sbc_theme_62303

Posted 6/20/03

SBC speakers promote kingdom, family

By Tony Cartledge

North Carolina Biblical Recorder

PHOENIX, Ariz.–Theme interpreters focused on the kingdom of God and crises facing the church during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 17-18.

“Jesus Christ is king,” Adrian Rogers told messengers in the opening message on Tuesday morning “We didn't vote him in; we will not vote him out.”

Rogers, a former SBC president and pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in suburban Memphis, Tenn., said Jesus Christ has been maligned and minimized in public education and public events in America, but Jesus remains King of kings.

Clayton Ross (right) of Lakewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, tries to collide with Adam Yarbrough of Warren Baptist Church in Indianapolis during the Southern Baptist Convention Student Conference, June 17. Youth volunteer Leslie Ledbetter referees the inflatable Sumo wrestling game set up on the plaza of the Phoenix Civic Center.

“You'll never really appreciate the kingdom until you see his king,” Rogers said, drawing on Revelation 1:12-18 to highlight 10 characteristics of Christ as king. Those include Christ's “undiminished humanity,” “unrivaled majesty” and “unblemished purity,” he said. Christ also reveals humans' hearts with “unhindered scrutiny,” Rogers said, with eyes that not only see, but see through.

Rogers described Christ as one who will judge with “untarnished integrity.”

The king cannot overlook sin, he said, explaining that sin either will be pardoned or punished. “If Jesus Christ were to let one half of one sin go unpunished, he would cease to be holy,” Rogers said.

Christ rules with “unchallenged authority” and with “unequalled mastery” as he wins an “unspoiled victory” with the sword that comes from his mouth, Rogers said.

“God spoke, and universes dripped from his fingers,” Rogers said.

Even though a day is coming when the antichrist and his hordes will fight against Christ with all their modern technology and weapons, Rogers said, Jesus will win the victory using only the sword of his mouth.

Finally, Rogers said, Christ rules with “undimmed glory” and with “undiluted deity” as the one who died and is alive forevermore.

Appreciating Christ as king should lead believers to respond with total submission and unquestioned obedience, Rogers said. Christians don't need to ask God for more money for missions, he said, but need to give God the money they already have.

Obedient Christians share their faith, Rogers also said. “If you're not interested in soul-winning, if you're not interested in bringing people to the Lord Jesus Christ, God sent me here to tell you you're not right with God. … To refuse his Great Commission is a clenched fist in the face of God; it is high treason against heaven's king.”

Christians should live in glad anticipation of Christ's return, Rogers said, explaining that the antichrist gives people a number, while Jesus gives a name

“When he comes, the big question is, will your name be called, or will your number be up?”

Danny Akin, vice president and academic dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, declared that men who want to be faithful to Christ must begin at home.

A Christian man surrendered to the lordship of Christ will be a different kind of man, he said, a man of conviction, commitment, character and commission.

Akin pointed to Ephesians 5:25-6:4 as a call for men to love their wives and bless their children.

Men should love their wives sacrificially, Akin said, not just emotionally, but volitionally, as an act of will, “even when she is not lovely.”

When Southern Baptists added the “family amendment” to the Baptist Faith & Message in 1998, the public media couldn't see anything but the statement calling for wives to be submissive to their husbands, he said.

“We don't apologize for that,” Akin said, but added that people should read the rest of the article, which says the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and “to provide for his family servant leadership.”

“We're not to be CEOs in our homes,” he said. “We're not to be frustrated drill sergeants, barking out orders,” but servant leaders, shepherd leaders, sacrificial leaders.

Husbands should “love sanctifyingly,” Akin said, encouraging their wives to walk more closely with Christ. “If there's anyone that you disciple in your life, you ought to begin with your wife and then your children,” he said.

Husbands should love their wives with sensitivity, as they cherish their own bodies, Akin said.

“God has made us equal but God has made us different,” he said. “God has called the man to be the leader. God has called the wife to be the helper. But God has wired men and women differently.”

After years of study, Akin said, he has concluded men are like dogs who want only to be fed, played with and praised. Women are more like cats, he said, friendly at times but moody and unpredictable.

