Encouraged To Endure Sermon Iii: Enduring In Anti-Christian Environments Series

Enduring As Christians in Anti-Christian Environments

Christian woman flies out of Sudan, meets Pope . . . (Headline July 24, 2014): “A Sudanese woman sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity walked off the plane cradling her baby and was greeted by the Pope upon her arrival in Rome. She had been released thanks to intervention by the Italian government”. Also this past week:

Islamist extremists who seized control of Iraq ordered Christians to leave or convert to Islam; if they choose to stay but refuse to renounce allegiance to Christ, they will be executed. Never to be forgotten: The most horrendous persecution that occurred during our lifetime – the Holocaust – but lost in the aftermath of the devastation reeked by the anti-Semitic Hitler was what happened to a Christian minister who dared oppose him:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - the Lutheran clergyman who had been imprisoned for publicly criticizing Nazism - was executed just before the end of WWII due to his refusal to renounce his Christian faith and issue a public apology to the effect that he had been wrong about Hitler.

Folks, we are so fortunate to live in the land of the free! If there ever was a Christian nation, it would have to be the United States of America – founded upon the principle of religious liberty. Indeed . . .

The majority of pilgrims who were among the first to come to America, and others to come later, were freedom-loving Christians – Protestants fleeing religious and economic persecution at the hands of governments run by Church-State hierarchies!

“In God We Trust” was more than a slogan when America was founded. Times were hard, and nothing worthwhile came easy. Early settlers depended on God and trusted Him to direct their paths. This is not to say that these brave men and women were perfect in their relationship with God or in their dealings with native people. They, like many of us today, had their faults.

Yet, in spite of our faults as a nation, no nation on planet earth has made the moral progress we - a country blessed by the Lord - have made over a relatively short period of time spanning about two and a half centuries!

What a privilege it has been for you and me to have lived for the most part in the 20th century during America’s greatest advancements on so many fronts – religious, racial, socio-economic, educational, political, and technological. However:

Now that this “nation under God” has come so far in so short a period of time, do we as a nation give God the glory? Yes and no. Some do and some don’t.

Sadly, a growing number of citizens of this the greatest nation on earth seem less and less inclined to recognize that “the Lord, He is God” and not we ourselves, let alone give thanks to God for blessings bestowed on us - individually and as a nation.

Rather, what we hear so much of is how “out-of-date” it is to “trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding”. No longer is thought, let alone taught, by an ever increasing number of educators and authorities in our country the time-tested truth: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”

So, we can say that 21st century Christians, as did Christians of the 1st century, face the challenge of being Christian(s) in anti-Christian environments!

This challenge is dealt with by the Apostle Peter - I Peter 2:11-21 - against the backdrop of a non- Christian society that was becoming more and more anti-Christian – because of the urging of a religious hierarchy that felt threatened by followers of “the Way”, and therefore claimed that Christians were up to no good.

Peter urged Christians to endure for the sake of the Lord Jesus who Himself had to endure undeserved persecution. The essence of Peter’s advice was this:

Trust God, and obey divine authority because God is just . . . obey human authority even though it may be unjust. After all, your journey here is temporary.

In the ideal nation whose God is the Lord, the people trust God and serve Him, while Government trusts the people and serves them. Not so back then, not so in our day - particularly in anti-Christian cultures such as Iran, Iraq and others - even anti-Christian elements of society within the borders of our own country.

Inasmuch as the early church was in its infancy at the time Peter wrote his epistle, he urged them to affirm their identity as a beloved Christian “community” devoted to living out their Christian commitment by leading lives worthy of being known as Christian. It’s as if he said:

“Surprise those who make false accusations against you - silencing them with positive actions that speak louder than words”.