CHRISTIANITY AT ITS BEST

#1 · June 14, 2010, 3:19 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on June 14, 2010, 3:19 pm
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

CHRISTIANITY AT ITS BEST

June 13, 2010

Text: Acts 27:13-26

During our Bible study of the book of Acts, I noted during the final chapters that Luke, the author, must have been impressed with his nautical experience because he wrote about it with a great deal of detail. There are places throughout the New Testament where we wish we had more information. Even in the book of Acts, we can find places where more detail would be helpful. Ironically, Luke appears to leave nothing out concerning his shipboard experience with Paul. His description of the ship, of the storm, and of their arduous experience keeps us from having to imagine too hard. He lays it all out. As a result, we have preserved one of the most exciting dramas in the life of the early church.

No matter how much we might feel drawn into this story, there remains the reality that we can hear it speaking a timeless Word of God to the situation in our personal and corporate lives. It actually proclaims several truths, one of which I lay upon our conscience today. It is the truth that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. In fact, the whole drama puts flesh on these prophetic words written by a distinguished American preacher, Dr. Lynn Harold Hough. He said, Christianity is always at its best when the world is at its worst. It is at its best intellectually when the world is most confused in its thinking. It is at its best morally when men have lost the sense of good standards. It is at its best socially when men are leaping at each others' throats. It is at its best spiritually when men have lost the sense of the Presence of God. The crisis finds the Christian religion with the word of mastery. And if that word is heard and heeded, the crisis will be a crisis no longer.

As we pay attention to this drama of the shipwreck, we can see how it declares this truth. The central character is the Apostle Paul, of course. When he arrived in Jerusalem at the end of his missionary career he was arrested and taken to Caesarea, where the Roman authorities put him in protective custody. At his trial before the Governor he invoked his right as a Roman citizen to be sent to Rome and tried before the Emperor. Along with other prisoners, he was placed in the charge of a centurion. During their travel, the vessel they were on put in at a harbor on the south shore of Crete. Waiting for the wind to change, the officers held a ship's council to which, for some reason, they invited their distinguished prisoner. As an experienced traveler, Paul knew that the navigation season was over and that they could not complete the voyage to Italy before winter, so he advised them not to attempt it. Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also. (Acts 27:10) But they ignored his advice. The centurion listened to the ship's owner and captain, who thought that they should travel to the preferred harbor of Phoenix.

That proved to be a mistake, because no sooner did they leave than a northeaster of hurricane force rushed upon them and drove them out to the open sea. In order to prevent being sunk, they lightened the weight of the ship by throwing the baggage and spare gear and eventually the cargo overboard. They lost track of their position and heading because the stars and sun, from which they calculated their location, were hidden from view. The storm raged for days and caused the men to lose hope. All onboard were in a state of panic all except one.

Paul did not panic. He had faced death many times before and was inwardly prepared for it, and there came to him a vision in the night which revealed not only that he himself would survive, but that the lives of all those onboard would be spared as well. In an I told you so moment, Paul announced, Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. Then he continued with the promise of a revelation from God, But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. (Acts 27:21-22)

Paul not only took command of the situation, he saved it. So keep up your courage, men, he declared, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island. (Acts 27:25-26) The island was Malta. After running aground, the soldiers would have killed the prisoners to stop them escaping, but the centurion in charge prevented that from happening because he wanted to keep Paul alive. Just as Paul had been told, prisoners, soldiers, passengers, and crew all made it to shore. In this way everyone reached land in safety. (Acts 27:44)

That is the story of the shipwreck, a living illustration of the truth that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. You will surely agree that the world was at its worst on the ship bound for Rome. To begin with, it was a secular world that brought disaster upon itself because it listened to the voices of money and power and refused to heed the warning voice of God. In crisis, the people of that world panicked, gave up hope, lost their nerve, and were paralyzed by their own despair. Some renounced their moral responsibilities, looking out only for themselves, as they attempted to save their own skins and leave everyone else to perish.

Like most of the biblical accounts, the lessons are not left in ancient history. The situation on the ship has its similarities with our world today. We can agree to some degree with the little boy who was asked by his teacher, What shape is the earth? The young student replied, My father says it's in the worst shape it has ever been. In truth, there have been some pretty bad periods in history that have been worse than today, but we can certainly see some important similarities between our world crises today and that on the ill-fated ship.

