What is the
one thing which has the ability to destroy God’s people? There might many
answers to this question. There are lots of sins which can tear God’s church
apart: gossip, bitterness, anger, etc. But most of the sins we might think of
are fairly normal in the course of church life. After all, each of us is on a
journey of sanctification, a journey of leaving our sinful habits behind and
becoming like Jesus. As long as there are new Christians being saved and coming
into the church, these “common” sins will always be around. A mature church
knows how to handle these sins and help others recover from them. However, some
things are very hard to recover from. There is one sure way to destroy a church
- take away their knowledge of God.
You can’t
worship what you don’t know. You can’t follow what you don’t understand. You
can’t become like what you have never heard. That’s what happened in ancient
Israel. The leaders – the prophets and priests - stopped proclaiming the law of
God. As people forgot who God was and what God had done for them, they
naturally gravitated towards the wicked ways (of worship and ethics) of the
pagans around them.
When scripture stops being the focus of God’s people, we are setting ourselves up for failure. I am so grateful to belong to a church where our pastor intentionally preaches through passages of scripture and explains them to our people. This is a treasure we should not hold lightly. The Bible is like a mirror which shows us who we are and who we need to become. Imagine in real life what we would look like after a couple of days of not looking in the mirror! Just as we would eventually become physically unkempt, we would become spiritually unkempt without the Bible.
As mentioned
above, much of the responsibility for this emphasis depends on our leaders. True
spiritual leaders proclaim an accurate picture of God and then exhort the
people to align their lives according to His ways. But the exact opposite was
happening in Israel. Notice the phrase, “Like people, like priest.” God’s
leaders were following the ways of the people. How sad. The passage says, “They
feed on the sins my people.” This possibly alludes to the fact that when people
would bring a sin offering, the priests would sacrifice a part of it and then
eat the rest. The bottom line: the more people sinned, the more they got to
eat. So for them, sin became a means to more food.
In closing,
I fear that the greatest tragedy of this generation might be that spiritual
leaders in America be tempted to preach philosophy, psychology, and five steps
to a better this or that, rather than proclaim God’s message, God’s character,
God’s ways and God’s purposes. Why? Because that’s what people want. We would
rather have our sin coddled than convicted. We would rather feel good than
become good. It is a sad day when pastors chose against preaching the Bible and begin preaching something else because it will allow them to
keep their jobs, or “grow their church”, or make them more popular, etc.
Pray that
God will make us and keep us people of His word.
It's neat that you post this because the knowledge of God has been heavy on me here lately also. That's actually the emphasis that God used to inspire the blog that I contribute to (zionssong.blogspot.com). I agree so heavily that what this generation lacks is the knowledge of God. We don't need the newest way to run church, we need a revelation of God--something that has remained firm through the ages. Corey Russel (on leadership at the I.H.O.P. that I was telling you about) uses A.W.Tozer's way of putting it into perspective by asking how we, as the Church, would respond if a flaming Seraphim stepped into the pulpit. All they would speak on would be revelations of who God was, and we would be blown away!
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