House Church Talk - Beware the System

[goodwordusa at att.net]

I apologize that this is so long.  I know you have better things to do than 
try to make your way through such long, long posts.  But I pray that maybe 
this will prove a blessing for some.

As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to be careful that our first 
and most central relationship is with Him, and that our eyes and ears are 
attuned to Him -- to the living Lord Jesus -- as our Shepherd and Savior, the 
One who rescues us from any trouble.

Now, I know we've all heard such comments before, many times.  I cannot count 
the number of times that some preacher or some good brother or sister has 
urged me to "Keep your eyes on Jesus."  And the Scriptures themselves, all 
the way through the Old and New Testaments, warn us to look to God Himself, 
to act on the faith that we have in the living God.  Even the Psalms and 
Proverbs warn us not to put our trust in any human being, but in the Lord.

Jeremiah prophesied, "Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in 
man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD."  (Jer 
17:5)

And we should be familiar, if we've known the Lord for very long, with the 
attitude of our Lord Jesus toward religious traditions in Israel.  He 
attacked them as hypocrisy and as undermining to God's own teachings and 
commandments.  (See Mark 7:1-23, for one example.)  Even Paul, after visiting 
with the brothers and apostles in Jerusalem, made it clear in the 2nd chapter 
of Galatians that he did not put too much stock in what these men said, 
except for the purposes of keeping peace among the churches.

I suspect that too many of us today were truly called by the Spirit of God to 
faith in Jesus Christ, and that we did really turn to faith in Him, only to 
quickly lose sight of all that is truly of Him, and to wed ourselves 
unwittingly to some form of a religious system.  Maybe it was to a 
denomination or large association of believers.  Maybe it was to a school of 
thought, to a tradition, or to an "anti-traditional" stance.

Consider this word from Jesus, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites!  For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte [or convert], 
and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves."  
(Mat thew 23:15)    Christians are in danger of doing likewise.

Somehow we fail to see that the same kind of religious traditions poison 
believers today.  The Jews were by no means uniquely stupid or evil or eaten 
up with hypocrisy in their religious traditions.  The evil so often exposed 
by Jesus Christ as He preached in Judea and Galilee, and the surrounding 
areas is a common human malady -- rooted in the sin that we all have in us by 
nature.  We must all be aware of the traps set by our own flesh, our own evil 
desires as sinners.

Such evil and hypocrisy is not confined to Rome, or to the large 
denominations of the church, or to those who meet in big buildings, or to 
those who pay men to preach for them.  The fallen religious nature of man, 
and the traditions & hypocrisies spawned by this nature are in all people 
everywhere -- even where only two or three are gathered.  It's inside you and 
inside me.  That's why Jesus warned us, and pointed out the signs and effects 
of such sin.

The world, in its ignorance of God, may well point to all Christian religions 
and think that they are all believers, that they're all followers of Jesus 
Christ.  But whoever knows the Lord Jesus is aware of the differences.  

Some people are simply religious.  And some believers in Jesus are also more 
religious by nature than others.  But whoever trusts in Jesus and follows Him 
in truth will be transformed by their association with Him -- by their daily 
relationship with Him.  But whoever has a relationship to the church -- yet 
not to God -- will not be saved by calling themselves "Christian believers."

Jesus Christ was (and still is, by the Spirit) a Preacher of righteousness.  
He reveals the righteousness of God.

He calls men and women to repent, to have genuine faith in God, and to 
believe in righteous (fair and ethical) judgment.  He warns us to think and 
act as the children of God, urging us to remember that God sees the act done 
in secret, knows the heart for what it is, and that God Himself will reward 
us openly for what we are in secret -- whether for good or for evil.  We must 
live our lives unto God and not unto men.  It matters not that we impress men 
and women with our religious talk and behavior, if we are not right with God 
from the heart.

And even Paul, the "preacher and apostle of grace" warns us clearly:  "Do not 
be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also 
reap.  For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he 
who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."   
(Galatians 6:7,8)

I praise God for the many wonderful things He has given to the church in the 
centuries since Jesus walked this earth.  I thank God for the Reformation, 
for men and women who embraced again the reality of "justification by 
faith."  But we must be very careful that we do not buy into a system of 
belief or a system of false religion in the name of Jesus.  Being an adherent 
of this or that theological (read philosophical) slant does not make us into 
the children of God.  Only those who actually know and love and desire the 
Lord are children of God.

Scripture says:
Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the 
hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You 
have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to 
as many as You have given Him.  And this is eternal life, that they may know 
You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  (John 17:1-3)

Eternal life with God is not won by joining a religious organization, or by 
learning a set of doctrines, or by gathering with others in a house, a barn, 
or a cathedral.  It is not won by reading the Bible or by saying or doing 
religious things every day.  Eternal life is about facing the reality of God, 
just as He truly is, as He has revealed Himself to all humanity in the 
Scriptures and in the Lord Jesus.  The real God must be faced and embraced, 
for better or for worse -- whether He destroys us in righteous wrath or saves 
us by gracious mercy.  We must face Him and embrace Him, accepting Him, and 
accepting the Son whom He has given to us and for us.

Eternal life is about a man, a woman, or any child knowing God, responding to 
Him in life and thought, trusting in the grace offered by Him.  And the 
result of knowing this real and true God is a new kind of righteousness that 
flows out of that new relationship, produced by the awesome influence of the 
HOLY Spirit on human lives.  Called to God and His ways, we forsake the ways 
of darkness for the light that is ever before us in Jesus Christ.  And we 
follow that perfect Light.

A religious system does nothing at all for us.  But the Savior and Shepherd, 
Jesus Christ, will take us all the way home.

Are we sinners, imperfect, falling short of glorifying God in our attitudes, 
our words, & responses to life?  Do we struggle with wrong desires, wrong 
motives, wrong results?  Then let us learn to be humble in God's Presence, 
and learn to pay closer attention to His voice within us and His good Word as 
it is recorded for us in the Scriptures.  And let us be more yielding to His 
HOLY Spirit as the Lord calls us to a genuine faith, a genuine reverence for 
God and for all that is of Him.  And let us cling with all our hopes to Jesus 
Christ for mercy and salvation.

But let us cling truly to HIM and not merely to some system -- to any system -
- that uses His name for its own purposes.  Let us follow Him, and not be 
busy following religious men or religious women or a religious system of 
ideas and traditions.  Only Jesus Himself is the Truth, the Life and the Way 
to the Father's heart.

Jim