[Open sermon with "Bubble Creek Canyon" video from BluefishTV.com]
OUR PRAYER: We want to be insulated and isolated from the evil in the world.
- Matthew 8:28, 32-34.
- There are two mentions of violence in this passage.
- First, there are two men who are demon-possessed. They are men of great violence. Verse 28 tells us that they were so violent that no one could pass through the area where they lived. It was presumably somewhat isolated, however, since it was a graveyard.
- Second, we see a violent scene when the demons are cast into the pigs and the herd runs headlong into the water. The death of this herd is a violent scene. These pigs are owned by some herders who run into town to tell what has happened.
- Which of the two scenes violence bothers the people? The second, not the first.
- We’ll get into more specifics in a moment, but just note for now that the second scene of violence directly affected them.
- The other situation had violence, but it was evil that was away from them. What bothered them was when the evil directly impacted them.
- We do the same thing a lot. We believe that part of God’s job is to keep us insulated and isolated from the evil that’s in the world. When we do encounter evil, we work to get away from that situation as quickly as we can.
- Examples of that kind of situation:
a. Our child tells about a kid in her class that’s in foster care. The child is on his third home in the last six weeks. The child basically has no one in the world. We say, “That’s really sad” and change the subject.
b. A friend posts on Facebook about how big a problem sexual slavery is around the world. Our friend writes that the video he’s posted contains information that will really bother you. You scroll down without watching it.
c. We have a relative who is showing signs of starting to mess around with abusing prescription drugs. We start making it a point to avoid them.
d. We read a story in the paper about the child soldiers that are being forced to wage war in Uganda. We turn to the comics.
e. A co-worker tells stories that make you think she might being emotionally abused by her husband. You steer your conversations toward the weather.
- We know there is evil in the world. We just don’t want to be confronted by that evil. We want God to keep us insulated and isolated.
- Jesus came to confront the evil in the world.
- That may make us a little uncomfortable because we know that if He did it He may expect us to do it.
OUR CHOICE: We’d rather have our peace and property than have evil confronted.
- Matthew 8:32-34.
- Matthew 23:23.
- What do we want instead? If our priority is not confronting evil, what is it?
- I think it’s often the same two things that the people choose.
a. Peace.
- The loss of the pigs troubled them. Jesus was disturbing their peaceful little lives. They wanted their peace back.
- Of course, there is a peace that’s a good thing. That peace includes having an awareness of God being near us. But this peace is more a fantasy-land peace. It’s a “keep-it-away” peace. It’s a peace that says, “I don’t care if someone is hurting as long as I don’t have to hear them crying.”
- Presumably the demon-possessed men were out at the graveyard, so it didn’t really bother the townspeople too much. It didn’t trouble their peace.
- This situation that Jesus caused, though, it did trouble them. Everyone was upset.
- I’d like to think that this came without them knowing the difference that Jesus had made in the lives of the two demon-possessed men, but v. 33 says that the herders told the townspeople everything that had happened, including what had happened to the men. They knew of this miracle and still chose to be bothered rather than blessed.
b. Property.
- The other thing that bothered them was that there was a loss of property. The pigs belonged to these herders.
- We’re not told that anyone said, “Hey, it’s terrible about those pigs, but isn’t it worth it if these two guys were healed?”
- This raises a troubling question. If these pigs were someone’s property, what right did Jesus have to do this? Or, to put it differently, why did Jesus choose to allow the demons to have their wish?
- I think it was to provoke the response He received.
- In our lives He may put us in situations where there is a financial cost to our obedience.
- It might be:
a. Paying for school supplies for that struggling foster child.
b. Paying for a doctor’s visit for a teen who had considered abortion before we pointed them in the right direction.
c. Donating sacrificially toward a cause that is making a difference.
- When I say this, I don’t just mean five dollars here or a hundred there. I mean that He has the right to ask us to make significant financial sacrifices. He has the right to point us in directions that require a downward adjustment in our standard of living. He has the right to ask us to give more than is comfortable.
- Many of presume that our money is our money. It’s not. It’s God’s money. And He has the right to ask us to make whatever sacrifices He deems necessary.
- They chose these things over seeing someone healed. When we talk about seeing evil confronted, we have to remember that evil isn’t an abstract concept. It’s not something we work to defeat just because it’s intrinsically bad.
- We also work to defeat it because it destroys lives.
- People caught in addiction. Children abused instead of cherished. Marriages ripped apart. People mistreated. Families torn asunder.
- Evil has real world consequences. For the two men in our story, it was destroying their lives.
- Yet the people still chose their peace and property over seeing these two set free.
- How often in our lives are we indifferent to the pain and suffering that evil causes those around us as long as it doesn’t affect me or my loved ones?
- Look at Mercy Revival, for instance. Who is involved in this ministry combating addiction? Almost exclusively people who’ve had family members caught up in addiction.
- Even here in our little town, there is sometimes a sense of trying to remain an isolated island in the midst of the sea of this prescription drug problem. We all know it’s out there, but we just try to ignore it as long as our own family is ok.
- Too often churches focus on “building the church,” which means raising attendance, increasing the budget, and generally improving what goes on with in the church building. And there is a place for that.
- But often “building the church” comes in the place of “changing the world.” We have no impact beyond our building. Sure, we’ll say that we’re changing hearts so they can change the world, but then we can point at no actual evidence of that happening.
- We define the church’s work as “spiritual.” Of course, that’s true, but we define that “spiritual” in a way that presumes no large-scale, real-world changes.
- Too often we treat the church as a place to retreat from the problems of the world.
- Matthew 16:18 says that the gates of hell will not be able to withstand the church. That means that we should be out there attacking the gates of hell, not cowering inside our church walls.