There is certainly the same secular spirit of a society that pays more attention to human voices than to the voice of God. Some years ago a religious journal in Canada conducted a nationwide opinion poll to discover the names of mass media communicators who then exercised the greatest influence on popular thinking. The fourteen people named were invited to answer questionnaires. Four described themselves as atheists and four as agnostics. Here is a sampling of their specific answers: I define God as my conscience. Jesus was a deluded Jewish youth. The effect of religion on man has been to keep him in line through fear of the unknown. The church is a nice little exercise in futility. After death there is nothing. These men and women are representative of the spokesmen of our culture. They are secular preachers who speak and write daily to thousands of listeners and readers. On any given day, people pay more attention to them than they do to all the spokesmen of God put together. It is not surprising at all that men and women around the world pay so little attention to the voice of God. There used to be a time when our most visible national leaders spoke of the importance of acknowledging and honoring God. Now, sadly, most of our national leaders believe that Bibles need to be put away whenever a man or woman enters public office. How can we hear the voice of God when we work so diligently to muzzle Him?

In our secular society there is a mood of despair, hopelessness, pessimism, cynicism, and fear pervading our culture. Modern poetry, plays, novels, paintings, motion pictures, and television shows project moods of secular hopelessness. Samuel Becket's play Waiting for Godot is an example. It has virtually no plot. Two disgusting, dirty tramps wait under a tree. They wait day after day, year after year, for what? For anything to relieve them of the intolerable burden of existence, the agony of making a decision. Age has withered and habit deadened the divine gift of the human will. They no longer act. They only wait for someone else to do the work for them and to take the initiative. They wait for a symbolic character named Godot who never comes. Cynically, the playwright dramatizes his philosophy by portraying man as a pathetic creature who lacks any desire or ability to do anything positive or noble. Heaped on top of this paralyzing and deadly cynicism is the coarse vulgarity that is thrown at us from just about every angle. Small wonder that we have become accustomed to give up the rights and liberties that God has bestowed upon us through the suffering redemption of His very Son!

There is a loss of nerve in our secular society, comparable to that on the ship bound for Rome. Under the stress of world events life becomes burdensome, even terrifying, and people feel inadequate to its demands. Over the past two years, we have been whipsawed by massive economic forces. We have seen personal savings decimated by a sharp downturn, reverse with a surprising upturn, and then totter once more on the brink of another precipice. Thousands upon thousands of our fellow citizens anxiously face the burden of debts they have taken on. To make matters worse, entire national governments face deficits that are going beyond the stretching point. Small wonder that we witness so much self-destructive behavior. World statistics reveal that every year a quarter-million people take suicide as the final route of escape from life and that three times that number attempt it without success.

There is a breakdown in moral standards which only the naive can ignore. Secularists have so far removed themselves from God that they are now declaring immoral any Christian opposition to social issues such as abortion and homosexuality. Despair, loss of nerve, low moral standards these are the symptoms of the crises of a human situation out of control because people will not listen to the warning and loving voice of God.

These, then, are the symptoms of the world at its worst. In the face of such crises do we dare claim that Christianity is at its best? We do if we open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to the voice of God. Like Paul, we have been given the vision of God. It is available to us as we learn from His Word and grow in our comprehension of His place in our lives. We have text after text that offers solutions to any secular challenge that confronts us today. Just as Paul saw through what the end would be to those onboard that ship in the storm, so we have been given insights that can respond to the crises we face today. Like those onboard that ship, it requires faith in and obedience to God who presents us solutions.

We need to take encouragement that when Christians are rising above the storms, those struggling to survive take note. One such tribute comes from Albert Einstein early in the Second World War. He said, Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came to Germany I looked to the universities to defend freedom, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth. But no. The universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom, but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to the individual writers who, as literary guides of Germany had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life, but they too were mute. Only the churches stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for supporting truth. Dr. Einstein went on to say, I never had any special interest in the churches before, but now I feel a great admiration and affection, because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.

