To Gain the Good Land (6)

Test all things; hold fast what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5.21

New…but improved?
In our day, whatever is new is best. The community of those who are seeking the promises of God is not immune from this temptation.

Every year brings new TV programs, new music and films, new fashions, new cars, new brands of this, that, and the other, new ideas, new morality. Old stuff just can’t be relied on any more, so whatever is new is best, and out with the old.

Christians can easily become infected with this virus of our age. We’re as ready to jettison our past heritage and ways of doing things as the next guy. We’re as susceptible to shifting winds of doctrine and morality as any of the unbelieving people in our Personal Mission Fields. Who knows anything these days about the heritage of Christian culture? Who cares about theology? Or believes the Law of God has any abiding validity? And who wants to sing those old, stodgy hymns when we have new praise songs coming available every week?

But the danger in defaulting to all things new is that we can lose sight of the ancient and precious promises of God.

The function of salt
We should remember that Christians are called to be the salt of the earth. In Jesus’ day, the primary function of salt was as a preservative. Rub a little salt in your meat, and it keeps that which is good, thus fighting off the inevitable drift toward corruption and decay.

Christians are supposed to be like that. Part of the pattern we follow for any Christian endeavor must include efforts at conserving whatever is good and passing it along to the next generation of the followers of Christ (Ps. 78.1-8). As David recalled (Ps. 68.7-10), when the people of Israel entered the land of Canaan, they found it to be a good land, with many good cities and farms, which God had prepared as a staging ground for blessing the world. In their Personal Mission Fields, Christians are called to discern, use, and preserve whatever is good, for this is a way of ensuring the presence of God’s glory into the future.

The pattern of Christian endeavor we have been considering in this series begins with focusing on the glory of God and determining to bring Jesus Christ and His Kingdom near to the people around us. For this we must prepare daily and show up in all the social and cultural arenas of our lives, ready to struggle for the progress of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit. We claim the promise of God to protect and provide for us, and to make us a blessing to the people around us. We work to put away everything that is corrupt and hurtful, and to follow whatever is good, and add to it in every way we can.

This pattern holds whether we’re talking about our own walk with the Lord, the work of our church, or the churches and ministries at work for the Lord in our communities. Right focus, careful preparation, consistent presence, and the ability – by our lives and words – to overcome evil with good: this is what we’re called to as the followers of Jesus Christ.

Spiritual entropy
But we need to remember that a principle of spiritual entropy is at work in this fallen world. Whatever is not tested and held fast for the goodness and glory of the Lord, will become affected by the corrupting presence of sin (cf. Eph. 5.15-17) Paul called the Thessalonians to test all things. We must take nothing for granted in our lives. We must not assume that any good land gained for the Kingdom, any progress in our lives, churches, or ministries, comes with inherent permanence. We must constantly examine ourselves and our work to identify and ferret out any corrupting influences and to hold fast to whatever is good, so that we might preserve it for the generations that succeed us. We must continually pay attention to whatever is going on in our Personal Mission Fields, so that we may understand the needs and concerns of others, and know what we must do (1 Chron. 12.32). And we must review the promises of God and the upward prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus, and continuously make certain that these are the ends we seek.

In this respect, we’ve got some catching up to do. This generation of Christians has turned its back on the glorious heritage of our Christian past, where we may find numerous examples of good work to help us gain the good land in our day. We have been too quick to replace everything in our lives – whether in our personal lives or our churches – with whatever seems new and hip and cool and likely to be agreeable to the unsaved people around us. We have let go of our great heritage of theology, the arts, liturgy, ministry, spiritual life and discipline, and evangelism, trading all this for a mess of postmodern pottage, and forfeiting the promises of God in the bargain.

Test everything
It’s time we tested our own actions as a community, across the board. Are we holding on to everything that is good? Or are we clinging to forms and practices which, because they are “new” and “promising” have, like some Gresham’s Law of spiritual life, established themselves as the “new orthodoxy” and relegated all our glorious Christian past to the dust bin of history?

We’ll never know unless we’re willing to test our efforts against the promises of God and His glory, and the achievements of our forebears in the faith. But continuous testing and assessing of all we do must be part of the pattern of any Christian endeavor.

For reflection
1.  Are Christians today in danger of leaving behind some very important “old” things? Explain:

2.  Meditate on Psalm 78.1-8. What are Christians expected to preserve and pass down to the next generation? How does your church do this? What are some good things about your community that Christians should seek to conserve?

3.  What does Paul mean by saying we should “test everything”? How does that apply to your daily walk with the Lord? To your church’s various ministries?

Next steps – Preparation: Do you practice the kind of self-watch called for in Scripture (cf. Prov. 4.20-27, 1 Tim. 4.16)? How might you begin to practice this more consistently? Do you have an accountability partner or a prayer partner who might help you in this?

T. M. Moore

This is part 3 of a 5-part series, Living toward the Promises. You can download this week’s study as a free PDF, suitable for personal or group use, by clicking here. You can learn more about living toward the promises of God by ordering a copy of the book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

We invite you to register for the free online course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview. In this course T. M. Moore provides a sweeping panorama of how life in the Kingdom of God unfolds in an age in flight from God such as ours. Set your own schedule and study at your own pace. Learn more, and register for One in Twelve, by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.