One Of The Hated

I Chronicles 16: 9, “Give unto the Lord the glory due His name: bring an offering and come before Him: worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”

Life isn’t about us, it’s about God. Although God created this world for us to inhabit and enjoy, it isn’t about us. The heavens declare His glory, not ours. This world shows forth His handiwork. The ultimate point of our life on earth isn’t to have fun but to know God. There is no other reason to exist. The sad thing is that most people miss it. Some go through life thinking that life is about them and for their glory. Others get so bogged down in the pain of their life that they can’t see that in their pain God is calling them to His sufficiency. Few find the straight and narrow road that leads to loving and obeying God without pause or question. Whatever the circumstances of our lives, if we are His, we are being called by God glorify Him, to grow in holiness, to proclaim His Name to the lost and to strengthen and edify the church through the knowledge of and teaching of the Truth of God‘s Word.

We have been blinded by popular culture and have lost sight of Who God is. A friend of mine asked me recently to think about something: if the church in America today could be picked up and transferred back in time, would she even recognize Jesus and, if she could, would she be ashamed of Him? That really made me think. Remember, before He began His public ministry, Jesus knew the hard physical labor of being a Carpenter. His hands were calloused. He had wood shavings in His beard and on His clothes. He would have been physically exhausted from His work at the end of the day. Once our Savior hit the road to preach, He left His everything behind. He owned nothing. He knew deep poverty; He knew hunger; He didn’t even have a home. Traveling as He did from town to town on dusty roads by foot, He would have been dusty and dirty much of the time. Besides all of that, Jesus was an outcast. He was considered a rebel and a trouble maker by the established religious leaders. His own brothers thought He was crazy and wanted to take charge of Him. They didn’t even come close to believing that He was God in the flesh--even though they grew up with Him. Jesus was a friend of sinners and a man of sorrows. It was only when people misunderstood His mission that He was popular. Once He openly declared Who He was, people wanted Him dead.

If we could go back in time and live around Him, what would we think of Him? Would we believe Him? Would we be ashamed of Him? Would we think Him crazy? Think about it: we drive nice cars, live in nice houses and have plenty to eat. We are clean and respectable. Our churches don’t tend to make waves. We are friends of the world--not to save them but so that we can play with them. We emphasize God’s love over God’s holiness when we should be understanding God’s love through the lens of His holiness. What would we think of Him cleansing the temple? What would we think of His choice of friends? What would we think of Him denouncing the established religion--even though it claimed to follow God? More importantly, what would Jesus think of us? What does He think of us today? If He walked among us, would He be cleansing our Christian ministries? Would He be denouncing our churches? Would He say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant?” Would He even acknowledge that we were His?

Today, the church has lost track of what Jesus came to earth for and just how far He went to secure it. He gave up heaven, intimate fellowship with His Father, He suffered and died in order to restore us to Himself: to make us holy. He didn’t come to give us good lives, easy lives or make us happy. For us to think that salvation will cost us anything less than our life is to consider ourselves above Him. This doesn’t necessarily mean dying a physical death for Him, although last century saw more martyrs for the faith than any century previous to it. This is about living a martyr’s life. We must be willing to give up the world in order to reach for heaven. We have to decide whether we really want Jesus or not. For some, it might mean death…for all it means persecution and hard times. This world hates Christ and it hates true Christians. Can you truly say that you are one of the hated?