THE H-BOMB

How far would you go to save a life? Would you cross the road... or travel to the other side of the world? Would you pay a dollar a day... or mortgage your house and give the shirt off your very back? Would you push someone out of the way of a travelling car... or drop the bomb that killed 80,000 people and ended World War II?

How far would you go to save a life? You see a train headed towards a fork. On the first track there is one person, on the second track five people. These people are tied up and unable to escape. You are the station master with the power to choose. Who gets to live and who dies?... The average person will sacrifice the few to save the many. But the dilemma continues, what if you knew that the five people were murderers and that the one person was a good mother. Does this change your answer?

God was faced with this dilemma. The bible tells us when we choose to do wrong and disobey God we set into motion a ‘train of sin’ with an inevitable consequence of death. On one track was God’s only, good and perfect boy Jesus and on the other track was you. What did God do? He saved you by allowing the consequences of our sin to fall upon his perfect son. But don’t be fooled into thinking our dilemma is over! We the church are at a crossroads; we can either stay on fallen Mankind's track or move to Jesus’ track. As we have seen Jesus’ track means a life of self-sacrifice; it means being a lamb amongst wolves and allowing the consequences of this world’s sin to hit you (albeit getting to rise again). This is what Jesus means when he said Luke 9:23 | ‘take up your cross and follow me’. Yes we are saved but we are saved to be safe. Our salvation compels us from the depths of our spirit to complete the work Jesus begun; to lay our lives down as heavens red carpet to be trodden upon by the undeserving. John 15:13 | ‘We have no greater love than to lay our lives down for our friends’. Alternatively, standing with mankind will mean you get to enjoy a worldly life, at least for a while, until that final train of mortality hits and you won’t rise again even if you call yourself christian. Matthew 7:21-23 |21 ‘Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. What is the will of God? Well let’s keep making our way through Luke 10 and find out.

Luke 10:10-12 | But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

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Luke 10:10 | But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say,

DON’T RUN! What happens when the world does not receive the peace and healing a christian has to offer? What's left to say?‘Polite company’ would tell us to accept the worlds decision. Polite company would have the church silenced and passively watching Mankind’s death spiral only to have them spend an eternity burning in hell. Who does it benefit for us to run? Praise God we are not polite company. WE are God’s company. We aren’t called to accept a sinful world and slink away like cowards. This is the order of evangelism as outlined in Luke 10: first to offer peace, second to offer healing, and as the very last resort, to offer a warning. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for a person is to rebuke and discipline them. I hate, hate, hate to smack my children. I swear to you when I smack them it hurts me just as much as it hurts them but I will do it if my kids are refuse to obey or their behaviour endangers their life or someone else's. Proverbs 23:14 | Punish them with the rod and save them from death. Why? Because a taste of the consequences of sin wakes us up, reminds us of what is at stake and scares us back onto the straight and narrow; which would you prefer the discipline of your loving God now or the torture of the depraved lucifer torture later? The fire God wants to light is in our hearts but if that doesn’t work he will light one under our buts. Likewise, christians are called to publically challenge those that won’t heed the gospel not because we enjoy the conflict that sin has necessitated but because our overwhelming love for the lost supersedes our comfort... and theirs for that matter. Notice this verse doesn’t say, ‘if you are an extrovert’ or ‘if you enjoy a good argument’. Jesus commission is more important than you or I.

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Luke 10:11 | ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’

THE BEST DEFENCE IS A GOOD OFFENSE. Imagine what it would you feel like to have someone do this to you (especially that meek little push over that offered you peace a few moments ago)? Wiping the dust off your feet doesn’t sound very christian does it? Well Jesus, aka the gospel personified, is telling us here that it is... Evangelism won’t always work. People who refuse to accept the peace and healing we offer will sooner blame the effectiveness of the gospel than admit their own sinful nature because they have hardened hearts. BUT do not allow them to harden YOUR heart, do not doubt yourself, the worth of our message or the assurance of our commission; Jesus told us that when we go out to evangelise that ‘the kingdom of God has come near’ even if the world is too spiritual blind and numb to receive it. When we encounter Jesus at the cross we leave our worldly baggage but we take up the kingdom of heaven like spiritual snails so that no matter where we go we take our heavenly home with us and our works and testimony pave behind us a silver trail of so that those with eyes to see may find their way to the cross and God their loving father. The real question is how can we change our tact to wake these seemingly unsaveable people? Jesus has a radical answer: we are to publically offend those who reject the gospel. Now we need to be careful here because our actions must always come first and foremost from love. So let me ask you, according to this scripture, who are we wiping the dust off our feet for? Others. God said to Adam and Eve after they sinned Genesis 3:17 | cursed is the ground because of you, so sure, at one level we are wiping off other peoples cursed culture and ideologies. However, at the end of the day we are clean because Jesus washed our feet not because we wipe dust onto others. This scripture is clear that we are wiping the dust off our feet and clearly communicating in the process as a very last resort and loving warning for those that need to be offended in order to realise their spiritual deadness. Don’t just write off your friends or even enemies because you are afraid of conflict. You need to take the time to lovingly rebuke them.

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Luke 10:12 | I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

HAVE PITY. After reading this I have a couple of questions. 1.What day is Jesus talking about? John 12:47-48 | For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. 2. What happened to Sodom? Sodom was a city so evil God personally rained down burning sulfur from the heavens to destroy it in Genesis 19. Therefore, before we wipe the dust off our feet, we need to make 110% sure we have well and truly offered the gospel of peace. The naughty h-word in christianity is what? ‘Hell’, some christians don’t believe in it, even more refuse to preach it, including, the Mormons, 7th Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witness’. But when we as christians say we have been saved what is it that we think we have been saved from? Salvation and condemnation are two sides to the same coin of God’s goodness it is how we respond to Jesus’ life and commission which determines which side we get to be on. Hell is not a rock-and-roll party for the cool kids it is a place you wouldn’t want to send your worst enemy to. Matthew 13:50 describes it as a place of  ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’. Revelation 14:10 | they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night. Aren’t you grateful that you have been saved from that? Aren’t you worried for your unsaved friends?

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Normally in church you try to finish a series with something upbeat but as we just read Jesus finished his commission to the 72 evangelists he was sending out by reminding them of what is at stake.

Have you ever seen this image before? This baby was crawling toward a United Nations food camp located one kilometer away. Kevin Carter who took this photograph later confided to his friends that he wished he had intervened. He won a Pulitzer Prize for this photo then commited suicide.

I hate this imagine; I personally feel guilty that such an atrocity can even occur in the world where I enjoy so much privilege. If you were there would you not run to this poor baby to protect it, feed it, love it, even raise it as your own? Well then why don’t we run to those who are spiritually starving, under threat of attack and an eternity in hell all around us right here in the Macarthur. Kevin couldn’t live with his decision not to intervene and nor can I. Today I us to make a covenant with one another in the presence of God to intervene.

God I will go.

I will offer your peace.

I will offer your healing.

I will offer your warning.

Today I declare a binding covenant with you.

To devote my life to being Jesus for the lost.

No matter what it takes.

Amen