Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200485B
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00:01 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:02 Before the break, I was carrying out 00:04 at some length about the meaning 00:06 of Martin Luther King and his whole movement. 00:08 Of course, using that sermon example 00:11 of sleeping through the revolution. 00:14 It's quite possible with so many changes afoot, 00:17 and in particular religious liberty, 00:19 so much the play thing 00:22 of those that would ultimately destroy it, 00:24 that we might decide, well, what does it matter? 00:27 It'll pass, I don't need to do anything. 00:30 That is the worst attitude anybody can have, 00:33 least of all the Christian. 00:35 Martin Luther King addressed this actually 00:37 in his very last sermon, 00:41 bare hours before he was assassinated. 00:44 And he spoke about the man on the Jericho road, 00:50 the Good Samaritan, the man that was there, 00:53 wallowing in his blood, probably dying. 00:56 Because I do think Jesus was telling 00:58 an actual story He knew about. 01:00 And the Levite 01:03 and the priests they went by. 01:08 They ignored him. 01:09 And Martin Luther King raises this point, 01:12 he says, the first question that the priests asked, 01:15 the first question that the Levite asked was, 01:18 "If I stopped to help this man, what will happen to me?" 01:23 And that's a legitimate question nowadays. 01:27 Our world has consequences 01:29 if you stand up even within a church sometime, 01:33 there's a price to pay, certainly within civil society, 01:37 you could be seen as a religious fanatic, 01:41 you could be seen as raising a false alarm 01:44 or Chicken Little of civil rights, for example. 01:49 There's a price, 01:50 you could be ostracized in subtle ways, 01:53 but Martin Luther King took it in a different direction, 01:56 that is the appropriate one, I believe. 01:58 He says, but the Good Samaritan came by 02:01 and Jesus reversed the question. 02:04 And he reversed the question rather, 02:07 "If I do not stop to help this man, 02:09 what will happen to him?" 02:12 It goes back to what I think 02:14 I said earlier that John MacArthur said 02:16 to those theology students, you know, 02:19 you're not here to change the world, 02:22 you're here to change lives. 02:24 And if we're concentrated as Jesus mandated that 02:28 we must be on reaching out to other people, 02:31 not just to make the members of the church, 02:34 but as Christians to imbue them with the mind of Christ, 02:39 with the ideals of Christ, 02:41 with the vision of living with Christ 02:44 and being one with Christ. 02:46 You know, that great prayer of Jesus, 02:47 about one this was not just wordplay, 02:51 it was how it really must be for the Christian. 02:54 We're seeking a oneness 02:56 with the divine, not a oneness with, 02:59 you know, a political community. 03:02 We have to deal with that along the way, 03:04 but we need to keep our sights fixed on the eternal kingdom. 03:08 And I do believe in this era 03:09 will have very legitimately social justices rising up 03:15 again as the unanswered question. 03:17 There is great social injustice in the world. 03:21 And Seventh-day Adventists and other Christians 03:23 and other people of faith, 03:25 I think need to show that 03:26 they are concerned for the community, 03:28 they can't shuttle on by 03:31 or shuffle on by the distance, not my concern. 03:34 If there's poor in the world, we should feel poor. 03:38 If there are those who are abused, 03:40 we should feel abused. 03:42 You know, it says Jesus was touched 03:44 with the feeling of our infirmities. 03:46 As followers of Christ, we cannot help 03:49 but be touched by what's going on. 03:52 But the solution is not to make the world as, 03:55 you know, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam says, you know, 03:59 make the world entire in a way that we like. 04:03 We can't do that. 04:04 Jesus has promised 04:06 to remake broken lives here and now, 04:09 and then together, 04:11 the mended individuals that make up 04:14 the church can move on to an eternity with Christ. 04:17 It's an interesting dynamic that we've seen 04:21 worked out very often through history, 04:23 the great missionary endeavors that flowed out of England, 04:27 in the Protestant era that George Whitfield 04:30 and others then came to the new world, 04:32 the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 04:35 the Nazarenes, the Methodists, 04:37 these are all outgrowths of this altruism 04:39 that did change the world, 04:41 but didn't seek to change the political world, 04:44 but by extension, it automatically did. 04:48 And if America seeks godliness in this way, 04:51 if it seeks justice in this way, 04:54 there will be an improvement, but if we, you know, 04:57 have the sanctimonious pharisaical 04:59 attitude of religion that, 05:01 you know, the forms must be followed, 05:04 even as the disadvantage are ignored. 05:07 I believe we'll head to a despotism of indifference, 05:11 a despotism of indifference at a time 05:15 when it's so obvious that 05:17 there are people crying out as never before for justice. 05:21 Now Martin Luther King said that 05:23 the arm of the moral universe is wide, 05:25 but it bends toward justice. 05:27 Yes, the bending will culminate in a new world, 05:31 but in this present temporal world, 05:35 we need to stick to the true values, of course, 05:37 of godliness, as far as the civil society, 05:41 claim unreservedly the right for religious freedom, 05:44 as far as their fellows unreservedly 05:47 give them the charity 05:49 and the love and the concern that 05:51 Jesus asked of all of us, 05:54 and we need to work to improve their lives, 05:59 and point them toward 06:00 an eternal kingdom of bliss 06:02 and, you know, fulfillment and a perfection 06:07 that we can only dream of in this world. 06:11 There are no paradises here, 06:13 but there is a kingdom to come and to win. 06:19 Jesus before Pilate was the crucial moment 06:23 of the failed revolution 06:25 if you like that Judas had started. 06:29 And Jesus said unequivocally to Pilate, He says, 06:32 "My kingdom is not of this world. 06:34 If it were, My followers would fight for Me." 06:38 What did His followers do? 06:40 Either denied him, 06:42 John fled almost naked into the night. 06:45 And all forsook Him, it said, 06:48 but with the Spirit of God and an understanding of what 06:51 God was teaching them, things changed. 06:53 And they did indeed change the world. 06:57 I hope and pray that today, 06:59 as we enter what is clearly a revolutionary period, 07:03 in our world's history, an end time cataclysm, 07:06 if you like, or a cacophony, 07:09 that somehow we will find that 07:12 spirit-filled energy 07:14 to proclaim God's eternal kingdom, 07:16 to show compassion to those who are suffering 07:19 under the lash of events, 07:21 and to point all and sundry and ourselves in our innermost 07:26 being to the coming Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. 07:30 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2021-01-22