineyard) have the right to be that prophetic voice because we’ve chosen to walk a different path. Every day I pass by a church that has a huge private school attached to it. This church and school is literally a quarter of a mile from the school our church meets in. They are just finishing up a multi-million dollar expansion to their sports and recreation fields; fields that could rival a college campus. Just a quarter of a mile down the road the three minority, public schools we meet in are playing on ball fields that are so desperately in need of renovation that it is just sad. Last fall the coach of the baseball team from this high school was literally begging the community to invest ten grand in the ball field so it would be playable. It floods every year. These kids can’t play home games because the condition of their field is so poor. Not only that (I know this is going to sound unbelievable but it’s true), these kids are wearing uniforms that were new in 1968! I wish our church had the financial resources some of these churches have because I would have written the check on the spot. Do we profane the name of our God when just a quarter of a mile down the road the wealthy, who can afford to invest the thousands of dollars a year, have college level ball fields, provided for them in the name of Jesus, when the poor are left behind? Is this where God wants His resources spent? Is this the fast God chooses for us?
Just a stone’s throw from our schools that were built in the late 1950’s, that have roofs that are leaking, where the air conditioning units don’t work properly, with more problems to their physical campuses than you could shake a stick at, goes up a multi- multi-million dollar church campus. This facility is built for the glory of God and hey, they are doing it debt-free. I promise you, people are being asked to take on financial fasts to see this thing built, but is this the fast that God wants when the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely who are literally sitting a stone’s throw from them are going severely without? Are these the acts of self denial that God is calling His people to? Are we seriously to believe that God wants us to invest millions and millions of dollars simply on ourselves? I don’t think so.
Now let me say, I think all of this happens through the best intentions. The leaders of these churches are good people who dearly love Jesus. They desperately want to see people come to know the Lord and live their lives for Him. My critique is in the American way of doing church. We have defined success in such terms that it takes mammoth facilities and budgets to be thought of as being relevant. This leads to a trap of catering to one particular group of people, the type of people who have the kind of resources that can fund this type of programming. I don’t think God has called us to compete with theme parks. I don’t think we are in the entertainment business. I think God has called us to partner with Him in seeing heaven touch earth.
I’m telling you right now, Chattanooga, arguably the most Christian city in the world, will not experience all that God has for it, until we, the churches, repent of this waste and turn our hearts to the true work of the Kingdom. It should be an affront to us that our school system is the worst performing in our state. Seriously, as Christians we should be embarrassed by what is happening to our city, because the presence of so many Jesus following people should be changing the very fabric of our society.
ISA 58:8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
ISA 58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
ISA 58:10 if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
ISA 58:11 The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
This is but one of literally hundreds of passages where God talks about his heart for the poor. The prophets are all looking forward to the Day of the Lord, when the great reversal of fortunes takes place. When the tears of the marginalized; the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely, will be wiped away once and for all. Those who thought of themselves as having been forgotten will realize that they were always very close to the heart of God.
The Old Testament teaches us that God loves the poor and He expects His people to love them too!
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