Gospel and Salvation

KNU International English Church

Josh Broward

January 31, 2010

The Gospel and Salvation

(Working with the Right Picture)

Gospel Series: Week 2

John 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:1-10; Isaiah 25:1-9

Learning Experience:

People gather in groups of 3-4 to put together the pieces of the puzzle. However, the pieces they are given don’t match the picture on the envelope.

Reflection:

What happened?

When you realized that the pieces didn’t fit the picture, what did you do?

Were you more committed to the pieces or to the picture on the envelope?

The picture on your envelope is called “The Bridge Illustration.” It works like this. We are the person on the left. God wants us to have life and joy and peace. But we sinned and made a huge gap between us and God. Because we sinned, and because “the wages of sin are death,” death is coming our way. We live a life that isn’t really life, and when we die, we’ll go to hell for eternal death.

Most of us try to bridge the gap. We try to do good things, to help other people. Maybe we go to church or give money to the poor. We try to get closer to God, but we can never be good enough. We always fall short.

But here’s the good news. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He died instead of us. He made a bridge for us to be close to God. Now we can put our faith in Jesus to forgive our sins so that we can live with God again. Now we can have life with God in heaven.

I grew up with the Bridge Illustration. I have probably drawn it 100 times to explain the gospel to others. The beauty is that it is simple. It is easy to draw and easy to understand.

But over the past few years, I have begun to feel like this picture is too simple. At first, I started to make changes to the picture. I added an arrow for faith – showing that we put our trust in Jesus and cross the bridge. I drew a community of people on the side with God to show that we’re part of the church.

But finally, I decided that I couldn’t make enough changes to this picture to really describe the Gospel that we find in the Bible. This picture of salvation was too small, too individualistic, too much like a business transaction, to stagnant. After the person puts their faith in Jesus, they are done. That’s the end of the picture. They cross over. They become a Christian. The end.

That’s not what I read in the Bible. Becoming a Christian is the beginning of a journey, not the end. When we become a Christian, we still have a lot of work and learning left to do. We need a new picture. We need a new way of thinking about the Gospel and salvation.[1]

Before we talk about a possible new picture, let’s spend some time talking about the puzzle pieces we find in the Bible. Now, I have to confess right now that I’m not going to say enough today. Each one of these pieces deserves a whole sermon, but we don’t have time for that. Today, I’m just going to introduce the pieces so that we can get an idea of the overall picture.

The Kingdom of God: Jesus’ fundamental message was: “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15). If we don’t understand the Kingdom of God, we are likely to misunderstand everything else.

N.T. Wright (probably the best New Testament scholar alive today) explains the Kingdom of God like this:

The prophet Isaiah … had spoken of God’s coming kingdom as the time when, (a) God’s promises and purposes would be fulfilled, (b) Israel would be rescued from pagan oppression, (c) evil … would be judged, and (d)God would usher in a new reign of justice and peace. Daniel had envisioned a coming time when … God would … set everything straight. To speak of God’s kingdom arriving in the present was to summon up that entire narrative, and to declare that it was reaching its climax. God’s future was breaking in to the present. Heaven was arriving on earth.[2]

In all that Jesus said and did, he was pointing people toward the Kingdom of God. Jesus was saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is happening all around us! Open your eyes. Open your hearts. God’s way is available to everyone everywhere. All you have to do is repent of your own way and live God’s way.”

Sin: Every last person on earth is sinful. Sin is basically anything we do that is outside of God’s way of life. It could be selfishness, revenge, gossip, ignoring people in need – anything that makes our world less of what God wants.

Sin causes all kinds of problems in our world. (1) Sin separates us from God. Sinning is basically pushing God away from us and choosing our own way. (2) Sin traps us in sinfulness. The more we sin, the more we forget what goodness is. The more we sin, the more addicted and trapped we get. (3) Sin separates us from others and messes up our world. When we live selfishly, that tears apart the fabric of family and community. (4) Sin leads to death. Choosing selfishness leads to self-destruction. When we sin, we ruin our lives here and now until we die. Then, we are stuck in our self-destruction forever.

