Abandoned by God
Posted on : 20-12-2006 | By : Alex S. Leung | In : Reformed, Theology
2
“Rebellion” - Part 4
This post is the hardest one for me to write in this series on rebellion. After hearing John MacArthur’s exposition of Romans 1 in early November to Southern Seminary, I was awaken from my slumber of minimal spiritual discernment about what happened to the musical worship ministry during Campus Challenge 2006. These thoughts have been boiling in my heart and mind for a long time now, and still as I share these thoughts in the form of written word, I am humbled by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit through Word of God. I know now that this is an accurate biblical explanation of why such a large-scale, musical blunders happened to such a skilled team of musicians at this big ministry conference. These are not my own words, but words of Divine grace, and may God show through his lovingkindess the truth that sanctifies all of us through and through.
God’s Wrath on Unrighteousness
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
When I wrote the words “without excuse” to the Campus Challenge 2006 worship team back in May, little did I know about the true weight of Paul’s words in Romans 1. Some found my words hurtful when looking at the context of the passage and a lot of pain & grief was suffered by the entire team as we grieved over our mess ups. On the Sunday night of the 4 day conference, one thing after the other began failing: a circuit broke in the main theatre during practice, leaving the worship team with little practice, the team being discouraged by the uncontrollable events, the projection screen failed to stop when lowered thus crashing down on the drums; and then during the evening worship set there were significant musical mistakes & mis-cues creating a very distracting worship environment for all the delegates. At the end of the night program, the Holy Spirit moved in the hearts of the delegates as tears of joy and sorrow flowed; the responsive worship set was unplanned and largely Spirit-led, and fortunately despite no musicians knowing where the response songs were going everybody in the room just wanted to worship in song.
After all the events of the evening ended, I neglected saying anything to the team or the worship leaders about their failures during the evening set–God’s Spirit seemed to have led us to a certain place of celebratory jubilation in the response set that it did not seem fitting for me to criticize the team on the major blunders of the night. On Monday morning I said nothing about it either, and so my own failure for the conference was having not discussed the failures with the team during the conference. Reflecting on the conference after the fact revealed to me that they did indeed require wise instruction from their Worship Advisor and I simply failed them and God in this respect.
From a detailed, expositional study Romans 1, I find that the main lesson we should have learned is found in the very fact that I neglected to verbally question, criticize, or instruct the team on their mistakes. Through me not doing anything about what happened, I can see now that God was trying to show us a bigger picture: that the Lord was abandoning us as an act of Holy judgment for the sins we have committed. Sins not necessarily committed by members of the worship team, but more concisely, by our generation. In one sense, every person in that auditorium experienced the wrath of God when we shared the distracting musical mishaps together.
In that moment and even in the days following the conference, I did not know that the Lord had departed from us. But now, through God’s illuminating Word by His Spirit’s enlightenment, I can now see that we had been abandoned by God because of sin and disobedience: as an individuals, and as a people. Simply put, God wasn’t there to answer when we called upon Him to stop us from failing, and He just turned us over to the inevitable results of our own sinful choices.
It came to a point, even to a covenant people, where God abandons His people, when God turns a nation to the consequences of his own sinful choices–which is further sin. We live with a people and in a nation that has been abandoned by God to its sinful choices and to the inevitable consequences of those choices: further and further sin, deeper and deeper inequity. It is not a new thing, but rather, we are watching the same age-old cycle that has gone on again and again. Exposed to the truth, we soon deny and reject the truth of God in disobedience, and God punishes us through abandonment.
It was in this time that God’s Spirit no longer strives with us and His judgment takes over instead, a judgment that could be described as the deprivation of restraining grace. When God removes His restraining grace, moral chaos and confusion kicks in and hence we struggle to find peace in the middle of wrath and in the aftermath of sin.
The wrath of God in the context of Romans 1 shows us the specific form of God’s punishment. It is not His eternal wrath (everlasting torment and punishment in hell), nor is it eschatological wrath (the wrath that God pours out at the end of the age just prior to the return of Christ); and it is neither consequential wrath (the “whatever one sows he reaps” Galatians 6 / built-in consequence of sin that produce disastrous effects) nor is it calamitous wrath (acts of God by which he does massively destructive things in the form of natural disasters). The wrath of Romans 1 is abandonment: in which he abandons a society.
Before all the other wraths, there is a time where God’s wrath is already at work–when He abandons a society and its people. This would be the worst time ever to do anything in ministry to accommodate the culture; to make a culture under divine judgment feel comfortable would be the antithesis of what God has called us to do. In the context of CC’06, allowing ourselves feel good and satisfied with our ministry efforts would not be appropriate at all.