So let us write it as truth on our minds that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. The church of Jesus Christ, which hobbles along rather feebly in untroubled days, has an amazing capacity to rise to its full stature and take command of the situation in a day of crisis. In the bleak atmosphere of despair, the church speaks a word of hope, urging people not to lose heart but to trust the righteous, invincible, eternal purpose of Almighty God. To people who have lost their nerve the church speaks a word of courage as it reminds them of the competence of a God whose strength is made perfect in our weakness. To a generation lax in moral standards the church speaks a word of judgment, reminding people that God is not mocked and that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. All over the world today the light of religious faith still shines. In some places, it is the one brave flickering candle that the darkness of tyranny and materialism has not extinguished. The church may appear woefully inept at times, yet we shall go on believing that, even should the storm of world conflict rages furiously, it will be the church that rises above the danger and sets people free.

Therefore, we must ask what it means for each one of us that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. What imperative does that truth lay upon us? I quote Dr. Hough again, but this time change a few words to describe the part that Paul played in the drama of the shipwreck: Paul was at his best when the world was at its worst. He was at his best intellectually when the world was most confused in its thinking. He was at his best morally when men had lost the sense of good standards. He was at his best socially when men were leaping at each other's throats. He was at his best spiritually when men had lost the sense of the Presence of God. The crisis found Paul with the word of mastery. And because that word was heard and heeded, the crisis was a crisis no longer.

The story of the shipwreck tells us that Christianity at its best may consist of one person's obedience to God. One righteous man or woman can save a situation. The world's salvation lies not in the hands of the many but in the hands of the few. Not quantity but quality will save the ship of our civilization. One dedicated life can be an effective instrument of God's redemptive power.

This truth is at once the source of our hope and of the demand laid upon our souls. We all know the heart-in-throat feeling that paralyzed the company of Paul's ship because we can feel the ship of our civilization lurching crazily under the impact of ungodly forces that rage out of control. We may abandon ourselves to those forces and to the panic all around us, or we may heed the call of God to trust and obey Him and become the lights of the world in our generation.

Albert Schweitzer, the renowned missionary to the depths of Africa, once declared, However much concerned I am with the problems of evil in the world, I never let myself get lost in brooding over it. I always hold firmly to the thought that each of us can do a little to bring some portion of it to an end. Because I have confidence in the power and truth of the Spirit, I believe in the future of mankind.

So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. (Acts 27:25)

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

179 W. Broadway

PO Box 515

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com

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Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

CHRISTIANITY AT ITS BEST

June 13, 2010

Text: Acts 27:13-26

During our Bible study of the book of Acts, I noted during the final chapters that Luke, the author, must have been impressed with his nautical experience because he wrote about it with a great deal of detail. There are places throughout the New Testament where we wish we had more information. Even in the book of Acts, we can find places where more detail would be helpful. Ironically, Luke appears to leave nothing out concerning his shipboard experience with Paul. His description of the ship, of the storm, and of their arduous experience keeps us from having to imagine too hard. He lays it all out. As a result, we have preserved one of the most exciting dramas in the life of the early church.

No matter how much we might feel drawn into this story, there remains the reality that we can hear it speaking a timeless Word of God to the situation in our personal and corporate lives. It actually proclaims several truths, one of which I lay upon our conscience today. It is the truth that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. In fact, the whole drama puts flesh on these prophetic words written by a distinguished American preacher, Dr. Lynn Harold Hough. He said, Christianity is always at its best when the world is at its worst. It is at its best intellectually when the world is most confused in its thinking. It is at its best morally when men have lost the sense of good standards. It is at its best socially when men are leaping at each others' throats. It is at its best spiritually when men have lost the sense of the Presence of God. The crisis finds the Christian religion with the word of mastery. And if that word is heard and heeded, the crisis will be a crisis no longer.

As we pay attention to this drama of the shipwreck, we can see how it declares this truth. The central character is the Apostle Paul, of course. When he arrived in Jerusalem at the end of his missionary career he was arrested and taken to Caesarea, where the Roman authorities put him in protective custody. At his trial before the Governor he invoked his right as a Roman citizen to be sent to Rome and tried before the Emperor. Along with other prisoners, he was placed in the charge of a centurion. During their travel, the vessel they were on put in at a harbor on the south shore of Crete. Waiting for the wind to change, the officers held a ship's council to which, for some reason, they invited their distinguished prisoner. As an experienced traveler, Paul knew that the navigation season was over and that they could not complete the voyage to Italy before winter, so he advised them not to attempt it. Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also. (Acts 27:10) But they ignored his advice. The centurion listened to the ship's owner and captain, who thought that they should travel to the preferred harbor of Phoenix.

