Contend for the Faith!

December 6 (Jude 3, 4)
Several years ago when I was a cop in Arizona, I had the opportunity to listen to Christian radio for quite a few hours each day in my patrol car while on patrol. I was an elder of a local church and taught adult bible studies. It seemed strange at the time that on a regular basis, those radio preachers were preaching on the same topic God had placed on my heart. Over the years I have come to realize that is exactly how God works. When something is wrong in the midst of His church, and it’s a universal problem, He gives the same message to all of those He has called to teach His sheep. Of course, that doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out. It’s entirely logical that the God of the entire church would know if there was a problem that was almost universally wrong in it. This morning, while listening to Sirius 161, a preacher named Yussef was speaking about Jude 3, 4 saying what I have been beating to death for weeks now. It is a plague of staggering magnitude that within God’s church some have crept in and are distorting the gospel. It was happening when Jude wrote his letter, has been happening since that time, and is reaching epidemic proportion in these final days of the church. It is one of the signs we are in the final hours of church history that the church will become so liberal those who preach in it will claim godliness but by their works will be denying its power. Titus 1:6 tells us, “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”

The problem is magnified because so few professing believers spend enough time studying God’s word themselves to recognize when these infiltrators of the church appear. The problem today is that the overwhelming majority of these wolves are the senior pastors of local churches. I suggest the very thing the church determined would help it escape that problem has now become her Achilles heel. Instead of local churches raising up new pastors and sending them out to start new churches (as was done in the first few centuries of the church), some geniuses decades ago decided the church needed to have professional clergy who got their training in a denominationally certified university. Voila! They have been and still are graduating and ordaining tens of thousands of preachers who have never read God’s word from cover to cover once. All one has to do is have the tuition and not screw up too badly for four years and he can graduate with honors and an ordination certificate from nearly any Christian university in the United States; and if he actually goes on to seminary, he can usually get a job making over $70,000 a year in most big city churches. Certainly if he takes a call from a Southern Baptist church he’ll just about be guaranteed a fine salary. That particular denomination has a salary schedule determined by the amount of education the pastor has. I recall several years ago in California, a PhD got about $30,000/year teaching in most public school systems. During that same period of time the Southern Baptist denomination required new preachers with PhDs get paid $33,000/year. Now, that’s what I call setting the example for the sheep to follow.

I know it to be true, but I think one day I’ll visit several Christian schools and find out how many of their students have ever read the bible from cover to cover. The speaker on the radio this morning indicated one research found that among those in the church less than 50% of them have ever read the bible at all. I watch television preachers on a regular basis stand before a congregation, raising their solid black four pound version of God’s word, sweating profusely from preaching so hard. And it’s incredibly obvious they never actually read it because they say things that aren’t in it, all the while insisting they’re words are divinely inspired truth. Allow me to tell you the quickest way to spot a phony. Jesus mentioned it numerous times in a variety of ways. As a matter of fact He once made a whip, cleaned out the temple in Jerusalem, and told those He drove out, "It is written, ' MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER'; but you are making it a ROBBERS' DEN."(Matt. 21:13) Take note; when a preacher claims he wants to give you a gift for a small donation to his ministry, he is a peddler of the word, not a preacher of it. He is turning God’s house into a robbers’ den. And when a preacher tries to convince you tithing is a New Testament ordinance, it is a clear indication he hasn’t a clue what the purpose and scheme for tithing was under Old Testament law. Of course the New Testament demands we be financial supporters to ministry. It declares in numerous places we are to support those in full time ministry and that takes money. The problem is the number in full time ministry who don't belong there in the first place. And that problem becomes staggering when those same unordained of God preachers have anything to say about where the money given to the church should be spent. Most importantly, tithe is not to be a standard for any New Testament giving. The complete lack of understanding on that basic topic is clear evidence for the failure of bible colleges and seminaries.

