September 30, 2014
Scratching the Itch
Recently I was pleasantly
surprised by a rich sermon from a Ugandan Presbyterian preacher. Based on
Philippians 2:12-16, the theme of the pastor’s message was, “working out your
salvation” and it contained the urgency of the day. What first captured my attention was how he illustrated his points.
Rather than using modern day examples, anecdotes, and jokes; each point was
illustrated with other passages of Scripture. The message was absent of
filler and point after point was supported with a different biblical text. We
don’t hear such sermons in America, but I suspect our preachers are simply
delivering what the audience wants to hear. “For the time will come when men
will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they
will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching
ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4:3-4 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----In a manner of speaking, the time when men won’t put up with sound doctrine has been almost as long as man’s been created. For a moment, the entire human population would not put up with sound doctrine when Eve ate the forbidden fruit and enticed Adam to do the same. Fortunately, that moment didn’t last forever. Until the flood, Enoch’s preaching, then Noah’s fell on deaf ears against other, more favored ideas. After the flood, God’s command that man fill the earth was ignored, nor was Noah’s preaching any better received, or Shem’s, as man again lived to the praise of their own self sufficiency, ascribing any blessings beyond that to imagined gods. People resisted Abraham’s denial of idolatry, moaned and groaned at Moses’ leading into righteousness, shunned and abused the prophets calls to abandon idolatry, killed their Savior, and broke His body into a thousand denominations because each one who became anybody had a better idea than what he was hearing from anyone else.
-----Itching ears were nothing new to Paul, else the expression itself would hardly have been useful. But all of that was ordinary. Paul wrote in a time that was extraordinary. Ananias bit the dust for telling Peter what mankind has thrived upon since, a simple lie we would merely call a “stretcher” today (and probably would vote for him if he ran for President.) Paul killed Eutychus with his long winded sermon, then raised him from the dead. In fact, many deceased saints came to life when Christ died, and they went into the city after His resurrection and appeared to many. The apostles went about healing people with their touch and passed that gift on to others who did the same. They and many more spoke in languages they didn’t know, prophesied, and had visions and dreams. Things just weren’t ordinary at the spiritual level. They were quite special. Poor Ananias failed to notice this wasn’t the time for telling stretchers.
-----It didn’t take long for some to start distorting the truth. Good thing for them that they weren’t preaching to Peter! But it took longer for many to start listening to their distortions, as Paul foretold, and people got back on track. Second century embellishments came like hairline cracks giving way to third century, intellectual chinks. By the fourth century, sound doctrine was fossilizing into liturgies and rituals, losing its supple, warm, corrective contact with the twists and curves of ordinary life. As truth and doctrine more and more became a religious thing, different religious ideas could be tried on for comfort like shopping for shoes, with almost as much variety, too, until we have the mess we’ve made of His body today. Even this Ugandan preacher of obedient sermons probably holds to a little black book of Presbyterian rules tighter than to the six days of creation or the given days of the lives of the Patriarchs and the seven thousand years of human history they imply.
-----“Science” demands a mental framework God’s Word won’t fit. And I believe its misgivings and the last eighty years of their obsessive teachings are building into the world a sociological framework for every idea except God’s idea. Once again this world is shaping up to another extraordinary time, as extraordinary spiritually as was the time of Paul, but spiritually opposite from that which made his time so great. Thus we see the misgivings of the world's view itching in the ears of far too many churches. Paul’s time was of the Spirit of Christ. This time is for the anti-Christ’s spirit. After all, before God can swat the cockroaches, they’ve got to be lured into the open.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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