Sunday, February 27, 2022
Denying Christ Through Indifference to His Word
The apostasy in the last day will not just be unbelievers rejecting Christ, it will be those in the church who believe all the right things but do not care about His word, to read it and follow it.
Those who attend church every week but are offended when someone corrects them with Scripture are apostate. We never agree on every single thing, but we do love to obey God and search His Word for His Heart and ways.
We are seeing the "great apostasy" now, in which most people who attend church are what I call "deadpan", completely uninterested in seeking God, but claiming to be "evangelical" as well as "bible believing" but they are neither.
Titus 1:16 "16 They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed."
How Do We Spend Our Time?
I have known people today who spend hours a day pouring over ancestry information to know the names of the people in their past that they have never met while neglecting relationships standing right in front of them.
We do not know much more than what the people in the ancestry book did for a living and where they were born or died. In most cases, they don't know what the heart of their ancestor was like but it seems satisfying enough for them to know their names and a few insignificant details about them.
I am convinced because of God's Word that we are to spend our time building living relationships. It is easy to become all warm and fuzzy over people we have never met and cannot ever know on this earth.
Perhaps the reason people love ancestry is that they are looking to find someone famous to be able to boast about their lineage. It's really amusing because everyone has someone famous in their genealogy, we have too, since there are so many people on the earth today all coming from the original couple, Adam and Eve.
I can prove through the Bible that I am related to every other human being on the earth. It would not be possible for me to be alive today unless the patriarchs of the Bible were not born first.
It might be fun to know some things about our ancestors from time to time, but placing so much effort into discovering it, to the point of neglected relationships of people still alive, seems strange to me. But that's just me, I see purpose in building relationships with people still living and those who love Christ.
There is a lot of fantasy thinking in this world today. People love to ponder in their minds what "could be" even more than they care about the facts. This is because our culture is more invested in "feelings" and "emotions" than they are in reality and relationships.
It is also the reason we have so many who are seeking alternative news sources that spew out lies, their sensationalism is far more titillating than the truth.
Spending our time pouring over ancestry information of dead people and the alternative news sources is safe, there is nothing invested in a living breathing person, no conflicts to resolve, no sacrifice given, and without any desire to engage in the hard work of caring about others.
We live in a culture that wants what it wants when it wants it, the needs of others seem unimportant unless they are glorifying self.
There is only one solution to this mess, which is to confess sinfulness and trust what Christ did for us on the cross. When we do this He changes our heart. All the things that seemed so important to us will fade as we seek Christ with all our hearts.
Do We Really Love God as We Say
There are so many Christians who would say they love God, but never will read His word. If someone told you they love you but never read your letters to them, or read them and never spoke to you about them, then we would believe they don't love us as they say.
Many Christians say they love Christ but do not care what He thinks about their decisions, even defying His Words of the Bible. We cannot know the heart of God or have His mind in us, if we don't read His Word to find all the nuggets of wisdom He has for us.
If you found a letter from your great-great grandfather whom you have never met, you would pour over it like it was a treasure, a man you have never met, never knew and was curious about the way He thought. God sent us His letters compiled in a book for us to read, but they are not treasured as much as that letter from the Grandfather.
Perhaps the problem is that most Christians do not believe that God is our Father and that He gave us those letters dictated to His prophets for us to not only enjoy but to follow.
The evidence that we love Christ is that we want to know Him, read His words for the purpose of obeying Him. When we love Him we know His words are for our good and for His glory.
John 14:15 "15 If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. "
Many people want to claim to have Christ for the feeling of safety. They want Him available if anything goes wrong and they need Him. They want His advice only when they are in trouble and can't fix it themselves, but will ignore the advice they don't like, that doesn't give them the answer they want.
We have experienced this mentality in parenting. Children act this way, wanting you only when you say what they like to hear but resistant to instruction when it does not suit their desires.
Children will accuse their parents of all kinds of things when all they were attempting to do was help the child learn to trust in Christ for their own benefit and for God's glory.
I remember a young woman who caused trouble all over the house with each sibling before leaving for the day. As she was leaving the house, bounding out the door she would say; "love ya." The "love-ya" was not a language of love but a demonstration of pompous control. She controlled the mood of the household with angst most days, she did not love anyone in the household but wanted to pretend she was a loving person.
It is so very sad to me in these last days that "love-ya" is merely something people say, there is little to no evidence that what they say is true. When we love people we treat them with honor and respect. We enjoy them for their personalities and quirks. They are allowed to be themselves without judgment when it has nothing to do with sin.
Fighting for our right to be first and best is an act of hate. Love happens when we care about the needs and desires of others more than ourselves. This kind of love can only come from Christ in us.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
"4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[a] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Loving people have no desire to control others, they want to help them reach their potential as human beings with the gifts and talents God has given them.
There have been many people in our church culture who interpreted love as forcing people to follow rules God never gave in order to appear godly on the outside and to elevate their parents.
Some parents counted themselves accomplished and righteous if their children glorified them in the eyes of the community. There is no love in this, only selfishness. Children can see the difference between authentic Christlike love and the love that demands them to glorify those who are making the rules.
May our love be that of the Holy Spirit Who lives in us. May it not be only words that make us sound good, but actions and attitudes that glorify God.
1 Corinthians 13
The Excellence of Love
"13 If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give away all my possessions to charity, and if I surrender my body so that I may glory, but do not have love, it does me no good.
4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.
5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,
6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7. it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
The two greatest commandments are as follows, they are the foundation for everything in our lives.
Matthew 22:36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 This is the great and foremost commandment.
39 The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40 Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”
We cannot possibly follow the second commandment to love our neighbor if we don't first love God above all else.
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