Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Rock And Sand

Before I start today, let me provide sort of a warning. If you are just fine with life, relationships, church, and so on, you may not want to read what I am writing today. God has laid it on my heart to say the truth about some things here. Some may say this is meat and not milk. I say it is the source of tears.

My wife and I were discussing last night many of the things we have been taught about the church and about relationship, from the scriptures. As we talked, God began to show us a number of things that we have been taught are not accurate, or mixed with truth at best. We were trying to figure out how this happened.

Ephesians 4:11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians clearly laid out the structure of the church. There are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Their job is to raise up (not be the boss of) the believers. The believers are to work toward becoming perfected so that they can build each other up. Let me ask a question. Have you ever seen this structure in the church? I never have.

Do you imagine that church leaders have read this scripture? So then, what we are saying is it has been heard, but is not being done, right? For example, almost every church I have been to the pastor tried to be the alpha male. And then we wonder why sometimes pastors fall and run of with a woman from the congregation. We wonder why the men in the congregation are not the strong male figure at home. Think about that for a minute and I think the answer becomes more clear. In every church I have been in that had more than one pastor, one of them always claims to be the Head Pastor or the Lead Pastor or the Senior Pastor. Interestingly enough, we have none of those listed in the scriptures that God gave us. So we are hearing what God said but doing something else. Hmmm.

In relationships we see a similar tendency. Paul wrote about this in the same letter to the Ephesians. Think they might be connected?

Ephesians 5:21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

There is so much to say here. Today’s teachings want to water this down and talk about how the scripture just before this says to submit to one another. It is not popular to talk about the order of things in the household. It is not popular to say that the wives should treat their husband as they would treat Jesus. Everybody seems to want to point to the husband treating his wife like Jesus treats the church. This latter point is true. But there is a strong voice among us believers, taught repeatedly from pulpits, lessening the concept of the wife submitting to the husband (maybe because the leaders already have the leading of the church wrong as we pointed out). So, from where does this strong voice come? Have we ever heard it before? What were the results?

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Here we have an example of hearing what God said, but choosing to do what someone or something else said. That is what got us here. So what does the scripture have to say about why?

Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

Jesus seems to be saying that if we hear and do what He says, we will be okay and things will go well. If we choose to hear but not do what He says, everything will fall apart. I guess we can look at these things, the condition of the church and the condition of relationships and ask, are things not right? If that is true, then according to Jesus, it would seem at least part of the reason is we have heard but are not doing.

If anyone thinks I am writing this because I have the answer, I am not.

I am writing this because I am weeping.

Prayer
Father, we praise and exalt You as the Most High. You are our King. You are our Ruler. We long to hear Your words and to do Your words. Help. We have gotten off the path. How do we get back and turn the families and the church? Only You can do this great miracle. It may perhaps be the greatest miracle of all. Please forgive us. We ask that You send Your healing, Your deliverance, and Your provision today. In Jesus’ (Yeshua’s) name. Amen.