Cling to Christ

This week I had the privilege of giving a message on clinging to Christ at the Oyumino Alive! Worship service. What a blessing! Yoji Horino translated the sermon into Japanese.

I spoke from Philippians 2:12-18. There Paul speaks to the Philippian church about obeying even when he is not there. (don’t cling to the approval of others) He contrasts obeying when he is present with obeying because it is God who is at work in us. What is our heart motivation for obedience? Is it a fear of man? Is it a fear of punishment? Are we motivated by guilt; trying to atone for our past sins and failures?

Paul’s specific command in this passage is to do all things without grumbling or questioning. When we think about how easy it is to grumble and question, we realize our lack of pure delight in God and His law. We noted the similarity of the Pharisees’ external righteousness and our own tendency toward mere external obedience when other Christians are watching. We recognized that we must have internal righteousness. But, we then see that by ourselves we cannot produce this type of righteousness. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:16 & 24) But, thanks be to God, He sent Jesus not only to atone for our sins, but He also fulfilled all righteousness as our representative (the second Adam, cf. I Cor. 15:45). And we concluded by seeing that though Christ obeyed perfectly in our stead, we are not released from our duty to obey; rather we are now motivated and empowered to obey by His great love for us . We must cling to Christ and His perfect work as the source of our salvation and as the source of power to live the Christian life.

Our Calling

My wife and I are in the midst of transitioning from short-term to long-term missionaries. We have been serving here in Japan for 2 years now. Before Mother’s Day 2002 I had never really considered serving overseas. I believed that God was calling me to full-time ministry, but to me that meant in the U.S. At the time, I didn’t see the inconsistency of my position.

It’s not that I didn’t understand the Great Commission. It’s not that I didn’t have a heart for missions. We had been serving our church’s missions committee for several years. But, I had not really ever considered the possibility that God would call me to serve in ministry somewhere other than my home country. Then, it happened. On Mother’s day a missionary from Japan that we supported came to our church. After Sunday school I cornered him to ask him how he and his family was doing. We got to talking and he asked me about my future plans for ministry. He asked if I had ever considered foreign missions. I answered as honestly as I could. I said, “No. Not really. My wife would probably love it. But, me? God, would have to open that door and kick me through it!”

Little did I know…but, God was pulling on his boot!

Immediately after I said this the music that signaled the beginning of the worship service began. “Whew!” I thought, “saved by the organ!” The missionary preached. He shared many things about Japan. But, he also preached from Isaiah 60:1-3 and Matthew 28:18-20. It was a simple message not unlike many that I had heard from missionaries in the past. But, God moved in my heart that day. As he preached, it broke on me like a tidal wave: Here I was, saying that God was calling me to ministry. Yet, I was only willing to do so in my home country where we have an over abundance of ministers! In countries like Japan, there are very, very few. Oh! Don’t think that I immediately obeyed and said “Yes, Lord.” I struggled and fought. But, I knew that I couldn’t fight. finally, I gave in and prayed, “God, if you want me to go, I will go.”

Later, the missionary (without preamble) asked me to come to Japan. What do you think I said? …I didn’t say anything! I hadn’t even mentioned to my wife what I was struggling with. Not to mention, I was still fighting! On the way home, however, I told my wife, “I think God may be calling us to Japan. What do you think?” She said, “I think you’re right.” Now, ordinarily I am a very conservative Christian. But, this answer floored me. God was working the same thing in my wife that He was in me. Though, I don’t think she needed quite the kick that I did.

God has grown in us a love for the Japanese people and a deep desire to see them changed by the power of the gospel.

If you click the graphic above, you will see that the Japanese are the largest unreached people group. This info is from Joshua Project. This doesn’t mean that Japan has a smaller percentage of Christians than other countries. Although the percentage of Christians in Japan is extremely low, the statistic states that it is the largest, by population, unreached people group in the world.

Why are there so few Christian missionaries in Japan? Because it is expensive. Japan is the second richest nation in the world (in terms of per capita income.) So, who is going to reach out to this rich nation? Isn’t it the responsibility of the American church? We, the church of Jesus Christ in the richest nation in the world, with all our money and resources; we must financially and prayerfully support and send missionaries to Japan!

The Darkness and the Beauty of Japan

Living in a foreign culture like Japan is really an eye-opening, thought-provoking, and often heart-wrenching experience. It is easy at times to be deluded into thinking that “this isn’t that different from America.” Japan is a modern country. We have all of the technological conveniences that we had in America. Most people drive nice cars in Japan. We have many American based businesses in Japan like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and 7-11.

But, Things are so, so different! For one thing, when you order a medium size drink at McD’s it is a lot smaller than in America. But, more importantly the size of the church and individual churches are smaller. The church in Japan makes up somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of 1%. Less than 1/2 of a percent! The average church in Japan is around 30 members. The growth of the church in Japan is also very slow.

Make no mistake. Japan is indeed a pagan culture. It has deep roots in Shintoism and Buddhism. This is not to be read lightly or dismissed out of hand. It is easy to say, “yes, yes, we know. We’ve heard that countries like Japan and China worship false gods.” That is easy to say when you aren’t looking into the face of someone you have been preaching the gospel to for 2 years, when she says that she went to the Shinto shrine on Sunday to pray for a safe delivery of her new grand-son/grand-daughter. Who or what is she praying to!? I pray that God will open the eyes of the Japanese people to see that there is only one true God who can hear and answer prayer.

The temples and shrines in Japan are really beautiful. But, the longer I live here and the more I think about what they really are, the more I dislike them. The real beauty of Japan is its people.

Me and my dear friend and co-laborer in the gospel, Mr. Dedachi

Gospel Contextualization

It is interesting how each generation of the church wants to re-define what the church is. This is particularly true of the American church since the 1960’s. This comes from the very western notion of individualism as well as from the 60’s ideas of freedom and self expression. While these things taken by themselves are not all bad, the problem comes when the church fails to properly remain true to its heritage, particularly the Scriptures, but also the heritage of the church. Or the other extreme of remaining true to the heritage of the church while failing to engage the culture.

Now, we certainly do not want to hold on needlessly to church traditions that are of purely human origin. Those traditions that have no basis in Scripture need to be examined carefully in light of Scripture to see if they are worth continuing.

But, what is needed is a proper contextualization of the truths of Scripture. What does that mean? It does not mean a compromise of Biblical truth. It is sharing the truths of Scripture in ways that connect with the people in the context that the church finds herself. This isn’t easy! We don’t want to isolate ourselves by becoming too much of a sub-culture. Though, the church will be somewhat isolated simply by the nature of being Christians in a non-Christian world, we are called to engage the culture as salt and light.

We are to love our neighbors, not look down in disdain at them. We ought to know that we are just as undeserving of God’s love as they. The only difference is the love of Christ and the grace of God in our lives. We have done nothing to earn the love that God has lavished on us. This is true not only of our past, before we became Christians, but it is also true of our lives now. Even the righteousness that we think we have attained since becoming Christians is tainted with impure motives and impure actions. Our only righteousness before God is what Christ acheived on our behalf in His life. His perfect righteousness is credited to us by grace alone through faith alone.

It is with this attitude of humilty, knowing that we are Christ’s only by grace, that we can engage the culture in love. This is the kind of contextualization that we need in order to reach the lost while not compromising Biblical truth.