Ask any Mormon; if every member of local churches gave 10% of his income to those local churches, those churches would be among the wealthiest corporations in the world. Mormons demand their member be tithers. I know a protestant preacher who demands the same thing. Please allow me to digress for just a moment (though this actually is the whole point of today’s lesson). If your preacher knows God’s word he will probably feel quite uneasy about taking an offering each week. I liken such behavior to begging. And I also believe in a real sense, taking up an offering is very akin to turning his church into a robber's den. There are much more creative ways to enable church members to support the church’s ministry assuming (and it’s quite an assumption) the local church deserves our financial support in the first place. One day I’d like to accidently (on purpose) knock the offering plate to the ceiling as it passes in front of me. We’re told when we give not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. How is that possible when everyone in the church (at least everyone behind you in church on a given day) can see whether or not you’re putting money in that disgusting thing we call the offering plate. One day I may actually get up the nerve to say quite loudly when the usher hands me the plate, “No thanks, I prefer to give to the needy.” I’ve also considered putting a note in one of those envelopes in the church pews saying, “April fools! Get a real job; it may not pay as much, but at least you won’t be misleading God’s sheep anymore.”

I’ve written a systematic 44 page treatise on the topic of Christian Stewardship if you’d like to understand the biblical reasons and pattern for given in this the church age. In it I include every single verse found in scripture that deals with the topic. I will close today’s lesson with two thoughts: 1. If true believers actually made it a priority to read their bibles, they would quickly leave most of today’s churches. I believe they’d exit post haste, disgusted with the lackluster, unbiblical, impotent, ungodly preaching that is going on in most contemporary churches. I further believe there would be a mass movement to restart home churches. Preachers like Allistaire Begg, John McArthur, Walter Martin (deceased), Adrian Rogers (deceased), and J. Vernon McGee (deceased), a pastor I once knew named Eddie Pate, and that Yussef guy would have or would have had (in the case of those deceased) so many people in their local congregations they wouldn’t be able to accommodate them all. They’d have to start meeting in homes because they wouldn’t be able to build a church building big or fast enough. Oh yeah, that’s how the church did it for the first four hundred years of its existent. I know there have to be more than those I have named, but in my 38 years as a follower of Christ I can’t name ten men I believe make it a priority to read the entire word of God from cover to cover on a regular basis. 2. Avoid bible reading programs like the bubonic plague. Begin your reading in Genesis 1 and read clear through to Revelation 22. I’ve been doing that for decades and can tell you it is the only way to understand it as God wrote it. I know it isn’t chronologically written, but any good study bible will explain the whys and wherefore of that. After you do that about ten times, it will begin making sense within its context. I know most don’t want to believe it, but unless you read massive amounts of scripture at one time, you won’t ever come to understand it in one lifetime. In Israel, the priests would read it to the Israelites four or five hours straight as they all sat around listening during every feast (there were a total of seven) they celebrated each year. Those feasts lasted one to three weeks and they sat for hours every day listening as the priests read. They had no choice because the average Israelite didn’t have their own personal copy of the Law of Moses. Most likely the reason so few ever read massive amounts of scripture today is our propensity to want to learn everything we know from things like television and/or computers. I personally believe unless you discipline yourself to read ten to twenty chapters each and every day, you’ll never have a good grasp of God’s word in its entirety; and it seems to me it should be the goal of every believer to have a good grasp of it. If you're a really poor reader, get a copy of it being read on CD and listen to it as you follow along in your on bible. Make sure to have the same version being read to you and your reading ability will improve drastically.

I fear a huge contengency of people in today’s churches are going to be sorely disappointed when and if they actually enter the eternal kingdom of God. I’ve been reading massive amounts of God’s word daily for 38 years and I’m still learning new things about Him each and every day. My own communication skill improved exponentially the more I read scripture. Unless I’m a slow learner, that means all of us should be doing the same. Finally, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to sneak into His church unnoticed and preach another gospel if God’s children actually searched the scriptures daily to see if the things they are teaching meet the test of scripture. I know it is the joy of my own life to preach to a group of men and women who actually read God's word themselves on a regular basis. When Jesus promised the sheep hear His voice (John 10), He presumed they would hear His voice because they would know His words; and that thing we call the Bible is filled with His words. And beloved, that’s His word for us today.