Tag: kingdom of God

The Words of Amos to the Faithful Remnant of God’s People in the US Today?

The pairing of the church and state is not a wedding made in heaven

kevingdrendelLeave a comment
Mountain fortress overlooking a stone bridge and river gorge at twilight

I have been reading Embrace the Tension by Tommy Nixon. He has resonated deeply with me, especially in this time. Christians in the United States seem to be living in a golden moment with a president openly engaging Christians and a popular segment of the church celebrating a symbiotic relationship with the president and his administration.

We don’t have to look too closely, however, to be concerned. Many prophetic voices have distanced themselves from this expression of Christianity. They stand outside the structure of this church and state power duo sounding an alarm. The foundation of this relationship is power and influence, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is missing,

Satan tempted Jesus by offering him all the power of the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus flatly turned him down. When Jesus’ own followers attempted to seize him by force and make him king, he escaped into the hills. When Pilate confronted Jesus about the confusing things he was hearing – Was Jesus really king of the Jews? – Jesus told him that his kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus explained to Pilate that his power was given to him by God. If Jesus had come to take over, his followers would have risen up and seized control, but that isn’t why he came. He came to good news to the poor and to die on a cross. He came to introduce people to the Kingdom of God that is here now – growing in the midst of the kingdoms of this world – though the reign of the Righteous King is not yet.

Jesus will not reign as king until he comes again at the end of the age. In the meantime, he was clear that his followers are to be salt and light in the world. The church has no mandate to take over the kingdoms of the world. The church is commissioned to make disciples – followers of Jesus. 

Tommy Nixon recalls in his book the church at Antioch. They were diverse, but not for diversity’s sake. They were diverse because Jesus loves and came to save the world. They were unified, but not for unity’s sake. They were unified in Christ and in his purposes. They had power, but not for power’s sake. The power they wielded was found in taking up a cross and following Jesus. They experience the joy of the Holy Spirit, but not for joy’s sake. They experienced the joy of the Holy Spirit in the midst of a world that was orientated against what God was doing.

A dramatic change in the church took place when Constantine became king and issued the Edict of Milan, proclaiming religious toleration for Christianity within the Roman Empire, followed by the Edict of Thessalonica, in which Christianity was made the state religion. This is how Tommy Nixon characterizes the change:

“What seemed like a triumph for the church was the beginning of a dangerous compromise. The same empire that once persecuted followers of Christ now embraced Christianity as its own. The gradual fusion of the church with the state followed, leading to the kingdom becoming the empire. Political power and cultural dominance diluted the gospel message. It was no longer good news to the margins; it was a tool to maintain control.

Embrace the Tension: Choosing the Radical Middle Instead of Picking a Side by Tommy Nixon, page 142

If we make an honest comparison of the church before the 5th century and the church after the first century, we can see the influence that state power had on the church. Before the church had any power it was persecuted and marginalized, but it revolutionized the Roman world in the love of neighbor and the love of God. The church was subversive in the best possible ways, led by people authentically walking the path of its suffering Savior, preaching good news to the poor – as Jesus did.

From the 6th century on, the became wedded to state power and than more deeply embedded in state power. Church and state became inseparable, and the corruption of the Church ensued. We call those years the Dark Ages for good reason.

Not everything was dark, of course. God was still at work in His church and in the world, despite the evil and corruption that litter the annals of this period of the history of the Church. The Crusades and the Inquisition are among the rotten fruit that grew in the name of Christ, though God always preserves a remnant in every age.

Tommy Nixon is nothing if not brutally honest and authentic:

“We see the effects of this today. In the United States, the surge of Christian nationalism and the conflation of faith with political ideology reveal how deeply the empire has shaped our perception of what it means to be a follower of Christ.”

Embrace the Tension, page 142

Once again, a segment of the Church flirts with the power and influence of Empire. In this context, Tommy Nixon refers to the Book of Amos. Amos was a prophet in Israel in the 8th Century BC. He warned Israel, that was once the oppressed living in slavery, that it had become the oppressor. Idolatry and injustice were rampant, and God was giving them an opportunity to repent and turn from their waywardness.

They didn’t listen, of course. Within 30 years of the ministry of Amos, the northern kingdom was exiled to Babylon.

Though Amos spoke at a low point in the history of God’s people, he ended with a message of hope. He spoke of a day when God would “restore David’s fallen shelter,” and “repair its broken walls,” “restore its ruins,” and “rebuild it as it used to be.” Amos 9:11-12

I don’t think that God intended to restore the nation of Israel exactly as it was; God intended to restore Israel as He designed it to be. Amos says God would do this so that his people would “possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name.” God’s blessing and promise to Abraham was always to extend to all the nations.