A husband's love also should be specific, Akin said.

“Make a covenant with your eyes,” he said, quoting Job 31:1, not to “look intently” at other women, whether in person, in magazines, in movies or on the Internet.

Akin said men likewise should make a covenant never to be alone with any woman other than their wives. Pastors, in particular, should not counsel women alone, he said.

As fathers, men should bless their children, Akin said, educating them to obey their parents. It is not enough just to tell them what to do, he said, but why they should do it.

Fathers also are to encourage their children with focused attention and affirmation, he said.

It doesn't take a great mind to be a man of God, but a great heart, Akin said. “When it comes to winning the world for Christ, I'm going to make sure I start where I need to start;; I'm going to start with my home.”

Effective evangelism requires sharing both the words and the music of the gospel, Ed Young told messengers in the closing address Tuesday night.

Young, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston and a former SBC president, said many of today's churches focus on teaching or praying but don't emphasize evangelism.

The great evangelists from the first and second Great Awakenings attracted great crowds for only a few years because “they ran out of cities,” he noted. They then turned to establishing educational institutions to teach people to go out into the towns and hamlets and preach, he said.

But now America faces a crisis of faith, he said. “We have lost the cultural war.”

In America, 35 percent to 40 percent of the people attend church with some frequency, but few can explain what it means to follow Christ because “we've so watered down Christianity that it has lost any sense of a biblical definition in our day and in our age,” Young asserted.

Young offered an interpretation of the history of Western civilization from the 14th century, when he said most people accepted a biblical worldview, to the present. The church did not adequately respond to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and urbanization, he said, leaving the church frustrated and confused.

Even among Southern Baptists, he said, while the U.S. population virtually doubled in the past 50 years, the SBC has annually baptized about the same number of people.

The SBC now faces “an unbelievable crisis even greater than the theological crisis we came to conventions in great numbers to fight about,” he declared, noting that last year, more than 29,000 Southern Baptist churches baptized less than 10 people each.

Churches are lost in the 1950's, using methodologies that no longer work, he said, a practice he called “insane.”

The answer lies in a first-century strategy for evangelism, Young said. The Apostle Paul and other early evangelists faced ignorance and hostility, the same cultural conditions the church faces today, he said.

To confront ignorance, the church must proclaim the gospel–declaring, defining and defending the word of God, Young said.

To confront hostility, the church should serve through social ministries, he said, explaining that the church exploded numerically in the first few centuries because the early Christians gained a reputation as people who served the poor, the suffering, and the diseased.

In the final theme interpretation, the executive director of the five-year-old Southern Baptists of Texas Convention said Jesus offered insights into “kingdom living” through three encounters in Luke 9:57-62.

Jim Richards said kingdom living calls for believers to trust in the provisions of God's providence. To one who offered to follow Him, Jesus cautioned that “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Some Christians misinterpret the “prayer of Jabez” to think of God as “a cosmic bellboy waiting to grant our every wish,” he said, but Christians are bound to experience trials.

“God is not as concerned about our happiness as he is our holiness; he is not as concerned about our comfort as he is about our cross,” Richards said.

To deal with difficulties, believers should rely on the Holy Spirit and rest in God's promises, he said, and the provisions of God's providence will see them through.

Kingdom living calls for an appreciation of the pre-eminence of Christ's person, Richards said, urging that Christians should not be consumed by popular opinion or controlled by personal agendas.

Those who please Christ live in deference to Christ's call to preach the gospel and are willing to die to self, Richards said.

Finally, kingdom living involves following the priority of Christ's plan, he said.

Jesus said those who would follow him cannot take their hand from the plow, Richards noted, explaining that means one who follows Christ cannot look back or lapse into old lifestyles but must look forward to plow a straight row.

A Christian's purpose should include seeking holiness, he concluded. “We've lowered the bar of holiness, and we have allowed public culture to creep in to the point that we have lost our saltiness.”

Following Christ's priorities requires getting alone with God every day, he said, and doing God's will: “Kingdom living today is all about living for the King.”