Our Christ gives warning about such
as these in Matthew 7:15, “Beware of the false prophets, who come
to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” This coming in sheep’s clothing is intentional and purposeful
deception. It is a deception that leads the undiscerning to believe
and accept that which is portrayed as good, but in reality is
destructive. This deception can prevent an immature believer from
ever enjoying the fullness and riches that are only available
through his Saviour . . . this deception can, and most often will, prevent
a lost soul from ever coming to the genuine saving grace of the one
true God.
We find in 2 Corinthians 11:15 that,
“his [Satan’s] servants also disguise themselves as
servants of righteousness.” Is it any surprise that so many
are lulled into believing that those they follow are of God, when in
reality they are following the servants of the “prince of this
world?” (John 14:30 KJV).
Most members of the local churches
believe they have no authority to question what is being taught from
the pulpit, or to question the direction the leadership is taking
the church. This belief is not only unscriptural, but is outright
dangerous. Allowing such autonomy is an illegitimate doctrine which
“the prince of this world” strives to implement within the
church. Such autonomy will have a neutralizing effect upon biblical
discernment that all within the body are exhorted to practice.
Allowing others to lead without accountability to the church or
assembly is not only foolishness on the part of the church, but can
lead to the separation from God. Biblical accountability is a
stopgap, a protection from infections that pose as “servants of
righteousness.”
The church, without discernment and
biblical accountability, will be drawn into the ‘dual allegiances’
we now witness in the church today. ‘Dual allegiances’ within the
body of Christ, the church, are unacceptable to our Lord . . . for
they are fictitious, they are fallacious. They only exist in the
mind and heart of man. We can not ‘follow’ man (i.e. world) and
follow God. We can not listen to man (i.e. world), and listen to
God. This simultaneous ‘following and listening’ to both man and
God is an illusion . . . it cannot take place. Such allegiance to God
is rightfully labeled as a false allegiance to God. Our Holy God
turns His back to these false allegiances and no longer will hear
these people when they call out to Him.
Do not love the world nor the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is
not from the Father, but is from the world”
(1 John 2:15-16).
The Cost of Deafness
He has warned His people to listen to
Him, “For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I
brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning
persistently, saying, ‘Listen to My voice’ ” (Jeremiah 11:7).
This listening, is more than just
knowing that you or I are being spoken to. It is more than just
‘reading’ Scripture without effort to understand and know what is
written. It is more than being physically present when a man of God
is teaching biblical truths and principles. It is the understanding
what is written or being spoken, then responding in a manner which
is acceptable and pleasing to God. It is application!
Have we lost the ability to hear God because our ears are tuned to
what man has to say? Have we become deaf, all the while believing we ‘hear’ with great acuity?
The Lord, as in the days of Judah,
persistently warns the people; today He warns through His creation,
His word, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Again, in Jeremiah 11:11
the Lord states, “Behold I am bringing disaster on them which
they will not be able to escape; though they will cry to Me, yet I
will not listen to them.” We must not miss what is stated here:
God himself says He will not listen when the people call out to Him.
In v 14, His anger becomes even
stronger, “Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a
cry or prayer for them; for I will not listen when they call to
Me.” What could anger such a loving God, a God that created man
to share His goodness with? As stated earlier, the answer lies in
vv. 12 and 13. The people never genuinely turned to God with a
repentant heart. If God didn’t respond in the manner they desired,
they sought their answers elsewhere, that being in their created
gods and idols.
Something very powerful is being
stated here in Jeremiah 11:11 that few recognize or desire to
acknowledge...God will not listen to the prayer of one that is not
one of His. We have all heard of someone that has gone through a
tremendous personal crisis, then praying to God for a miracle to
heal a sick child or some other person close to them. If the child
recovers, they proclaim, “A miracle . . . I prayed and a miracle
happened . . . and my dying child is healed.”
This is good for story telling and
tickling of the ears, but is completely unscriptural. The only
prayer that the Lord will hear from the reprobate is a prayer of
acknowledgment that he is a sinner, and he understands and believes
in the need of the Christ to receive him as one of His own.
There is also guidance for those that
are of Christ, those that are of the true church, in praying for the
unsaved in Jeremiah 11:14. This guidance is equally difficult to
hear or understand; but is scripturally expressed with great clarity
and poignancy. The only prayer that God will respond to for the
unsaved is in the manner that Scripture reveals. It may very well
be that what most perceive as a heart wrenching experience is a
punishment; an act through which God is turning the reprobates eyes
and heart to either receive Him (trusting in Him only*), or to
reject Him as Lord and Saviour.
God has repeatedly used punishment
throughout history to turn mans eyes and heart to Him; should
we be surprised if He does it today? The manner, in which we should
be praying for the unsaved, is that God will bring into their lives
a situation that will turn them genuinely to Him. The sad fact is,
that most will curse God for their deserved chastening, exposing
their true heart and its hardness. Or they will respond just as Judah did here in the book of Jeremiah. They will turn to Him to ‘see’ if
prayer will work to satisfy their wants; if not, then moving
elsewhere, continuing in the search to satisfy their desires
___ revealing
the true nature of their heart.
We find in Proverbs 1:20-33, as we
did in Jeremiah, that when man wanders from God seeking after his
own desires, God will reject the pleas from an insincere heart.
This is applicable to not only the heathen, but to the Christian as
well.
In the churches ignorance, it
believes that as long as it is not as bad as the world, then its
level of ‘goodness’ is within an acceptable range . . . even if what
is now perceived as acceptable was once the reprehensible . . . that
God himself will look on the church, pat us on the head, and say,
“Good job, your not as wicked as the rest of the world.”
