Christians, Move Ahead 9/12/48
Scripture: Acts 17: 15-28a
Text: Acts 17: 16b; ... “His spirit was stirred within him...”
Our day offers tremendous opportunities for advancing the cause of Christ. Seldom has the door swung so wide for the Christian message in the Orient as now. The Christian churches of the Orient want more of the same vital, living message that brought them into being -- want the missionaries of Christ who will not exercise authority over them but work with them in India and China. Japan is wide open with friendly, desiring interest in Christianity as her people have not been for decades.
In our own land, and in other Occidental countries, the climate has been changing until conditions not only favor, but demand and plead for a vital Christian gospel as perhaps they have not done in decades, or in a couple of centuries past. The opinions and attitudes of self-confident, and “self-made,” men and women have been shaken by the successive blows of war, depression, war again, and now the disappointments of a new peace. Much that man has believed in - automatic progress through scientific achievement, education, and utopian idealism --has proved wanting. Arrogance and self-trust are receding. The door swings open to alternative faiths. So ours is a time of great opportunity for the Christian faith.
Paul found a similar spiritual situation when he visited Athens. Athens, in that first century of our Lord, had been a proud and beautiful city, a world center for knowledge and the arts. It had been a religious center. Paul discovered there the statues and shrines of the gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman world. But they were relics of a faith that had died in the lives of people, and Athens had become a place of some disillusionment; cynicism, purposeless, physically licentious, and morally corrupt.
The story told in the book of Acts says: “His spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” And Paul began proclaiming his new faith in the living Christ in the Jewish synagogues, among the Greeks on the street, and at length to the crowd on Mare Hill.
Christians of this day! We ought to be moving ahead in the same way. Ours is a time when the earlier optimism of the century sounds silly and shallow, when life has no sense of direction for hosts of people, when despair clutches at the hearts of multitudes, or listlessness overtakes their spirits.
We who have known God in Christ have the same means of spiritual advance as Paul had. And the central truth of the Christian faith is particularly relevant to our time. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.” [John 3: 16].
To the mood of pessimism and despair that settles over the world we have the word (1) that God revealed himself in history in Jesus Christ. In him is revealed the grand plan for mankind. Every individual person has his place in God’s creation and is related to the master design. Every man, woman and child counts. Not even a sparrow falls to earth without notice of the God who is revealed in Christ. The Jesus of Bethlehem and of all history is part of the message of Christian advance for our day.
(2) The life of Jesus is another part of that message. His unique and distinctive personality, with gentleness and strength intermingled, with purity and restraint, with unparalleled courage and devotion is part of the message to the people of our day.
We have lived through a time when other ways of living have taken the offensive. The ruthless man of Nietzsche was made incarnate in Hitler and others like Hitler. And this man had an appeal far beyond the borders of Germany. The selfish man everywhere whose slogan is a hard-lipped “business is business” has had his bitter day in commerce. The sensual man, aided by the spirit of disillusionment, has been able to do almost as he wished.
The one real, effective treatment for these failures of human living is a moving introduction to the quiet beauty and wholesomeness of Jesus’ life. People of our day are in the process of rediscovering the fact and the power of sin. Evil is a fact that can not be written off as a by-product of circumstances. It is far too often the direct result of man’s own perversity.
We still have tremendous confidence in education. The notion that the “evolving process” of personal experience in education is the answer to all our ignorance and evil has been precious to our generation. But this fact now becomes more and more clearly focused; that if man rises to higher levels of cultural living and intellectual competence -- so does sin, following him like a shadow --- Unless there be a moral directive in education!
Our Christian message is one of humility, penitence, sacrifice, brotherly love, respect for the person and rights of others, devotion to God. This religious message is the only sure hope of the world’s people. We Christians must move ahead with the message, practicing it and sharing it.
(4) The message of Christ is one of hope -- hope that springs to new vitality with every proclamation of the Easter message. The faith that Jesus was not only a person during 33 years of history, but that the Christ lives throughout all history, and in eternity, in triumph over evil and vindication of the right -- this faith is hope-inspiring, fear-destroying! It kindles gladness in the midst of the earth’s disappointment and despair, and by it we are assured of victory for our spirits.
Our world of today flounders in desperate, fearful need of the message of Christ. Christians must move ahead in proclaiming it. Let it be known in our speech, through our acts, by our attitudes, in our service. Let it be known to those near at hand, in our families, among our associates at work, to our new acquaintances. Let it be proclaimed abroad by means of our prayerful and sacrificial support. [Church a missionary Ch.]
Let our spirit be stirred within us, until people everywhere shall know the name, and the life and the fellowship and the power of our living Christ!
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 12, 1948