We see the reality of this, of course, in Jesus. He came first to the lost sheep of Israel, but his ministry extended far beyond the remnant of Israel. It extended to all of us and to all of time.

God’s ways are not our ways. He sent his only Son into the world that all who call upon his name will be saved – in Israel, Judah, Samaria, and all the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, El Salvador, China, and to all the islands of the world.

Tommy Nixon concludes his assessment of the church in America by saying. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” We don’t need to devolve into the corruption of state power. “We can continue to be the rebels, but we have to be honest about the rebellion. The church needs a lot of work, but you and I are the church. It is time to be brave and own our hypocrisy and do something about it.”

Tommy Nixon speaks truth when he says, “The church is the problem,” but our hope is in the fact that “the church is also the solution.”

It’s time for the church to be the church, to repent, and to get back to what it means to be followers of Christ, fellow cross bearers, suffering servants in the way of Jesus, who live out the kingdom of God in our daily lives, preaching good news to the poor, suffering with those who suffer, mourning with those who mourn, and sharing the good news of the kingdom of God to anyone who will hear.

Jesus could have taken over the kingdoms of the Earth, but he knew who it was who had the present authority over the kingdoms of the world. The will of God was to introduce His kingdom on Earth and to raise up an army of suffering servants who would pray and live into the reality of the kingdom of God on Earth as it is in heaven.

We are tempted by the same things that tempted Jesus, and we should reject them the same way Jesus rejected them. His kingdom is not of this world. We have missed the mark in our attempt to protect the power and influence we have gained in this world at the expense of being like Jesus – the ambassadors of his kingdom.

Just as Amos prophesied it is not too late. It is not too late for the remnant of God’s people in this age – the church – to be the body of Christ, representatives of Jesus in this world. We do not need earthly power and influence. As a matter of fact, earthly power and influence will corrupt the whole thing. It always has, and it always will until the day Jesus comes again. As God told Amos, God will do what He says. We only need to be faithful.

The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdoms of This World: A Political Primer

kevingdrendel2 Comments
Ornate crown with jewels lying on cracked desert ground

In the episode of the After Class podcast link to above, the theologians who do the podcast continue their discussion of politics and the Bible. Among other things, they talk about how Israel rejected God by wanting a king like all the other nations.

I have read that story many times, but the import of it didn’t hit me until a number of years ago. It must have been 2016-17 when the following words God spoken to the prophet, Samuel, settled into my heart and have continued to hang over me ever since. The people of Israel demanded a king, and Samuel warned them about what they were requesting. Then God said to Samuel:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.”

1 Samuel 8:7

God gave them a king even though they were rejecting God as their king by their very request. This is a sobering thought, because Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God gives us over to our delusions if we persist in them.

The fact that God gave them the king they requested was not a blessing and it was not what God desired for them. The fact that God used Israeli kingship to establish David and his line, out of which the Messiah would eventually come, is beside the point. God is able to work all things together for the good, but that doesn’t mean that all things are good.

In case there is any doubt in anyone’s mind about these things, God spoke again through the prophet, Hosea, many years later to drive the point home:

“Where is your king, that he may save you? … [I]n my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away“

Hosea 13:10-11

I dare say these words haunt the American church presently. We have put our faith in politics, and in doing so I firmly believe that we have rejected God.

I could easily rail on conservative Christians who have championed and defended Donald Trump as if he could do no wrong. But I could just as easily critique Christians who have rallied in opposition to Donald Trump. We have taken positions on the front lines of a cultural war of political ideologies – on both sides – to our own detriment and the detriment of the global and timeless purposes of God.

Not that we might frustrate God in achieving His purposes any more than the people of Israel did in rejecting God to want a king. God works despite us, perhaps, more often than he works through us. Meanwhile, our distraction and exhaustion with politics keeps us from being salt and light in the world that Jesus meant us be.

The United States of America is not Israel, the covenant people of God. The modern nation of Israel is not the covenant people of God either. Israel, the nation-state that exists today, is a secular nation. The Temple is not the center of Israeli religious life. The modern nation state of Israel is not governed by the law of Moses. It is not a continuation of the covenant relationship that was established under the law of Moses.

Modern Christians have even less provenance than Jewish people to support the notion that a modern nation can replace or continue the former covenant relation established by God through Moses. As Paul says, the law was only a shadow. It was only a tutor.

Jesus is the reality, and He is the fulfillment of the covenant relationship God made with Abraham who did not put stakes down into the promised land. Abraham lived in tents as a sojourner, waiting for the city the architect and maker of which is God. He was still waiting for it when He died, as were all the men and women of faith commended to us in Hebrews 11.

