What Does God Have to Say About this Mess?
That is what the crowd gathered on the beach of the Lake of Galilee to hear: What does God have to say?
Luke 5:1 “the crowd was pressing around him to hear the word of God”
Things were a mess in Israel. The country was run by foreigners who were brutal taskmasters. It was divided into factions that were quarreling with each other. There was insurrection in the air and rebellion against Rome. It was so bad that the ordinary folk who were caught between all this wanted to know if God had a way out. And they wanted to know what Jesus had to say.
His answer was “the kingdom of God.” (Take a moment to look at how many times Jesus spoke of the kingdom in Luke, 31 times. Biblegateway )
Translated, that is let God be in control. Do things his way. Follow King Jesus. But they didn’t.
In just a year or two, many of the people who heard Jesus speak God’s word would crucify him as a rebel and rabble-rouser, an enemy of Rome and a false hope for Israel. They chose the path they were on. And it came back to bite them.
In a generation, as Jesus warned them, the mess became a fire literally that consumed Israel and the institutions and factions in which they put their hope. The temple was destroyed. The city of Jerusalem was burned. The priests were killed. The army the Jews had raised to throw Rome out lay dead. What they most feared had come to pass. “We want to do it our way” turned out as badly as it ever has.
But what of the word of God? What of the kingdom of God Jesus told them about and invited them to be a part of? Well, it has grown to occupy and rule in the hearts of billions of people around the world just as Jesus said it would: The yeast of the kingdom of God planted by Jesus has permeated the entire world (Matthew 13:33).
It has produced the good fruit of kindness, gentleness, righteousness, and compassion. It has changed lives. And those whose lives that have been changed have changed the world not with the sword but by love made powerful by the Spirit of God in them.
Today America is a mess. We are very much like Israel on that day when Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. And America is headed toward the same end as Israel. We will tear ourselves apart as a civil society. We will kill each other over political ideology. We will destroy ourselves from within by following the rule of doing life our way. We will fail of the distinction one of our forefathers, John Winthrop, hoped for in 1630, “a city set on a hill” a light of godly goodness for the rest of the world. We will be a curse word on their lips.
And most seriously, falling for the poison fruit of doing life our way rather than God’s way, we will destroy ourselves.
God will move on from us, if we do not repent, to a people who will follow him, who will count themselves citizens of the Kingdom of God rather than an earthly kingdom that is passing away.
God is looking for a people who will recognize Jesus as King and follow him. Will we be that people?
There is hope for the church in America. But it rests on our repentance and on our doing it God's way. It is my deepest prayer that we will.