Summary: THE ANCIENT CHALLENGE AND<br> THE NOW CHALLENGE ARE THE SAME<br> The Ancient Challenge And The Now Challenge – Woodstock ’99 was held last weekend. The slogan of the original Woodstock thirty years ago was “Three days of peace and music.” At Woodstock ’99, about 200,000 people attended the last night. It ended with about 50,000 of those people starting a bonfire, then torching the concession stands, then torching the equipment trailers, and finally setting fire to some of the set.<br> <a href="https://www.godsmessageontheweb.com/index.php/2008/05/08/who-would-you-choose-to-be/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Who Would You Choose To Be?</a><br> <br> * I want to use this event and its ending as an illustration.<br> <br> * Some of us sitting here literally cannot grasp that event or its fiery end.<br> <br> * We could not be tempted to attend a rock concert, and certainly not that one.<br> * We are repulsed by the attitudes and words in the song lyrics.<br> * We will never grasp why anyone would burn the entertainment they attend.<br> <br> <br> * Some of us sitting here can understand the appeal of the event and the emotions of the people who started the fires.<br> <br> * You have no personal interest in that kind of concert.<br> * You understand the song lyrics are destructive.<br> * But you have accurate insights into the mind set that would set the fires.<br> <br> <br> * Some of us sitting here know exactly why people attended and exactly why people set the fires.<br> <br> * You frequently are around people who think as they thought.<br> * You clearly know the appeal of the concert, and you fully understand how it could turn violent.<br> <br> <br> * In this assembly there are at least three reactions to what I just said.<br> <br> * Some of you are saying, “How could anyone sitting here understand anyone who thinks and behaves like that.”<br> * Some of you are saying, “If we refuse to try to understand people who are so different to us, a lot of people will never listen to us.”<br> * Some of you are saying, “The church does not understand the world around it, and I doubt that the church will ever understand me.”<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> * Our God specializes in doing the impossible.<br> <br> * God always has specialized in doing the impossible.<br> <br> * Building a nation from one child born to a ninety-year-old woman and a one hundred-year-old man was truly impossible, but God did it.<br> * Creating a special people for Himself from the enslaved descendants of this elderly couple was impossible, but God did it.<br> * Creating His unique kingdom, the church, from “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” was impossible, but God did it (Revelation 5:9).<br> <br> <br> * We spend a lot of time studying and talking about the church that God built through Jesus Christ.<br> <br> * Too often the focus we have on the church is an injustice to God’s work through Jesus Christ.<br> * To make a nation out of the slave descendants of ninety- and one hundred-year-olds seems to us a huge impossibility.<br> * To begin with that nation and make a global kingdom comprised of people of all languages and cultures is, in comparison, an incredible impossibility.<br> <br> <br> * People who declare themselves to be God’s people always have struggled with the same problem.<br> <br> * Ancient Israel never trusted God or what God did.<br> <br> * They believed that God made them a nation.<br> * They just never understood God’s purpose in making them a nation.<br> * As a consequence they always thought of themselves as special, but rarely thought of God’s purpose as special.<br> <br> <br> * We have never truly trusted God or what God did.<br> <br> * We believe that God made us to be His church.<br>