Jesus dispels the notion that infiltrating or overtaking and establishing a nation state on earth is a proper purpose for his followers. Jesus introduced a kingdom that is not of the world. He could have, but he did not, model Christian involvement in secular governmental authority.

God does establish secular nations and authorities under powers and principalities that He allows (and uses) to create order in the world. Though God uses them, the powers and the principalities are not all aligned with God. In fact, they are opposed to Him, and they will all crumble and be no more when Jesus takes the throne as the rightful king when God remakes the world into a new heaven and earth.

The only thing that will remain, then, is the kingdom of God. Nowhere does the Bible suggest or Jesus teach that we should usher in God’s kingdom in through secular political means. As a matter of fact, it’s just the opposite.

Continue reading “The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdoms of This World: A Political Primer” →

Embracing Our Identity as Citizens of Heaven

kevingdrendelLeave a comment
created with Chat GPT*

A very good friend and sister in Christ recently gave a devotional presentation to a faith-based non-profit Board of which I am a member. She reflected on her experience of being a minority as a Christian growing up in India, where less than two percent (2%) of the population is “Christian” (including Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, and Mormons).

Her poignant story of personal struggle with minority status and finding blessing in it, hits home with me. I have never felt like a minority in the visceral way that she experienced it. The blessing she found through Scripture in embracing her minority status is a lesson for all believers.

Being a Christian in a Non-Christian World

My friend struggled with her minority status as a Christian in India. She was ridiculed, teased, and looked down upon. By God’s grace, she felt her divine calling as a child of God, but her identity as a Christian came with consequences.

The consequences proved even more difficult for her sister, who applied to medical school. The admissions officer said she must recant her faith to be approved for assignment to any med school. She refused, and she gave up her dream of becoming a physician. Minority status in a majority world as consequences.

Being a Foreigner in the United States

When she emigrated to the United States she felt the joy of being a part of the Christian majority. Over time, however, the struggle with minority status began to resurface again. She stood out because of her ethnicity, accent, and cultural differences. She realized, “I am a minority within my Christian majority realm.”

This was a very personal struggle for her because of her childhood experience in India. She thought that moving to American where Christians are in the majority would be different. Instead, she felt the sting of minority status. Though she was a Christian in an ostensibly Christian country, she was still an outsider and a foreigner because of her nationality, ethnicity, and cultural differences.

Being a Foreigner in the World

She shared that God met her in the struggle and confronted her with His Word. What she learned through this process was sobering for her, and it is a lesson for those of us who have always lived in majority status in a majority Christian nation. 

She began to realize what a privilege it is to be a minority because we are called as believers out of the world where wide is the path that leads to destruction. We are set apart by God from the world, which means we are called to minority status in the world.

Narrow is the path that leads to life. Minority status is the Christian experience.

The Privilege of Minority Status

As she focused on these things God was showing her in His Word, she became grateful for her experience as a Christian in a majority non-Christian country. This experience gave her perspective that American Christians lack.

Continue reading “Embracing Our Identity as Citizens of Heaven” →

The Importance of Separating from the Culture, Politics, and Spirit of Our Age

We are called to be in the world but not of the world or influenced by the world

kevingdrendel1 Comment

I have become hyper vigilant about the influence of our current times, culture, politics, etc. on my theology. We can’t help ourselves but to struggle with the currents of our times as they threaten to push us along in their path.

We might find ourselves swept along without even noticing it. Or we might take the opposite course and fight against those currents in the opposite direction. Both responses are problematic for the Christian who desires to follow Christ and to live according to his kingdom that is not of this world.

Whether we are being carried along by the currents of this present world, or fighting in opposition to them, we can find ourselves being wholly defined by the world – what we are for and what are against – instead of the purpose and commission Christ Jesus gave to us. Both types of responses to the world lead us off the path of following Jesus.

My views on this come from a sermon I heard in my early twenties 40 some years ago. I forget the biblical texts that laid the foundation, but the foundation remains with me: whether we allow the currents of our world to sweep us along or we fight in opposition to those currents, we are constantly in danger of defining ourselves and our theology in relation to the world – rather than in relation to God and His kingdom.

If we are followers of Jesus Christ, we might look at times as if we are going in the direction of the world. At other times, we might look as if we are going in direct opposition to the world. In reality, the Christian who follows Christ is walking a straight path. His path will take us at times in the same direction the world around us seems to be going and at other times in the opposite direction.

