Be assured, the worst of Satan’s demons are not sitting on the shoulders of complacent Christians debating the virtues of the latest Netflix series.
Instead, the devil’s worst are fighting on two distinct battlefronts. Firstly, against those fighting to come to Christ, and secondly, against those fighting to bring those same people to Christ.
If the apostle Paul had preached a sermon on “Being Better Believers,” everybody in the Synagogue in Thessalonica would have smiled and nodded agreeably. In fact, his message about Jesus being the Messiah may even have been tolerated for novelty’s sake. But the moment that people started to believe and were converted to Christ…it was then that the demons launched their counter attack.
The rent-a-thug riot that ensued had been whipped up by the Jews who had rejected the Gospel. They couldn’t find the preachers, Paul and Silas, so they dragged the new Christians before the city officials instead. This was the opening line of their charges:
“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too” (Acts 17:6).
This message, though originally spat forth with demonic venom, has been a cry of victory for Christians to this very day.
The church was on the move. The Holy Spirit was convicting men of sin, and they were repenting and being baptised into Christ.
The Word of God is the Sword that divides humanity into two groups—Those who are happy with the world as they prefer it, and those who turn it upside down for Jesus.
This does not happen without resistance. If you choose to preach Jesus as Saviour and King, you invite the wrath of “evil men and imposters who go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 2:13).
If we want to see the world turned upside down in this generation, then we must join our first-century brethren who “from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 5:42).
John Staiger
0 Comments