Is America a Pre-Christian Nation?

By now the term "post-Christian" is common to most people in America. We're quite often referred to as a "post-Chriatian nation." This term means that America, a naiton traditionally and historically of the Christian persuasion, is now a place where the Faith no longer dominates. Christianity has had its time in the American sun, as it were. It is a time when young people can longer be assumed to know any basic information whatsoever about the Bible, and the vast majority have never heard the Gospel. Whereas jokes and referencers regarding Bible characters were commonplace and understood at one point, that's just no longer the case.
I was watching a video yesterday on Youtube of a presentation by Tim Keller, author of best-seller "The Reason for God," a bit of a modern day popular apologet like "Mere Christianity. He was speaking in a church in London and during the introduction the pastor of the church asked Dr. Keller a few questions, and during that interview the pastor said something fascinating. He said that London and other such places around the world have been post-Christian long enough now that they are actually pre-Christian.
The biblical-Christian voice has so died out or been shut up so long that, not only has it lost its influence, its influence has been forgotten! While this is not the case in many places throughout the world, it is very evident in the major cities like New York (where Tim Keller ministers as a church pastor) and London. According to Keller, this phenomenon is a leading contributer to the growth of his church, which he founded. It began as a church plant in 1989 with a handful of people and now has 5500 members over several campuses througout Manhattan. He said that the older generation has seen Christianity and has decided "it's just a bad idea," but the younger generation (being told it's a bad idea but not experiencing it for themselves) is actually curious about it.
Our once Christian-majority nation is becoming an unreached mission field. Without going off on a tangent of trying to point fingers at who to blame, I can't help be reminded of Israel just prior to the days of the judges.
Judges 2:7-10 says, "The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel." (NASB)
Author and professor of New Testament Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, D.A. Carson, has been quoted explaining this same phenomenon as it has occurred throughout history. He says, "The first generation has the gospel; the second generation assumes the gospel; the third generation loses the gospel." It seems this is what has happened in America. Somewhere along the line something broke down. Somewhere along the road someone couldn't fix a flat.
So what happened?
I've studied this text a number of times and preached on it (I will be preaching on it again this coming Sunday at 5-Mile Community Church), and everything that I find points to one common mistake that causes this breakdown in communicaton of the truth from one generation to the next: incomplete obedience of the heart.
"Do as I say and not as I do" never works, because given the option children will ALWAYS do what parents do and not as they say. At the end of the book of Joshua is his famous last speech to Israel before his death, and in that speech he says that Israel should put away all traces of false religion. With the exception of the golden calf, Israel had not had much of a problem with idolatry at that point in time, so what most scholars believe is that Joshua is referring to traces of religions in their homes in the form of folklore and superstition. Not idols per se in the home, but just traces of their influence on an almost purely cultural level, just little traces of things that had crept into their homes and lives. Such skirting of full obedience is as good as full disobedience.
Incomplete obedience sows the seeds of disaster in the next generation. God's desire is for us to be holy inside and out. Inside down into the innermost parts of our being, those places no one ever sees. But most of us are more concerned with our reputations than God's evaluation of our holiness.
So it's up to those of us who are true believers now to ensure the gospel is passed to the next generation, and most of that will happen in the home from parent to child. That's the way it's supposed to happen. It's on us to ensure that America, if it is indeed pre-Christian, does not remain that way, and that the Great Commission is carried on.
Global evangelism will be unsuccessful on the whole until generational evangelism is successful in the home.

What We Deserve, What He Deserves

Ruth 2:10--"Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?" The beautiful story of Ruth illustrates the fact that salvation is, and always was, extended in offer to the gentile nations of the world. Ruth, a Moabitess, finds favor in the eyes of the righteous Jew Boaz who marries her and redeems her from a life of unproductive widowhood. She gains a new name, a new love and a new life. At their first meeting Ruth asks Boaz the above quoted question. "Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me?" We are sinful, wrecked people who, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, will inevitably choose sin always over obedience to God. The Bible is clear that we deserve nothing short of hell, yet, as the lyrics of an Andrew Peterson song I recently heard says, "I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God." As I was translating this chapter for my Hebrew class, an idea came to me that I've never thought before. It's one thing to consider what we deserve in light of who God is, but it is another thing to consider what God deserves in light of who we are. Words would be insufficint to say what all God deserves. My point isn't to list all of that. My point only is to say that God gives us blessing and righteousness when we deserve death, and far too often in exchange we give God sin which is deserving of death. God gives us what we don't deserve, and in return we give him the same actions which made us undeserving in the first place. The most powerful sermon ever preached is the one we preach with our life, and in a culture where experience is ultimate, unbelievers today need more than anything to see Christians living as if what we say with our mouths was really true, that God has given us everything we do not deserve, and taken upon Himself the one thing we do deserve, death. This week I'm challenged to consider what I give God in response to what He gives me, and as I consider this I feel wrecked to the inside in realization of the truth. God took my death, I should give Him my life, but I usually just give him more death.

Out of My League

In Luke 10 Jesus said that no one, after setting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

As some friends and family are aware, I am a youth pastor candidate at a small community church near Spokane. I will preach the Sunday sermon on July 29 and that afternoon there will be a congregational vote to decide on calling me or not.

This ministry is totally out of my league.

The hindering part of getting up to a new task is examining the difficulty, examining all the reasons why it can't or won't be done, and most of all looking back to where we've been. A farmer doesn't get behind the plow and then decide he can't do it after thinking of a time when he was not a farmer. God calls us to His service out of our past garbage. He calls us first out of death and into life, so is it really any wonder that He calls us to tasks which are higher than we are?
It's amazing how often when God calls us to some task we have the audacity to make it about us, when all along no part of the Christian life begins or ends with us. Was creation about us? No, it was about Him because He made male and female in His image. He made male and female...in His image and called them "man." This means there was some supreme function he created them to do. After all, the Hebrew verb bara, the word "create" in Genesis 1, is not an existence oriented word, as if the main fact communicated is that God created out of nothing, but creation in the ancient world was function oriented. To create was to give order and purpose.
The main point is that God made man with a function of being in His image and reflecting Him in the world. That means that although it involves us, our creation begins and ends with God. It's not about us.
Our salvation is also not about us. Colossians 1 says that the reason He redeemed mankind was to become preeminent over all things. God shows his overwhelming, beautiful, terrifyingly holy character in His giving His own life to save those He loves who hate Him, so that He would ensure He reign over all things. Our salvation is about Him. It's not about us.

So when God calls us to some new difficult task, chances are it's not really about us. So instead of thinking "You want me to do THAT??" Maybe we should think "You're going to do THAT???" And like a friend of mine said once, maybe when God says to jump, maybe He doesn't want you to ask how high. Maybe he just wants you to jump.

And so if God calls me to this youth ministry job (and those who know me know how far away youth ministry is from what I've wanted to do), I won't ask God how He thinks I'm going to be able to pull it off. I'm going to assume from day one that I will not be able to do it and that my own efforts will fail. I will assume God's work will be done in spite of me and that He will build His Church.

Change of Plans

Unfortunately the six posts on Genesis will not happen. With this assignment I had a few options. One of my other options was to write a sermon on the passage. I preached through this passage a year ago, so I took that sermon and tweaked it to fit the assignment. I may go ahead and post that, maybe as a whole or in four installments.
Either way, I don't know if anyone read this or not but I hope no one is disappointed.