That proved to be a mistake, because no sooner did they leave than a northeaster of hurricane force rushed upon them and drove them out to the open sea. In order to prevent being sunk, they lightened the weight of the ship by throwing the baggage and spare gear and eventually the cargo overboard. They lost track of their position and heading because the stars and sun, from which they calculated their location, were hidden from view. The storm raged for days and caused the men to lose hope. All onboard were in a state of panic all except one.

Paul did not panic. He had faced death many times before and was inwardly prepared for it, and there came to him a vision in the night which revealed not only that he himself would survive, but that the lives of all those onboard would be spared as well. In an I told you so moment, Paul announced, Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. Then he continued with the promise of a revelation from God, But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. (Acts 27:21-22)

Paul not only took command of the situation, he saved it. So keep up your courage, men, he declared, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island. (Acts 27:25-26) The island was Malta. After running aground, the soldiers would have killed the prisoners to stop them escaping, but the centurion in charge prevented that from happening because he wanted to keep Paul alive. Just as Paul had been told, prisoners, soldiers, passengers, and crew all made it to shore. In this way everyone reached land in safety. (Acts 27:44)

That is the story of the shipwreck, a living illustration of the truth that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. You will surely agree that the world was at its worst on the ship bound for Rome. To begin with, it was a secular world that brought disaster upon itself because it listened to the voices of money and power and refused to heed the warning voice of God. In crisis, the people of that world panicked, gave up hope, lost their nerve, and were paralyzed by their own despair. Some renounced their moral responsibilities, looking out only for themselves, as they attempted to save their own skins and leave everyone else to perish.

Like most of the biblical accounts, the lessons are not left in ancient history. The situation on the ship has its similarities with our world today. We can agree to some degree with the little boy who was asked by his teacher, What shape is the earth? The young student replied, My father says it's in the worst shape it has ever been. In truth, there have been some pretty bad periods in history that have been worse than today, but we can certainly see some important similarities between our world crises today and that on the ill-fated ship.

There is certainly the same secular spirit of a society that pays more attention to human voices than to the voice of God. Some years ago a religious journal in Canada conducted a nationwide opinion poll to discover the names of mass media communicators who then exercised the greatest influence on popular thinking. The fourteen people named were invited to answer questionnaires. Four described themselves as atheists and four as agnostics. Here is a sampling of their specific answers: I define God as my conscience. Jesus was a deluded Jewish youth. The effect of religion on man has been to keep him in line through fear of the unknown. The church is a nice little exercise in futility. After death there is nothing. These men and women are representative of the spokesmen of our culture. They are secular preachers who speak and write daily to thousands of listeners and readers. On any given day, people pay more attention to them than they do to all the spokesmen of God put together. It is not surprising at all that men and women around the world pay so little attention to the voice of God. There used to be a time when our most visible national leaders spoke of the importance of acknowledging and honoring God. Now, sadly, most of our national leaders believe that Bibles need to be put away whenever a man or woman enters public office. How can we hear the voice of God when we work so diligently to muzzle Him?

In our secular society there is a mood of despair, hopelessness, pessimism, cynicism, and fear pervading our culture. Modern poetry, plays, novels, paintings, motion pictures, and television shows project moods of secular hopelessness. Samuel Becket's play Waiting for Godot is an example. It has virtually no plot. Two disgusting, dirty tramps wait under a tree. They wait day after day, year after year, for what? For anything to relieve them of the intolerable burden of existence, the agony of making a decision. Age has withered and habit deadened the divine gift of the human will. They no longer act. They only wait for someone else to do the work for them and to take the initiative. They wait for a symbolic character named Godot who never comes. Cynically, the playwright dramatizes his philosophy by portraying man as a pathetic creature who lacks any desire or ability to do anything positive or noble. Heaped on top of this paralyzing and deadly cynicism is the coarse vulgarity that is thrown at us from just about every angle. Small wonder that we have become accustomed to give up the rights and liberties that God has bestowed upon us through the suffering redemption of His very Son!

