Samson was the leader of his church.  He was responsible for remaining vigilant in order to protect God’s people.  Nonetheless, God says Delilah made Samson “sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair ….  But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.  Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison” (Judg. 16:19, 20f.).  

Too many Christians bear a resemblance to Samson in their sottishness.  They are asleep when their duty requires the utmost watchfulness. Scores of professing believers in positions of leadership in their churches are sleeping in the midst of a vicious offensive being waged by the adversary.  

Gatekeepers are not to sleep during their watch.  There is no “at ease” in the Christian life, for the Christian is always on duty.  The tresses of your spirit can be as quietly and decisively sheared as Samson’s.  

The church is asleep, and Satan is hopeful that its slumber continues.  The church is slumbering because churchians do not want to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6).  Until the church is awakened, the wickedness of the world will remain unaddressed.  

God calls your church to be a fort where you come for fortifications to undertake the raging battle.  Jesus says, “strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die.”  Scores of churches are but a carcass of what Christ desires.  They are unemployed in the campaign of Christ.  They have taken on the lethargy of their pagan ethos.  Has the strength of your church waxed cold?

Salvation is a revolutionary grace, and makes revolutionary demands upon those claiming God’s saving grace.  Churches should be praying daily for the earthly interests of their members to decrease, for those in the marketplace to become more interested in the nurture of their souls than in their finances and for every churchman to recognize that even at his workstation he stands coram Deo, before the face of God (II Cor. 7:1).

Christ says, “I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.”  You may protest, but Jesus judges the merit of your deeds based upon God’s standard, not your standard, the canon of your church or the rule of your culture.  Be mindful, “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?  If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?” (Jer. 12:5).

The Bridegroom will not come until the bride makes herself ready.  The bride is not just you, but your entire church!  Look closely at your church.  Are its leaders and members engaging their families and associates in eternal matters, or have they set themselves upon the task of avoiding engagement, persecution and hardship in order to avert disclosure of their professed Christianity?

Too many church leaders and members are starters, but are not finishers of what they began.  Peter slept as his Savior sweated blood.  Are you or your church asleep?

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7f.).  

God describes His church as “the pillar and support of the truth” (I Ti. 3:15).  When someone is a part of a true church, they will exclaim with Jacob, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17).  A tsunami of excitement captures their hearts all week as they anticipate being in the presence of the Lord amidst the praises of His people.  You should sense the eyes of the Lord looking upon you and hear the voice of the Lord speaking to your heart when you attend your church on the Lord’s Day.  The sweet psalmist of Israel declares, “O God, Thou art awesome from Thy sanctuary. The God of Israel Himself gives strength and power to the people. Blessed be God!” (Ps. 68:35).

Nonetheless, God is not present in all churches, even those claiming to be Christian!  Paul cautioned the church about those being raised up in the body who would be “speaking perverse things” (Acts 20:30).  In J. Gresham Machen’s book titled Christianity and Liberalism, he affirms that liberalism is not Christianity just as Baal worship is not Christianity.  Dr. Machen equates liberalism with the Israelites erecting the Asherah pole – there was not merely a theological difference between the worship of YAHWEH and the worship of Baal, but a fundamental divide as wide as the mouth of hell.

The core beliefs of the true church and the liberal church are radically different.  The liberal church’s catechism may be summarized by any one of the following ideological principles:

• The Bible contains the word of God, but all Scripture is not necessarily inspired by God (II Ti. 3:16)
• The Old Testament makes for interesting reading, but is not really relevant to us today (Mt. 5:17-19)
• The Bible will help us live well, but since we are a priesthood of believers, we can interpret it the way we want (II Pe. 1:20f.)
• Miracles are interesting children’s stories, but they did not really occur (Mk. 6:32-44; Lk. 11:9-32)
• The devil is more the concept of evil than an actual being (Lk. 22:31; Jn. 8:44)
• The God of the Old Testament was a God of wrath, so He is not the God of the New Testament, who is a God of love (Mal. 3:6; Js. 1:17; Heb. 13:8)
• God loves everybody (Mal. 1:3; Ro. 9:13)
• God is good and powerful, but even He cannot control nature (Mt. 8:23-27)
• People should be kind, honest and helpful, but no one needs to be “born again” to go to heaven (Jn. 3:3; I Pe. 1:23)
• Though Christians have opinions, they are not supposed to judge anyone (Jn. 7:24; 18:23; I Cor. 5:5)
• God does not expect anyone to be perfect (Mt. 5:48)
• The Bible does not require Christians to tell other people about Jesus because we live in a pluralistic society and some people could be offended (Mt. 10:27; I Pe. 2:9)
• No one can know God’s will for themselves or for anyone else (I Thess. 4:3, 7)
• All people go to heaven when they die, not to hell (Mt. 7:13f.; 25:41, 46)
• Church membership is open to anyone wanting to join, not just Christians (Acts 2:47)
• Jesus was a good man, but He was not God (Jn. 10:30-38)
• Jesus was an effective teacher, but He is our friend, not the Lord of our lives (Acts 2:36; Phil. 2:11)
• Jesus is one of the ways to get to heaven, but not the exclusive way (Jn. 14:6)
• Jesus’ spirit was resurrected from the tomb, not His body (Lk. 24:1-7, 36-43)