Cross: Jesus came to defeat sin and to reverse the effects of sin. (1) Through the cross, Jesus reconciles us to God. Jesus took the death we deserved and made peace between us and God. (2) Jesus’ cross sets us free from our slavery to sin and selfishness. In Jesus, we died to that old way of life. (3) Jesus’ cross unites all people. We are all sinners in need of God’s grace, and we are all brought together into God’s grace at the cross. When we are all one family, we stop mistreating each other and start taking care of each other. (4) When Jesus died, the earth shook. When he was resurrected, everything changed and new life emerged from the tomb. I’ll let N.T. Wright explain again:

When Jesus rose again, God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings themselves to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t leave us as passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world.[3]

Spirit: Forgiving us and giving us a fresh start is good but not enough. We’ll just make a mess of our lives and our world all over again unless God changes us and helps us. This is where the Spirit comes in.

Through the Holy Spirit, we actually have God in us, God living through us, God taking action in our world through us. We can live differently now because God is in us, helping us, healing us, teaching us. Through the Spirit, we become a place where God’s Kingdom is actually a happening in our world.

Grace: Grace is God’s loving, forgiving, healing, empowering presence in our life. We don’t deserve God to help us, but God does. Grace is not a gift from God but the gift of God.[4] God gives himself to us. God stirs our hearts to long for him. God strengthens us to do the good. God works within our hearts to change us to give us hope. We are saved by grace. We live by grace.

Faith: We usually misunderstand faith. We usually think that “faith” means “believing” that God loves us and that Jesus died for our sins. That is definitely part of faith, but that’s not really what the Bible means when it says we are “saved by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). James helps us understand what real faith is:

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well” – but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless. (James 2:14-17)

Gary Gulbranson puts it like this: “It’s not what you believe that counts; it’s what you believe enough to do.”[5] Putting our trust in Jesus is more than just understanding theology and prayer. Trusting Jesus means obeying Jesus. If we don’t trust him enough to obey him, we don’t really have faith in Jesus. We just believe some things about Jesus. Having faith means following Jesus.

Following: Jesus was always calling people to “follow” him. Being a Christian is about following Jesus’ way of life, following Jesus’ action in our world. Being a Christian is learning to live the Way of God like Jesus did and does. In fact, the first Christians were called “followers of the Way” (Acts 24:14). Our job is to follow Jesus, to go where he goes, to act as he acts.

Heaven: Heaven is a lot closer than we think. Heaven – God’s “space” – is all around us. Heaven overlaps and intersects earth. It’s like our world is a dirty piece of plastic on an overhead projector and heaven is the light. Our world is real, and heaven is real, but we can’t see the heaven because of all the dirt.

Don’t misunderstand me: there will be life after death. There will be a resurrection, and everyone who has trusted in Jesus will be physically raised with a new body to live in a new heaven and new earth. The Bible is very clear about that, but it doesn’t really explain the details of what that new world will be.

N.T. Wright says, “The whole point of Jesus’ work was to bring heaven to earth and join them together forever, to bring God’s future into the present and make it stick there.”[6]

Salvation: Let me quote John Wesley here: “By salvation I mean, not barely … deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity … the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth.”[7] Salvation is the whole process of being saved: forgiveness, transformation, and partnership in God’s mission of healing the world. The good news is that ALL of this is available to ALL of us through Jesus.

When we put all of these pieces together, I think we get a different picture:

We are stuck in a dark land. Our whole country is polluted by our sin and selfishness. We have ruined our environment and ourselves because of our selfish ways. Smog fills the air. Dirt covers our clothes.

But Jesus enters our broken, messed up world. He tells us there is a better way to live. He says we don’t have to live in a world ruined by selfishness.

We decide to follow him, but we are stopped at Customs as we are leaving the country. The immigration officials won’t let us leave until we pay all our debts, but we have a debt of 100,000,000,000 dollars (100 조 원). If we worked a hundred lifetimes, we could never pay that debt. But suddenly, Jesus gives the immigration official his bankbook and says he’ll pay our debt. When the man gives his bank book back, we see that the new balance is zero. It cost Jesus everything to pay our debts.

