A WAY OF WALKING WITH GOD; REACHING OUT

Joe Kutter

September 30,2007

Our text for today Acts 1:8,

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

The question is, how shall we walk with God and what have the Baptists taught us about walking with God?

Before beginning this reflection, I want to say again that the Baptists have no monopoly on God and the truth is that most of us don’t want one. Just as we have a witness to share, we know that we need the witnesses of others who have been led to follow Christ in different ways and in different places.

Isaac Backus lived in Middleborough, Massachusetts before and after the Revolutionary War. He began his ministry as a Congregationalist but after a long season of intense personal study and struggle, he decided to ask for believers’ baptism by immersion. He came to believe that baptism was a testimony offered to the world about the salvation that Jesus Christ gives us through faith. It was the testimony that he choose to give.

If you understand baptism as testimony, then you are very close to the core of Baptist spirituality.  Through this series, we have said over and over again that God made each of with a personal capacity to respond to God’s Spirit. We were made for spiritual experience. And, I have said, over and over again, that God gave each of us the freedom to respond or not and that freedom must never be blocked by any human force.

When we freely make the decision to respond to God’s spirit and accept the salvation that Christ gives to us through faith, it is inevitable that that there will be times and places where we will share that story. We will find a way and a time and a place to say, I have decided to follow Jesus.  And for many of us, the first time that we tell that story is in the drama of baptism.

Backus had already been a Congregational minister for many years and he had shared his  testimony of God’s love many times over before choosing believers’ baptism by immersion but there came the time when for him it became important to give that testimony. He was baptized and he became a Baptist.

As a Baptist, he discovered the realities of life for Baptists in Massachusetts. He personally discovered the realities of the absence of religious liberty. He agreed with Thomas Helwys and John Bunyan and Roger Williams that Christ alone is the Lord of the conscience and that the rulers of the state have no legitimate authority over the souls of men and women and he became Massachusetts’ greatest campaigner for the separation of church and state.

Why?  He wanted to be free to follow Christ without the interference of the government or the state church.

At one point, in 1773, he proposed a campaign to fill the jails with Baptists who refused to obey the laws concerning the support of the state church. The campaign was not very successful, the Baptists did not want to go to jail, but it demonstrates his eagerness to pursue the case for that elusive thing that the Bible calls justice. And he wanted to be free to preach the gospel of Christ without interference. For Backus, walking with God, testimony, justice and evangelism were all parts of the same reality, faithful obedience to God as revealed in Jesus Christ. It was a way of walking with God.

John Leland was a protégé of Issac Backus and a native of Massachusetts. But his ministry took him south to Virginia primarily for the ministry of evangelism. According to one source, he preached more than 3,000 sermons and baptized 1278 converts.

While Backus was a rather formal New Englander, Leland was a fiery evangelist and his preaching was energetic, to say the least. For Leland, testimony meant evangelism. The love of God which he felt at the center of his soul simply had to be shared.

However, just as Massachusetts had a state church, so did Virginia and while he was allowed to preach, it is clear that in Virginia all who were not Anglicans were seriously disadvantaged. One could be a Baptist as long as one paid to support the Anglican church!

Leland’s fundamental commitment to evangelism led him to two other causes.  He became a powerful proponent of the separation of church and state and is given credit with helping to convince James Madison to include the separation clause in the first amendment to the constitution. Be very clear about this; we have separation of church and state in this beloved nation of ours in very large measure because of the witness of Backus and Leland and the Baptists of their generation. It is a witness, a gift, that we have made to the Christian movement around the world.

Leland also looked at the institution of slavery and became a powerful energetic opponent of it. He simply could not believe that Christ gave his life for a white man and if Christ gave his life for a black man that the white man could regard himself so superior as to own the black man. If the black man has been created with the competence for a relationship with God then he must have the freedom to respond to God without the interference of human masters.  You’ll not be surprised to learn the Leland’s popularity in Virginia faded.

Once again, the experience of Christ’s love within led to testimony and testimony led to outreach. The powerful reality of the Spirit of God in Leland’s life compelled him to share it and in sharing the gospel, he found himself advocating for the rights of other human beings. It was his way of walking with God.

William Carey was a poor English cobbler. He made and repaired shoes. He professed Christ as his savior at the age of 18 and gave his testimony through believers’ baptism. According to the reports, his first preaching attempts were not good and his fellow church members had a hard time seeing him as a pastor or preacher. They, frankly, suggested that he keep his day-job as a cobbler.

But he did have a fascination for the world and an enormous talent for languages. As he worked at his cobbler’s bench, he would study Latin and Greek and Hebrew as well as maps of the world. By the end of his life, he had mastered:  Latin, Greek to interpret the New Testament, Hebrew to interpret the Old Testament, Dutch, French and Italian. After that, Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, Orya, Marathi, Asamese, Punjabi,, Pashjot, Kashmiri, Telegu, and Konkani. The last languages are native to India.

In May, 1792, he preached a sermon on Isaiah 54: 2; “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations….” That famous sermon included the words, “Expect great things from God….Attempt great things for God.”

He preached it to a Baptist associational meeting and he challenged them to care for the lives and souls of men and women around the world. That sermon sparked a fire that has not yet quit burning. It was the beginning of the modern missionary movement. Money was raised and William Carey soon sailed for India where he began to share the gospel of Christ to a land and culture that knew little of it.

For Carey, it began as an experience of God’s love in Christ. That love settled itself in his heart. He gave his testimony, first in baptism and then in personal sharing, teaching and preaching. Ultimately that love became so compelling and powerful that it simply had to be shared with the world.

When he arrived in India, he encountered a cultural practice called suttee. With suttee, when the husband died, the widow was burned with him! Do I need to say that the practice of burning widows, contradicts the love of God as we experience it in Jesus Christ? In time, Carey helped to organize the campaign that led to the demise of suttee.  As I see it, it was an expression of his commitment evangelism. How can you say to a person, “Jesus loves you” and then say, “but it is ok for them to kill you when your husband dies”? The love of Christ inevitably leads to a quest for justice. The inward experience leads us to reach out.

So, how do we walk with God? We experience the love of God in Christ Jesus. We accept him as Lord and Savior. We invite the power of the Holy Spirit to shape our conscience and life.

That love grows and we give testimony to it, in baptism and in sharing our story. We invite others to know the joy and love that we have experienced.

And as the need arises, we bear our witness against the forces that would deny any person a full opportunity to know God’s love.

The experience of God’s love within, sharing God’s love with others, a witness for God’s desire for justice, reaching out with the love that we have experienced within, it is all a part of our walk with God. It is our spirituality.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 (NRSV