The Rebuke

 When James and John heard about it, they said to Jesus, 'Lord, should we order down fire from heaven to burn them up?' But Jesus turned and rebuked them." Luke 9:54-55

Jesus and His disciples were heading to Jerusalem, and they were traveling through Samaria. Samaritans were a mixed blood people, the descendants of Jews who intermarried with the non-Jewish people who populated the land after Israel was carried away into exile by the Babylonians. Jews and Samaritans despised each other. As a result, when Jesus sent ahead asking a Samaritan village if He and His followers could stay there, they denied Him because He was a Jew and was heading to the hated city of Jerusalem. The brothers James and John, thinking they would be doing a righteous work, asked if they could call down fire on the village and destroy the people. Jesus rebuked them because they were exhibiting a spirit not from His Kingdom, but from hell. We who identify as His, do well to ponder how this applies to us. What spirit are many of us walking in today? Where are we earning His rebuke.

My heart grieves with a deep heaviness over what has been unfolding in our nation over the last decade and a half, though the seeds for it were planted long before. What happened yesterday in Washington D.C. is only a symptom of what has been brewing for a long time. Our culture is soaked in a spirit of hate and anger. This is a tragedy, but the greater tragedy is that many in the Church have been swept up in that spirit as well. We see it in the rhetoric of both sides of the political and social spectrum. Hate, and all the violence that springs from it, comes naturally to those without Christ. It is to be totally alien for the one who calls themselves one of His.

The burning, looting, violence, chaos, and hatred we have been seeing unfold before our eyes comes straight out of the devil's "gameplan." Decades ago C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, an account of how the demons of hell work through the minds and hearts of men to bring about destruction. It is all about how the enemy manipulates humans to bring about his desired end, and my friends, that's exactly what he's doing right now. And too many of God's people have been swept up in this manipulation. Have been deceived.

I confess that I have been angered by the actions of those I would consider being on the opposite side politically and socially from where I stand. I know too that this anger can be stoked by a media committed to manipulating me, you, to carry out the purposes of the enemy who very much works through it. If I do not live with my heart and mind guarded by His Spirit, by the armor of God outlined in Ephesians 6, then I know that I too will walk in the same spirit as did James and John. The spirit that wants to destroy my "enemies," who are not my real enemies at all. As His Word says, we don't war against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces in high places who work through fallen flesh. God forgive me for where I've permitted them to work through my flesh. Like James and John, I've earned His rebuke. Have you? In fact, it's not a question of if you have, but where you have?

Jesus rebuked the brothers because they were not moving in the Spirit of the Kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of this world. As His Word says, the anger of men will not accomplish the righteousness of God. We cannot have victory by fighting with worldly weapons, but with heavenly ones. Our anger cannot be carnal, but must be righteous, and directed not at people, but at the demonic kingdom that seeks to control and destroy all humankind.

The Church can have only one response in this time. We must rise up in the power of His Holy Spirit, and in that power, the power of risen lives, lift up the name of Jesus Christ. He said that where He was lifted up, He would draw all men to Himself. Too much of the church has been living and acting in the flesh. We haven't been lifting up Christ at all. I am talking of living out a faith and life rooted in Him, His holiness and righteousness. A life so God filled the world can't deny it. A life that in every way points to Christ Himself. I want to live that life, and I repent of all that has kept me from living it. Do you? Will you?

Let's be done with the ways of the flesh, and walk in the way of the Spirit. Let's stop living lives that bring His rebuke, and live ones that bring His approval. Let's repent of wanting to call down destroying fire on those we believe are against us, and instead call for His Holy Fire to fall upon a church in desperate need of it. A fire that destroys all inner corruption and leaves us whole and holy. That fire brings no rebuke. That fire is needed now.

Blessings, Pastor O