Once we clear customs, Jesus politely says, “Um. You stink. … You still have the dirt and grime of your old land in your clothes and on your skin and in your hair. Why don’t you take a bath?” So Jesus baptizes us in the River of Life and gives us new clothes.

Then, we meet up with the rest of the group that is following Jesus, and Jesus teaches us how to travel in his way. He teaches us how to cross a river, how to find our way through a forest, how to survive in a desert. He also teaches us how to be a community, how to love each other, and how to forgive. Every person on the traveling team has a job. There’s a cook, a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, a scout, a repairman. Everyone does something.

As we travel, Jesus teaches us to notice people in need and how to help. In the mountains we build a hospital. In the forest, the children don’t know how to read, so we build a school. In the desert, there isn’t enough water, so we build a well. Everywhere we go, we help those in need. Everywhere we go, we make the world better. Jesus’ people always add light and healing to our communities, so everywhere we go, more people want to follow Jesus.

Jesus leads this group around and around the world, changing the world as he goes. We are actually remaking, reclaiming, repairing the world through simple actions of love and kindness and healing. The darkness will not win. The darkness cannot last because through Jesus a new light is breaking in.

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[1] This idea of a puzzle matched with the wrong picture comes from Steve Chalke (The Lost Message of Jesus), referenced by Brian McClaren in Everything Must Change, (Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 91.

[2] N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006), 100.

[3] Ibid, 116.

[4] Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology, (Nashville: Kingswood, 1994), 86-88.

[5] Richard Stearns, The Hole in our Gospel, (Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 87.

[6] Wright, 102.

[7] Quoted in Maddox, 145.

The Gospel and The Bible (Gospel Series: Week 1)

KNU International English Church

Josh Broward

January 24, 2010

The Gospel and the Bible

(Read Forwards not Backwards!)

Gospel Series: Week 1

Isaiah 61:1-11, Matthew 11:1-6, Romans 1:13-17

When I was growing up in the 1980’s, there was a huge controversy about backmasked messages in rock music. Conservative Christian groups began accusing various famous rock bands of having secret backward messages in their music that would entice people to follow Satan, use drugs, or have illicit sex.

Ÿ Led Zeplin’s song “Stairway to Heaven” is alleged to have the backward message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan.”

Ÿ Queen was accused of including “It’s fun to smoke marijuana,” backmasked in their famous song, “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Most bands vigorously denied these claims. However, as the fury and controversy over backmasking raged in the 1970s and 1980s, some bands joined the backmasking trend with some funny messages.

Ÿ In 1979, Pink Floyd backmasked the message: “Congratulations! You’ve just found the secret message.”

Ÿ Weird Al Yankovic hid the message: “Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands.”

There are hundreds of real or alleged backmasked messages. Some of these backward messages are funny. Some are strange, and some are scary. But the simple truth is: when you play something backwards, sometimes you get an entirely different message.

Most of us here today really start reading the Bible at the end. We start with the book of Revelation and its dramatic pictures of heaven and hell. Heaven will be streets of gold and pearly gates and everyone will be filled with joy worshiping God, no tears, no pain, no sadness. Hell will be fiery furnaces and pits of sulfur and ash and eternal torment day and night. Of course, we all want to go to heaven and avoid hell. But how?

Well, we keep reading backwards. We go to the letters. We focus on a few key verses:

Ÿ 1 John 5:1 “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God.”

Ÿ Ephesians 2:8-9 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”

Ÿ 1 Corinthians 15:3b “Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.”

Ÿ Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We usually read these key verses in the context of heaven and hell, and we come to the natural conclusion that Jesus came to earth and died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven so that we can go to heaven and not to hell. This becomes our framework for understanding the entire Bible.

Then, we keep reading backwards. We get to the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) – the stories of Jesus, and we read them through this backward trajectory. We interpret everything that Jesus said or did based on this framework.

But, honestly, we don’t really know what to do with most of Jesus’ teachings because they don’t fit our framework. Jesus’ teaching is mostly about doing the right stuff and almost nothing about sin or forgiveness.

So we focus in on the cross, and we pretty much ignore the rest of Jesus’ life and teachings. Jesus came to earth to offer a new way for people to be right with God and go to heaven – “by grace through faith.” That’s why he lived. That’s why he died.

