My Family Tree

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 
        What a rich season it is. The chill in the air this month has often made me want to complain, but every time I take a dive out into the frigid air, I'm reminded of how much God wants to wake His people up. I want to continue this journey of sharing what I'm learning with you. I cannot tell you how beneficial my time in studying God's Word has been this year. I could tell you story upon story, so please, if you want to know more or have any questions at all, let me know!

        This week we had the privilege of hearing from my favorite teachers, Chad Hampsch, about the incredibly rich and complicated 2,000 years of church history that have come since the writing of the Bible was completed. Rather than list information about epochs of time, I'd rather talk about some themes I saw in our history and how God has worked through all of it. But why study church history? Why not just know the Bible and be done with it? I see several reasons for devoting one's time to studying those who have gone before us in faith. 

• First, we need to know our family tree. 

• Just as most people know what kind of biological heritage they came from, so the Christian must be aware of the heritage they have in faith in the family of Christ. The Bible says that our family in Christ is of a higher priority than our earthly family and it is also eternal. This is not to say that God doesn't place us where we are in time in the family we are in for a distinct purpose, but it is to say that Christ is the priority over any human relationship or commitment. 
• If we know where we have come from, we can see how God has been working over thousands of years to bring a sinful and broken people back to the knowledge of Him.
• The Bible wasn't even translated into the common language of the people until about 500 years ago. We have to recognize the immense privilege it is to have the entire completed word of God in our own language and give honor to those who gave their entire lives, even unto death, to make this possible. 
• Second, we need to understand why the world is the way it is.

• If we can put our finger on the pulse of Church history, we can put our finger on the history of the world. The institutions of the Western world are deeply rooted in Christian tradition. Not only this, the problems in the Western world are problems that began due to frustration with the church and a departure from absolute truth- that is, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I could overwhelm you with example upon example of how we have seen error in the Church turn into a tidal wave of hurt in society. This rippling effect of the breakdown of truth and compromise upon and adding to the gospel of Jesus Christ has created a culture in which absolute truth is rejected absolutely. Spirituality is praised, relativism glorified and religion rejected as archaic and nonsensical. Yet the inherent logical error is this- postmodernism says "My truth is my truth. Your truth is your truth. There are many ways to understanding." But if everything is true, then nothing is. The essence of truth is that it stands no matter who speaks it. Jesus Christ is the only way to understanding and the only way to truth. We have 2,000 years of millions of men and women who have died for a faith that glorifies man not at all and places each of us under the loving sovereignty of the God who loves us. What an honor to die in such service. 

• Our teacher, Chad, said, "Man couldn't write the Bible if he tried, and he wouldn't if he could." There is no way that people would invent a religion that asks you to take up your cross (instrument of torture), abandon selfishness, love others, reject the comfort and the sin of your life and place total trust in God. It rides against everything our flesh has to say, everything that is natural and common to people. Christians must be able to defend from historical evidence and the attestation of thousands of accurate Bible manuscripts that our faith has both meat and veracity! 

Here are just a few of the many ways I see that God has worked in Church history:

• Where persecution abounds, the church only grows. We see this in the book of Acts when the Jewish authorities are befuddled at the fact that killing Jesus Christ did not kill His message. In fact, thousands of converts were added to the kingdom of God in just a few short years. His message spread across the world, and touched peoples and continents that were absolutely pagan and should never have come to a knowledge of God. 
• We see this later in the time of the Reformation, where a hunger for the truth of God's word motivated Martin Luther to decry the Catholic tradition that men need mediators other than Christ. The works that Luther published, commentaries on Scripture were read by common men and women across Europe, and the message of the gospel exploded and created the Evangelical faith as we know it. 
• We see John Wycliffe, committed to the printing of Bible's in every person's language, who was killed for his faith, and yet today, the Wycliffe Bible Translators have helped to accomplish the translation of scriptures into 1,300 languages. 
• With the dawn of the Age of Reason, philosophers and thinkers such as Voltaire predicted that Christianity would die within the next hundred years. (Today, the French Bible Society prints and distributes every Bible in France from Voltaire's home. Talk about God's sense of humor!) 
• In countries where Christianity has long been declared illegal, the church only grows. There are an estimated 200 million believers in China. It is said that the Communist government will have to declare Christianity to be legal in the next ten years, lest it take over the nation. 

• God is serious about his plan to use the church as a the redemptive organization for the world. We need to be serious about getting behind what the church is doing. The only true change that can occur in people's lives is from the inner change the gospel brings- when we try to legislate morality, it doesn't matter because nothing truly changes. If church is a place where you sit for an hour each Sunday and listen to a man talk and listen to some other men sing and hear a list of do's and don'ts to make your life better- then we're attending a speaking function ora social club. If the church can reject this idea of moralistic therapeutic deism- the idea that God exists to give you a list of to-do's and to make you feel better- the gospel will explode on earth. Our brother, John Wycliffe said it well, 

“The gospel alone is sufficient to rule the lives of Christians everywhere...any additional rules made to govern men's conduct added nothing to the perfection already found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ” -John Wycliffe

        God doesn't need us to accomplish His purposes. He chooses to use us. He chooses to give us personal ownership in the process of making His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. He chooses to give us the great task of making Him known as we learn to know Him. Don't run away from the Church, friends. Be a part of a local body that preaches the Word accurately. Be a part of a community where truth is declared and accountability to the Word of God is paramount. Be a part of the change we will see in people's lives and hearts when the love of God overtakes him. The battle for unity in the community of Christ is one of the greatest challenges of our time. But it's so worth it. He is coming back to judge and to rescue, let's declare His coming. 

"And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

Matthew 24:14