Tag: Ellicott

Christ is not your boy toy.

This world is coming unraveled, and it is speeding up the unraveling with each passing day. The bible warns us, many times over, of what is to come (which I believe is already here in some regard) and how to identify it, and then how to deal with it. We can boil the reasons down to just one, sin. But I know that is when people start rolling their eyes and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah! Sin, that’s the reason for everything with you people!” So instead of just saying ‘sin’, let me try to put it another way, let me reveal how God puts it, and see if we can’t clear some things up.

I am reading from the second epistle (a short dispatch or note) of John. There is only one chapter, so let’s go directly to verses 7 through 11.

7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

To start off with, we are told here that if there be a person who does not confess that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, they are a deceiver. We have no need to interpret this, as it is plain. There is no reason why a Christian entertains theory from a person who does not believe that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh. In fact, there are many who confess this, but fail to actually believe it. This is a principal that is a huge hiccup for a lot of people. Faith is more than lip service. It is a total belief system. You say it, but do you confess it from the nucleus of your mind? With all of your logical senses, do you truly confess that Christ is God in the flesh?  In the next verse, John starts of with the word ‘THIS’. The word indicates the behavior. ‘This’ really means those who do not confess and believe that Christ is the God man, and that this behavior makes a person a deceiver and the enemy of Christ. I know that when we talk about an anti-christ, we think of just one person that is going to rise to power as the testimony of Christ reveals in the pages of Revelation. But here, John is letting you know that ALL who do not believe are an enemy of Christ. This is serious business folks. I put it to you because I think the Christian of today believes that a relationship with Christ is some cavalier on again off again deal. Christ is not your trophy girlfriend, or your boy toy. He is almighty God and this is a lot more serious than you think!

Ellicot wrote– “among all the human errors by which the influence of the Evil One is manifested, this is the most destructive. Those who adopt such errors are the most fatal deceivers and opponents of Christ and truth.”

John Gill wrote- “who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh; these were not the Jews who denied that Jesus was the Christ, though they would not allow that Christ was come in the flesh; but these were some who bore the Christian name, and professed to believe in Jesus Christ, but would not own that he was really incarnate, or assumed a true human nature, only in appearance; and denied that he took true and real flesh of the virgin, but only seemed to do so; and these are confuted by the apostle and upon everyone of these he justly fixes the following character.”

8 Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

Why is the gathering of the saints important? Why is a church home important? Why should the brethren be the most important people in your life? Because we are to ‘look to ourselves’. We are to be AWAKE!! We are to be on constant guard for the series of men who deceive and who are an anti-christ. We are to be a peculiar people set aside all on one accord, like minded so that when we see that which is not right we can identify it as such and stay clear of it. Christians are not hate mangers and we are not filled with phobias. We believe the BIBLE declares a right behavior and a wrong behavior. As we all should be on the constant lookout for flaws in our own lives, we are also on the constant lookout for the snares of the world. And we are to identify them, call them out so we can all, together, stay clear of them. Why? So that we do not lose the things which we have wrought. This is very clear. We must be watchful for if we fail, we lose all the ground we covered. It is a constant effort, it is an endless walk, it is enduring to the end, it is making the good choice, it is leaving behind your earthly flesh and giving over to God all that is you. There is a finish line to cross, a reward to be lost, and a hell to shun. But there is a full reward to be had, a heaven to be gained for those who endure unto the end. In Galations 3:3 Paul asks the Galatians if they were so foolish as to begin “in the spirit” and then be “perfected by the flesh”. We must remain vigilant in rebuking those who would mislead us with wrong interpretations of God’s word. That is the answer to the ‘why’ questions. So that we can bare each other’s burdens and be our brother’s keepers.

Benson comments– “Lest you lose the reward of what you have already done, which every apostate does; but that we receive — Which every one that is faithful unto death shall do; a full reward — That, having fully employed all our talents to the glory of him that gave them, we may receive the whole portion of felicity which God has promised to diligent, persevering Christians.”

