https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/jer/2/1/p1/ss0/rl1/s_747001
Well, I am back to using the old Blog. Enough people have signed up now that sending an email got to take as long as writing it seemed. I am praying that this speaks to you. I will say that not all the thoughts are mine and all of them came while I was sitting in Church yesterday listening to Steve Larson and Steve Mahnke preach two completely different messages that perfectly complimented each other.
The original thought for today was that most of us do not know the goodness of God toward us very well. If we did, we would never run and hide from Him in shame. We would run to Him in repentance as quick as we could. I will be writing about that soon but not today. However, this message will tie in.
As you see, there is a link to Jeremiah 2 at the top of the page. I would ask you to go back and read the chapter before you go beyond this point. It is the foundation of everything else I will be writing. I am writing this because there is freedom in the Lord that we are called to walk in, freedom to live Godly lives, not freedom to submit ourselves to the bondage of sin again. It seems that the message these days from so many places is just freedom, forgiveness and love. There is a complete lack of understanding that God also has wrath and judgment. He will judge all sin. When we don't warn people of the coming judgment, we fall into judgment for their destruction.
1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: 'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. ... 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. ... 14 But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. 15 So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. 16 Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. ... 20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. 21 I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, 23 and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works. - Rev 2:1, 4-5, 14-16, 20-23 ESV
3 Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. ... 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. - Rev 3:3, 19 ESV
As I read the words above, I was struck by a couple of things. The Churches these letters were sent to seemed to be on the right track. They often lived in places that were said to be the throne of Satan. They were encouraged for many good things and for being faithful in several ways. Then the word was a word of rebuke and reproof. The angel acknowledged the good things that they were doing and even continued to do. And yet, there was something about them that was not right, something that would lead to their downfall and the Lord was giving them the opportunity to repent while there was time. This rebuke was not because He did not love them. It is because Jesus wanted them to receive all that He died to give them and these things would keep them from their inheritance, and even worse, it would keep others from the truth of who they were in the new creation.
I have read these words many times but they hit different this time. I really saw how there were several good and commendable things going on in these Churches before they were rebuked. They got a lot of things right. There was no doubt that many of them loved Jesus and served faithfully, yet there was something that was really wrong. For two Churches, it was an issue that is prevalent today in today's Church. I believe it is a major reason that so many are leaving and the Church seems to be powerless.
Look at the letters to Pergamum and Thyatira. These Churches that had it all together did not call out the lies that the world promoted. The allowed the teaching of Balaam and Jezebel to pollute them. The two sins that were prominent in these teachings were to eat food offered to idols and sexual immorality. Now there is not a lot of food offered to idols today but the rise of sexual immorality since the 1960's has been astronomical. It has grown exponentially since the start of the sexual revolution. For a few years the Church took a hard stance against the growing movement in society but in the last 40 years something has changed.
- 1968: The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) was founded as the first church with a specific ministry to the LGBTQ+ community.
- 1972: The United Church of Christ (UCC) became the first mainline Protestant denomination to ordain an openly gay clergy person.
- 1974–1976: The Episcopal Church saw the formation of advocacy group IntegrityUSA (1974) and passed resolutions recognizing gay persons as children of God entitled to equal protection (1976).
- Late 1970s–1980s: Specialized movements grew, such as the Presbyterians for Lesbians and Gay Concerns (now More Light Presbyterians) in 1978 and the Reconciling Congregations program for Methodists in the early 1980s.
- United Church of Christ (UCC): In 1985, the General Synod encouraged congregations to become "Open and Affirming".
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA): Began welcoming LGBTQ+ individuals in the early 1990s, allowing same-sex union blessings in 2009 and electing the first openly transgender bishop in 2021.
- Episcopal Church: In 1994, it amended its canons to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
- Methodist Churches: The United Methodist Church officially removed bans on LGBTQ+ clergy and same-sex marriage in 2024, following decades of debate, with some traditionalist groups leaving in 2022 to form the Global Methodist Church.
As you see, Churches started moving towards the sexual malfunction of society and embracing it. They began to call it love to embrace the identity of lost people. It became common to practice welcoming everybody rather than to call sin for what it was. Churches want to be known as loving to the point that they no longer acknowledge that some people are lost and living in rebellion to God's purpose for their lives. They no longer talked about the coming judgment that is taught by Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John. We stopped calling dead men to life. We stopped pointing out that sin always separates us from God. We have allowed people to remain lost rather than to offend them and risk driving them away. The Church is in danger today because the preaching of repentance must always the forerunner of the Gospel. People don't get saved by repentance alone, but it opens the door for salvation, just as John was a forerunner of Jesus who prepared the way for His coming with the preaching of repentance.