As we move backward even farther, we keep on reading the Bible through the same framework. When we read the Old Testament prophecies, we read them like they were written to the people of Jesus’ time to convince them that he is the Messiah. The entire message of the Old Testament prophets shrinks down to one point: Jesus is the Messiah, the one who saves us from our sins.

As we read about the history of Israel, we read it as one long introduction preparing the people for Jesus. They don’t have anything really valuable to teach us. This is just the long, slow process that God had to go through to get people ready for Jesus to come so he could save us from our sins.

We read the Torah (the Law) as a long silly list of rules. This was either the foolish human attempt to try to please God through our actions, or on the other hand, God’s (somewhat cruel) method of teaching people that we can never measure up – that we can never do good enough.

We read the creation story through the same lens. We read it as giving the simple message that God created people because he wanted someone to love. God formed us simply for personal relationship with God. But we are such big losers that we ruined the whole deal. Adam and Eve had to go and eat the apple – thus letting sin into the world and into our hearts. We would just have to wait several thousand years for Jesus to come to solve that sin problem.

When we read the Bible backward, the end result is a very small message: “We sinned. Jesus died. Trust Jesus. Go to heaven – not hell. The end.” This is like taking three pieces of glass out of a huge stained glass window and saying, “Here. Look at the picture.”

The end result of this kind of reading is believing that the only thing that matters is if you are going to heaven or to hell. This life and this world don’t matter. The environment doesn’t matter. Poverty doesn’t matter. Relationships don’t matter. In the end, other people don’t really even matter, because if you yourself are in heaven, you won’t be worrying about them anyway. This is not what the Bible teaches. This is not the Gospel.

To really understand the Bible and the Gospel, we have to read it forwards. We have to start at the beginning and work our way to the end, letting each part expand and enrich the picture.

When we start at the very beginning of the Bible, we start with God. “In the beginning, God …” (Genesis 1:1). God must always be the beginning of our thinking, and before our beginning God always was. “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (1:2). “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves” (1:26). The beginning is the Trinity. In the beginning, God was Community. In the beginning, God was love. In the beginning, God was Mutual Sharing and Creative Teamwork.

Out of the great, rolling, frothing Mystery of God’s internal loving relationships, our earth and our humanity was born. God created us like God – in God’s image, as God’s representatives in the world. We were to marry – to love like God. We were to multiply – to create like God. We were to rule over the earth, to tend the garden – to lead with compassionate care like God. We were to participate in God’s activity of creating and loving and tending the earth.

When Adam and Eve rebelled, things quickly went from bad to worse. Stealing some fruit moved on to jealousy. Jealousy moved on to murdering a brother. (See Genesis 3-4.) Sin and family breakdown slowly moved around the earth until it seemed like everyone everywhere was corrupt.

God decided to start over again. He made Noah like the new Adam, and he used the flood as his eraser on the sketchpad of earth. He redrew the plants and animals and everything else and gave Noah the same command he gave Adam: “Live like God in the world. Create, love, and care for the earth.” (See Genesis 6-9.)

God chose one man, one family, one nation to be the starting point. God wanted to change the whole world, but he started with one family. God made a covenant with a man named Abram (later Abraham): “Leave our native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:1-3).

God’s people would be a blessing to others instead of keeping all the blessings for themselves. God’s people would be on the move throughout the world instead of staying in one place. God’s people would become famous, but that was not the point. The point was that everyone on earth would be blessed through them.

Again and again throughout the Bible, this fundamental promise is repeated and confirmed. God has made a binding covenant with Abraham’s family to restore the earth. God cannot allow the earth to slip into ruin. God cannot allow people to destroy themselves. God will act from within – using one family, one nation, to heal the world.

Throughout Israel’s history, one theme is repeated again and again and again. N.T. Wright says, “It is the story of going away and coming back home again: of slavery and exodus, of exile and restoration.”[1] Abraham goes to Egypt and almost loses his wife before he returns. Jacob runs for his life to east, and later returns home to wrestle with God and to reconcile with his brother. Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt, but becomes a success. Joseph’s brothers join him as successful immigrants but become slaves.