The wayward Christian takes on the
heart like that of the Pharisee. “The Pharisee stood and was
praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other
people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get’ ”
(Luke 18:11-12).
A Christian that ‘parrots’ the world
is a tremendous attribute in the arsenal of Satan. What better
weapon than to have the children of God representing the “prince
of the world” to mankind! What better way to introduce a cancer
within the body of Christ, than to have a child of darkness
representing the church that He has built! For when the child of
God and the child of darkness are external mirrors of each
other . . . it is not long before the ‘church’ is no longer of Christ,
but is of the world.
A Practical Application:
For Us, for the Church
“What mean these stones” for
you and I today? Is there significance in what many would consider
nothing more than an archaic phrase of antiquity? Should such a
question as this bear as a determining factor on how you or I live,
think, or impact others?
Let me explain this question,
“What mean these stones?”, by first giving some practical
applications. This we will do through a series of questions with a
similar undertone. These types of questions are often asked by
children as well as adults today.
-How was the Grand Canyon formed?
-When did we get the seven day week?
-Where did the rainbow come from?
-Why does a rose or a tree like the
honey locust have thorns?
-Why does a lion kill to eat?
-Why did my puppy have to die?
-What does marriage mean?
-What is the best educational method
for my children?
-Is government or public school
education pleasing to a Holy God?
-Is gambling sin?
-Why is Grandpa so sick?
-If God is a good God, why would he
allow my child, (or parent, or friend) to die?
-When I die, what will happen to me?
-What is faith?
-Can you prove God exists?
-How do you know the Bible is true?
-Is there a real hell where people
painfully suffer forever?
-A loving God wouldn’t send someone
to hell, would He?
How we respond to these and similar
questions (our response being indicated through our understanding
and implementation of the answers), will speak volumes about our
relationship with God; and how we work within the boundaries of that
relationship. How you or I respond will speak volumes about our
understanding of God’s Word, and its application to the world we
live in.
If we take an honest look at where we
are in relationship to how we respond to these types of questions,
we would no doubt find that how we ‘fit into’ our culture bears
heavy weight upon our responses. If you are one that allows
the culture, even the cultural relativism so prevalent within the
Christian church today, to influence you in varying degrees, your
responses will reflect that influence. The greater the degree
of influence, the less you will be able to respond from a biblical
understanding and perspective.
God desires “that all the peoples
of the earth may know the hand of the LORD,
that it is mighty, that you may fear the LORD
your God forever” (Joshua 4:24 NKJV).
“What mean these stones?”
is a reminder of what God had
done for his people. These stones were placed to help future
generations remember God’s people falling away from Him in sin, His
promises and love for them, and their restoration into a
relationship with Him.
We are to teach our children what God
has done and is doing for His people. We are to teach our children
about the God of this creation and the relationship He has with us.
Our children must be taught the biblical account of man and the
world he lives in, and about his relationship with God — from “in
the beginning God created” (Genesis 1:1), up to and through this
point in history, the period of time we presently live. We must
move away from the mindset of telling our children Bible stories—as
Ken Ham of the Answers in Genesis ministry states, “We must
teach them the history in the Bible.”
What should our response be when
someone asks about the Grand Canyon, thorns or death? Is the answer
reflective of biblical understanding within the nature of God, as
well as the nature of man? How we respond must reflect the
relationship we have with the Lord and His Holy Word. Our response
must represent and rest upon the very foundation of Christ our
Saviour and His message of Truth. How we respond is a viable
indicator of what our relationship with Christ is.
Choosing To Do What is Difficult
But how are we to teach these
things? How are you and I to shield ourselves, our families, and
our church from the relentless onslaught of deceptions and lies of
Satan and his followers, with his followers being disguised as
servants of righteousness?
The answer is a simple one. The
implementation of the answer is not.
We must first make our
salvation sure, as so many have been and are deceived about the
genuineness of their salvation. Those deceived have placed their
hopes upon false assurances, taught by the many false prophets and
false teachers, within the many apostate churches claiming to be
Christian. Those deceived by these propagate the same lies through
their own ignorance... through their own lack of understanding and
discernment. What is so sad and discouraging, is many teaching
false teachings and doctrine may actually be of the true church.
We must understand and believe that
the evidence of our salvation is not only a prayer, baptism, some
emotional experience, our participation in a religious activity such
as ‘going to church’ on Sunday, or involvement with some program.
It is only evidential as God has laid out in His Word. Does our
work glorify Him? Is His desire, joyfully, our desire? Do we love
the Lord our God and humbly obey Him with our entire heart, soul,
strength, and mind? Do we love others as ourselves?
The response to these questions, and
many others like them, are the evidences of my . . . of your
relationship with our God, our Lord. Our response is the evidential
fruit of our labors, whether it be of good fruit, acceptable to God,
or bad fruit, that which is rejected.
The relationship that we are to have
with Christ is as the Word states . . . it is to be relational. This
relationship is not some emotionally charged, sensationalistic
experience; it is not evidential through ecstatic utterances. It is a turning from the will of self
and becoming a bond-slave, and then a steward of God’s grace.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts . . . . Let the word of
Christ richly dwell within you” (Colossians 3:15-16).
There is a comforting peace built upon and within the Truth
available to each of us. There are riches beyond what our wildest
dreams can imagine.
How will you respond to your
children, a friend, or fellow member of the church the next time a
“What mean these stones?” type of question is asked? Will
your response reflect God as the Almighty God? Will the attributes
of our Holy God, Creator of all seen and unseen, be foundational in
your answer? Will our Lord and Saviour be glorified by your
response? Will you remember? Will you not forget? Can you answer
the question, “What mean these stones”?
Whoever
speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God;
whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength
which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified
through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever
and ever. Amen (1 Peter 4:11)
