Friday, August 24, 2018

Today's Evangelical Leaders Are Yesterday's Pharisees

1Ti 4:13  Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching. 14  Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery.15  Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all.16  Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

Mat 5:27  "You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY';
Mat 5:28  but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

2Jn 1:9  Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. 10  If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; 11  for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. 

The Pharisees thought certain actions made one righteous (like fasting, offerings, alms), and that not doing certain actions (not sleeping with a woman not their wife, for example) made them righteous as well.

Today's religious Evangelical leaders believe that:

certain doctrine makes them righteous

not all doctrine is needed for sanctification

abstaining from certain works makes them righteous

doing certain actions makes them righteous

They then can claim a small set of doctrine and actions to define what a true, faithful, mature Christian is, while at the same time treating as strange, unimportant, and useless, many biblical doctrines--and really Scripture itself--thus ignoring it and not feeding it to the sheep as Paul exhorted Timothy to do.

These leaders forget or really, ignore, that it is a heart of unbelief, to have such a disposition toward all sound doctrine and all of Scripture, and that such a disbelief is actually rebellion. That is to say, that to neglect the WHOLE counsel of scripture (which includes the entire O.T. and the covenants and all the doctrine therein), dividing it into sections of that which is "unnecessary", "more important", or "less important", is a hostile disposition toward God and that is what makes a man unclean.

The OT is what the Bereans tested Paul against to see if he was of God. It is the Scripture that Paul speaks of in 1 Tim. 4:13, and is definitely included by Peter in 2 Peter 3:16.  In fact, the book of Hebrews has entire chapters devoted to Christology grounded in the OT. That many of today's "sound" teachers of renown neglect the systematic teaching of the OT is to rebel against clear Scripture and the King Himself. It is also to starve the sheep.

So really the problem is that today's Evangelical leaders miss is that they are just as unclean as their predecessors by:

associations and a disposition of acceptance or tolerance toward false teachers within their own camp

the unrepentant sin of partiality

the hypocrisy of teaching while not living in line with Scripture

the pride and arrogance to think that they themselves or their "trusted" friends in ministry wouldn't or even couldn't, be deceived because they know too much, been in ministry too long, have supposedly sound men around them, read a lot, study a lot, have preached for decades.

Spiritual harlotry is worse than physical adultery, yet these leaders think that the physical is the only kind, and therefore they fancy themselves as remaining "righteous".

Not watching one's life and doctrine closely and giving attention to the OT as well as the NT and teaching all its doctrine, is to not insure the salvation both for themselves and those who hear them.

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