Posted on 10/20/2015 8:43:38 AM PDT by Gamecock
Our readiness to perform our task becomes critical when we realize the world also has a mission—to capture and assimilate the church. If the church becomes an echo of the world, the mission of the world is accomplished.
It is our task to build the city of God. It is supremely costly and extraordinarily dangerous. He who will work to build the kingdom of God must be on guard against arrows that are directed at his face—but perhaps even more on guard for the arrows directed at his back.
Nehemiah’s work provoked hostile reactions from some of the pagans. But the real threat was grounded in the fears of God’s people. When a leader like Nehemiah, Paul, or Jesus Himself provokes a hostile reaction from enemies, the people are prone to turn on them as they bear the fallout from such attacks. Remember, it was the people who feared the wrath of Rome who turned their wrath on Jesus.
True leaders of the Christian faith, however, love believers and pagans alike and risk the hostility of both to build the kingdom of God.
Coram Deo
Do you love believers and unbelievers alike? Are you willing to risk the hostility of both to build God’s kingdom?
Passages for Further Study
John 17:14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.1 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Good Morning All!
The word translated "world" in Jn 17 is cosmos, it does not refer to a location, but to an order or arrangement. The antonym for cosmos is chaos. So Jesus is not from a sinful order or arrangement, that common to fallen man. Jesus' kingdom requires an reordering of values to align with His arrangement or order. Jesus appeals to the use of divine truth revealed in the Word to illuminate the correct reordering. The reordering has the glory of God with primacy over the glory or comfort of man, the authority of God with primacy over the governments of men, humility as the road to exaltation and the love of God in perfect harmony with the law of God to name but a few of the values that are in the natural man out of order.
G-d HAS His kingdom, YOU can’t build it.
And, as Yeshua said to Satan when offered the “keys to all the kingdoms on earth”, i.e. secular power, Yeshua answered with “my kingdom is not of this earth”.
It is G-d who will bring His kingdom to this earth, not you and not any of your works.
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