speaking of what God's done

I was reading a periodical yesterday that's sent out to many of the churches that comprise the "family" of churches in the "movement" that my church was originally born out of. The movement is historically known as the Restoration Movement, and, in a nutshell, it rose out of many people in the mid-1800s wanting to do away with creeds, denominationalism, and divisions arising from doctrinal disagreements. It also had a lot to do with their seeing the need to baptize by immersion as accords with Scripture, contrary to the many at the time who had moved away from faith-based baptism. Why it's called the "Restoration Movement" is because the original men and women who brought the movement about desired to restore the Church to the New Testament model of church life and day-to-day discipleship. To them, the New Testament was enough without creeds, and elders running the churches was enough without hands-off leaders being "in charge" of churches from some office in a big city disconnected from the churches themselves. I praise God for these people, because even though I disagree with much of their conclusions regarding certain ideologies that I believe were misguided, I DO still believe their hearts were in the right place and I agree mostly with the core ideas--"Let's let the Scriptures guide the Church, let's be autonomous (self-governing as the churches in Acts were), and let's exalt Christ above all things," seems to be what they were about. Sounds good to me! Praise God, that's what I'M all about!: Christ's work, the Bible, and the Church. Let's do it--thus I'm preaching in a Restoration church, because I'm on board.

Yet (and perhaps it's been this way for a long time and I've just now realized it because I've just now started keeping up with it) recently I've noticed a stream of "scholarship" in much of the publications that are put out by Restoration churches and Christians. Getting back to what I started with, I was reading one yesterday and I noticed something that was unsettling. Almost every article spent more time speaking about what Christians are doing wrong than speaking about what Christ has accomplished on the cross and out of the grave. In a sense, they spoke more about what we do bad, instead of what Christ has done good. Of course, we need to speak of what is truth, and if it's all sin and corruption, we need to speak of it. All you need to do is turn to an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah or one of the smaller Prophet books like Malachi and Zechariah to see that sin needs to be spoken to. That's granted and I certainly can't discount the need to speak to it--I speak to sin every week as I preach and teach.

And yet when I look through New Testament teaching, I see something that's somewhat of a slant. The aforementioned publications I'm speaking of get sent out to different churches, and in a sense are LETTERS written by church leaders to encourage other churches, just like Paul's letters were in the New Testament, so the comparison is fair. If I'm attacking the fact that these writers attack other people's sins with almost every paragraph, I know it needs to be said that Paul spoke of sin and corruption as well, which you can see clearly if you look through Romans 14, large chunks of 1 Corinthians, specifically chs. 3, 5, 6, 9, and 14, and we could go on with the rest of his letters, including the ones to the churches AND the ones to the individual young pastors.
Also both John and Peter spoke to specific sins, as you can see if you look at 2 Peter 2, large chunks of 1 John (including the beginning of ch 2, which seems to have John saying this whole letter is written so you won't sin), a part of 3 John, and chs 2 and 3 of Revelation, where Jesus tells the churches what his beef with them is.

Of course, we wouldn't even need to say anything about the four Gospels which each have Jesus not shrinking from calling people out as sinners and holding the inwardly (and outwardly) pious accountable where they were wrong, as is evidenced especially in the middle sections of Luke and John.
What's my point in bringing all of this up? I want to make it known that I know it's important to hold people accountable for their sins, and the Scriptures seem to make it clear all over the place (see Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 2 Thessalonians 3 at the end among others). The reason for this necessity to speak truth with each other as Christians is so that we will "grow up in every way in...Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 4:15), and be "competent, equipped for every good work"..."that the Father has prepared for us to do" (2 Timothy 3:17, Ephesians 2:10).

However, let me be clear...and if you're reading this, you obviously care at least a little about what I have to say, and if you do, PLEASE hear me right now: what's MORE important for Christians to know and understand is what Christ has DONE, not what we and our world are DOING. Let me be more clear if that's a confusing statement--no one ever became a Christian by hearing a preacher point out everyone else's faults and the fact that the world has problems. They only became a Christian because a preacher preaches Christ and His finished work IN LIGHT of the world and all it's problems.