Then, God works the great Exodus – setting his people free from slavery in Egypt. God affirms his covenant promise to heal the world through the children of Abraham. He restarts the global rescue mission by rescuing the people of Israel. On their long trip home, God teaches his people how to be his people – how to be a people who will be a blessing to the world.

The people finally make it home, but home is not all they hoped for. They struggle on – trying to get a grip on their land and on what it means to be the people of One God – the only God. They continually seem to lose touch of God’s vision of connecting the entire world with God’s healing presence. They continually retreat into a smaller vision of being a great nation – or an even smaller, weaker vision of just surviving.

So God sends prophets to remind them of his vision. They call the people to account for their compromises and short cuts and selfishness. They call the people to live with justice and fairness and concern for the weak. But finally, the prophets aren’t enough to prevent another repeat of the leaving home theme. As the people continue to distrust God, they grow weaker and weaker – until they are conquered by Assyria and Babylon and taken into exile.

But God keeps sending prophets. God keeps working on his people. He has made an eternal covenant with them to use them to heal the world, and he’s not giving up.

It is in this context that we first hear the idea that God has a “gospel” or “good news” for people. We hear it first in Isaiah 52, when the prophet tells God’s people the time has come for them to leave their exile and return home. “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns! … Let the ruins of Jerusalem break into joyful song, for the LORD has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem” (52:7, 9). So the good news is that God’s people will be brought out of exile and set free.

The second message of good news comes in Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the LORD’s favor has come” (61:1-2).

Isaiah’s good news is that God will bring healing to the world. Beginning with his own people, God will lift up the poor, heal the brokenhearted, free the prisoners, and comfort the morning. In other passages, God’s prophets explain and expand this good news to include the healing of all the world. God will make right everything that is wrong. God will heal all that is broken.

So when Jesus came “preaching the good news of the kingdom” (Matthew 4:23), the people would have understood the “good news” in this context: healing for God’s people and healing for the world. In case they missed the point, Jesus quoted Isaiah 61 for them at the beginning of his ministry. Mark explains that “Jesus went into Galilee, where he preached God’s Good News. ‘The time promised by God has come at last!’ he announced. ‘The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!’” (Mark 1:14-15).

When Jesus talked about the Good News (or the Gospel), he didn’t talk about how he would die for people’s sins so that they could be forgiven and go to heaven. That wouldn’t have made any sense at all to them. No, Jesus was working in the tradition of the prophets. Jesus was calling forward all of God’s promises. Jesus was announcing that God’s great rescue mission was happening all around them with new force.

When Jesus talked about the Good News, he said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” God’s way of life is right here available to us. Jesus said we should pray that our earth will become more like heaven. Jesus never said we should pray so that we can go to heaven. Jesus taught people to pray, “May your Kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

When Jesus died and was resurrected, that gave fresh life to God’s rescue mission in the world. Jesus endured the ultimate exile – into death. And he came home again! Jesus blazed the trail for all of us to survive death. Jesus blazed the trail for all of us to survive life – to live in God’s Kingdom Way now, on earth. In the midst of so many conflicting pressures, we can live the heavenly way on earth.

And God poured out his Spirit on his people to enable us to live his ways – to be a counter-cultural community living as citizens of God’s Kingdom. Through his Spirit, God is at work among us restoring us into his image as God-like creators, God-like lovers, God-like tenders of the earth, God-like friends of the friendless, God-like healers of the broken, a God-like community of love.

So the first Christian theologians – Paul and Peter and John – set to work gathering people together to live in these counter-cultural communities learning to live in Jesus’ way. They tried to understand what it means for Jesus to lead us all on the great exodus out of slavery to sin and death. (We’ll talk more about that next week.) They realized that even though this way requires so much from us – everything really – it is still built on grace every step of the way.

They also realized that it’s not about us as individuals. It’s about where God is leading us as a people. It’s about how God is incorporating us individuals into his great rescue mission of healing our world. So in the book of Revelation, when we read the Bible forward, we still see heaven and hell. But hell is the unfortunate result of rejecting God’s healing, and heaven is the beautiful climax of all God’s healing work. And heaven is inhabited by all who have been healed in and involved in God’s healing work. And we see the great homecoming, where all of God’s people are eternally committed to God and set up house with God as the Bride of the Messiah.

