Key Life Network

Matthew: Kings don't bow, they rule. Let's talk about it on Key Life. Key Life is a radio program for struggling believers, sick of funny religion and pious clichés. Our host and teacher is seminary professor Steve Brown. He teaches that radical freedom leads to infectious joy and surprising faithfulness.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. We're talking about some of the manipulative lies that confuse us. And if you were listening yesterday, we talked about the lies that have to do with God's nature and how in order to fix those lies and get the truth to us, it took a baby born in a manger in a little town nobody heard of.

But the lies don't only have to do with God's nature, but they have to do with God's action. One of the themes of the book of Isaiah, and I love that book. I was taught when I was in graduate school in Boston that Isaiah was not a single book; it was written by a lot of people. And then we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls that were predated some five thousand years before any kind of scrolls that we had—or some thousand years—and we found out it was one book.

And one of the themes, and it can be really confusing in the book of Isaiah, is the theme of a suffering servant. Now, that's not what you expect from a Messiah King. Kings rule; they don't bow. It doesn't work that way when they bow. And yet, in Isaiah 53, it says that the Messiah King, and I'm quoting, "had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces."

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. That's Isaiah 53:3 and 5. Paul wrote that this strange King, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." That's Philippians 2:6 through 8.

When Will Campbell, the late Baptist minister and civil rights activist, began his amazing work of reconciliation between whites and African Americans, he first reached out to African Americans. Campbell was white, and his black friends, maybe because they had suffered so much, accepted him and his dream of reconciliation. However, when Campbell talked about going to the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Groups, his black friends were understandably skeptical.

They wondered how in the world he would get racist whites to listen to him. And with great and wonderful biblical insight, Campbell told them that he was going to empty the bedpans of their sick. He got that from Jesus. That's what God is all about. A friend of mine told me that worship is when we serve God with our lives, words, and music.

My friend pointed out that a lot of worship is like going to a restaurant only to discover that the waiters and the waitresses are sitting at the table expecting the customers to wait on them. I suppose that's an apt illustration for man-centered worship, where the music, the sermons, the liturgy are designed to please the worshipers instead of the God they worship. But the truly amazing thing is that is exactly what the God of the universe has done.

The one for whom—this is Romans 11:36—the one from whom and through whom and to whom are all things, and to whom belong glory forever, has, as it were, waited tables and cleaned floors and toilets. When Jesus washed his disciples' feet in John 13, he said as an aside that as their teacher and Lord, he had washed their feet, and he admonished them to wash one another's feet.

But during the foot washing, Peter got understandably agitated and said in effect that it would be cold in a hot place before he allowed Jesus to wash his feet. What Jesus said to Peter takes my breath away. He said, "Peter, if I do not wash you, you have no share in me." And Simon Peter said, astounded, "Lord, not my feet, but also my hands and my head." Jesus said the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. And if anybody tells you different, they're lying. They've misunderstood. They're misinformed. And they might be nice, you might like them, but don't trust them. You think about that. Amen.

It's Wednesday, and sometimes on Wednesday, I take some time to answer a couple of questions. As you know, Pete Alwinson comes in on Friday, and we spend the entire broadcast answering questions. We love your questions. You can ask a question 24/7 by dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433.

Or you can send your question to Key Life Network, Post Office Box 5000, Maitland, Florida, 32794. If you live in Canada, Key Life Canada, Post Office Box 28060, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8. Or you can email us at steve@keylife.org. And if you can help us financially, please do. I promise we'll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it, and we'll use it for the benefit of your brothers and sisters in Christ who can't afford to help us financially. Enough about that. Let's turn to maybe one or two of these questions.

What do you believe about the end times? That's an email. Jesus wins. That's about it. I've taught the book of Revelation a couple of times. And each time I've taught the book of Revelation, I have stayed confused for most of the time. Don't trust anybody who says they've got it figured out because nobody does have it figured out until it happens, and then we'll know.

Specifically, I'm probably semi-postmillennial if you're interested. I believe sometimes, well, most of the time, that the tribulation and the millennium run concurrent with each other. But bottom line, whatever else I believe, I believe in the end, Jesus is coming back, he's going to clean up the mess, and everything is going to be fine. I know you wanted more details than that, but that's all I've got.

This is an interesting question: As Christians, are we to believe first and then look for justification for why we believe what we believe, or should we examine the reasons for believing and then determine what we believe? Well, this is a lot more complicated question than you think. Theologians refer to something called the *Ordo Salutis*. That means the order of salvation.

And those who are reformed believe that you are saved before you have faith and that it happens and then you have faith and then you believe. And if you get that order wrong, it's not a biblical order. Well, I don't know how I feel about that because it did seem that I had something to do with it. I looked around, I looked at the arguments, I figured that the Christian faith was true.

At least it was truer than anything else I knew because everything else didn't seem true. And so I decided, so, I'm going to become a Christian. And I became a Christian. I gave my life to Christ. There wasn't a whole lot of emotion. But I thought that I thought it through. I thought that I'd read all the books and made a reasonable and good decision.

But you know what I found? When I became a Christian, Jesus said, "Hi, Steve. I've been expecting you all along." So something was going on before I was born. It was no accident where I was born. It was no accident the circumstances in which I was born. It was no accident I had the parents that I had. It was no accident that I read the books that I read.

And I still to this day think that I had something to do with it, but the older I get, the more I realize that it was all Jesus. Every bit of it. He chose to hug me before I was ever born. Hmm. I got to go. But first, let me say: Key Life is a listener-supported production of Key Life Network.