Text 888, 126 rader
Skriven 2006-02-09 04:00:00 av Bob Hoffman (8:8/2)
Ärende: The Dross Purged
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The Dross Purged
Faith's Checkbook

February 9

The Dross Purged

"And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as
silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on My
Name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is My people: and they shall say,
The LORD is my God" (Zechariah 13:9).

Grace transmutes us into precious metal, and then the fire and the furnace
follows as a necessary consequence. Do we start at this? Would we sooner be
accounted worthless, that we might enjoy repose, like the stones of the field!
This would be to choose the viler part
-- like Esau, to take the pottage and give up the covenant portion.
No, LORD; we will gladly be cast into the furnace rather than be cast out from
Thy presence!

The fire only refines; it does not destroy. We are to be brought through the
fire, not left in it. The LORD values His people as silver, and therefore He is
at pains to purge away their dross. If we are wise, we shall rather welcome the
refining process than decline it. Our prayer will be that our alloy may be
taken from us rather than that we should be withdrawn from the crucible.

O LORD, Thou triest us indeed! We are ready to melt under the fierceness of the
flame. Still, this is Thy way, and Thy way is the best. Sustain us under the
trial and complete the process of our purifying, and we will be Thine forever
and ever.

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Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ’s Work, not Muhammad’s February 8, 2006 —
Fresh Words Edition By John Piper

What we saw this past week in the Islamic demonstrations over the Danish
cartoons of Muhammad was another vivid depiction of the difference between
Muhammad and Christ, and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve
the violence. But a deep lesson remains: The work of Muhammad is based on being
honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two
very different reactions to mockery.

If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his
saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners from the wrath of God.
Already in the Psalms the path of mockery was promised:
“All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their headsö (Psalm
22:7).
“He was despised and rejected by men . . . as one from whom men hide their
faces . . . and we esteemed him notö (Isaiah 53:3). When it actually happened
it was worse than expected. “They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him,
and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. . . . And
kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And
they spit on himö (Matthew 27:28-30). His response to all this was patient
endurance. This was the work he came to do. “Like a lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened
not his mouthö (Isaiah 53:7).

This was not true of Muhammad. And Muslims do not believe it is true of Jesus.
Most Muslims have been taught that Jesus was not crucified. One Sunni Muslim
writes, “Muslims believe that Allah saved the Messiah from the ignominy of
crucifixion.ö1 Another adds, “We honor [Jesus] more than you [Christians] do. .
. . We refuse to believe that God would permit him to suffer death on the
cross.ö2 An essential Muslim impulse is to avoid the “ignominyö of the cross.

That’s the most basic difference between Christ and Muhammad and between a
Muslim and a follower of Christ. For Christ, enduring the mockery of the cross
was the essence of his mission. And for a true follower of Christ enduring
suffering patiently for the glory of Christ is the essence of obedience.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds
of evil against you falsely on my accountö (Matthew 5:11). During his life on
earth Jesus was called a bastard (John 8:41), a drunkard (Matthew 11:19), a
blasphemer (Matthew 26:65), a devil (Matthew 10:25); and he promised his
followers the same: “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how
much more will they malign those of his householdö (Matthew 10:25).

The caricature and mockery of Christ has continued to this day. Martin Scorsese
portrayed Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ as wracked with doubt and
beset with sexual lust. Andres Serrano was funded by the National Endowment for
the Arts to portray Jesus on a cross sunk in a bottle of urine. The Da Vinci
Code portrays Jesus as a mere mortal who married and fathered children.

How should his followers respond? On the one hand, we are grieved and angered.
On the other hand, we identify with Christ, and embrace his suffering, and
rejoice in our afflictions, and say with the apostle Paul that vengeance
belongs to the Lord, let us love our enemies and win them with the gospel. If
Christ did his work by being insulted, we must do ours likewise.

When Muhammad was portrayed in twelve cartoons in the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten, the uproar across the Muslim world was intense and sometimes
violent. Flags were burned, embassies were torched, and at least one Christian
church was stoned. The cartoonists went into hiding in fear for their lives,
like Salman Rushdie before them. What does this mean?

It means that a religion with no insulted Savior will not endure insults to win
the scoffers. It means that this religion is destined to bear the impossible
load of upholding the honor of one who did not die and rise again to make that
possible. It means that Jesus Christ is still the only hope of peace with God
and peace with man. And it means that his followers must be willing to “share
his sufferings, becoming like him in his deathö (Philippians 3:10). Footnotes

1 Badru D. Kateregga and David W. Shenk, Islam and Christianity: A Muslim and a
Christian in Dialogue (Nairobi: Usima Press, 1980), p. 141.
2 Quoted from The Muslim World in J. Dudley Woodberry, editor, Muslims and
Christians on the Emmaus Road (Monrovia, CA: MARC, 1989), p. 164.

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