If we read the Bible backwards, we end up with a very small picture: “We sinned. Jesus died. Go to heaven – not hell.” These are all true and good, but they are not the whole truth. They are pieces of the full beauty God paints for us.

If we read the Bible forwards, we see a beautiful and full picture. God is deeply in love with the world. God has made an unshakable promise to heal us and our world. Amazingly, God’s unstoppable plan is to work through us to do his healing work. Amazingly, God forgives us and frees us from our sins. The Gospel is that we don’t have to keep being the same broken, messed up people we’ve always been. The Gospel is that our world doesn’t have to keep being the same broken, messed up world it’s always been. Through Jesus, we are set free to come home to God who heals us and heals the world through us. This is the Gospel. This is the Good News that has the power to change the world.

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[1] N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 75.

The Exiled King - Isaiah 62

KNU International English Church

Josh Broward

January 17, 2010

Read: Isaiah 62

Once upon a time, there was a great King, who was just and fair and humble. The motto of his Kingdom was: LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. He taught his people how to live well. The King helped his people to love each other and to help each other. He taught them that everyone is connected, that one person’s success is a victory for all of us, and that another person’s suffering is a wound in all our hearts. He taught people to live with kindness and mercy – helping the weak, befriending the lonely, hugging the children, celebrating with joy, and encouraging the good in all to flourish and grow. His Kingdom grew, and his people prospered.

However, as is often the case, some powerful people wanted more power. They didn’t like this love and justice philosophy. They believed in the survival of the fittest. They believed that everyone gets what they deserve. The strong should get stronger, and the weak … Well, who cares about them anyway.

This group of power-hunger Powerfuls led a coup d’etat. In a quiet revolt, they sent the King into exile and imposed a new government. Their motto was: FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS FOR ALL. They filled the streets with their propaganda: “Let us throw off those ancient social norms. Let us rid ourselves of the shackles of concern for others. Live free. Pursue happiness above all else. If you want it, do it. If you like it, buy it. If you can’t afford it, work for it and work some more. Anyone can have anything they want if they only work hard enough or smart enough.

Most people gladly accepted this new government and their message about life. It is not easy always being concerned about others. Often that means putting aside what we want – at least for a while. This new way of life was much easier. It was such a relief simply to be concerned about yourself. There was a time of celebrating and revelry in the streets. Wine and women moved freely.

But carnival cannot last forever – especially not a carnival set on the philosophy of survival of the fittest. Some people are simply not as strong. They are pushed out of the way with reckless disregard for where they land. Some people want to hold on to the bottle instead of passing it around. Some people want to collect all the bottles for themselves. A powerful fist or a thieving hand is glad to get the bottles moving again.

After the carnival fades, life continues with the same philosophy under more civilized circumstances. Carefree abandon in the streets transitions to legalized divorce in the courtrooms with alimony and child support payments. Fist fights transition to office manipulation with gossip and crafty maneuvers. Wild drunken revelry transitions to a trip to travel agent who can help us escape all our troubles for a weekend on the beach. Brute force transitions to the all-out pursuit of knowledge. Education = power = wealth = happiness. Everything is more civilized, but it is still the lawless party in the streets.

On the national scale, the Powerfuls begin diverting the government’s resources to benefit the businesses of the Powerfuls. The government seems to have two primary jobs: to make the rich richer and to keep everyone else under control. Oil and gas and mining become the industries of choice. Social programs, assistance to the needy, and common infrastructure are pushed lower and lower on the priority list.

The glossy image of the government’s propaganda begins to fade and crack. FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS FOR ALL has really become “freedom for some and happiness just out of reach for everyone.” Society begins to break down. Careless independence breaks apart families. As executives take what they want when they want it, businesses find their resources wasted and their morale low. As frustration mounts, hope fades into shadows. Violence increases. Body guards and security systems become a must for all who can afford them. The nation becomes an armed society – arming themselves against themselves.

