Friday, July 5, 2019

When Truth Gets Offensive

Monday, July 8, 2019

About that time, serious trouble developed in Ephesus concerning the Way.  It began with Demetrius, a silversmith who had a large business manufacturing silver shrines of the Greek goddess Artemis. He kept many craftsmen busy.  He called them together, along with others employed in similar trades, and addressed them as follows:  “Gentlemen, you know that our wealth comes from this business.  But as you have seen and heard, this man Paul has persuaded many people that handmade gods aren’t really gods at all.  And he’s done this not only here in Ephesus but throughout the entire province!  Of course, I’m not just talking about the loss of public respect for our business.  I’m also concerned that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will lose its influence and that Artemis—this magnificent goddess worshiped throughout the province of Asia and all around the world—will be robbed of her great prestige!”  Acts 19:23-27     

 (for another post on this text see here)

Truth usually becomes offensive for two reasons:
1.     When you proclaim any truth as absolute…as in 1 plus 1 is always two, and never anything else.
2.     When that truth is, as former Vice President Al Gore called it, inconvenient!
An absolute truth is one which leaves no wiggle room for anything else.  Paul claimed that exclusivity for the Gospel, and it became inconvenient for Demetrius:

There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”  Acts 4:12

With those two sentences saying the exclusive way to God is through Jesus Christ Paul claimed roughly two-thirds of the world’s population is going to Hell when they die.  That is an absolute truth claim, and it’s also quite inconvenient for around 4 billion people; people just like Demetrius, who wasn’t so much worried about going to Hell (he worshipped Artemis, making little silver statues of the goddess who never sent anyone to Hell…well, actually, she never did anything but sit on the fireplace mantel gathering dust).  I have a sneaking suspicion Demetrius was a little more concerned with his idol business franchise losing market share than he was outraged by Paul’s religious views.
When I was being trained in personal evangelism, I had a mentor who was rather firm, forthright, and forceful about presenting the Gospel to anyone.  I asked him the question everyone seems so worried about these days:  if you come on strong with all this Jesus being the only way, won’t you wind up offending them…you know, scare people off?  I will never forget his response:  Russell, if you scare them off, where they gonna go…Hell #2?
It’s true; there are only two possibilities, and the fact remains that Jesus is the only One standing at the fork in that road.  One way leads to Heaven, the other to Hell.  I got the point.
For You Today
You don’t have to be a hard-shell nutcase, foaming at the mouth, rather, just the opposite; your job is to let the Holy Spirit make you a winsome witness who just tells the truth.
Let me borrow John Wesley’s way of saying it:
Tell all the people you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
As long as ever you can…
…that Jesus loves them, died for them, and they can know God through Him.
And if that scares them off to Hell #2, you couldn’t have helped them by keeping your mouth shut!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Mathilde Hospital   via Wikimedia Commons    Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

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