For those of you who have attended the Selah services this and last week, isn't it neat how these two seemingly different series have come together and mirrored one another? In times past, I could have been accused of solid planning - but not lately - this series on the Gospel message of the Apostle Peter has taken on a life of its own and instead of the originally planned fifty-one sermons, there will be seventy-one instead. I just found two more overlooked preaching portions within Mark that I just added to round off this series by the end of May. Nevertheless, my imperfect planning has providentially arranged Psalms 111 and 112 with similar themes to our passages last week and this one as well. And the uniting themes have been our position before the glorious God of heaven and our standing before the common worldly crowd. Given these two dramatically different audiences - we may think that our presence on that dual stage is complex indeed. However, let me assure you that our calling is more simple than what we know. It is only in our time, that silly and stupid professionals have multiplied job descriptions to the nth degree of unattainability.

Professional church planters these days are to have twenty-seven specific skills to guarantee success. Indeed, I heard recently that the only thing holding back the spread of mega-churches is the lack of the intellectual raw material to lead them!

Professional educators have also magnified the problem of educating children even as they have minimized any possible resulting knowledge of their captive charges! Every time I hear one of those fools explain that a classroom teacher must attempt to engage his audience with aspects of learning appropriate to a hundred different individuals, I wonder what ever happened to the older wisdom that simply demanded that the students adapt their work habits towards attaining the necessary knowledge to simply pass the tests? Here in Ohio, the only problem with the proficiency tests is that the educational experts are manipulating those tests to unfairly bring an end to the tests themselves. They don't want to be held accountable for their Alice in Wonderland methodology which is really no methodology at all, but only a patchwork of new age psychobabble.

Living consistently between two worlds is not all that difficult really, if you keep your eyes on the prize - if I may so summarize the ongoing struggles of the civil rights movement. The religious roots of that movement were at one time the most important aspect and in that context more success was achieved than in the more worldly approach of the last few decades.

Recently I received an email joke from a friend. The police interviewed a thief who supposedly stole some property from a church. The man refused to confess. The pastor asked if he could sit down and talk with the man. After a few minutes he came out with a confession and a description of where the goods had been hidden. The policemen were astounded, and asked how had he accomplished what they couldn't. "Very easy," the pastor admitted, "you could only threaten him with a few months in jail, I could threaten him with an eternity in hell!"

There is a wonderful chapter in the book of Numbers which should be our textbook for combatting racial prejudice. Turn with me to that twelfth chapter and I'll outline it quickly and let you peruse it later at your convenience for its full impact. Briefly, Moses' wife Zipporah was a Cushite, or Ethiopian in this translation. Miriam and Aaron, in that order took issue with that providential marital arrangement of the Lord of all the earth! Moses, here in his weakness does not deal with his own brother and sister as he should. So the Lord of all the earth appears before them and threatens the two siblings in the most fearsome manner imaginable. "Is not this man Moses my own prophet?", we may summarize the accusation. Aaron quickly recants his racism when He sees the Lord's judgment on Miriam. Moses immediately prays for the forgiveness of their sins and after a short expulsion from the tribes of promise, she is meekly restored.

I have known about that passage for thirty some years and I have always wondered why I have never ever heard it in the context of the American Civil Rights movement. Racism is wrong because God says so, and all the silly little kkk intellectual toddlers and their pagan aryan cousins should be given over to Satan in preparation for their well deserved eternity in hell! Plain and simple. Now that may be a little tough for today's society, but tough love is a social phenomenon that does indeed work as some skeptics are beginning to admit. We do have to stand for the Lord in our society and tell the world what it doesn't want to hear!

Historically, it was only when honest Christian men began to speak out against slavery that progress was finally achieved. Of course in this country an uncivil was was necessary and for decades it was the power and might of the British Navy alone which scoured the seas for slave ships, destroyed the slaver's forts and overcame local resistance to the necessary acceptance of the revealed wisdom of our God. William Wilberforce spent his life towards ending the racist slavery that had become the accepted practice of too many nations and peoples around the world. Today, we have only to consider the plight of the Sudanese Animists and Christians to realize that this scandalous behavior is still not ended. Now, I have spouted off long enough, let us turn to our passage in Peter's first epistle to apply the scripture to the several lessons for the day.

