 |
|
| Volume 22 Number 12 December 2020 | Page 7 |
|
|
| Volume 22 Number 12 December 2020 | Page 7 |
Ernest S. Underwood
Jeremiah was called into the prophetic office at an early age. When God called him, he tried to excuse himself by saying that he was just a child. However, God told him that He was going to put His Word in Jeremiah’s mouth and that it would be his responsibility to proclaim that Word to His people. According to Jeremiah 1:10, he was set by God over the nations and over the kingdoms, and by the command of the Lord he was “To root smoulders and to pull down, To destroy and to throw down, To build and to plant.” Jeremiah was instructed by God to “not be afraid of their face,” indicating that the people to whom he was sent would be hard of heart and have their faces set against any messenger who would try to change them.
Jeremiah’s message was not one of “suggestion,” of which we hear so much today. It was a message that laid it on the line to idolaters, ungodly priests and false prophets. A sample of his style is seen in 5:30-31 where he observed, “An astonishing and horrible thing Has been committed in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule by their own power; And My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” This great prophet called God’s people to “stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and to walk in it. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’” (Jeremiah 6:16).
After going to the people, being threatened by them and told by them that they had no intention of listening to his preaching, he determined that he would quit. Beginning in verse seven of chapter 20, Jeremiah made his complaint to the Lord, reminding Him because of his preaching what the Lord commanded that he was made “a reproach and a derision daily.” In verse nine, he voiced his determination in the following way. “Then I said, ‘I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.” The next word in the text is “but.” This word lets one know that he is to look for a contrast. The words that follow the word “but” have been a source of encouragement to many preachers, teachers and others. The prophet continued, “But His word was in my heart like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, And I could not.” So intense was Jeremiah’s love for God’s Word that it burned in him like a fire in his bones. His love for God’s people caused him to realize that he neither could nor would hold back the proclamation of it.
Where is our “fire” today? There are those in the church today who have a fire to be like all the denominations around us. Their hearts are as cold as ice concerning the biblical teaching of the oneness of the church. Their interests are no longer focused on what pleases God but on what makes one feel good. Their remedy for this is like those of Ephraim who had “joined” themselves to idols (Hosea 4:17); instead, they joined themselves to the false doctrines of men. To them it is much better to have the ear soothed with machinery in worship and to have the fellowship of men than it is to be pleasing to God by obeying His Word.
There are others whose fire is the obtaining of material goods or of participating in the things of the world. Their fire smolders on a Sunday morning, but soon after leaving the meetinghouse, the fire dies, to be revived a week later, if something more interesting doesn’t attract them.
If a fire isn’t kindled in us by the Word of the Lord that causes us to be more zealous for His cause, we can be assured that on that great and final day that we will be “on fire” in the place where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. Brother, sister or friend, where is your fire? Is there in you a burning fire in your bones to find and to obey the truth, then to walk in that truth? Will you not rekindle it today before it dies and you die with it?
Just As I Am
T. Pierce Brown
I do not know how many hundreds of times we have sung “Just As I Am” as an invitation song. Close to the same idea is another song, “Only come as you are and believe on His name. Jesus will give you rest.” When I heard Dan Rather’s program about the Christian right with the homosexual church pastor saying that God loves all of us and takes us just as we are, without any special mention of what is involved in that, except that he said that God has special love for homosexuals, I decided to enlarge on the subject of God taking us just as we are from a biblical perspective.
It never entered my mind, nor the minds of most Christians, that anyone would ever teach or preach in such a fashion that when we sing, “Christ receiveth sinful men,” that it is suggested that Christ receiveth sinful men who continue in sin. Nor would most of us ever have dreamed of anyone who would suggest that God taking a person as he is implies or suggests that because God takes him as a sinner, He leaves him that way.
That was almost the idea that caused Paul to apparently recoil in horror as he said, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!” If we ever use the expression, “God takes a person as he is,” we should be careful that we explain (though most of us can scarcely conceive that we would ever need to explain) that “as he is” means that he is a penitent believer who is willing to now let Christ be the Lord of his life. He does not have to do righteous deeds and prove himself to have been reformed and strong enough to resist all temptations of the Devil, but he does have to repent of his sins, whether they include homosexual practices, adulterous ones or any other type of sin.
There are those who are so concerned about the expression, “Only come as you are and believe on his name. Jesus will give you rest,” that they have revised the song to say, “Obey Jesus your Lord, heed his every command.” We could probably find as much fault with misunderstandings about that as we can with the way the song was originally written. When I sing, “Only come as you are and believe on his name,” it never enters my mind that anyone would assume that any drunken wretch or adulterous rascal could come, continuing to be as he or she is, and that at the point of faith such a one would be saved. “Believe on his name” has always with me included trusting in and surrendering to Christ’s authority, which involves obeying His commands. However, the way some are now teaching (and sadly enough they are not all in a homosexual church), one may need to be more careful in calling attention to phrases that may be wrongly applied.
It is very similar to what may occur to us as we think of singing in a Christmas carol, “Don we now our gay apparel.” Some of us may now try to edit that song in some fashion, but it is hoped that most of us will be able to sing it without the necessity of some long-winded explanation or article. Just be careful!
[Editor’s Note: Some Christians try too hard and end up making rules that God did not make, while other Christians don’t try hard enough and minimize rules God did make. It is enough that we abide in the doctrine of Christ. The world, though, is unschooled – often willfully so – in the Word of God and draws erroneous conclusions to satisfy sinful appetites. The church and Christians who comprise it ought to be less reactive and more responsive with the Gospel to the speech and the actions of an ungodly world. ~ Louis Rushmore, Editor]