Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Matt. 9:35-38, Gen. 3:1-6

Let's get out our wallets and open our purses. I want us to retrieve any pictures of loved ones we have with us. How many of us have at least one picture of a loved one? How many who are grandparents have pictures of our grandchildren with us? We love our families.

Now let me ask the really tough question. As we gaze lovingly at these pictures, how many of us know that all of these loved ones are active in church, walking daily with the Lord, so that we are confident we will meet them in heaven? Who among us is absolutely confident that their entire extended family is devotedly Christian so that we are assured of their salvation? If we have such a family here today I'd like us to honor that familyŠ

Okay, let me ask the question in a way that includes most of us. How many of us have concerns for some family member who has wandered away from God? Truth be told, most of us have a prodigal son or daughter, brother or sister, grandparent or grandchild. Nearly all of us have family members who not only are not following Jesus, but they show no transformational signs of having experienced God's love in any deep, meaningful sense. How do we pray for our loved ones who don't know God?

Jesus compassionately referred to them as "sheep without a shepherd." In fact, he instructed us in a way that we can pray about these concerns. Jesus taught us to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers to gather in people to experience God's love. In other words, he wants us not only to pray for our loved ones to come to faith, but to get specific enough to pray that some Christian would be used by God to share the good news of God's love with those loved ones.

But there is a potential problem with this approach to prayer. If we are not careful, the idea of asking the Lord to send laborers into the harvest can be dangerous. Taken the wrong way, we can use this idea of simply praying for the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest field to mean that we have abdicated our responsibility for being witnesses ourselves. "Lord, send laborers into your harvest field to be your witnesses," can really mean we are praying a prayer of passivity. "Lord, send someone else to do all the work, while I just sit here and pray." This is not how prayer works. Jesus never taught passive prayer. So how do we pray for the laborers to evangelize our loved ones, without becoming passive?

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God say, "You shall not eat from any tree in the garden"?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die." ' But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

-Gen. 3:1-6

The language teacher finished explaining to the class that in the romance languages nouns are either male or female. As an exercise, the instructor divided the class so that all the female students were on one side of the room and the male students on the opposite side. The teacher then asked the two groups to answer the question, "What gender are computers?" After a few moments, the women declared that computers are male. They gave the following four reasons. (1) In order to get their attention you have to turn them on. (2) They have a lot of data but are clueless. (3) They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem. (4) As soon as you commit to one, you learn that if you had waited longer you could have had a better model The men responded that computers are female. They reasoned as follows: (1) No one but their creator understands their internal logic. (2) The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. (3) Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval. (4) As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

In May I had the joy of attending our annual men's retreat. The speaker put a new slant on the Adam and Eve story for us. He reminded us that too often Eve has been blamed for bringing sin into the world. She ate the apple, so it was all her fault. The speaker then asked us to look at the Bible story again. Where was Adam when Eve ate the fruit? Adam was standing right beside her. He had been warned by God and knew better but he failed to speak up. Adam remained passive. We were reminded that one of the central male sin areas is our tendency toward passivity.

The husband could call on the way home from work just to tell his wife that he loves her and while he's at it, stop to get her a bouquet of flowers, but instead he passively drives home, collapses in front of the television, and then wonders why she feels unappreciated. The father could volunteer to coach their daughter's ball team, but he sits on the bar stool telling the bartender his woes and then wonders why his children are disrespectful when he tells them to do something. The man could give up one golf game a week to join a local service club and become engaged in blessing the community, but he doesn't. Passivity.

While this appears as a distinctively male problem, unfortunately it can creep into the hearts of women as well. The sin of passivity has crept into the whole church. It is particularly a problem when it comes to being a witness for Jesus to others. Evangelistic passivity came in through a belief known as universalism. Simply put, universalism is the idea that everybody goes to heaven. Nobody goes to hell. It sounds so alluring at first. Follow the logic. God is love. That means God loves everybody. If God loves everybody, then God's love would not allow anybody to go to hell. Thus, since God loves everybody so much that nobody is judged or condemned, we don't need to share God's love with others. They already have it. We start with God's love and end up with passivity. When it comes to salvation, God does it all without our doing anything.