Adam Clarke comments– “This reading is more consistent and likely, and is supported by at least as good evidence as the other. We find that if these persons did not keep on their guard they might lose their salvation, and the apostles their rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus. Even this intimation might put them on their guard. Had the apostle said ye cannot finally fall, what a different effect would it have produced!”

Ellicott writes– “The result of the error would be loss of the fellowship with the Father and the Son in truth and love.”

9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. 10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: 11 For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.

Again, there really is not need for too much discussion as this is pretty clear. If you subscribe to crying out LORD LORD and do not have the doctrine in you, you are not abiding with God. These are His words. Not only does God want you to believe in Him, He wants that faith to produce obedience. He does not just want you to believe in Him, He wants you to abide with him. The word abide (μενων) refers to being one with, not separating or becoming something different. That’s how close God wants you to be with Him. But if we transgress by not being one with the doctrine of Christ, God tells us we are not one with Him, but that we have become something different; we are apart from Him. If we do keep the doctrine then we are one with Him. And this is so important to God that He tells us, that if anyone comes teaching something that is not right, we are not to receive that person. Now, John is saying that this person should not be permitted to teach or preach in the house of God because that is not the doctrine of Christ. But this verse does not stop at the house of God alone. If you are a true Christian, then when you leave church and go home, you are truly leaving one house of worship and going to another house of worship. So if the anti-christ is not to be in the church house, he is not to be in your home also. In-fact, the next few words tells you to not bid him God’s speed. This means that we are not to encourage them to continue to preach, teach, talk false doctrine. If you encourage an anti-christ, you then are promoting the false doctrine and are now one with the enemy of Christ. God is simply saying, pick a side. There is no middle. You are either one with me, or you are not.

Benson states– “….so the Christian sister to whom the apostle wrote this letter, being probably rich, and of a benevolent disposition, thought herself under an obligation to supply the wants of those strangers who went about preaching. Wherefore, to prevent her from being deceived by impostors, the apostle here directs her to require such teachers to give an account of the doctrines which they taught; and if she found that they did not hold the true Christian doctrine, he advised her not to receive them into her house, nor to give them any countenance. And this advice of the apostle was certainly perfectly proper, because they who entertained, or otherwise showed respect to, false teachers, enabled them the more effectually to spread their erroneous doctrine, to the seduction and ruin of those whom they deceived.”

Ellicott writes– “Although it would be possible to love unbelievers, in the sense of earnestly desiring that they might come to a knowledge of the truth, it would be wrong—for sincere Christians it would be impossible—to hold out to them the right hand of fellowship. Especially dangerous would it be for the matron and her family.”

This sharing of the word is done so that we may allow the spirit to convict each of us accordingly. I can only know for sure where I stand. Am I a deceiver, or does God abide in me and me in him? I fail everyday to be perfect. But I strive to be as perfect as possible. I am confident that this is a goal that only Christ attained, but I cannot let that be the excuse to do less than I am gifted to do. The truth is, I may not be gifted to do much at all. But God, I believe, loves to see the effort. I must try to grow and learn and to allow the spirit in me to produce works that bring glory to the throne of God.

If you stand in the mirror, what will the reflection tell you about your relationship with God and what are you going to do about it? May the peace of God be abundantly heaped upon you and your home, straight from the cross to the Christian!

If you can’t beat’em, join’em

So many times in my life I have used the circumstances of my situation and environment to justify what I knew to be a wrong behavior. To this very day I still do it, and I still hear others do it. It is weird but also amazing what you hear and observe when you admit to yourself that you do the same thing. I know a lot of people who conform, even pastors, yet they would never admit it because they know it’s wrong to do so, but even they have been socialized. I have used, and am willing to assert that you have used (if you stand in that mirror and are completely honest with yourself) some of these justifying statements.  Number one- “But everybody is doing it.” Number two, “If you can’t beat’em, join’em.” Number three, “That was then, this is now.” Number four, “Times change, people change.” Number five, “These things we have today weren’t even made in the times of Jesus.” I am certain that there are many variations of these phrases, but they all lead to the same principal. We make excuses galore to be content in our earthly disobedience.