The licentious church is teaching many of these fundamental departures from the way of God.  They are employing the pulpits and teaching stations of the less biblical church to debauch true churchmen.  These Jezebel teachers are social engineers seeking to bring their church in conformity with the world rather than calling their church and the world to be conformed to the image of Christ.

The indictment the Lord Christ brought against the church in Thyatira is the same charge He brings against the profligate church in this age (Rev. 2:18-29).  Tolerance is the hound of hell and the goddess before whom the unbiblical church bows.  Sadly, the laissez-faire church is following the ways of man instead of the Lord’s word and is tolerating historic intolerables.

Toleration of biblical intolerables is a satanic movement designed to eliminate God’s absolute truth.  The disadvantages of tolerating intolerables are legion:

• Disables the jurisdiction of proven authorities (such as parents)
• Assures loss of community and accountability
• Advances uncontrolled lifestyles
• Ability becomes the criteria for action rather than appropriateness
• Increases artificial confidences in fallen reason
• Radical individualism supplants community
• Aids and abets historically recognized wickedness
• Silences moral gatekeepers
• Accentuates the value of one’s feelings and experiences over one’s mind
• Increases individual and corporate stresses including loneliness, fatigue and fear
• Tombstones true progress by licensing secularists, materialists, hedonists and consumerists
• Massacres by assassination a civilized civilization

Do not forfeit your society or your church to the daughters of Satan.  You must not allow public opinion to become the god/Baal before whom your church bows.  The poison of church lenience must be antidoted with the inspired, inerrant and infallible word of the holy and righteous Christ (II Ti. 3:16f.).  

Your spiritual forefathers bled for truths that now are being neglected, abandoned, manipulated or renounced by liberal churches that position themselves as broadminded; whereas they are broadminded to all concepts except authentic biblical righteousness. You cannot afford to compromise on the essentials of Christianity.  

Your society has become increasingly transient.  Even within a given locale, there is movement concerning people’s professions, places of employment and even their church.  Years ago, children just joined their parents’ church and stayed there the remainder of their lives.  In present days, the Holy Spirit is moving in the hearts of His beloved to encourage them to become involved in those churches that will best facilitate their Christian maturity.  

One of the questions frequently asked by Christians desiring to grow in the Lord is: “How/When do I know the time has come for me to leave the church I am attending?”
Though the panoply of answers to this matter is varied, one of the telltale signs of needing to exodus the church you are attending is when you are placed in the position of “outsourcing” the biblical education you, your spouse or your children need.  When your church fails to provide the biblical diet appropriate to your advance in the Lord, you should have already left.

Leaving the church of your parents, your youth, your baptism, your marriage or of your friends is not an indictment of that church.  The Lord leads His people to go wherever He directs in order for them and their families to capture the fullness of His Spirit.  No existing visible church can minister to all people with the same efficacy.

When someone recognizes they are not receiving from their church the nourishment they need, why do they hesitate to leave?  The reasons are legion:

• I’m teaching Sunday school or youth at my church and must stay for them
• I sing in the choir
• I have talked with my children and they want to stay at the church
• I love my spouse and he/she is not where I am spiritually, so we need to stay
• I’m in a good Sunday school class where I know everyone
• I like the way it ministers to my felt needs
• I’m in a position of leadership; I’ve invested so much and the church needs me
• I’ve always gone to this church and my family and friends are here
• I love the architecture, church yard and grave yard (my family is buried here)
• I like the preacher and many others in leadership
• I appreciate the number of business associates and social friends at my church
• I like the missions emphasis, the music and the fellowship
• I get to evangelize lost people attending my church
• I can turn the church around so that it will offer more solid teaching
• I like the programs at my church

Do you notice the prominence of the perpendicular pronoun “I” in each response?  How would Christ respond to each of your feeble protests?  Are you going to church for you, your spouse and your children, or for Jesus?  Could your selfishness be imprisoning your entire family?

