JEREMIAH GOSPELED
A friend of mine gospeled to a friend of his called Jeremiah and experienced the joy of seeing that friend in a repentant trust taking on him the name of the Lord Jesus in baptism [note Acts 2:37-38; 19:1-5].
Paul speaks of the gospel as "mystery" [1 Timothy 3:16]—truth once hidden but now made known to the believers. He summarized it to Timothy.
The incarnation, the death and resurrection [implied in vindication in the Spirit—see Romans 1:3 and 1 Corinthians 15:34 with 1 Peter 3:18 and elsewhere] and His glorification are there and so is preaching. Angels saw it all and [astonishingly] he was "believed on in the world."
This world where the satanic and demonic forces grin and leer at us? The world of the emperors headed up by the prince/god of this world? Jesus was preached in a world like that and believed in?
No wonder he called the mystery "great".
Now and then [not too often!] I'm again stunned by what I see and hear at a baptism. Stunned by the gospeling that goes on there. I think of the noise, the jeering, the voices, sobbing women, hammers on spikes, groans—all that and more! There’s the clash of worlds, empires coming down in ruins, someone bursting up out of the water like someone bursting out of the tomb in a resurrection to triumph and deathless glory.
All of that is rehearsed in baptism in response to a foolish preached message voiced by fools for a Lord who again plays the fool in a Church that’s called his Body [note 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and 4:10].
Once more in his new body [Colossians 1:18; Ephesians 1:22-23] he embraces the mocking as he reprises his victory over a “world” of entrenched evil and shows his triumph over the world-spirit at the baptism of a single young person called Jeremiah.
There! There in that moment and in that act the gargantuan world, the behemoth that swallows up nations is shown to be the donkey it is.
Dear God, it’s done with words! How insane is that? Not just words; words that “the world” jeers at!
“What’s wrong with these idiots—they think their ‘gospel’ makes
sense!”
Yes, we do!
“And more and more idiots believe the words!”
Yes, they do!
And these words bring empires down in ruins, they dismantle worlds and bring evil imaginations and lies into captivity and lay them at the feet of the King of Kings [2 Corinthians 10:3-5].
When you say these things quickly [or develop them slowly and deliberately] they can make the adrenalin rush and the heart beat faster. But when they were transpiring in actual history in the beginning—before the little house churches in Rome grew so large that they knocked down the Roman amphitheaters to make room—before that happened the Church must have appeared pathetic and its gospel weak philosophy but it was God’s power because in it God’s saving righteousness was made known and the “world” collapsed before it [Romans 1:16].
For a while it must have seemed like tens of thousands of tiny losses, endless vain rushes when the believers had hoped they would end the wicked thing in one determined push. Instead they found it a long hard, slow, unpromising series of engagements with a stubborn foe with a million satanic allies. But it happened—rush or no rush, dramatically or in a slow resistless tide.
We hear the same jeering today, note the same bored indifference, listen to the same tolerant and “wise” dismissal, watch the same rolling of the eyes and shaking of he unbelieving heads.
Then Jeremiah in response to gospeling approaches the water and in faith plunges in and rises into a new world!
Great is the mystery of godliness!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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