So Grace Bible took a turn for the better last week.  The policy of the church has always been all-I-need-is-my-Bible, gospel gospel gospel.  Which becomes narrower with each repetition. In it’s quest to ensure that nothing interferes with the Gospel they have advocated a Gospel that doesn’t interfere with much of anything.  It has become a private things that we talk about on Sunday but does’t really flesh out into much of our lives.  The practical outworking of this gospel is basically only seen in saving souls, getting butts in the seats I like to say.  And it’s not just one Church in the Gallatin Valley.  This has been the trend, this is American Evangelism, it’s in the title.  Ever since the masses were caught up in the Second Great Awakening and all the camp revivals, which emphasized the saving of souls in dramatic emotional performances, this has defined American Christianity.

It carries down to this day as Franklin Graham, takes over for his father in their well orchestrated mass alter calls.  Men like D. L. Moody set the tone in their Bible Bible Bible schools.  He tells the story of a man who died unsaved after listening to one of his sermons, or something.  Then he vows to never preach again without an invitation and or the gospel.  I may have this story completely wrong, but the point is this has been the trend.  But then the revival is over, the tents are folded up, sunday comes to a close.  We go back to real life none the different.  It’s that mile wide inch deep faith.  It finally fell apart in the 60’s.  A whole generation had been completely unequipped to handle the realities of life with a faith that didn’t answer any of life’s question.  “Because I said so”  or “because the Bible says so” hardly made a dent in the growing humanist ideologies.  The faith of their parents seemed fake, so they started their own camp meetings, like Woodstock.  They had revival services at their universities complaining about war or their underwear, hell bent on destroying everything their parents had loved.  I think we can concluded that this was a disaster, yet the narrow butt-saving gospel kept being preached.

But as I said there was a turn.  Jesus spent a lot of his time just healing.  It’s right there in Mark 6.  It’s wasn’t conditional on hearing his gospel presentation, the gospel presentation was the healing.  He was remaking the earth, as far as the curse was found.  If there was something wrong, he was fixing it, this was his job, this is our job.  The gospel applies to everything, not just fire insurance, every area of life.  This is the Protestant dignity given back to work.  It’s not just the ‘holy’ professions like monk, priest, or cardinal that are doing the kingdom work, it is every profession.  The shoe maker and the blacksmith each bring heaven to this earth by doing their work to the glory of God.  By applying the gospel to their trades in the sight of all men.

I think we often misunderstand the “cup of water” statement of Jesus (Mark 9:41).  We take it as a call to worship the poor.  Really it’s saying that anyone who does any tiny thing for a Christian because he is a Christian, will not lose his reward.  But what about getting saved?

Or, I think of Jesus stopping to condemn a fig tree that is unfruitful (Mark 11).  Of course it is a rich metaphor, he is the gardener etc, but the fact is he stopped to kill a tree.  He is the gardner, and being a gardner and tending to a tree is part of the gospel, it is part of making earth like heaven, of reversing the curse.  No doubt the disciples want him to get on with the work of throwing off the Romans, and we want him to get on with saving some people.  But he is doing quite well fixing one tree.

And so the masses flocked to him, to have things made right.  Today the masses flock to America for healing of every kind.  This was the vision of those Protestants who wished to build a city on a hill, in the sight of the world.  And so they did, they sailed over on a ship to rule and subdue a new land.  They converted the savages that they could, and died by the thousands, from starvation, winter, invasion, and wild animals.  They established a land like the world has never seen, it wasn’t about saving people, in fact they had left millions of people who needed saving.  They simply applied the gospel to agriculture, ship building, trapping, government, military and education and the world has noticed.  Today they come to us for just a corner of the American Dream.  But we have lost our way in the main.  We forgot what the gospel was, we let the world redefine it for us, and they are all to happy with a private faith that has no place in the public sphere.

It’s interesting to note as we currently deal with an immigration problem, that Jesus didn’t heal everyone.  He often retreated to pray, or speak to his disciples.  Every entity person or government has limits.  We should know our limits or we become ineffectual to everyone.  Historically there were long periods where immigration was all but cut off in this country.  That was wise.  Water it down too much and it is no good to anyone.

But he healed indiscriminately? I know it seemed odd to our pastor and many others.  But is it really that hard to believe that Jesus would pour out blessings on even the unsaved?  It’s really just an encore of what he did in the first creation.  Every breath used to curse God was given to man by God himself.  Every fist raised to God in anger was given to him by God.  God crated a world where man can take the blessings of creation and use them against the creator.  This is the overflowing bounty of God, and Jesus repeated it when he walked this earth.  It’s not just a narrow pragmatic mission to get everyone saved, it’s a beautiful frivolous party hosted by the God of the Universe.  And the people too dumb to see it will get their wish and not be invited back.  But it shouldn’t be those in the church, we should be partying every day and gospeling everything.  Step one is admitting you have a problem, check.