The Hole in Our Gospel - part 2

Further excerpts from Richard Stearn's book, The Hole in Our Gospel. Please read this book.

"The true gospel is a call to self-denial. It is not a call to self-fulfillment."
John MacArthur
(25)

When we say that we want to be His disciple, yet attach a list of conditions, Jesus refuses to accept our terms. His terms involve unconditional surrender.
(39)

"If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him."
Sir Francis Bacon
(42)

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King Jr.
(53)

Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Isaiah 58:3-5

God is never satisfied with rituals and liturgies when the hearts of His people remain corrupt. So He suggested in this passage something that ought to stun our own beliefs about prayer – that because of their hypocrisy, He would not even listen to their prayers! . . . So if God is not pleased with man’s prayers and veneration, what does please Him?

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Isaiah 58:6-7

If we are to be part of this coming kingdom, God expects our lives – our churches and faith communities too – to be characterized by these authentic signs of our own transformation: compassion, mercy, justice, and love – demonstrated tangibly.
(55-57)

(Read Matthew 25:31-46)

The people gathered before Christ will be divided into two clear groups, the sheep and the goats. But what is perhaps most surprising is that the criterion for dividing the two groups is not that the sheep confessed faith in Christ while the goats did not, but rather that the sheep had acted in tangible and loving ways toward the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and the vulnerable, while the goats did not. Those whose lives were characterized by acts of love done to “the least of these” were blessed and welcomed by Christ into His Father’s kingdom. Those who had failed to respond, whose faith found no expression in compassion to the needy, were banished into eternal fire.
(58-59)

We learn that Christ’s criterion for determining authenticity of someone’s profession to follow Him is whether or not he or she tangibly cared for those in need. And now we are told that when we do care for them, we are actually caring for Christ Himself – His identity merged with the least and last. There is no “whole gospel” without compassion and justice shown to the poor.
(60)

It takes transformed people to transform the world.
(74)