Being Salt and Light?

"The Holy Spirit gave us the power to be witnesses, not to do witnessing. And so we need a generation of Christians that understand it's not about standing on a street corner to do witnessing, but to be witnesses on the earth. To bring salt and light in the midst of our darkness. That's what God has called us to do." ~Christine Caine via Lifechurch.tv

So according to Christine Caine, we're not to go preach the gospel, we're to just exist as Christians in the world. And not to judge or call out sin, rather we need to just bring salt and light.

I guess Peter and the rest of the apostles did it wrong when they were filled with the Holy Spirit and went into Jerusalem during a festival preaching the gospel, telling the people to repent of their sins, save themselves from this crooked generation, and to be baptized and to follow Jesus.

And Paul did it wrong when he went to the Areopagus and told the Greeks not to be ignorant but to repent of their sins because Jesus would soon return to judge the world. Then he went to Corinth and tried to preach to the Jews but they wouldn't listen to him, so he shook his garments of them and said, "Your blood is on your own heads."

And Jesus did it wrong when, in the same public sermon he preached about being salt and light, he said, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." And "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. They will say, 'Didn't we do mighty things in your name?' And I will say, 'Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"

Or maybe Christine Caine is wrong, and we should wage the good warfare lest by rejecting it we make a shipwreck of our faith. Being witnesses means that we speak truth and expose lies. Being salt and light means that we hold out the word of God and expose sin. Don't listen to anyone who tells you to just be and not do. They're liars when we understand the text.

Eternal Security?

In John 10, the Jews pressed Jesus to speak plainly if he was the Christ. Jesus answered, "I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep."

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

It is God who gives us eternal life, and it is God who keeps us there. In Jude 24, we are told it is by the his power that we are kept from stumbling and presented blameless before him. In Ephesians 4:30, Paul writes that in Christ we are "sealed for the day of redemption." And in John 3:16, those who believe in Christ are given eternal life.

If it was possible to lose that gift of eternal life, then it wasn't eternal. If you could lose salvation, then you haven't been saved. It is by no work of our own that we are saved, and it is by no work of our own that we stay saved. It is from beginning to end the gracious work of God.

If a person confesses to being a follower of Jesus for a time, but then falls away, then they were never rooted in Christ to begin with, which Jesus explained in the parable of the sower.

But for those of us who have been called out of darkness and into his marvelous light, take heart, Christian. For nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord when we understand the text.

Do We Have to Prove God Exists?

Carl Sagan once said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." You know what? We agree! Though not in the way an atheist might think -- if it could be said that an atheist thinks. The burden of proof is more on an atheist to show there is no creator than it is on a Christian to prove that there is. Why? Because all human beings inherently understand design.

This is referred to as Empirical Adequacy. Pick any object and you inherently know it was created. But no atheist will ever be able to refer to anything coming into existence without cause or creator. Even if he were to cook up some example of random processes, he runs into the Implied Creator Paradox, because he had had to create an example of non-creation.

The statement made earlier about how atheists don't think? We aren't trying to be derogatory. We're simply following their logic. If we're nothing but the result of accidental process, than human beings are just walking sacks of chemicals. And chemicals cannot reason. They only react.

And that's a pretty good description of some atheists.

Romans 1:19-21, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

There's no reason to have to prove God's existence because everyone inherently knows God is real and His word is true. All of the evidence is already there when we understand the text.

You're David and Goliath Is Your Problems?

David and Goliath. Who doesn't know that story? Little shepherd boy faces a giant warrior and wins with nothing more than a stone and a sling and faith in God. It's a story about how God can help us be victorious when facing our biggest fears, right? Or, maybe there's more to it, when we understand the text.

The book of 1 Samuel, chapter 17, captures one of the most well-known stories not only in the Bible, but in all of human history -- the story of David and Goliath. From the time we're old enough to hold a crayon in Sunday school, we're coloring pictures of David and Goliath. We have a giant shown against a little boy, and already we're learning something out of context. David wasn't a little boy -- despite what Veggie Tales or this guy might tell you...

"So David is herding sheep. You might even say he could have been 8, 10, 12 years old." -Ray Vander Laan, "That The World May Know" video series distributed by Focus On the Family

In 1 Samuel 16:18, one of King Saul's servants describes David as "a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him." Then Saul made David his armor bearer. So this isn't a mere boy we're talking about here. He was likely about 17 and a skilled slingsman, which was a valuable talent for Israel's army. Judges 20:16 describes 700 Benjimite slingsmen who could "sling a stone at a hair and not miss."

Israel was at war with the Philistines, a more advanced army equipped with swords and spears, while the Israelites basically only had farm tools. Every day, a 9 foot tall champion named Goliath (a common Philistine name), would go down into the valley and taunt the Israelites. "Choose a man for yourselves," he said, "and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants."

When David heard Goliath's taunting, he said, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?"

Long story short (because it is a pretty detailed story), David is brought before Saul, he says, "The Lord will deliver me." Saul wants him to wear armor, Saul's armor doesn't fit, so David grabs his staff and five smooth stones from a brook, though he'd only need one.

He comes out to Goliath who looks at David and says, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks? Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field!"

Then David jaws back, "This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel."

See? David's even a better taunter than Goliath!

Goliath drew near. David slung a stone at him which thunked him in the forehead, and he fell to the ground, face-first. Yup, the Bible even details which direction Goliath fell -- on his face (1 Samuel 17:49). Then David runs over, pulls out Goliath's sword, and lops his head off. Then David goes back in to see Saul, holding Goliath's head in his hand, but that's not the part of the story you colored in Sunday school. We like to leave the yucky stuff out.

But something else gets left out.

When we tell the story about David and Goliath, we like to talk about how we're David, and Goliath represents our problems, and with God's help, we can beat anything just like David beat Goliath. From the movies we watch to the songs we sing, and, yes, even this guy again...

"Now the lesson in that is, to me, God always wants you to simply use what he's given you to be good at." -Ray Vander Laan

But little guys do overcome the odds and win all the time. It's not like David was incapable. Remember, he was described as "a man of war." Prior to confronting Goliath, David had manhandled lions and bears. He absolutely knew that when he went out to face Goliath, he was going to beat him. David had no doubt. If we think of David beating Goliath as an underdog story, then we've missed the point.

David was not merely defying the odds to beat Goliath. He was the only person who could possibly have pulled it off. David is a picture of Christ.

David was the substitute who delivered the Israelites from certain defeat at the hands of the Philistines, just as Christ is the substitute who delivers us from the wages of sin. Christ, therefore, is the greater David, just as He's described in Hebrews 3 as the greater Moses and in Matthew 22 as David's Lord. So David wasn't the underdog. That was Goliath!

David went on to become known as Israel's greatest king. The Lord made a covenant with David and said that through his offspring, God would establish His kingdom forever. And so He did, through Jesus Christ, descendant of King David, the greater King than David.

We need to remember that the entire Bible points to Christ, Old Testament and New. You're not David and your problems aren't Goliath. David represents the Savior, the only Savior, who can save you from your sins.

And that's what we find when we understand the text.