We see that Paul used the words “God gave them up” 3 times in this Romans 1: in verse 24, 26, and 28. The Greek word used in these 3 verses has a judicial meaning, explaining that the wrath of God has acted judicially to sentence sinners for their disobedience.
God’s wrath is described in verses 24-32, which I’ll explain in Part 5…
(Continued in Part 5, coming soon…)
“Rebellion”:
Part 1-Worshippers Rebel
Part 2-False Faith
Part 3-The Apostasy of Young and Old
Part 4-Abandoned by God
Part 5-Deprived of Restraining Grace
Hey Alex,
I’ve been holding back from messaging you the past while… I applaud your honesty and sincerity in following Christ and glorifying God, but I also have to say in your past blogs I find it… interesting, to say the least, what you have written about worship, life and most of all, now CC06 worship.
Y’know… I find that although you are trying to be entirely biblical on your approach to people, you also seem to be talking from a “top-down” approach when speaking to others. I know you have a “preaching” vein in you, but I think it’s important for you to consider that these are still your peers you are talking to.
I think the biggest mistake you can make is to speak the gospel message at people without loving God first (which I think you do well) as well as loving His people as yourself. I think in reading your email towards the worship team at CC06 you did not show as much your OWN love towards them as much as you wanted show biblical truth to them. I think those can’t be done without the other.
When I was “the worship advisor” the year before, I saw a bunch of you young’uns leading worship, but I knew I had to get to know you guys better before I could’ve said anything directly to you. There are times to speak truth boldly, but the majority of the time, I fully believe relationships are priority because that’s how Jesus exemplified it (heck even Paul did when he wrote to those churches HE knew people from)
Now being in ministry, I ‘ve realized, how can you realistically speak truth into people’s life without being in community with them?
I know you probably felt you knew these people well enough to speak directly at the errors that happened, or perhaps you even feel as long as you speak the truths of the word it will be enough… but I challenge you to constantly make more and more of an effort to be a theologian AS WELL as a relationship builder. Jesus did both effectively and therefore, we need to learn to do both effectively, not one without the other. I hope these aren’t negative words, but words to help.
Live for Christ as you have always been my friend,
Shu
Hey Alex,
After reading this post, and reading the response that shu put up, I’m sorta left w/out words.
As one of the members from last years and this years CC worship team, and as your friend Alex, I’m still not really sure what to make of this.
I has assumed that as a team, we had the time to work and sort it through. But i guess I was SOOO wrong on that one.
I know that you have a hard time w/ what happened during CC this year, and maybe a lot more than that.
I know you went through a lot of hurt, on all fronts, on all levels, spiritually, emotionally, which all strangely can lead to getting physically hurt. and i don’t know if it makes any sort of difference right now, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry that when during the times that you were hurting the most, that you felt that there was no one around you, supporting you, and caring for you. I’m sorry that those that you had placed such high expectations upon, all seemed to have failed you. I’m sorry that things didn’t exactly work out the way that you had expected. I’m sorry that people hurt you, and hurt you bad, to the point of having issues in trusting someone again. Maybe i’m not the one that can actually say the “i’m sorry” about all these things, because I know i don’t have the solution to “fix it”. But if anything, i think it’s something that you needed to hear, just for the healing of your soul.
back to it, i think that there are some things that as much as i appreciate your transparency of your blog, that if you have beef with any of us, that instead of immediately writing it out on your blog, that you actually come talk those involved first. With the attitude that i’m getting from this post, it sounds very much like a “me against them” or “me against the world” mentality, and in the end, just seems to breed more resentment and build more walls on both sides. I think that if you actually had approached us, not only would earn respect amongst those involved, but it would also encourage unity and community, and demonstrate God’s love, and His ability to heal the broken hearted. Right now, it just seems that rather than really dealing w/ the problem, and actually putting in the effort and time to speaking w/ us about it first, that you’d rather take the “easy way out” and just put it out on your blog so that you would never have to deal w/ us personally about it. I admit. It’s easy to do that, to start using your blog as a crutch, and a means to justify yourself.
i don’t mean for this to sound like an attack, or condemning at all. I don’t like to judge, and from the bible, we’re asked not to, cuz then the same measurements that we use on others, will then also be placed on ourselves. I guess if anything i’m just trying to understand where all of this is coming from. You know, i don’t have the gift of theology (if there were such a gift), or the gift of understanding intellectual theological arguements, but if anything, i have an interest in just listening, and wanting to know more about others and about God, and how the roles each of us play in this cosmic world end up affecting what is waiting for us in eternity.
well i hope you didn’t take this comment/response in the negative way, my intention wasn’t for it to be that way, but just to find the common ground, and to just share some thoughts and words w/ you, in love.
kat