Let's face it, universalism and evangelistic passivity is quite alluring. But do we really want to go where this takes us? I don't think so. Let me show where universalism inevitably takes us. Not only does it let us off the hook of sharing God's love with others, it also leads us away from any ethical responsibility. If God's love assures us that everybody is accepted into heaven, then it doesn't actually matter what people do here. No matter what people do, God will forgive and love them without their need to repent or change. Therefore, Hitler, Sadam Hussein, and the communist guards who tortured some of our own church members while they were POWs in Vietnam all go to heaven without any consequences. It wasn't really wrong to commit mass murders, since nothing done here on earth counts in the long run. No consequences means there is no such thing as wrong.

He is an influential person in our society. If I told you his name you would recognize it. It is important that I protect our friendship and maintain his anonymity. To tell you the truth, I felt complimented that he wanted to meet with me. Soon after the brief formalities, (I think a bodyguard was nearby, but I did not discern who it was) he asked me his question, "Bruce, do you believe in hell?"

To be honest I was tempted to tiptoe around it with one of those "on the one hand, on the other hand" replies. But he had given precious time to meet me and have an honest discussion about his faith. I began by saying that my definition of hell is not a literal lake of fire. After I was done giving my caveats, I finally responded honestly. "Yes, I believe there are those who will suffer torment in an eternity separated from God's love." I clarified, "It is not because God angrily sends anyone there, but rather that some people are so arrogant that they refuse to admit they have been wrong and need to repent in order to come back to God and let God love them." He smiled and responded, "Good. I believe in hell too." He told me he could not hang in there through all the worst of human nature and continue as a positive influence to others if he didn't believe in hell.

Here is the truth. Very few of us are really Universalists. We think we are, but when push comes to shove we are not really. Universalism collapses due to our interior need to draw a line between right and wrong. We deeply want there to be not only forgiveness and love, but also justice and consequences for evil. Claiming God loves and forgives everyone sounds good until we are pressed to answer the question whether God forgives Hitler without Hitler needing to admit that what he did was evil. Most of us want the Hitlers and Husseins and POW torturers to face consequences for their evil acts. In fact, we want God to be fair as well as forgiving, just as well as merciful. While we want God to forgive the wrongs people do, we also want bad people to become good.

The good news is that God's love is not passive. God's love is active. Love is not a passive but rather an active verb. When we love someone we care enough to do something. Love requires us to get involved.

Let me show you what happens when we pray as Jesus instructed us that God send laborers out into the harvest fields. We not only want God to be active, but we discover that we are to be active also. When we pray for the laborers, we grow compassionate toward those who don't know the gospel and we want to share God's love with them. In fact, our persistent prayers for the salvation of loved ones in distant places change our own hearts toward the importance of being witnesses right here to our neighbors. While someone else may be the answer to our prayers for a laborer to that loved one far away, we are the answer to someone's prayer for their loved ones who live here in North County. We stop waiting for God to do it all, and discover that our actions impact those around us.

Senator John McCain tells about his time as a POW in Vietnam. He recalls the Navy officer, Lt. Commander Mike Christian, who meticulously gathered small bits of red, white, and blue cloth to sew inside his shirt a secret American flag. Every night the group inside that prison cell would recite the pledge of allegiance as Mike held open his shirt and revealed the secret flag. One evening the guard discovered what the prisoners were doing and they dragged Mike out of the cell. He was severely beaten for several hours and then thrown back in the cell as a lesson to the rest of what happens when someone dares to resist the authorities.

That night, as John McCain lay down on the concrete slab used for a bed, he looked over at Mike, still bloody from head to toe. With the solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling John could see that Mike's face was swollen beyond recognition. As John watched, Mike dragged himself up and began gathering fresh bits and pieces of red, white, and blue cloth to start his next flag.

When we pray that God's love will touch our loved ones, are we active or passive?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why do you pray? Does God invite us to pray for his sake or for ours?

Do you believe that there is hell? What difference does that make?

Who is a model for you of active prayer?