3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. - Luk 13:3 ESV
46 and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. - Luk 24:46-47 ESV
36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" 38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." - Act 2:36-39 ESV
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - 1Jo 1:5-10 ESV
Wow, do you see it? Jesus and the Apostles did not shy away from calling out sin and pointing people to repentance in order to be saved. They point out that we can only be saved when we acknowledge that we are lost and have lived in rebellion to Jesus. The cross was not to make us more likeable people. It was to separate us from our rebellion against a holy God. The cross is the only door to salvation and repentance is the key that opens that door for us. When we allow sin to propagate in the Church and do not call it out, when we allow society to be overrun with immorality and say nothing, we are condemning whole generations to a Christless future
The two Churches that I mentioned specifically above were told that the Lord would come and make war with them with the sword of His mouth and He would throw those who refused to repent into a great tribulation. To me it seems that the world is on a train speeding to the edge of a precipice. The bridge has been knocked out and they are about to plunge over. We are not warning them. We are not even warning those who come into our doors often times. They are going to certain death and we want to affirm them rather than call them out of their peril.
The Church has lost its moral compass and been guilty of shielding the ones lost in their sin with our misguided love and compassion. We think that is it more important to affirm a wrong identity than to call people into the identity Jesus died for them to have. In doing this, we condemn them to the worst imaginable fate. We "love" them right into hell. At the same time, they call us bigots and hypocrites. Our attempts to win them with a false kindness has been our undoing and theirs too. We have lost the moral authority to have any spiritual power over the works of the devil. He is running rampant and decimating our Churches because we have given up the only message that saves and transforms.
The message of the Gospel is clear. All men are trapped in sin and live lives in rebellion to God. It plays out differently in every person's life, We are all unique but all have a common need. We need a Savior to rescue us from our sin and transform us into new a new creation who can live in harmony with the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus. This requires us to acknowledge our sinfulness and seek His forgiveness. He empowers us to come to Him. We cannot come on our own volition because our spirits are dead. When we come to Him in repentance, He immediately justifies us before the Father. We are not home yet, but we re on the road. He has given us a new identity that we still don't know how to live out. H begins to walk us through the process of sanctification, This is a lifelong process that helps us unlearn all the wrong ways we have been taught to live and teaches us to live like Jesus. It is a process of revealing the life of God that has now become resident in us.
I fear that too often we have interrupted the process for many people these days. The Lord has put people in our lives that are obviously hurting and in need of a healer, Savior and Lord, but we have affirmed their broken identity. They need us to speak up in love. They need to hear that Jesus is calling and has prepared an amazing life for them, but they cannot carry their old, broken identity into it. They have to be willing to let Jesus have it all and be Lord of their lives. Now none of us knows exactly what that means "Lord." Lord is kind of an outdated term that with the end of slavery kind of fell out of common use. It is kind of like Master. We do not call people master anymore. They are the same basic term. Jesus is in Charge. He sets the terms of our salvation. We come to Him as a bondservant, one who has entered into an agreement for our past in exchange for His protection and care in our future. Jesus has the lead and we are bit players in His story. At the same time, He elevates us to sonship with the Father.
How about it. Do we love broken people enough to tell them that they are separated from Jesus by their own choices. Yes, they were born into a sinful life, but every single one has chosen sin over Jesus too. It is not until we repent and open the door to Jesus that we can begin to experience the life He has for us.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - 1Jo 1:5-10 ESV
The good news really is good news. The Gospel is that God is delaying judgment so that all might have every opportunity to repent. But, a day is coming when this will all burn, including those who have not turned to Him as Lord and Savior. This world is temporary and we do not know the day judgment will begin to come upon it. All we can do is prepare everyone we meet to see Jesus face to face.
29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." - Act 17:29-31 ESV
Calling all people to repentance and life is the work Jesus has called us to join Him in. Anything less is rebellion on our part and certain judgment for those we fail to warn. The good new is that those who respond to the call of repentance, find life and the Holy Spirit waiting to make them new. This is the challenge Jesus has left us to fulfill as His hands, feet and voice. The call to repent is the call to love broken people.