In Acts 1:8, right before Jesus ascends and leaves His disciples, He tells them, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." And then He left them.
But did you catch what He said? "You will be my witnesses." The reason this is significant is because I hope you see that Jesus wants His disciples to go and witness FROM Him, TO everyone else. That's what it means to "witness" in any context: to share information with others about what you've seen/heard/felt. Jesus clearly wants His disciples to share what has been accomplished by Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven. Luke tells us at the very end the first part of the story he wrote (his Gospel being the first part, and Acts being the second part), that Jesus told His disciples that "repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem," and He concluded, "You are witnesses of these things" (Luke 24:47-48). Then he picks up with the Acts 1 passage we just looked at IMMEDIATELY after that.

Interestingly, if you read throughout the rest of the Book of Acts, you see that what Jesus told His disciples to do is EXACTLY what they did. "Be my witnesses to the ends of the earth...proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins..." They did it.
You can see it if you look at the sermons of Acts: 2:14-41 is Peter's Pentecost sermon, and he tells them, "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." (v 23) Then he says, "This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses." (v 32) When the people ask what they are to do with Peter's message, he says, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ." (v 38).
Moving onto Peter's sermon at Solomon's portico in 3:11-26, in v 15 he tells them, "you killed the Author of Life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses." Then (v 19), "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out..."
In 4:8-12, Peter and John are speaking to the council in Jerusalem regarding their healing of a man who was lame, and they say, "by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead--by Him this man is standing before you well" (v 10).
I won't keep going, but suffice it to say that EVERY sermon throughout the rest of the book of Acts, including the rest of Peter's, Stephens huge sermon, and all of Paul's emphasize the work of Christ whether it's His work on the Cross, out of the grave, in their (the preacher's) own individual lives, or all of the above in most cases. (Let it be known, the only exception to this is when Paul talks to the people in Athens in 17:22-31; he doesn't preach Christ to them...rather, he preaches to them ONE GOD (most of these people don't believe in one God, but a team of little 'specialist' gods), and he tells them that this God is bringing forth a judgment. He bridges the gap with their unbelief, and we can assume that if he would have stayed in Athens, the next meeting would have been spent preaching Christ.)

Anyways, like I said I'm not going to go through the rest of the sermons in Acts, but if you'd like to, you'll find them in 7:2-53 (Stephen), 10:34-43 (Peter preaching to Cornelius and Gentiles), 13:13-41 (Paul and Barnabas at Antioch-Pisidia), 15:7-11 (Peter at the Jerusalem council), 20:18-35 (Paul to the Ephesian elders), 21:37-22:21 (Paul in the Temple), 24:10-21 (Paul before the ruler Felix), and 26:2-29 (Paul before Herod Agrippa).

Now I know that just by starting off this blog post calling out fellow brothers and sisters who are wrongfully spending all of their time telling everyone else what they're doing wrong, I'M doing the very thing I'm preaching against. I'll concede that. But what I want you to know is this: God is our Creator, we've rebelled and continue to rebel from Him, and now we're spiritually dead. Jesus Christ went to the cross to atone for sins for all time and to absorb the righteous wrath of God to secure salvation for those who would put their trust in His finished work from first to last (John 3:16, Romans 10:9), who make up a "multitude no man can number" (Revelation 7:9). He then rose from the dead, so that as these sinners come to Him, they would die to sin and be reborn into new life (John 3:5-6, Romans 6:1-4, Galatians 2:20) that lasts eternally and is characterized by the ever-present knowledge that Christ is with them for all of time.

As part of the Restoration Movement, how can we possibly give our time and our energies to anything BUT preaching Christ? The Movement started out of desiring to restore the New Testament Church--and when I read through the New Testament, it seems like all I see is Christ saturated on every page: what He DID, who He IS, what He's DOING, what the Cross means, what salvation in His name is, etc. Yet why aren't men preaching it? I suppose it's because we (myself included) find it easier to point the finger at other people's sins, which like I said, is important--if we've learned anything from Scripture, that's it. But that's not ALL THERE IS, and it's not even MOST of what's in the Scripture. The Bible is about Jesus and what He's accomplished on the cross, conquering sin, and rising from the dead, conquering death. It's that simple.
What do we tell those people we write to and preach to? Very simply what we just said about Christ's work, followed by a "turn to Him, trust in Him, call on Him, and run to Him."
Otherwise, we're Pharisees and I'd hate to hear what Jesus' words to us one day will be.