Countless hours are spent solving unnecessary problems. Unlimited resources are invested in curing preventable illnesses and injuries. Vast amounts of energy are sucked up by relational conflicts and home-life drama. Creativity is clouded out by the frustrations of dysfunction. National productivity falls. Every indicator shows declines. Exports are down. GDP is down. Per capital income is down. Consumer confidence is down. The only thing going up is inflation. A national depression takes over the economy, the family, and the individual.

Other nations recognize their moment of opportunity. First, the foreign investors come. They buy up the struggling farms and businesses. Next come the foreign armies. They put to rest any resistance to foreign rule. The coup d’etat government actually welcomes them as their last chance to stay in power and to milk the nation for its remaining resources. They work out a power-sharing agreement to stay in power as long as they pass along the best of the nation’s resources, products, and people.

This once-great-nation has become a land of desolation and scorn. The destruction of the natural environment is a mirror image of the destruction of the people: forests chopped down, rivers polluted, fields turned into concrete jungles and smoking factories. They become the butt of jokes: “Where is your King now? Did he find a prettier, younger bride somewhere else? That’s your house?!! Oh, I thought it was the chicken coup!!” Nationally and individually, they were rejected and ruined.

Everyone knew that the true King was in exile. However, they didn’t know that the King had not given up on his kingdom. He still loved his people and his land. In fact, some of his last public words were amazing promises – promises that seemed a little foolish for a king being pushed into exile:

There is no other King but me. I am the only righteous King and Savior. Let all the world look to me for salvation! I am the King, the only King there is, the one and only. I promise you this in my own name. I never take back what I say. This is the absolute truth: Every knee will bend to me. Everyone is going to end up kneeling before me. Everyone is going to pledge allegiance to me: “Yes! Salvation, and goodness, and strength are in the true King!" Everyone who rejects me now will be ashamed of themselves then. Everyone who maintains faith in me will be proved right and filled with joy through me. (See Isaiah 45:21-25.)

Small groups of people here and there stayed loyal to the King. They secretly maintained communication with the King through letters and messengers. He always encouraged them to maintain his way of life. He urged resist the propaganda of the system to put their own desires first. The King encouraged them to seek out those who were squeezed and crushed by the ruling system of pleasure and greed. The King reminded them often of his motto: LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. And, the King reminded them of his promises:

At just the right time, I will come to you. On the day of salvation I will help you. I will protect you and form you and use you to help the people reconnect with me. You will be proof of my promise to them. I will use you to make things right, to restore families again. I will tell prisoners, 'Come on out. You're free!' I’ll shout to those huddled in fear, 'It's all right. It's safe now.' There will be food stands along all the roads, picnics on all the hills— nobody hungry, nobody thirsty, shade from the sun, shelter from the wind. For the Compassionate King will guide them. (See Isaiah 49:8-10.)

The King’s loyal subjects also sent messages to the King: “Come save us! Come back and rule as King again. Kick out these unjust leaders and heal our land. O King, things are really terrible here. Don’t you see our suffering? Don’t you care? Hurry! Come quickly, King! Come soon!”

The King explained that he felt their pain and that every tear and every wound cut straight to his heart. He hurt when they hurt. He cried when they cried.

However, the King also explained that he must consider the whole picture – the whole nation. If he were to return immediately, the great majority of his kingdom would be destroyed. So many people still rejected his rule that there would be outright war, which would ruin the land and the people.

Instead, the King called his loyal subjects to form a counter-movement, an underground resistance movement. He called them to live within the systems of the revolt, but to live against the revolt within its systems.

He called them to be like termites eating away at the foundations of the revolt with their counter-cultural lives. The revolt was built on the foundation of self-directed pursuit of pleasure and survival of the fittest. They could poor acid on the roots of that tree by living the King’s counter-principle: LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. By caring for the weak, by limiting their own pursuit for stuff and pleasure, by living with genuine love and being concerned about others, they could undermine the revolt against the King without ever using a weapon or going to war.

They were to prepare the way for the King to return by preparing the people for the King. “Prepare the way by preparing the hearts,” he said. By lifting up the weak and by seeking LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, they would prove that the way of the King is viable and valuable. They would be living proof against the revolt’s propaganda that the King’s way is obsolete and impossible. Through their lives, they would entice people into believing that maybe – just maybe – the King’s way is the path to the life we all really want.

