Fox News interviewed a
former Islamic extremist and his view on the global Islamic problem is that the
world has failed to hold darker skinned, people of color, to a higher standard.
In essence, the world gives darker skinned people a pass as though we can’t
expect anything more from them…which he found offensive. It occurs to me that
we do something similar in the church. We give one another a pass simply on the
basis of being a believer. And yet, the writer of Hebrews stressed we are
capable of a higher standard, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all
over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives
on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about
righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by
constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb
5:12-14 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Leviticus is an interesting read. Chapters 18 and 19 present a bunch of things the Israelites were forbidden to do. Chapters 20 and 21 prescribed stoning and burning to death for a bunch of things the Israelites were forbidden to do. We love to judge God over this. But to the Israelites He said, “You shall be holy to me; for I the LORD am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.” (Lev 20:26)
-----What woman of us when baking a cake for the celebrity of her life throws the flour in by handfuls and tosses in a glob or some of shortening after shaking a salt shaker over it for a while? Quite to the contrary, because of the stature of the one for whom she will honor with the cake she will measure most carefully each ingredient, adding it in its proper order, folding it in by the proper process, baking it in a pan blacked right for her oven at the temperature which will complete its conversion into a perfect treat. Are we any less God’s people than were they? Is God somehow less holy today?
-----You are so right. Today the church is full of winkers and faithless nodders. Nobody wants to stand up for God’s Word in what it says is evil and what it says is holy. Thats just ain’t what His Word’s for any more! We have and hold and read it now because it’s to make us feel good. That means any part of it which does not make us feel good is ignorable. “Oh! That was meant for those days! The times have changed! Oh, my, how they’ve changed! The Bible no longer applies like that to today!” everyone seems wont to say. Have we forgotten? If it is the antichrist who seeks to change times and the law, then why on earth are we aligning with the change more than with God's Word?
-----The Bible and this life compete like two mill balls against the bottom of a mill. They’re constantly grinding us there, at the bottom of that mill. If either one goes soft, our ore is not crushed for the extraction of its gold. Why would we wish to come to the Lord for refinement and destroy either of His tools for that process unless we honestly do not want refinement, because, well, we scoff at and reject His righteousness? We think ourselves so sharp and smart to have figured out the cushy, sweetsy, Gody of His Word, so cuddly and cute, who simply loves everybody with sugar and spice and everything nice just because all the little people of the world are His children! (Except, of course, fundamentalist Christians for whom He prepared Hell!) We totally misunderstand that in all our figuring, the Word has exposed us. “Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written, 'That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and prevail when thou art judged.'” (Rom 3:4)
-----Look around this world just a little bit. All of the nations now simmering over the heat of current events are the players of the Tribulation as found in Revelation and Daniel and the heat is the evils described therein. All of the props are inside the theater and the stage is being prepared. But somehow “the church” does not recognize the prophecy of God’s Word. Somehow it does not notice the prophetic story of church history written into the seven letters to the angels of the seven churches. Neither does it recognize that “the church” of today is the Laodicean Church, and their lukewarmness is the result of being refined by foam rubber mill balls in a Charmin lined mill.
-----No. God is yet God. Righteousness is yet right. And His Word will judge between the world with its church and His Church. Our job, the job of The Church, is to be faithful to Him, which means being faithful to His Word moreover, to watch, and to spread the news about Christ to as many as will love the mill that is God’s refining truth.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment