Mission to the Forgetful

Psalm 138                            Amos 8:4-12                        1 Timothy 2:1-7                      Luke 16:1-13

Mission To The Forgetful

What causes people who have known the power and presence of the living God to stop following him?

According to Moses, it begins with complacency. It begins when God’s people forget to honour him as the Father who lovingly formed and watched over them and instead relegate the Almighty Creator and Saviour to the sidelines of their lives.

That is not only ancient Israel’s story. It is Europe’s story. Once the cradle of the Reformation, Europe is now a mission field. The Netherlands, where Louise and I serve, is a vivid example of what happens when nations that once knew God slowly forget Him.

Let me paint the picture for you. At 6% of the Dutch population and rising, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the Netherlands. Compare that to only 4% who identify as Evangelical believers, most of whom live in the so-called Bible Belt, far from the province where we work. Religiosity in general is in decline: in 2010, 55% of the population considered themselves religious; in 2023, that number dropped to 42%. Among 18–25-year-olds, over two-thirds say they are non-religious. In Christ Church, Heiloo, our young people tell us that confessing Jesus at school is like committing social suicide.

Even among those who still call themselves Christian, church attendance is rare. Less than half of Protestants attend monthly, and three-quarters of Roman Catholics rarely or never go. In short, the Netherlands is religiously plural, spiritually restless, and largely post-Christian.

Why does this matter? Because the gospel is not just good news for Africa, Asia, or Latin America…it is still good news for Europe as well. And Europe needs to hear it again.

David began Psalm 138 with these words: “I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart… for your unfailing love and your faithfulness” (vv. 1–2).

Even when nations forget God, he does not forget them. Even when generations drift, God’s steadfast love remains.

The Dutch may have forgotten their spiritual heritage, but God has not forgotten the Dutch. The empty church buildings, some of which are now cultural centres, apartments, and breweries…the young people who have never opened a Bible…these are not signs that God has abandoned his people. They are challenges for us in which God is calling his people to rise up again, to proclaim his faithfulness in a generation that has lost its way.

Mission begins not with despair, but with worship. David praises God “before the gods”…in the midst of rival powers, false hopes, and competing voices. And that is our calling: to lift up the name of Jesus amid secularism, materialism, Islam, and every false god of our age.

But what happens when a people persist in forgetting God? Amos warned Israel of a devastating judgment: not a famine of bread or thirst for water, but “a famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (v. 11).

Dearest beloved brethren, this is the famine of Europe today. Our neighbours are not starving for food; they are starving for truth. They are surrounded by entertainment, information, and prosperity, but they have no word from God. They are spiritually malnourished.

Think about North Holland. Once the home of Corrie ten Boom, Brother Andrew, missionaries like Willibrord and Boniface, and historic churches that shaped world mission. Today, many of those old church buildings are museums, apartments, or breweries. The structures remain, but the Word has been silenced.

Amos says people will “wander from sea to sea, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it” (v. 12). Isn’t that what we see today? Young Dutch people searching for identity, belonging, meaning, yet looking everywhere but to Jesus. Loneliness, anxiety, depression, even fear of war…these are symptoms of a spiritual famine.

Did you know that in the Netherlands, suicide has become the leading cause of death among teens and young adults? In the last few years, the number of young people seeking help for suicidal thoughts has risen by 75%. This is not just a statistic. This is Amos’ prophecy lived out: a generation fainting or perishing for lack of hearing the Word of the Lord.

So what is God’s answer? Paul tells Timothy: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people… for God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (vv. 1–4).

Mission begins with prayer. Before strategies, before programmes, before sending missionaries, Paul says: pray. Pray for rulers. Pray for nations. Pray for the lost. Pray for us. Why? Because God desires all people…even secular Europeans…to be saved.

The gospel is not just for “mission fields in poor countries.” It is for all people. And Paul reminds us: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (vv. 5–6).

That is why we serve in North Holland. That is why you have sent us as your  missionaries. Because Christ died for all: for the Dutch teenager who thinks Christianity is a fable, for the lonely widow in Alkmaar, for the immigrant family in Hoorn, for the businessman in Heerhugowaard.

Mission is not about nostalgia for Europe’s Christian past. It is about proclaiming that Jesus Christ is still Lord today, and that he gave his life as a ransom for all.

Finally, in our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus told the parable of the shrewd manager. It is a strange story, but his point is clear: use what God has entrusted to you for eternal purposes.

Jesus said, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much” (v. 10). Mission is about stewardship. We cannot change Europe alone, but we can be faithful with what God has placed in our hands: our prayers, our resources, our partnerships.

North Holland is spiritually dry soil. But we believe God has placed us there to plant seeds of hope and raise up disciple-makers for the future. We often meet people who are spiritually curious but biblically illiterate… they believe everything and they believe nothing. What will it take for them to hear? 

Faithful witnesses. Faithful sowers. Faithful stewards of the gospel.

So let me return to the opening question: What causes people who have once known the power and presence of the living God to stop following him?

It happens slowly. Through compromise. Through complacency. Through forgetting.

But what will bring them back? The faithful witness of God’s people. The Church praying, proclaiming, and preaching the gospel with boldness.

Psalm 138 tells us God has not forgotten his people. Amos warns us of the famine of hearing God’s Word. Paul reminds us to pray for all, because Christ died for all. And Jesus calls us to be faithful stewards of what we’ve been given.

Europe may have forgotten God, but God has not forgotten Europe. He is not finished with the Netherlands. Revival is possible. But revival begins with us…when we take seriously the call to go, to give, to pray, and to serve.

And that is why we are here: to remind you that you are partnered with us in the Gospel….that you labour alongside us in the barren fields…and together we can ensure the gospel is not just Europe’s past, but Europe’s future.

“Whoever is faithful with little will also be faithful with much.” May God find us faithful, for the sake of the nations, for the sake of Europe, for the sake of his glory.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2025

Sermons of Fire and Light: Seven Ballads from the Eternal Word - Ballad I: Love Forgotten

Sermons of Fire and Light: Seven Ballads from the Eternal Word

Ballad I: Love Forgotten 

The keeper stood high on the wall with his lamp burning cold in the dark.

His eyes were like flint in the wind, and his hands were unyielding and stark.

He watched through the long-blooded dusk for the wolves that would creep through the gate,

But none passed unnoticed, unchallenged, unseen, whether early or late.

The scrolls in his chambers were sacred and sealed by the fire of the law.

He spoke with the voice of the mountain and bore both its wisdom and scars.

Yet under the shell of his armour, an ember began to decline,

The song that had summoned him upward was fading and slipping in rhyme.

He knew every word of the creed as he sang it out loud in the storms,

But he’d long since forgotten the love that had moulded his faith in its form.

The hope that had leapt in his breast like a stag on the hills of the earth,

Now sputtered like coals in the wind and the rain that no longer had worth.

But then came a voice on the wind like the cry of a long-buried spring:

“You’ve stood and you’ve fought, but forgotten the love that first taught you to sing.

Return to the place where your heart was still humble, where mercy ran wild.

Remember the wounds that once healed you, return dearest wandering child.”

“Or else,” said the voice, “I shall walk through your garden and carry the flame,

The lamp that you hold with such honour shall vanish along with your name.

For what is your wall without mercy and what is your gate without grace?

The truth must be wed to the Lover whose blood brought the light to your place.”

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2025.

