“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.” Luke 1:80
John the Baptist didn’t show himself until he grew strong in the desert. Moses never led Israel until after spending forty years in the desert. Even Jesus did not start His ministry until He spent forty days in the wilderness. Can you see that it takes some desert and wilderness to make a minister out of a Christian?
“And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.” II Chronicles 9:1
The queen came prepared to give in abundance, if the report she heard was true. The report was true and she gave it. She wasn’t going to visit Solomon to get more of the things of the world, she was going to get what the world can’t offer. This is why the church must stop offering worldly ministry to the lost. They don’t need more of what they have, they need what they don’t have, CHRIST.
“And David said, Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be builded for the LORD must be exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries: I will therefore now make preparation for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death.” I Chronicles 22:5
King David, before his death, ordered stone to be hewn and cedar to be gathered and nails to be made from iron, for the construction of the temple. So too, must the church and ministry today prepare the next generation to lead and minister to the church, the house of the Lord.
“For with God nothing shall be impossible.” Lk. 1:37
God may call Christians to a work that requires a lot of money and man power. When I would see these, what we call ministries, struggle for money and man power, I was quick to make a judgment and say in my heart, “That’s what they get for starting something God isn’t in.” But I have another thought about it. Maybe some of these huge works, impossible works for man to do, were ordered of God, but those who started out in obedience and trust in God, have lost their trust in God and took matters into their own hands. Therefore it leaves them with a work that is impossible for them to do. Nothing is impossible if God is in it. Let’s trust God in all the work He gives us to do.
“Then said Zedekiah unto Jeremiah, Let no man know of these words, and thou shalt not die. 25But if the princes hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king, hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death; also what the king said unto thee:” Jer. 38:24-25
King Zedekiah was in a tough situation. He wanted to hear what the Lord had to say through Jeremiah the prophet, but he also didn’t want to the princes to know. He didn’t want to offend them. The real problem with Zedekiah is that he feared man more then he feared God. Once that happens to a preacher, his ministry is done, unless he repents of course. Once any believer fears man above God, they will live a life of fear. Unless the man fearing believer repents they will end up like Zedekiah. “Moreover he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and bound him with chains, to carry him to Babylon” (Jeremiah 39:7).
“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.†Revelation†22:18-19
We believers, can have a rather proud attitude sometimes when we proclaim that we believe the whole bible. We can talk as if we are so grounded and unmovable when it comes to the entire word of God, but saying you believe something is not proof of actual belief. It is a very disturbing thing to have millions of Christians, including whole denominations insisting that they believe the whole bible, yet there seems to be a thousand differing and divisive beliefs that they all claim the bible teaches. How is it that Christians, who all have the same book, and claim it is their final authority, are so divided? Well, it isn’t the fault of God’s word; the problem lies with man.
Because our human nature hates correction and self-denial, it isn’t hard to understand why man at times will resist the bible and even teach the scriptures in a way that accommodates the lifestyle of man. There are those who water down scripture and even teach a false view of scriptures for convenience sake. Those who do that are called false teachers. They do this for a variety of reasons. Some do it to justify their sinful life style, some do it to form their own brand of religion, some do it to please man and some do it to scare or rule over people. Some will try to make the scriptures say less than they do, while some try to make them say more than they do. I have often said, “The bible has enough rules already without someone adding more to it.†Whatever the motive is, it is of the highest offense against the kingdom of God to carelessly and falsely handle the word of God.
I want to address something of great concern, which has to do with this subject of mishandling the word of God. What makes it such a great concern is that this mishandling that I am going to talk about is widely accepted in the Christian church. Since it is so accepted, few see the danger of this violation. What I am talking about is what we all agree is forbidden to do, and that is, “take away from the words of this book.†No, it isn’t that a publisher has printed bibles with some of the words missing, it is that some of the words and verses have been marked as obsolete by some of the most popular bible teachers of our day.
I can give you two strong examples of what I am talking about. The first example has to do with the ministry. Let’s look at Ephesians 4:11-13. “And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:†You can see that I highlighted the words, “till we all come.†This simply means that there is a time that we will no longer need, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, but now is not the time. The time is when we all come into “the measure of the stature of the fullness in Christ.†Kind of sounds like heaven to me. Have any of you come to be a “perfect man?†If so, has the rest of your brethren? If not, then you still need ministers in your life. Has the church come into “the unity of the faith?†This is highly unlikely, since we have hundreds of denominations and different doctrines that separate us. It is plain to see that we need ministers in our life. Well, you may say, I believe we have pastors and teachers, others may say, we have pastors, teachers and evangelists. I will not disagree with them, but we also have prophets and apostles. However, we have those today that say we no longer have prophets or apostles, and that they died off in the first century. Just because we don’t have men anymore that can pen us scripture does not mean that we don’t have apostles in our day. I think some of the problem is that we over spiritualize the office of an apostle. Apostles were simple men like you and me that God used to establish and oversee the body of Christ. We still need that done today. Therefore we still need apostles.
Another example is the gifts of the Spirit. It is amazing to me how widely accepted it is that some of the gifts aren’t for day. The spiritual gift that is most commonly refuted is “speaking in tongues,†but it doesn’t stop there. I know of Christians that don’t believe that divine healing is for today. When I first heard that as a young believer, I just shook my head in disbelief. I have come to find out that this teaching is more widely accepted than I thought. All I can say is that Jesus said, “let it be done according to your faith.†If you don’t believe in speaking in tongues, you aren’t going to receive the gift. If you don’t believe in divine healing, you are never going to pray for someone to be healed.
The thing that is the most disheartening about the claim that not all of the gifts are for today is the desperate attempt to find scriptures to support that belief. One of the more common scriptures is I Corinthians 13:8-9. You would never come to the conclusion that this scripture is telling us these three gifts, “prophesies,†“tongues†and “knowledge†will cease during this church age. The bible experts that believe that, violate the principles of bible study by not reading that passage in context and not reading the verses around it. In fact, just read verse 10 and it will clear up the whole passage. The “perfect†that verse ten is talking about is obvious, it is heaven, and it is our completeness in Christ.
So we have prominent teachers and church leaders that tell the church that there are no longer apostles or prophets today. They tell us that some of the gifts have ceased, but there seems to be confusion and disagreement about which gifts have ceased. So I end this article with this immensely important question: Who has such authority today to tell us what offices and gifts are not for today? Who has the authority to make the final decision for all of us on these matters? Simple respect for God’s word tells us that the safest ground to be on is to just believe it all for today. Do you really want to get into trying to pick and choose what is for today and what isn’t? I don’t know about you, but the scares me to death.
“But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.†(Matthew 4:4)
“But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.†(I Peter 1:25)
