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What Does the Bible Say?
For the next few months, we will be presenting a series on ten fundamental biblical principles that have been compromised within our churches. Not every weakened principle will apply everywhere or to the same degree in all churches, but if we’re honest, we can all benefit from taking a hard look at ourselves to see if we have been caught up in the confusion of some of these watered-down precepts.
In Matthew 15:7-9, Jesus strongly condemned the religious leaders in His time for imposing on the people certain commandments of their own design or simply passing on traditions that were handed down from their predecessors, as if those rules were equivalent to God’s laws. Quoting Isaiah, Christ bluntly states, “in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” When Jesus speaks such heavy words of condemnation to leaders in the church, it should cause men to tremble.
With that said, let me make clear that I choose to assume most pastors have nothing less than the most sincere motives to glorify God in their lives and churches. Most are doing their best to follow honorably in the paths of their predecessors or mentors. However, the “commandments of men” we will discuss in this series have become widely prevalent today in the majority of our churches, leading to a noticeable void of fiery messages confronting the radical ideas attacking the Church today.
This is not the first time in history the priesthood has lost its zeal to combat evil in the culture and God’s people were disciplined as a result.
An Example from the Old Testament
Consider Nehemiah, chapters 8-9. After Ezra read the law to the Israelite people, making clear its applications to every family, all the people repented in sackcloth and ashes. They acknowledged that they had become virtual slaves to the nations around them due to their complacency toward God’s law. All their toiling had produced fruit that the foreign leaders took for themselves while leaving little for the people.
The correlation between then and now is obvious. Is it not true that our cultural collapse has come because we, like Israel of old, have become indifferent to the injustices and outright sins in the culture around us? It appears we have renounced our responsibility to be active in our society and therefore are failing in one of the two fundamental commands given to us—to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Is there nothing the church is willing to fight for? Is there nothing happening in the society around us that makes our blood boil? Is there nothing we hate in line with what God hates? What is keeping the church from recognizing our responsibility for the weakened position we find ourselves in today?
Our God and His people are openly mocked, insulted, ridiculed, cast down and intimidated into silence; yet we still won’t humble ourselves, consider our own failings and beg forgiveness as the Israelites did in the passage above.
On the other hand, what we don’t want to do is overcompensate and lose our balance in the opposite direction by recklessly focusing on our outward works while forgetting that we can do nothing without the manifold grace of God to lead us. We must always remember we are saved by grace FOR good works, not BECAUSE of them. Our God is a God of balance. That is why His way is called a narrow way.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey to climb out of our current valley toward the next magnificent peak God has for us.
This series will be extracted from the book my son and I recently published, “In Vain Do They Worship Me, Teaching as Doctrine the Commandments of Men—Ten Grave Errors Tossing the Church To and Fro.”
Available on our GTI website or Amazon.
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