The Sermons to the Seven Churches: The Church of Loveless Orthodoxy (2)

Acts 2:42-47         1 John 3:11-18; 4:7-21        Revelation 2:1-7                 John 13:34-35

The Sermons to the Seven Churches: The Church of Loveless Orthodoxy (2)

As I was meditating on the text and praying for God to lead me in the writing of this talk, I sensed the Lord leading me to a passage found in Mark 10:17-22. A wealthy man ran up to Jesus and knelt before him and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” After Jesus listed several commandments from the Law, the man replied, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 

Now, I want you to notice that Mark records Jesus looking at him and loving him…Jesus looked at him and loved him. Before we rush on the next bit, I want us to think about this. What does that mean? Jesus looked at him and loved him. Whatever else love entails, it surely means that Jesus approved of what the man had said. The man had kept all the commandments since childhood…in other words, he was a devout believer in God…he was, what we would call, orthodox. He had dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”…just like the church in Ephesus. Perhaps we could say that he had loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

But then Jesus said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Mark then tells us that the man was disheartened by the saying and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Now, most of us, quite naturally will zoom in on his wealth…his covetousness, if you will, because Jesus spoke about the difficulty for the wealthy to love the right master in the verses that follow. But I think there is also a lack of compassion here for the less fortunate and a lack of love for his neighbour. Loving your neighbour as yourself…or better perhaps…loving as Jesus loves does include a measure of care for others. 

As James said, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:15-17)

Bearing these things in your heart, let’s now turn to our passage in the Revelation. If you recall, in last Sunday’s talk, we saw that Jesus commended the Ephesian church for its orthodoxy…they walked the talk…they kept and guarded the faith…they did not tolerate evil people and rejected any form of false teaching. In short, Jesus commended them for their steadfast adherence to accepted, established, and correct doctrine and belief, as opposed to heterodox or heretical views. Perhaps we could say that he looked at them and loved them. By their uncompromising loyalty, they too had demonstrated that they loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

But, as with the young man in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus pointed out to them an essential missing mark of a true believer. “But I have this against you,” Jesus said, “that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”

What I was taught back in the dark ages, was that the “love” the Ephesians had abandoned was their love for God, basically because that is what many older commentaries taught. But as Jeff Weima and others point out, it may be the love for others that Jesus was addressing. 

Ask yourself, would Jesus have commended this church so warmly and applauded them for their orthodoxy if they had ceased to love him? Indeed, would they have endured hardship for the name of one they no longer loved? Surely, they would have taken the easier option of compromise, like the Nicolaitans, had they abandoned their love for Jesus.

Indeed, to correct this failure to love, Jesus said they needed to do the works that they had done before. What are the works they are meant to do? What are the “works” they “did at first”, if the love they had abandoned was their love for God? Remember, Jesus had already commended them for their works of doctrinal orthodoxy. Just like the man in the Gospel of Mark, they had honoured and kept God’s Word. So, it seems that the Ephesian problem was not a lack of doctrinal commitment or zeal or love for God or love for his Word.

Perhaps it would be helpful if we looked at the way John used this word “love” in his other writings. Of all the four Gospels, only John recorded Jesus as saying: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) 

It is instructive to note here that Jesus did not say that people would know we are his disciples by our orthodoxy…by our sound doctrine…by our sound teaching or preaching…but by our love for one another…which, in many ways, ought to be orthodoxy in practice. Indeed, writing many years later, the North African Church Father, Tertullian described how nonbelievers marvelled at the mutual love of the Christians, reporting that pagans would say “See, how they love one another!’ and how they are ready even to die for one another!” 

If this is the abandoned love Jesus was referring to, then it is no wonder then that the consequence of not loving one another is the removal of the lampstand. A loveless church repels rather than attracts people because lovelessness does not reflect the one who is love.

In 1 John (3:16-18, 4:10-11, 19-21), John wrote about how our love exhibits our relationship with God by mirroring his character. “By this we know love,” John said, “that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth…In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

So, while love for God is certainly biblical, the predominant usage in Johannine literature is horizontal…believers loving one another. But it is important for us to note that while the orthodoxy of the Ephesian church was a praiseworthy virtue, it was also apparently a failing for them. Their greatest strength was, in fact, their greatest weakness! Their ‘hatred of heresy had bred an inquisitorial spirit which left no room for love’  and they had become insular, inward-focused, an exclusive club, if you will, where only card holding members were welcome. Their orthodoxy had “apparently engendered hard feelings and harsh attitudes toward one another to such an extent that it amounted to a forsaking of the supreme Christian virtue of love. Doctrinal purity and loyalty can never be a substitute for love.” 

