• Three things: 1. Special service this Sunday for the ordination of Tom Bilbro and Matthew Lanser to the offices of elder and deacon, respectively. Thankful for their service to Christ in our midst. 2. Remember the special musical, *Joseph,* next Saturday at 7:30, featuring our own Ross Hauck. Preview here. 3. MEN’S MINISTRY is on for this Saturday at 9:00. Breakfast included.
• Christians are supposed to be disenchanted with the world, and the sooner the better. The psalmist is bitter when he writes, “in my dismay I said, ‘all men are liars’” (Ps 116:11), yet in the midst of the mess the Lord has “ delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.” There it is: the world is a place of lying, weeping, failure and death. God is a shepherd, deliverer, redeemer. The one is all despair; the other is all hope.
• Yet Christians are always trying to dress up the world and make it work for them, like putting lipstick on a corpse. There’s no end to our, in effect, sprinkling holy water on the 52” TV (mine is only 24”). No end to our thinking that access to the halls of power and money will bring about the kingdom and righteousness of God. No end to our thinking the place where we park our cars, eat our meals, and spend the night is really home. With another psalmist, we “envy the wicked” when we see them prosper, and we think our efforts toward godliness are a stupid waste of time (Ps 73:3,13). Middle-aged people, still hearing the mocking echo of their younger zeal, are uniquely susceptible to this despair, and often abandon the pursuit of God and godliness.
• Don’t do it. “God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do” (Heb. 6:10). Let the world do what it’s going to do — you stay the course. “ Exhort one another every day, as long as it’s called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Heb. 3:13-14).
• None of this constitutes abandoning the world, rather you will shine brighter and brighter as a light in the darkness. And the light of Christ, your light, is what this world cannot produce on its own — you are the only source (Mt 5:14-16). In the meantime, expect the pagans to act like pagans, expect the world to be dark (1 Cor 5:9-13). We don’t need to fix or dress up the world; we just need to introduce it to its Redeemer. It is the work of Christ alone to come, in his glory, bearing the new heavens and the new earth (Rev. 21:1-4).