Perhaps you need to give up living in yesterday. Perhaps you need to surrender your opinions to the mind of Christ. Perhaps your worship of your church has supplanted your worship of Jesus to the extent that your church has become a stone of stumbling between you and Christ.  

You are charged with the responsibility to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Pe. 3:18).  Is your church aiding in that growth or is another church providing the more significant assist?  God says, “Lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).  Could your church be an encumbrance not because anything is wrong with your church, but because you need to be in another place at this season for you to capture all the Lord has for you?

Distinguish the riches of true Christianity from the container of your comfortable church.  If you are outsourcing your growth in Christ through His Word such that a marketplace Bible study, retreats, special services elsewhere, another preacher’s audios or another church through its teaching is providing your biblical meat, you need to change churches.  Now you must pray for the courage to do what you know you should have already done, “for whatever is not of faith is sin” (Ro. 14:23).

Jesus knows your dwelling place because He did take flesh and dwelt among mankind.  He knows the difficulty of living where Satan roams “about on the earth” (Job 1:7).  He has also done battle with Satan on the enemy’s territory.  Nonetheless, “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him” (Lk. 4:13).

Satan is the definitive instigator of man’s difficulties. The more closely associated you are with your Christ, and the nearer you live to Satan’s havens, the more sober you should be concerning your well-being. Those taking up residence near the lair of evil are exhorted to expect evil assaults (I Pe. 1:13).  

The enemy of Christ and Christian man is calculating, disciplined, intelligent, organized, motivated, shrewd, well financed and sacrificial in his commitment to seducing and crushing Christians.  Satan is a fool for his cause, and he has a keen awareness of the appropriate time to effectuate the most inappropriate works of darkness.  

The devil appears to come out of nowhere, yet he and his legions are well positioned to foster their evil.  He is called the Accuser, and he manifests himself in various ways and in all venues.  He is unconcerned with world approval, yet he consistently receives the world’s endorsement.  

Your enemy knows how to captivate your attentiveness to his offerings.  Nonetheless, the cross of Christ changed the landscape of the world and the power of Satan’s throne.

Light and darkness cannot dwell together peacefully; therefore, the witnessing church will be the persecuted church.  God desires a pure church unmixed with worldly compromises (I Cor. 5:5; 11:32).  Christ’s chaste church will witness to its chastity by the persecution it receives, for God shakes the church tree via unregenerate man’s disgust and maltreatment thereby identifying the temporary Christians. 

In your society, the persecution of the true church is not seen on the gallows or the guillotine or in the prisons.  Rather, “civil” persecution is in the form of jealousy and envy and slander and being publicly distanced from the “respected more sophisticated” community.  The untrue church will label your true church a cult or a center for worshiping a preacher rather than being a sanctuary where many might join to do business with the holy God who expects nothing less than holiness from His worshipers (I Pe. 1:15).  

One of your Christian responsibilities is to determine those in your church, particularly in positions of leadership, who are but temporaries (or hirelings!) enjoying the outward privileges of being churched though without title to an eternal pew (II Jn. 7-11; III Jn. 9f.).  Personal and corporate implications accompany your lack of vigilance.  The consequences of failing to judge with a righteous judgment are more severe than you or your church body can afford, for God shall remove your lampstand (Jn. 7:24).

The receding cultural influence of the Church makes Christianity peripheral in the western world. But why is the Church’s affect upon the society receding?  The Church is being built upon feelings, fears and human felt needs rather than the foundation of Jesus Christ.  

God designed the Church as a peculiar society of people with the noblest goals.  Its ambitions are celestial, not terrestrial.  It is purposed to reform the terrestrial through the revolutionary person of Christ.  It must ally itself with all that is pure and eternal in order to effectuate reformation.  The Church should be penetrating every facet of life, including such market places as the factories and the professional offices, the legislative halls and the court chambers, the banks and the homeless shelters, the palaces and the farms, the ships and the space shuttles.

