Pastor Clark Jones
While I was in Bible college, I had the opportunity to be involved in a ministry to inmates in Cook County Jail in Chicago for four years, as well as some times ministering in a couple of the prisons in the Chicagoland area. Back here in Rapid City, I then had the privilege of ministering to inmates in the Pennington County Jail for 17 years, as well as many years in the Juvenile Services Center.
At one time, I spent some time along the creek through Rapid City in the Roosevelt Park area attempting to reach some of the same people out in the community. There was a native gang operating in that area. One day a group of them approached me, and a young woman, holding her gang colors in her hand, asked me what “that book has to say about justice.” I started to open the Bible to answer that question, when her gang leader walked up, grabbed the other side of her bandanna, and said, “If you keep talking to him, this is coming with me.” Normally, when he would see people talking to me, he would just yell across the park “stop talking to him.” That was 17 years ago.
What did those colors represent to her? They meant everything she thought was going to give her love, satisfaction, acceptance, and order in her life. It meant the entire world to her in that moment. Jesus said in Matthew 16:26 “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
I have a friend who has planted a native church within four blocks of that conversation. A few years back, he said he had seen her, but she was a shell of a human being, ravaged by methamphetamine.
She wouldn’t let go of her side of those colors, what she thought was going to give her everything she was looking for in this world. To what are you clinging? What things of this world are you pursuing?
She asked about justice. We hear talk all the time and see in the news that people are demanding a form of what they call justice, and longing for peace. Justice is a making right. To justify speaks of how we are made right. Romans 5:1 says “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Justified: made right with God. Jesus said in Mark 1:15 “…The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Let go of the colors of this world and the prince of this world. Turn your back on that life, turn to God, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are promised eternal life.
The prince of this world; the one holding the other side of your colors is a stomping, raging, threatening bully, trying to tell you he’s your best friend, but in the end he will leave you a shattered, burned out shell of a human soul. Jesus said in John 10:10 “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Romans 5:8-10 says “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Who are you going to follow? What are you depending on to make you right with God? Repent and believe the gospel. Let go of the world’s colors.