So the people studied the King’s letters. They poured over them, reading them again and again, analyzing every word. They dreamed about his letters, imagined how wonderful it will be when the King finally returns. For months and years and generations, they studied the King’s letters. They sang songs celebrating the King’s goodness. They sent the King letters thanking him for his promises.

And they continued to live within the system as regular members of the system. They worked; they played; they took vacations; they stored up their resources for a rainy day. The only difference was that once a week, they got together with the King’s other followers and remembered the true King’s kingdom. Once a week, they studied, sang, and talked about the true King. They really enjoyed these meetings with the King’s followers. Those weekly gatherings made them feel special and different before they went back to their normal lives within the system.

And so the King sent more messages:

It is good that you are studying and singing and meeting. But if you love my Kingdom, you will not keep still. If your heart yearns for me, you will not be able to stay silent. If you love my Kingdom, you will call on me for help until the goodness of my way and my people shines like the dawn. You will get involved in my work until the healing work I do shines like a torch around the world. Then your reputation will change. You will never again be called the dead and dying place. You will be called the place full of joy and life. People will stop talking about how many people are leaving you, and everyone will be amazed at how many people are committing to you with joy and zeal. (See Isaiah 62:1-5.)

And the people said, “Oh, this is good. Let us study more. We must understand this more deeply. Let’s form a study group so that we can understand exactly what the King means with this message.” Some said, “Ahh, what wonderful words!” And they made a beautiful song using the King’s words to sing whenever the King’s people meet together. Others said, “This is true. This is the absolute truth. I believe it with all my heart. We must surely believe this.” And they continued to return to their normal lives as normal citizens of the ruling system - except for their weekly meetings to sing, to celebrate, and to encourage one another.

The King sent another message:

My people, the time is urgent, but you seem to be sleeping. Turn on your alarm clocks. Stop the music that lulls you to sleep. Call out to me day and night until I come to you. Do not let me forget my promises to you. This is enough of pleasant singing and celebrating. Now is the time for redemption.

Now is the time for me to fulfill my promises to you. I have made a solemn promise – a promise I will surely keep: “My people will no longer be robbed and plundered. All my people will work faithfully and earn the reward for their work. They will work and be deeply satisfied as they celebrate together with the King.”

Where are you, my partners? Why are you silent? Why are you sitting down? Why aren’t you joining me in the work? (See Isaiah 62:6-9.)

The people listened with joy to the King’s message: “Did you hear that? One day, we will be safe from our enemies. One day, we will all have our own gardens and vineyards. We must surely study this more. Let’s sing a song about the King. “Now is the time for action.” I’ll think about that all week as I go about my life in the system of the system by the system.”

The King listened to what they were saying, and he sent another message with more urgency:

That’s all good. There is nothing wrong with study or work or singing or relaxing, but now is the time to do what I have taught you. Get up! Get off the couch! Prepare the way for my coming. LOVE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. That is not so hard to understand. Now is the time to live it. Prepare the way. Rescue the dying. Befriend the lonely. Live in quiet defiance of the system. Prepare the way. Do not stop calling me to come until you find me among you, until your land is renewed by my love and justice. Prepare the way with your subversive actions of love. Clear away people’s objections to my rule through the grace and mercy in your lives. Tell me where I am needed most, and quietly I will go there. Tell me where the people are ready for my aid, and I will meet you there. You will see revolution rise as quietly as the dawn. Call on me in the night, in the morning, in the afternoon, and I will appear among you. We will raise my flag of love and justice and my people will come to me. From the north, from the south, from the east and the west, your children will return to the King of their forefathers. They will commit to me and to their land, and together we will bring healing and new life. Call to me, and prepare the way, and I will surely come. Now is the time. Do not wait! Prepare the way and claim your destiny as the people loved by the One True King. (See Isaiah 62:10-12.)

And the people said, “What a wonderful promise! Thank you King. We will study this closely. We will sing a song about preparing the way. We will form a study group about action. Next Sunday, O King, we will surely keep talking.”