Exploding Like Water On A Grease Fire?

I’ve been thinking today about a quote from Stephen Altrogge:

Trying to stop the gospel is like pouring water on a grease fire. The gospel explodes in the face of opposition.

As I have been preaching through the book of Acts at our Sunday morning Gathered Worship, I have been thinking a lot about the pattern that followed Paul and the development of the Church. Paul would go into an area, go to the synagogue (the “religious” people), expound Jesus, find rejection, go to the Gentiles (the “irreligious” people), find general acceptance, then stir up opposition. It nearly always seems that as the opposition increases, Luke inserts one of his summary statements like Acts 19:20: “So the word of the Lord t continued to increase and prevail mightily.”

Why doesn’t the church in America find opposition like this anymore? In Acts 19:21-41, Paul finds himself in the midst of a riot because the spread of the Gospel meant that people were no longer buying idols and the idol-makers (no, not Simon Cowell), were losing money and became infuriated. Why don’t the modern-day “idol-makers” lose money with the spread of the Gospel? Why does pornography still flourish? Why is there still poverty and injustice? Why don’t we find opposition?

We live neutered lives and we preach a powerless message. Yes, the Gospel is about personal salvation, but it is also much more than that. It is about being with Jesus when we die, but it is also about living with and for Him now. It is the proclamation of Jesus as Lord and King, it is the news of a new Kingdom growing out of the thorns and thistles of this fallen world, disarming the rulers and authorities, creating a new people from all peoples unlike the old peoples. The Gospel should be dangerous. When it is, it fuels opposition. When it isn’t, we are simply viewed as another voting block or another consumer group.

Could it be that the Gospel in America rarely spurs opposition because we don’t preach the full Gospel? We love the individual, “that’s fine for you” elements, but we don’t like the part where it says that we are made different people with different affections and allegiances. After all, we don’t want people to think we’re weird and we certainly don’t want to offend people.

It is my heart that we at Church of the Cross would make a real difference in our city, that the “idol-makers” would be infuriated because we are changing the Northwest Phoenix Valley with, by and for the Gospel.

I want us to be a people with a deep-rooted Gospel that affects every area of life, not just ensuring that we’ll “go to heaven when we die,” but that calls, enables, empowers and indeed, demands that we live different lives here and now.

Wouldn’t you like to be part of a movement instead of just “going to church?”