Christopher Watkin calls this Christian phenomenon “diagonalization” because it often looks like we are working at cross purposes to the world in both directions. As the world is pushes left, we appear to be pulling right; and as the world pushes right, we appear to be pulling to the left.

The key is that we should not allow ourselves to be defined by the world around us. We should be influenced and defined by God alone and His revelation to us found in the Bible.

I made one statement above that is not exactly true. I do remember one verse on which the sermon that influenced me so many years ago hung: “It is good that you grasp one thing, and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them.” (Ecclesiastes 7:18) I call this holding things in tension.

We do this with the Bible itself. We learn to hold things in tension. Our fear (respect) for God and His word compels us to grasp one thing we know to be true while not letting go of other things we know to be true – even when it is difficult holding onto both things.

We fear (respect, trust) that God has greater perspective than we do. When He tells us to hate sin as He hates sin and to love people (who are all sinners), we need to grasp and hold onto both things as true, even though they may seem (to us) to be in tension with each other.

When we do that, we find that we come forward with both truths and a better understanding of Truth (capital T). We understand, for instance, that God hates sin because of what it does to us and to the rest of His creation, among other things.

As finite beings, we always have an understanding gap. Even when we think we know something, we are ignorant of what we don’t know. The Bible describes that reality by saying that God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.

We all know “religious” people who are hard, self-righteous, and unloving. They find it easier to hold onto the idea that God hates sin and more difficult to grasp the love God has for people who sin. We also know people who tolerate, accept, and even embrace sin in everyone (including themselves) because they feel that the tension between love for people and hating sin is too difficult to navigate.

People tend to want to gravitate to one end or the other of a spectrum of thoughts that seem to be in tension with each other because it might seem simpler and make more sense to us. For instance, some people reject the idea that human beings can even know truth because of our finitude, while others (in rejecting this post modern skepticism) double down arrogantly on the things we think we know. If we hold these things in tension, we reject the idea that human beings cannot know truth while we remain humble in what we think we know.

The person who fears God, grasps the one thing without letting go of the other. We may not do this perfectly well, but we understand that both of these things are true, and we strive to hold them in tension.

I have taken longer to get to the point than I expected, so I am going to finish this train of thought now by tying it back into the opening paragraph. What does this have to do with influence of the currents of the culture, politics, and spirit of our times on our theology?

Continue reading “The Importance of Separating from the Culture, Politics, and Spirit of Our Age” →

Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth Donald Trump?

“‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.'”

kevingdrendel4 Comments

I try not to be too political, and I try pretty hard to stay out of the public political fray. I am convinced that Christians should be very circumspect about politics. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and we owe our ultimate personal allegiance only to the King of all Kings.

I am also mindful of the tradition of the prophets. They stood as God’s mouthpieces to God’s people and to the priests and kings who lead them. While they didn’t hold back in pronouncing God’s judgments and warnings on surrounding nations, they directed most of their attention to God’s people, the nations of Israel and Judah.

I also have to note that the nations of Israel and Judah are unique in the history of God and man. The United States of America is not a nation of God’s chosen people like the nations of Israel and Judah were.

(The current state of Israel isn’t either! See the responses of Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, to a pointed questions put to him about the status of nation of Israel today in the postscript to this blog article.)

There is much I could say about these things, but I want to get to my topic today. God’s prophetic voice is most prominently focused on His own people, wherever they are situated. Thus, Jesus often confronted the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees and Sadducees – though he hardly said a word about the Romans who were the governing authorities in Judea.

Similarly, I believe God’s attention is on the church in America, and I am focused on Donald Trump only because many American Christians have claimed him as their champion. Biden, and Clinton, and Obama didn’t claim to be aligned with the church, but Trump does.

Therefore, when I read the following headline in the New York Times recently, For Those Deemed Trump’s Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear, I took notice. The statement that Donald Trump has vowed to exact vengeance caught my attention.

Trump’s public warnings to those who opposed him, searched his home, prosecuted him, etc. are have weight behind them because they are characteristic of the man. People have taken them deadly seriously, including Joe Biden who pardoned a record number of people in his last days of office, including preemptive pardons of his own family members and people on Trump’s hit list.

I could say a lot about these pardons, also, but I won’t do that right now. I will only say that the threats Trump has made are not empty, and conducting himself in that way has repercussions for both parties and the health and future of politics in America. “What goes around comes around,” as the saying goes.

My focus, though, is on what this means for the church and how we live out being salt and light, making disciples to the ends of the world, and living consistent with the kingdom of heaven on earth. Do we not have some responsibility to God, the Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, to speak prophetically about the state of the church and of its complicity in the rise to power of Donald Trump?

Continue reading “Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth Donald Trump?” →