Drifting Away From the Cross

So why are we sitting here, doing nothing?  Let's get organized.  Let's go to the big city and at least die fighting...We hoped things would turn out for the best, but it didn't happen that way.  We were waiting around for healing - and terror showed up!    

Jeremiah 8

A nation that is without any shame or self-blame has decided instead to surrender to the inevitable disaster of her personal and collective sins.  The spread of the caronavirus has yet to be abated and now organized protests of terror have hit her streets.  The foolish unsound judgment of the social justice movement has led many to think they are not to blame for the afflictions that are blighting their communities; this is a very common response that plays itself over and over again throughout history. 

Job in the Bible was not responsible for the calamities that came upon him.  But just as Jeremiah the prophet spoke to God's people, here today I believe God is stating that the calamities of the virus and the violence in our cities are because of a nation's personal and collective sins.  Each of us will bow inevitably to our sorrows, but will never bother to find out whether we are to blame. 

It is easy to drift right away from the Bible standpoint and from the cross of Christ by re-accommodating our faith to a spirit that hates Christ.  The majority of us know nothing about shame and repentance.  The fake "lamenting" of the woke church and the hypocrisy of Black Lives Matter demonstrate this re-accommodating spirit of hate.  We drift from the Gospel's central point because we more easily get into sympathy with men than with God.  How many Christians and whole institutions have gotten into sympathy with Black Lives Matter with all their #hashtag Instagrams and memes?  This is slander against God. To save the world cost Jesus Christ His life.  If we teach that the world can be saved in any other way we slander God.

We mistakenly place our foolish hopes on the "ideals" of a movement taught by false gospel activists.  Jesus Christ, on the other hand, not only gives us ideals, but He shows us that we are incapable of attaining them.  And, He came that we might get there, not by organized activism, but by the miracle of His grace.  

Like all false teachers, "woke" teachers of critical race theory never refer to the possibility of our getting there to perfect justice for all, and it is that kind of teacher we like.  We can never attain the ideal that God demands unless we attain it by regeneration through the cross of Christ.  And, that never comes in experiences or in some form of organized activism but by shame and repentance.  

But we can't exclude the morally good people from the demands of Christ either.  We may say, "Oh, they are all right.  They're patriotic law abiding Americans."  If they are all right, the cross of Christ is a farce.  If natural virtue and natural goodness are really all right, then the cross is a sham.

When we immediately come to see that the characteristics of the new life are based in our experience of shame and repentance, we can always recognize these experiences.  When we go down in the valley among men and women, let them never be so bad and degraded that we despair.  Because, no matter how bad they may be, we know of a Savior Who can save them.