There are many examples of disobedience in the Holy Bible. Everyone would be right in saying that most all of what we have today was not present in the times of Jesus. However, everyone would be incorrect to say that the relevance of the principles Jesus taught are not the same, and not applicable to our lives today. First remember that Christ created everything, and then that he knows everything. If you believe that then the stories that He spoke were spoken to you! Let’s take the story of Elimelech.

The example that Elimelech left for his sons is that it is okay to try to solve all your problems on your own and not take the word of God seriously. Elimelech lived and was raising a family during a time of famine. He heard there was plenty of food and life in Moab. So he decides to move his family. The issue here is that the bible mentions no instance of prayer, or divine guidance. He left God and God’s people to go to the pagan city filled with food, but also filled with sin. The Moabites worshiped hundreds of Gods. They sacrificed their own children to these Gods. He marched his family of faith into the den of vipers. Upon arriving into the land of sin, Elimelech dies.  In those times that meant the son’s, particularly the eldest, are now the head of the family. Do they exercise faith and obedience to God and return to their people, the chosen people of God? Nope

Key Verse

Ruth 1

4 And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years.

5 And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons and her husband.

They married women from Moab. Now, just in case we need some reminders about this type of activity, let’s look at the word of God and try to see if we can clearly get God’s take on this activity.

Deuteronomy 7

7 When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

2 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

6 For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

8 But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

That seems pretty clear to me. Remember that this is the same God we serve today. God HATES SIN!!! I believe we have become a people who live according to our flawed definition of love. God’s love is righteous, and people will be held accountable. Here, these nations that God is calling for complete destruction of are nations who chose to live in sin, and not under His love.

Genesis 6

6 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

I can hear people now, wait Mike, I don’t understand what Genesis 6 has to do with this. Awesome, let me explain. Re-read it, but before you do, think about how this all came to be. Cain killed Able. Able’s heart was true, and God was well pleased with him. Cain was selfish, and thought more of himself than he did God. His heart was not true; and when God was displeased with the behavior, Cain became overwrought with envy, and hate. Instead of taking the correction and doing better next time, he lashed out and murdered his brother. God banished Cain from the family. He sent him out into the world to be on his own. As the story unfolds, we see descendants of Seth and Cain mixing, taking husbands and wives without regard to God’s desire to remain separated from the sinful world. This mixing was not about black and white like most people would like to suggest. This was about God’s people, and worldly people. The result was that there were so many offspring from these “unequally yoked” relationships that God was hurt. The whole earth became corrupt with sin. The Bible talks about how man was so wicked that he corrupted even the dirt of the earth. And so God needed to destroy all of it. I praise God for Noah, and that in spite of what society was telling him, in spite of how the people of his time were making fun of him and persecuting him, in spite of what everyone was doing, and, praise God, in spite of all the hardships of preaching an unwelcome word, giving warnings of a end of time revelation, Noah NEVER said, “If you can’t beat’em join’em!” No, he remained faithful to the end. All of that destruction, because the line of Seth mixed unequally with the line of Cain.

Even though the Israelites knew this story, we see the sons of Elimelech thinking and acting just like their dad. They took wives from the pagan group of idolaters, murderers, and all-together immoral people. Not only did they take wives, but they pitched their tents and squatted for ten years.

Charles Spurgeon commented,  “Which was about ten years too long. Probably they did not intend to remain so long when they went there, they only meant to be in Moab for a little while, just as Christian people, when they fall into worldly conformity, only purpose to do it once, “just for the sake of the girls, to bring them out a little.” But it happens to them as it is written here: “and they dwelled there about ten years.”

Adam Clark comments,

“The Targum very properly observes, that they transgressed the decree of the word of the Lord, and took to themselves strange women.”

