A friend, who just arrived last week from the south African country of Namibia, talked with many of our students who have expressed a desire to be involved in missions. After the meeting, John said to me, “I’m sorry if I came across too direct. I always feel sorry for the first group I talk to after getting back in the states.” Half of the orphans he and his mission team work with are HIV positive. They bury kids almost every week. Living among the poor and hurting makes re-entry into our wealthy land initially disturbing. I think we need to hear his jolting questions and piercing statements. “What are you doing now? Do you know Christ and does that make a difference in your life? Do you serve the poor here in the states? Do you care about the lost where you live? Do people see Christ in you? What makes you think you’ll be any different if you go live in a foreign land? You won’t! Serve the poor now. Share Christ now. Live Christ now. Wherever you live… be a missionary now. Don’t wait for some trip or some moment later in time.”
As Jesus walked the earth, He often made jolting statements: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of God in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’” “If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”
No wonder Jesus was despised and rejected. No wonder people turned away. No wonder He was crucified! Jesus was angry about the things that made His Father angry. He jolted those that needed to wake up. He offended those whose hearts were hard. “One of the experts of the law answered him, ‘Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.’ Jesus replied, ‘And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them…’” (see Luke 11:37-54) People might accuse Jesus of being insensitive, but we know He only proclaimed what the Father of love wanted said. None of those listeners will stand at the judgment and say, “Lord, why didn’t you tell us what you saw?”
So what about today? Is our generation a righteous one? Has this world become good? Do the people of God practice what they preach? Do wealthy Christians in the western world have responsibility to the sixth of the world living in poverty? Is it God’s will that 100,000 people die every day without hearing Christ’s Name? The Living Word still jolts. May we recognize what God says to us and not turn away. May we be confident that a God of love speaks truth to listening ears and the Holy Spirit convicts humble hearts.
But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold to our courage and the hope of which we boast. So as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’” See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” Hebrews 3:6-15