- Sometimes we try to make church all about “spiritual things” as though those can be cleanly separated from everything else. A faith that doesn’t bleed out all over all aspects of our lives is a faith that’s not worth having.
- One of Jesus’ scathing criticisms of the Pharisees was that they neglected “justice” (Matthew 23:23).
- That, of course, points us to the larger inequalities and societal evil that surrounds us.
- So the tendency of a lot of conservative churches to largely ignore much of the evil in the world that they don’t deem “spiritual” seems to have a lengthy history.
- And the violence that we see in this story is prevalent in so much of the evil that we see today too: people being forced to do things they don’t want to do.
- Side comment here: it’s amazing how indignant about the evil in the world we can get when something punctures our insulated bubble. “Why doesn’t God do something about the evil in the world?” “How can He sit up there and not be bothered by this?”
- There’s a lot I could say on this, but let me just say one thing. It’s the height of hypocrisy to work so hard to keep ourselves safe and unbothered within our little bubble while God sees all the evil that happens every day and then criticize Him when we find evil bursting our bubble and staring us in the face.
- God’s not the one who’s been ignoring the evil; we are. God’s not the one who’s been turning his face the other way; we are.
- Now, we can talk about the nature of evil and what God should or should not do in response, but for us to act like we’ve been the ones attending to evil when we’ve been doing all that we can to insulate and protect ourselves from it is the height of hypocrisy.
- Christians have a great tradition of facing to great human need.
- At many points in history, it’s been Christians who have stood up to the wrong that was going on and with God’s help changed the world.
OUR EXCUSES FOR WHY WE DON'T CONFRONT EVIL:
1. “I’m just one person!”
- Luke 1:37.
- You’re right, you’re just one person. But that’s not an excuse to do nothing.
- Three things:
a. Much of what I’m talking about this morning presents itself to us as helping one person.
- Sometimes what we’re talking about is as simple being a shoulder to cry on for someone dealing with the effects of evil in their lives. Sometimes there are greater time and money sacrifices to be made, but they are still ones that one person can do.
- Not all the confrontation of evil has to be someone solving a large problem. Sometimes we work to release the prisoners one at a time.
- Are you willing to help that one person?
b. Progress is almost never made because of a committee. It’s usually one passionate individual that makes the difference.
- It’s one person with a fire in their belly that makes the difference. We put too much emphasis on numbers and not enough on passion. Passion matters more. (And the numbers generally follow the passion.)
- As someone once said, “For God so loved the world that He didn’t send a committee.”
- Don’t worry if you’re just one person. God has a great history of changing the world through just one person.
c. If you’re confronting evil that God wants confronted, you’ve got God on your side, which is a pretty big deal.
- You may think you’re alone, but God is with you if you’re confronting evil in the world.
- God is willing to bring His resources and power to bear on your behalf. It’s amazing the victories that God has brought through one passionate person because He showed up on their behalf.
2. “I don’t know what to do!”
- James 1:5.
- Most of the time, when it comes to evil, there are no easy answers. If there were, someone would have already fixed it.
- We have to be willing to look at the problem in the face and live for a while with the uncertainty of not knowing what to do. You have to be willing to let God lead step by step, to make some efforts that don’t work great so you take a couple steps back and then try again.
- In James 1:5 the Bible tells us that if we lack wisdom we can ask and God will give it. That’s encouraging when we’re facing big problems. That’s encouraging when we don’t know how to help our friend.
- Often the hardest thing in a situation like this is that moment of facing it squarely without any idea how to solve it. That’s probably when the temptation is the greatest to turn tail and run. But that’s something we’ve got to dwell with and not walk away from.
- Our job starts with prayer. Asking God to give us wisdom on how to proceed. He’s will to answer and guide.
- Sometimes there are no clean answers – it’s just a matter of getting down in the mud and helping as you can.
- Sometimes you just have to dig in and figure it out as you go.
3. “I’m scared!”
- Matthew 10:28.
- It’s ok that evil scares us. That’s probably a good thing in waking us up.
- But we cannot give into that fear. God is bigger than the evil.
- This fear is a major reason why many of us look away in the first place. It’s scares us, so we try to keep it out of our line of vision.
- Again and again in the Bible, God (or God’s messenger) starts what they’re going to say with “Do not fear!”
- One of the greatest assets that evil has in our eagerness to look away.
- Ultimately, “am I scared?” is the wrong question. “Is God leading?” is the right question.
THE FIRST STEP: Look it in the face for a while.
[Video on Christian Post page about small church adopting 76 kids]
- I want to be quick to acknowledge that I don’t have the answers to all the problems that we’re facing. There are just too many difficult issues.
- Beyond the large-scale issues, there are also the complex issues that are there in individual’s lives.
- No “one-size-fits-all” solution can handle all that. Rather, the answer demands that we listen to God’s leading and participate in God’s power as He shows up.
- Because of that, I just want to focus on the first step: don’t run away.
- As I’ve said, our first instinct when we’re confronted with evil is to figure out how we can insulate and isolate ourselves from it. We want to get away from it as quickly as we can.
- Instead of that, we need stay with it. We need to face it in its ugliness. We need to not retreat to our comfort zone. We need to be burdened about it: not that it’s inconveniencing us, but that it’s genuinely wrong and that someone needs to do something about it.
- As we dwell with it, we become burdened with it.
- Taking on a burden is something that a lot of us have no interest in. We think that the Christian walk is supposed to be about God making my life easier, not harder. But we are called to carry burdens (Galatians 6:2).
- Giving someone a burden is often the way that God begins the process of changing someone else’s life or confronting a difficult situation.
- But when we face something that would create a burden, our first response is often to get away from that as quickly as possible.
- Do you want God to help you hide from the world or change the world?