For those who do not know, the Targum (pictured above, and no it is not the original) is a collection of commentaries from the first century. It is not the bible, but it is interpretations as Rabbis read Hebrew and taught and preached in Aramaic. So they needed to explain a lot. So Clark used the Targum to show that the boys were acting outside the will of God in their marriages here. Some believe that the wives converted to Judaism before they married, otherwise known as “proselyte”. Again, you cannot, if you want to be an obedient child of God, marry a non-believer. Many non-Christian religions today require conversion, if they do not outright forbid the marriage. Unfortunately, the Christian Church, with only a few denominations withstanding, don’t care who they marry. They will marry believers, non-believers, same gender marriages, all in the name of man’s own flawed definition of “Love”. A believer in the Christian faith should never even date a non-believer. What comes first is witnessing and bringing that person to the cross. Since Christ is the head of our home, the man and the woman should both be of Christ in order for Christ to be the head of the house. It is the number one reason for divorce. I do blame the American Church’s decline of this standard for the inflation of divorce, which has been high for a long time, not just recently. Even in the 50’s when Dr. J. Vernon McGee preached, he spoke of divorce rates of 50%. So I tend to agree with the likes of Clark and Spurgeon, and disagree with the likes of Coke and Gill on this. I do not believe they converted but that the men lived in the moment and turned their backs to God. The boys spent no energy even trying to be obedient.

In the first chapter of Ruth we saw the leader of the home make some bad choices that cost him, but also his lineage. The boys followed in the dad’s footsteps and they reaped the same consequence. Why did it happen ten years later; I have no idea. But it really doesn’t matter, does it? It was all according to God’s plan. And the story is told so that we can see that God is not weak, He is not confused. We are weak and we are confused. The bible is the living word of God and it is here for us to not only study, but to follow. It is our guide.

On the marriage Ellicott comments, “This seems to have been after the father’s death. The fault of settling on a heathen soil begun by the father is carried on by the sons in marrying heathen women, for such we cannot doubt they must have been in the first instance. The Targum (or ancient Chaldee paraphrase) says: “They transgressed against the decree of the Word of the Lord, and took to themselves strange wives.” This act was to incur a further risk of being involved in idolatry, as King Solomon found”

It is my belief that not a single one of us is perfect. We will ALL fall short. We will ALL violate God’s will for us; we will ALL be disobedient every day. That is not in question. What is in question is, “What are you going to do about it?” Are you going to make some changes in your life? Remember that when we become believers we should behave differently than the world. We are to be a peculiar people. Or, are you going to say well society says it’s okay, so it must be. No matter how hard it is, we never join them. No matter how many magazines say that the spaghetti strap and thong bikinis are good, no matter how many GQ magazines say that peanut shell speedos are the trend, no Christian should ever be exposing that much of their body. We are to be a modest people. In America sex sells! That’s the truth. No Christian should dress like they are selling their sexuality. I see people come to church dressed like that, let alone anywhere else in the world. Some say, well it makes me feel good to have all my flesh hanging out, or to go to church or even church functions, in front of children looking like an extra from Saturday Night Fever. And at the end of the day, our relationship with God is not about us feeling good. These boys, should there not have been any God Jehovah fearing women in Moab, should have lived a peculiar life and drawn people to God through their conduct. That didn’t happen. There is no reverence for God in selfish and idolatrous behavior. In a church house you should be screaming “PRAISE GOD”, not “LOOK AT ME”! We need churches who still preach the truth. And if people pick up and go to Moab, well, that’s between them and God. A friend of the world is an enemy of God. Again, I believe God is serious; I don’t think He is kidding. What are you conforming to? What behaviors are you making excuses for because they are just too enjoyable to give up? It is hard, but it is true. When does the God fearing hero stand up and say that enough is enough? When do we say, “I will NOT conform!” It all starts with that look in the mirror.

If you stand in the mirror, what will the reflection tell you about your relationship with God and what are you going to do about it? May the peace of God be abundantly heaped upon you and your home, straight from the cross to the Christian!