2020: THE CHALLENGE AND THE SOLUTION
September 30, 2020PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE SOUNDS FAMILIAR… Riots. Disease. Politics. Racism. Poverty. Division. These words surface in the minds of many, like a google search predictor, when considering America in 2020. Interestingly, they also adequately describe Israel at the time of Christ. Romans oppressed the Jews. The sick and the poor littered the public squares. Hate crimes were committed openly in the streets by Roman officials. Jews were either corrupted by the Roman authorities or formed rebel groups aimed against them in retaliation. Division wasn’t limited to Jew against Roman, however. Even Jews harbored bitterness for other Jews. In the midst of all the turmoil were many religious teachings, philosophies, and politics that infiltrated the culture, but not one of them offered real solutions. Sound familiar? LOVE YOUR ENEMIES I want you to really catch the similarities here. Take a moment. Let it sink in. Now imagine Jesus… that’s right, Jesus… in the flesh, stepping into our current predicament. What would he say to us? I think he would say much of the same things He did then! Yes, Jesus would absolutely preach on righteousness and judgment, and Republicans would love it. He’d also preach on social justice and the Democrats would applaud it. He wouldn’t stop there, though. He’d then proceed to tell us stories like that of the Good Samaritan where a Samaritan man shows great compassion for someone who had been beaten and left for dead. It’s significant that Jesus chose a Samaritan to be the protagonist in this story because the hearers would have been Jewish; Jews despised Samaritans more than any other people group. It...
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