There is a loss of nerve in our secular society, comparable to that on the ship bound for Rome. Under the stress of world events life becomes burdensome, even terrifying, and people feel inadequate to its demands. Over the past two years, we have been whipsawed by massive economic forces. We have seen personal savings decimated by a sharp downturn, reverse with a surprising upturn, and then totter once more on the brink of another precipice. Thousands upon thousands of our fellow citizens anxiously face the burden of debts they have taken on. To make matters worse, entire national governments face deficits that are going beyond the stretching point. Small wonder that we witness so much self-destructive behavior. World statistics reveal that every year a quarter-million people take suicide as the final route of escape from life and that three times that number attempt it without success.

There is a breakdown in moral standards which only the naive can ignore. Secularists have so far removed themselves from God that they are now declaring immoral any Christian opposition to social issues such as abortion and homosexuality. Despair, loss of nerve, low moral standards these are the symptoms of the crises of a human situation out of control because people will not listen to the warning and loving voice of God.

These, then, are the symptoms of the world at its worst. In the face of such crises do we dare claim that Christianity is at its best? We do if we open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to the voice of God. Like Paul, we have been given the vision of God. It is available to us as we learn from His Word and grow in our comprehension of His place in our lives. We have text after text that offers solutions to any secular challenge that confronts us today. Just as Paul saw through what the end would be to those onboard that ship in the storm, so we have been given insights that can respond to the crises we face today. Like those onboard that ship, it requires faith in and obedience to God who presents us solutions.

We need to take encouragement that when Christians are rising above the storms, those struggling to survive take note. One such tribute comes from Albert Einstein early in the Second World War. He said, Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came to Germany I looked to the universities to defend freedom, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth. But no. The universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom, but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to the individual writers who, as literary guides of Germany had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life, but they too were mute. Only the churches stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for supporting truth. Dr. Einstein went on to say, I never had any special interest in the churches before, but now I feel a great admiration and affection, because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.

So let us write it as truth on our minds that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. The church of Jesus Christ, which hobbles along rather feebly in untroubled days, has an amazing capacity to rise to its full stature and take command of the situation in a day of crisis. In the bleak atmosphere of despair, the church speaks a word of hope, urging people not to lose heart but to trust the righteous, invincible, eternal purpose of Almighty God. To people who have lost their nerve the church speaks a word of courage as it reminds them of the competence of a God whose strength is made perfect in our weakness. To a generation lax in moral standards the church speaks a word of judgment, reminding people that God is not mocked and that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. All over the world today the light of religious faith still shines. In some places, it is the one brave flickering candle that the darkness of tyranny and materialism has not extinguished. The church may appear woefully inept at times, yet we shall go on believing that, even should the storm of world conflict rages furiously, it will be the church that rises above the danger and sets people free.

Therefore, we must ask what it means for each one of us that Christianity is at its best when the world is at its worst. What imperative does that truth lay upon us? I quote Dr. Hough again, but this time change a few words to describe the part that Paul played in the drama of the shipwreck: Paul was at his best when the world was at its worst. He was at his best intellectually when the world was most confused in its thinking. He was at his best morally when men had lost the sense of good standards. He was at his best socially when men were leaping at each other's throats. He was at his best spiritually when men had lost the sense of the Presence of God. The crisis found Paul with the word of mastery. And because that word was heard and heeded, the crisis was a crisis no longer.

The story of the shipwreck tells us that Christianity at its best may consist of one person's obedience to God. One righteous man or woman can save a situation. The world's salvation lies not in the hands of the many but in the hands of the few. Not quantity but quality will save the ship of our civilization. One dedicated life can be an effective instrument of God's redemptive power.

This truth is at once the source of our hope and of the demand laid upon our souls. We all know the heart-in-throat feeling that paralyzed the company of Paul's ship because we can feel the ship of our civilization lurching crazily under the impact of ungodly forces that rage out of control. We may abandon ourselves to those forces and to the panic all around us, or we may heed the call of God to trust and obey Him and become the lights of the world in our generation.

Albert Schweitzer, the renowned missionary to the depths of Africa, once declared, However much concerned I am with the problems of evil in the world, I never let myself get lost in brooding over it. I always hold firmly to the thought that each of us can do a little to bring some portion of it to an end. Because I have confidence in the power and truth of the Spirit, I believe in the future of mankind.

So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. (Acts 27:25)

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

179 W. Broadway

PO Box 515

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

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