True, love for others cannot ever be complete without love for God, which is the opposite end of the spectrum, currently so prevalent in the modern church. Indeed, love for others in the modern church has largely eclipsed love for God and his Word…but the converse is equally true: without love for others, truth becomes brittle, mission collapses, and the lampstand is in danger of removal.

Jesus had warned that within that generation (Matthew 24:34), “…many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:11-12). Paul’s letter to the Ephesians emphasized love for others as central (Eph 1:15; 4:2, 15–16; 5:2), which may suggest a long-standing concern for the Ephesian believers: that orthodoxy must be balanced with love in practice. Paul told them that as they spoke “the truth in love” they would “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:15-16) And he concluded his letter with the charge: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2) 

Indeed, his words to the Corinthians echo the same sentiment. “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2-3) How far the Ephesians had fallen…to the point where they could be considered nothing.

If they chose to persist in their loveless orthodoxy, Jesus warned that he would come to them (a well-known Old Testament symbol of divine visitation to either judge or bless as we have seen before) he would come to them and destroy their church. This may sound harsh but think on it. A loveless “church” is not a church…why? Because it lacks the one thing by which it would be known as a church of Jesus Christ. It is by our love for one another that we are known to be followers of Jesus. You can be ever so pure doctrinally, obey every commandment, hate those who are evil, test and reject all manner of falsehoods, move mountains, sacrifice everything you have…but if you do not have love, you are not a disciple of Jesus.

Whoever has an ear, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

However, Jesus did not end on a negative note. “To the one who conquers,” he said, “I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” Every sermon concluded with a positive statement of victory, expressed using the Greek word “nikao” which means to overcome, to win, to conquer, or to prevail. This word was used by John some 24 times, indicating that the idea of victory in Jesus was a given and is equated with faith in 1 John 5:4-5: “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes (nika) the world. And this is the victory (nike) that has overcome (nikesasa) the world—our faith (pistis). Who is it that overcomes (nikon) the world except the one who believes (pisteuon) that Jesus is the Son of God?” The word was often used as a metaphor for either athletic contests or military conflicts as a form of the word is the name of the female deity “Nike”, the goddess of victory. 

The reward for overcoming the world through faith would have been obvious for 1st century readers. Eating from the Tree of Life in the Paradise of God was and is a symbol of total reconciliation with God…not only are true believers forgiven, united to and re-created in Jesus, but God has also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). We who live in Jesus are presently in Paradise with him. You see, coming to share in the Table of Jesus is more than a ritual…it is a re-enactment of what is reality for those who are in him. 

In the light of this sermon addressed to the church in 1st century Ephesus, may I ask you to reflect on our own life as a church here in Heiloo. I think we would hope to view ourselves as orthodox…but is it possible that we are lacking something? As we have seen, a passion for the truth can eclipse our passion for others. The church has been described before as the “only army that shoots (and buries) its wounded.” (Keith Millar/Freddie Gage) So, how can we make sure we are both orthodox and loving?

The best test would be to measure ourselves against a description of a healthy church found in Acts 2:42-47. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

I recently wrote the lyrics to a song based on this text. And as we sing this song together now, would you ask the Holy Spirit to help you take the “love test”, as it were?

May we who have ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says to us. Shall we stand and sing together?

Come Share His Table / Together Strong 

  Tertullian, Apology 39. 

  Caird, G. B., The Revelation of St. John the Divine. New York: Harper & Row, 1966, 31.

  Ladd, G. E., A Commentary on the Revelation of John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972, 39.