September 1, 2020 -- John 7:32 -- Battle-scarred and witnessing

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

John 7:32 English Standard Version

Jesus spoke of His Father in heaven. He revealed the wrath of God against sin. He represented the mercy of God the Just as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. The crowds of Jesus’s day were hearing a message radically different than any they would hear from their government, or from their religious leaders. Crowds of people were asking important questions about Jesus. That is why the establishment wanted to arrest Him. It is ominously “modern”. The people in power preach tolerance, the only “sin” in our world today is to be intolerant—except if it is Jesus and the Christian faith which is in view—then intolerance is the order of the day.

Our world today forgets the long-suffering patience of God the Glorious and Almighty. He hates sin. He cannot tolerate evil to be in His presence. Yet God is not willing that any should perish, so He allowed the wickedness of our world to continue so that confronted with Jesus Christ some will turn from their evil ways and find their sins punished in Him in order that they can rise to new life. Do not mistake the delay of God’s final judgment of the earth as tolerant acceptance of our wickedness and sinfulness and licentiousness. There will be a moment when the trumpet shall sound, the LORD Jesus will descend and all the earth will be judged. All wrongs will be addressed.

We live in an age where statues of our founding fathers are torn down (case in point, the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald torn down in a park in Montreal on Aug. 29th). This is tolerance? We live in a time of “cancel culture”, any public speaker considered intolerant or privileged is shouted down by an intolerant crowd, ironically doing so in the name of tolerance. Mobs protesting wrongful death at the hands of police are allowed to rampage, assaulting officers, breaking windows, looting store owners and themselves causing terror, inciting fatal violence. Where does it all end?

Intolerance ends, when Christians serve Jesus, bearing in their bodies the marks of Christ—the marks of Jesus are evidences of the world’s hatred of their message. Such marks show Christians will be mocked, hated, jailed, fined, beaten, and more—we should expect this. We are speaking the most radical message of hope to each generation. We do not cower in the face of cancel culture. We do not back down because of consequences to ourselves of our property. We take a stand for Jesus Christ, by the power of His Spirit living within us, so that the love of our Father in heaven and His great salvation will be made known to our violence-loving, tolerance-imploding, cancel-culture. I leave you with the words of Jesus:

Remember what I told you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.'

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.

If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also”

(John 15:20).

Blessed Jesus give us an ever greater measure of Your Spirit so that we will withstand the raging of this world and the firehose blasts of hatred poured out against us. As we suffer for Your Name’s sake, may the truth of our Father’s love reverberate through-out our culture and our age so that many sons and daughters be brought to You in repentance and holy wonder. Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1GiZL60c80