Implanted evil will rise, but for God [Mark 9]

Most of those who, historically enemies of Christ, will a remnant within the people of Zion. Among those who are secular, many will be accounted as of Zion. Although this world is among us, within the world there are those who will be saved by the grace of God.

This is not a comment of Flo and her band, but that the woman can sing, and that beauty reflects something not of this world.

Now there is much that is evil and wrong in this world, but also much that is good, and beautiful and true. And on those things we can think, meditate and reflect. Even as we find that we have to isolate ourselves from the world. Nut we tend not to that but to the cheap, the broken, and the evil. As it is written in the Gulag archipelago:

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?< ?pre>

One of the reasons we should pray for our enemies and those who are in the public light and our leaders is that God loves them. They may be doing evil. They may be doing great evil. But God’s will shall be done, and one can never forget that such can change. And the evil one does can be twisted into good.

A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A Song.

	On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion 	more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Selah
	
	Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush— “This one was born there,” they say. And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”; for the Most High himself will establish her. The LORD records as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah
	
	Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”

(Psalm 87 ESV)


	They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

	And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

	John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.

(Mark 9:30-41 ESV)

I have not used standard Evangelical examples this morning. I have used Florence and the Machine, who is celebrated in the UK as one of their divas, and that Orthodox Russian Giant of the Soviet era, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

This is deliberate. Not all those who preach the gospel know they are doing it, or preach it using methods and words that are strange to the reformed. But those who are for the gospel are not against us.

Therefore we need to functionally support each other. Regardless of the bad blood between groups historically: those of Christ have more in common than we do with those of Belial, or Allah, or the cult of Marx and Gramsci.

We must stand together. As brothers we can see and correct each other’s faults, and encourage us to be faithful. Lest the night falls, evil is tolerated, and beauty hidden.