Verses eleven and twelve advise us of the temporary nature of our presence on this planet. We are here for a short time and we are to use that time for the Lord's work. Now Peter's statement in verse twelve is interesting in that should the world consider our work in His name evil, than it is our good works in His Name which do indeed glorify Him and prove our calling to serve Him. Thus, the first portion of our text here reminds us to remain faithful to the Lord God of heaven and earth and to speak His words accurately and fairly before the world. How the world reacts is to be upon their own heads.

However, as the second portion recommends, our own submission to worldly governments should prove our integrity. The long twilight struggle to call attention to the absolute wickedness of abortion in this country and around the world should give much credit to the Christian witness for the amazing restraint that so much of the church has observed before the world's manipulation of the courts whose lawful roots have been turned against the very purpose of law, order and justice.

The American Civil War may rightly be laid at the feet of the "righteous radicals" who demanded an end to slavery and were unwilling to allow the compromise and conciliation worked out by John Quincy Adams from being invoked by agreeable southerners. Their plan was to gradually do away with the "peculiar institution" which honest men in the south were finally beginning to realize needed to go away. This was not acceptable to the radicals in the north, so many innocent people, both north and south had to pay dearly for their intransigence. So far with the exception of a handful of John Brown types, assassination and assault have been rare and rightly prosecuted. Just this week, one radical abortion terrorist was finally caught overseas and is being returned for trial.

With a new president in office, perhaps some minimal progress may once again be attained towards restoring a biblical policy of protecting the unborn? "Therefore submit yourselves to very ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good." I know, this is many times difficult to do, but just as Moses' siblings were told - this is God's ordering of His creation. We are to submit to rulers as we are to Him. The only time we do otherwise is if the government is requiring us to do something against our God Himself. And then, like the martyrs - we have a different witness to give the world if we cannot escape to another more civilized commonwealth.

Finally, in verse eighteen we are encouraged to be submissive to our corporate masters. We are to endure patiently the employment relationships to which we have agreed. Alexander Solzehnitsyn wrote about a character who taught math for the former Soviet system. And while the teacher was dismayed at the low level of expectations and the favoritism shown to the Party children, he did as he was told, knowing that the faulty work he was required to do would in the end undermine the evil empire and lead to its dissolution. Even Joseph served a cruel autocrat who used a drought to confiscate the accumulated wealth of ancient Egypt. In so doing, the Egyptian economy and kingdom were so weakened that when God's people were called out of that land, the Egyptian government was no threat to the foundation of Israel just beyond the borders of that same Egypt. In a like manner - as corporation socialists consume each other in merger after merger, when it is all said and done and the artificial system can no longer be maintained - what a mighty collapse there will be, it will make the fall of the Soviet Union look like the minor leagues when all is finally said and done!

For the present though, we are to live as God's men and women, uncowed by the worldly systems around us. And why? "For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: 'Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth'; who when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, he did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness - by whose stripes you were healed." "God has appointed", as my commentator Alan Stibbs suggests, "that the innocent should sometimes have to suffer here on earth as if they had done wrong, and the proper submissive spirit in which such suffering should be endured are both supremely illustrated in the passion of Christ."

Well did the theologians of the nineteenth century understand that purpose being worked out in and through the cruelty of the American Civil war. We in the twenty-first century are really no further civilized than our ancestors and as more and more the Christian foundations for our civilization are undermined, so too will God's judgement descend upon our culture. At least, as C.S. Lewis observed in the fifties, in a dying culture Christians will more and more stand out as salt and light in the midst of a world going wild. May the Lord's service in word and deed be our own calling in these latter days. Come quickly Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.