God had seven to 20 billion people whose thoughts were evil all the time; they had reached the tipping point of no return—the solution? A worldwide flood; eight were saved. Years later, Eli’s sons were evil to the core, no heir apparent. The solution was answering a broken-hearted woman’s prayer; Samuel was born. King Agag was denying God; his tribe was corrupt to the core. Solution? Samuel sent King Saul to wipe out the entire tribe including the children, animals, et al. God’s solutions are not always easy. King Saul wimped and 500 years later God had a greater problem. The 70 years of owed captivity are over. Many Jews have gone home to Jerusalem; the vast majority of them are in high positions in 127 nations of the Persian Empire. An Agag descendant has risen to number two in the empire and has planed the death of all Jews. The solution? God has a beautiful and brilliant Jewish queen on the Persian throne, and she uses 100% of her feminine wiles and the Agite and his ten sons are hanged on their own gallows. God’s long range solution: He set up synagogues over the whole Persian Empire to be stepping stones for Paul to build the Christian church 600 years later. God had a greater problem, as Paul clearly put it in Romans, All the earth full of humans had sinned and fallen short of God’s glory; in fact, they were all Hell bound. Solution? God had to come to earth: Virgin born, nine months in the womb, and birthed in a stable, with the mother attended by the rough hands of a carpenter. Mother and family fled to Egypt to save God’s life. Thirty-three years in this dusty corner of the world, and God ended up on a Roman cross to be his own solution to sin. The rest of the solution: the whole world needs to know and have a chance to respond. The ultimate solution, which is squarely in your lap and mine, is the Great Commission (Get sinners worldwide to fall in love with Jesus by making him appealing, baptizing them and teaching them). This solution to the world’s problem was given 2,000 years ago and never rescinded, modified, or amended.
The problem is the modern church of every stripe has its own solutions. The major problem, the modern church does not want to get their hands dirty by dealing with sinners with the God solution. Thus, they seek to boycott sinners, alienating them and closing the door to reaching them. The righteous Christians refuse to bake a cake for a sinner, closing the door to Jesus, costing the Lord’s church a million dollars of mission money and mega Christian man hours, spitting in the face of Jesus. Across town a photographer makes the same error, and again drives a nail back in the hands of Jesus and the majority of the church stands applauding the sinful behavior. While the church is being super righteous and wrapping their religious robes about themselves, Jesus is crying in the corner of heaven; we have forsaken his solution.
Now, today, God has a tremendous problem. It is approaching the problem he had before the flood. Because the government, education, business, and the media have all bought into the negating of absolutes and making everything relative, we have an avalanche of American leaders being fired, resigning, or hiding out because they have been living the modern philosophy. The culture’s answer is to fire them, disgrace them, and try to teach them morals by using immoral methods. The American press, the American government is floundering. The problem for the church is that, if we can believe Focus on the Family’s pastoral hotline, above 60% of the pastors that call in are dealing with the same problems that the American public is dealing with. We are drowning in pornography, illicit sexual touching, and sexual relations with church and business associates.
God’s solution is for the church to return to the Sermon on the Mount and realize that for us, sexual lust in the mind is just as sinful as a behind-the-door office affair with the CEO pressuring the secretary to have intercourse. Once the church gets their act together and returns to purity of mind and action we can offer God’s solution to the secular world.
Where the world is firing, censuring, and covering up sexual sins they are doing nothing to prevent the next generation from following in the current footsteps of the fired and censured. The solution is to realize that 2,000 years ago Jesus knew this problem would exist and has a one-size-fits-all answer. That answer is to make Jesus the Messiah of God appealing to the cultural sinner more than the slippery morals of relativity. Once we make Jesus appealing to them we can disciple them, baptize them, and change their lifestyle with new birth. This opens the door to changing their life, their children’s life, and their grandchildren’s life, and getting our culture back to the absolutes of God. Then men will be taught to treat women as sisters or mothers.
