We live in a culture that does not accept the possibility that we may be wrong. “Have it your way” is the rule of the day. “Everyone is right”. “That is your opinion”. There is always another voice we can listen to that will declare what we want. It is easy to gather a group of followers to side with us against the wisdom of God. Kind of like the saying in statistics, “if you torture the data long enough it will confess to anything”, we can always find a sympathizer if we look long enough or sow enough discord. Ultimately, we do not want the objective truth because it may just conflict with our desires. In regards to dismissing pastoral advice, Deuteronomy 17:9-13 has a very interesting solution.

Some may think it a bit strong to say that “if I don’t listen to my pastor I am rebelling against God”, but scripture is pretty clear on the subject. It is difficult for us to even comprehend the fact that when the apostles told people to obey the civil authorities it was those authorities who were hunting down and killing Christians. How much more so are we to obey the spiritual authorities God has given us. We are not really at liberty to question the creator of the universe why He has chosen our under-shepherds. God, in His providence, has ordained these people to shepherd His people, and that includes us.

Our position of disobedience is on even less solid ground if we elected them to church office. If we have voted them into the positions we are even more responsible to take their advice. By voting for them we have affirmed that they are worthy to be honored, respected, and listened to. Furthermore, most denominations, when installing a leader, will have the members take vows to pray for them, listen and obey them. These are not just vows to the leader or fellow congregants, they are a covenant with God. We break that covenant to our peril.

But what if we know the leader is wrong? Why should we listen to someone if we think their advice is bad? Some will submit out of fear of church discipline, but that is rare these days. Many people will submit out of false humility, secretly praying that God will vindicate themselves. We “rest” knowing that God will hold them accountable (yet somehow forget He will hold us accountable for our sinful attitude). Alas, very few will submit out of true humility in worship of our Savior. The majority maintain a sturdy self-righteous rebellion against submission.

At the core are two issues, a defective view of God’s sovereignty and an unwillingness to submit ourselves to God. We make ourselves to be wiser than God. We do not believe that He is working in this situation, and it is up to us to fix things. We think we know better than Him, revealing the fact that we have already placed something else on the throne of our lives.

Is there any positive to submitting to our leaders? Of course there is! Listening to our leaders is not only the responsibility of a church member, it is also God’s grace and advantage to us. We are freed up to live in faith that God is working all things out to His glory. We do not need to worry, fret, stress over the details because God has chosen faithful people to fulfill His plan. As such, submission is actually a form of worship.

Worship? Accepting a leader’s counsel is worship? That’s right. By submitting to God’s righteousness (and righteous plan) in faith, we offer an acceptable spiritual sacrifice, confessing that God is God, and ascribe the worth due His name.

Well, it is late now, and I must sleep. A lot more could be written, but I hope that gets some of you thinking.

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No wonder RadioShack is in the dumps, and changing its name to The Shack is not going to help.

CCEF is a Christian counseling and educational ministry located in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I want to highlight here their podcast called Help & Hope. [iTunes] They post about every other week with things that touch upon our daily lives.

… Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, repaired, and they restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall.

This guy made perfume, and was not afraid to get his hands dirty and work shoulder to shoulder with his people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. I doubt Wall Building 101 and Masonry 211 were standard classes during his perfumery schooling.

I think we can learn from his example that if there is work to be done in the church, we have a calling and responsibility to step up and help out. Back in verse 5 we read:

And next to them the Tekoites repaired, but their nobles would not stoop to serve their Lord.

Who do we want to be like? The faithful perfumer or the nobles? I hope that I will be willing to roll up my sleeves and pitch in.

Creation

In the past who knows how many years, the notion of a God creating the entire universe has been thoroughly mocked and ridiculed from several angles, most notably from the scientific establishment. As a result, I believe a lot of pastors, and their parishioners, shy away from discussion on creation. While I do not advocate that Christians become hard core Intelligent Design proponents, they do need to understand that if God did not in fact create the universe, then the rest of their faith is worthless. If God did not create it all, then we should worship whoever/whatever did (similar to how many atheists worship at the altar of evolution).

Fall

The fall of mankind is also a foreign concept to a lot of Christians, theologically and practically. Theologically the general consensus is that people are good and that society (and/or something else like religion) makes them go bad. This is quite contrary to the clear teaching of scripture. But even if we intellectually assent to the depravity of mankind, our actions tend to say otherwise. We attribute bad things to God, chance,  or others. We attribute  good things to ourselves like somehow we actually deserve them because we are such good people. We often subtly infer that our holiness achieves merit before God, forgetting that even our best works are like filthy rags.

Some think the fall only affected pieces of us as opposed to the whole. Just the body (evidenced by disease) and the soul (because we need a savior right?), but not the mind (because we all know that we each have Vulcan logic and are always right).

But one of the main issues that people do not like preaching about our fallenness is that it makes people unhappy thinking that they are so bad and nasty. The goal of Christianity is to be happy, right? Wrong.

Consummation

We do not often discuss consummation in the redemptive plan because it involves several topics that our modern minds do not want to deal with.

Kingdom: The consummation is of God’s eternal Kingdom. As such, there is a call for us to be servants in that Kingdom. We associate this servanthood with slavery, totally neglecting the fact that Christ came as s servant to us and told us to do likewise. This involves sacrificing our desires for those of the King. This is not something we want to do, as we spend the majority of our lives trying to build our own kingdoms.

Heaven: Christians have a misconception of what heaven is based on plenty of movies,  media, books, and other venues other than scripture itself, not to mention the widespread heritical belief in some sort of Christian reincarnation. Plenty of Health/Wealth teachers out there certainly teach that you can have your best life now, and society (with its glitz, glamour, and toys) does not want us to think or yearn for heaven. Once you talk about heaven, you need to talk about…

Hell: A very uncomforatble subject especially when you are subtlely mocked with the question “Do you really mean that (their personally significant person) is going to hell?” Actually, yes, I do mean that and I wish it was some other way. The Bible speaks of a literal, conscious, eternal torment called hell. Of course, if you skip the Fall, then you don’t need a hell, but then you don’t need the item talked about the most:

Redemption

Redemption gets a lot of press, and rightfully so because of the unfathomable grace of God shown towards believers in Christ. But if there was no fall, we would not need a redeemer. If there was a fall and we could save ourselves, then we would have personal redemption. If we are redeemed then left on our own, then there may not be a need for a consummation. We often neglect what we are truly being saved from, and what we are being saved to.

Well, those are some thoughts.