Who Hath Marked His Word?

Blame it on Matthew!  When I studied Matthew 24 last Christmas I felt that I should commit to memory several basic verses that describe what the end times will look like.  After all, almost half of that chapter and all of the next are dedicated to the admonition to “watch therefore”.  So every day I’ve been memorizing and reviewing verses such as:

                I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ,

who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;

Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season;

reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;

but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers,

having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth,

and shall be turned unto fables.                                

  I Timothy 4:1-4 

It doesn’t take too many days of this before you look around and begin to see the world differently.  For example, I’ve come to at least three distinct conclusions:

1.       Many Christians are ignorant of what Scripture teaches about doctrine and godliness.

2.       Many Christians don’t believe that the Scriptures are the sole authority of truth in their lives, and therefore rely more on feelings and experience.

3.       Many Christians get their teaching from books and internet videos rather than from the Bible ... and much of that has false teaching in them.

Either I’m over-exaggerating by looking for a heretic under every bush, or this truly is the end times and I am seeing the outer fringes of the coming apostasy.  Maybe what I am becoming aware of is what Christ described:

                And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.  Matt 24:11

It is a relatively new thought for me that the departure from the faith is coming from teachers within the church.  It appears that people are departing from the faith but don’t realize it.  They think they are still living a Christian life, but it is only a form of godliness, which according to the verse in I Timothy above is motivated by lust.

In my reading through the Bible I ran across two situations that seem to be an example of this.  It is such a predictable pattern of my own sin nature (to justify all my actions so they appear to be righteous) that I really shouldn’t be surprised.

The first example is what the Scripture refers to as the “matter of Peor.”  In a detailed account in Numbers 22-25 the story is told of King Balak of Moab who wanted to fight against the children of Israel as they were making their way to the Promised Land.  With promises of great wealth and power he tried to hire a well known sorcerer named Balaam to put a curse on the children of Israel.

Balaam wanted the money and power and so he went to do what the king asked.  The Lord warned him through an angel and a talking donkey, and eventually put words of blessing into his mouth instead of a curse.  However, Balaam did not give up.  When he saw he could not defeat Israel directly he came up with another plan.  (Numbers 31:16)  By combining religious worship and worldly lust he beguiled Israel into joining themselves unto another god by committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab.  (Numbers 25:1-3,18)  It appears that this idea that we can do what we feel like doing and still be a good religious person is at least as old as Balaam.  God’s severe judgment against Israel that followed is an indication of God’s attitude toward this concept.

The second example comes from the ministry of Jeremiah.  He pronounced a very clear response of God against “the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture.”  (Jer 23:1)  The Lord in this chapter describes the leaders of the people of God (the prophets and priests) who were false teachers for their own gain.  Listen to these descriptions:

-          Both prophet and priest are profane.

-          I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria.

-          They speak a vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord.

-          They say unto everyone that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, “No evil shall come upon you.”

-          The prophets … prophesy lies in my name saying, “I have dreamed.”

-          They are prophets of the deceit of their own heart.

-          I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness.

Some of the verses I am memorizing indicate that this same scenario of false teaching from the leaders in the church will be accelerated in the last days.  It says, for instance, that “certain men crept in unawares” in Jude 3.  And in Acts 20:29 it says “shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.”

However, what I am startled by is that this will happen because the people of the church in their lust will ask for it.  Notice in the verse from I Timothy:

                But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” 

If we go back to Jeremiah 23 we find not only the sad problem but the simple solution …. the Word of God.

      
 Is not my word like as a fire? Saith the Lord:
and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?  Jer 23:29

The Word of God is the only standard of truth, and I need to be in it daily and listening and obeying …. and according to our verses in I Timothy … be exhorting those around me by standing true to what God has revealed.

Here is what was happening in the DR and the challenges I had in putting this principle into action:

1.       The small English-speaking church that we have chosen to fellowship with this past year has recently chosen a pastor.  This young man in his mid-twenties has recently graduated from a conservative Bible college in the States and is engaged to be married this coming year.  He also teaches at another Christian school not far from our town of Santiago.

Our church constitution was copied from another church in Haiti in some forgotten past and does not describe how we want to “do church”.  So our little congregation has been meeting together to re-write the constitution.  I can’t imagine a more challenging activity for a group of diverse believers.  We have people born and raised in Europe, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guyana, and fromweird places like Idaho.  Should we have congregational or Presbyterian polity?  Should women serve as deacons?  Can women preach?  Is the word of God our sole standard for faith and practice?  And we haven’t even begun to discuss our doctrinal statement yet!

If we can survive this and come up with a church that is grounded in the Word, this will be where we will worship next year.  My wife and I are currently helping with the music and leading the songs.  We are also trying our best to uphold the Scripture and protect against false teaching as we formulate this constitution which has taken a lot of study and time.

2.       Since our selection of a pastor was fairly recent, our church has been inviting guest speakers to fill the pulpit a Sunday at a time.  Because we are a non-denominational church, quite a variety of backgrounds and doctrines were represented by various recognized pastors and teachers.  I was able to realize firsthand how false teaching can come from the pulpit and not being able to do much about it.  Fortunately though, most of the men were fairly solid Biblically.

During the times when we couldn’t find a “real” pastor, I was asked to fill in.  About three years ago when I finally realized that many of the people around me didn’t know the Bible or believe it was important, I made a commitment that if the Lord allowed me an opportunity to speak publicly I would use  it to emphasize our need for turning to the Scriptures.  Not only have I been making this a theme when I preach, I have also been encouraging the importance of the Bible during my classes each day as I start the period with a verse and prayer.

3.        The small group Bible studies that happen in and around the campus here, we’ve discovered, do not usually study the Bible.  Most studies use a popular book or video written or made by a famous pastor or teacher.  My wife was a part of a women’s study and I was a in a men’s study during this past year.  As you can imagine, it has the potential to become a hot-bed of false teaching depending on what the book or video is about and who the leader is.

Last Christmas when the men’s group finished the book we were studying, we entertained suggestions on the next “Bible Study” to buy.  I suggested that we study the books of first and second Peter directly from the Bible.  They agreed with my idea and we were able to finish at the end of the school year .  This was a delightful change and immensly encouraging to me. 

This summer we are traveling around the world to see our family.  We are spending several weeks each in Texas, Japan and Peru.  In some ways it has been good to get away for a while.  The Dominican Republic, unpredictably volatile during an election year, survived this latest presidential election with relative calm.  The same political party, the Dominican Liberation Party, will retain office with a different president, Danilo Medina, in a close 51-47 percent margin.

The weather was also unseasonably hot and humid.  It was 97 degrees the week we left with humidity around 80%.  This had followed two months of sometimes torrential rains.  Our family joke was, “It is almost 4:30 … time to rain.”  It seemed to rain everyday at the same time (slight exaggeration) but even if we were caught in it, as we were a couple of times, it is like taking a shower. 

The pictures, by the way, are orchids that our neighbor lady has.  To me it is a symbol of beauty and order in an uncertain time because God is in control of His creation.  I scattered them throughout my blog to remind myself of that fact.

So we have left our little island of tropic temperatures and unpredictable politics for a couple of months to see our children and two grand-babies that we haven’t met yet.  When the summer is finished I will try to summarize our world tour.  My prayer is that during this time away we will be faithful to be a couple that marks his word.

For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord,

and hath perceived and heard his word?

                     Who hath marked his word, and heard it?         

Jeremiah 23:18