The true Church must purpose to influence the metropolises and the villages, athletes and the frail, homemakers and militia, the wealthy and the widows, the simple and the cosmopolitan, the obscure and those noticed by society.  Christ’s biblical Church despises vice, ungodliness, greed and self-indulgence.  It is a cultivator of the purest motives, the justness of holiness and the benefits of self-sacrifice.  The Church of the Holy Spirit woos man to God, destroys class divisions and provides a social life envied even by the devils.  God’s Church strengthens the weak, emboldens the timid, removes the guilt of sin and proclaims the substitute of life for death.  

But how do these visionary ambitions occur? How does the Church bring healing to broken limbs? How does a dream become a reality rather than remaining an illusion?  The society of the beloved places their trust and activates their spirits in the foundation of “Christ Jesus it is He, Lord Sabbaoth His name, from age to age the same, and He shall win the battle.”

Throughout the ages the Church has been tempted to place its trust in other more earthly foundations.  The Church is subject to forgetting that it is constituted of fallen, faulted people subject to many doubts and artificial reliances.  It is ever ready to trust walking by sight rather than marching in faith.  Sight-walkers kidnap the Church away from its one true mooring.

Many doomsayers presently proclaim the demise of the Church.  But ask yourself if the Church is in worse circumstances today than it was when enslaved in Egypt or when imprisoned in the traditions existing in the 10th through early 16th Centuries.  The Church of the living God cannot afford to part with the biblical hope set before it.  It cannot become distrustful of God’s goodness or apprehensive that they are expecting too much of God.  

Christ’s Church exists for both the blessing and purification of humanity.  It must not only oppose unrighteousness, but actually overcome the devil’s handiwork.  The Lord Jesus of the Prophets, of the Law, of the Gospels and of the Epistles is God’s way, truth and life.  Those “in Christ Jesus” must be committed to a constant sacrifice of their leisure, pleasure and comfort or they shall never accomplish all the Lord God has set before them.  

The lifestyle of true Churchmen is set forth in God’s holy oracles.  Are your life-principles found in the Ten Commandments, in the Psalms of praise and in the epistles of liberty?  The Churchman’s life is one of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” coupled with applying all diligence to one’s growth in Christ so that “in your faith supply moral excellence; and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control; and in your self-control, perseverance; and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness; and in your brotherly kindness, love” (Gal. 5:22f.; II Pe. 1:5-7, respectively).  Is this a portrait of your life?

The character of the Christian Church is a character separate from (and almost in isolation of!) the ordinary ways of men.  The true Church relies at the greatest cost upon Christ to bear its peculiarity.  In reliance upon Christ, rivers of living water flow from this frail and yet august body (Jn. 7:38).

There is but one book in the entire world, one writing, one Author, one set of principles that provides and proclaims the hope for all the world.  That God-breathed book affirms that all shall be accomplished only when the Church practices the lifestyle-giving evidence that the elder Brother of the Church is the King.  

Would you describe your commitment to the labors of the Lord’s Spirit through the Church as being urgent, earnest, enthusiastic and sacrificial?  Are you aware of being hurled into the spiritual struggle every day, and even after apparent defeats you know the freshness of the Spirit’s holy dew upon your life so that you are invigorated to continue in the eternal cause of Christ?  Are you immersed in laboring for a new heaven and a new earth wherein you and scores of others you love shall dwell in righteousness?

Martin Luther attempted to reform the Roman Catholic Church from within – he failed.  The English Puritans attempted to reform the Church of England from within – they failed.  The likelihood of anyone outside church and denominational leadership reforming their church or denomination out of the darkness of lawlessness into the light of grace is ever so slight absent the mighty hand of the Holy Spirit.  There are few instances of a particular church or denomination, once having taken a course away from II Timothy 3:16, ever returning to God’s way.

Why and how do churches and denominations become lawless? Churches and denominations turn away from God’s commandments in order to draw larger crowds to their facilities.  Sometimes they are chasing finances or numbers, but oftentimes their intentions are noble, it is just that their methods and goals are less than God-honoring.  They may accommodate the world in the areas they deem less important thereby failing to recognize that every word of Scripture is important to God or He would have remained silent in the matter.  Every denomination or church with a weak unbiblical address to sin shall become a people where the flesh of man rules rather than the Spirit of Christ.   

The house of the Lord should be a house of prayer, obedience, sacrifice and holiness.  The way of the Cross has been designed by the Christ to be difficult and offensive to the world because it demands holiness.  The narrowness of the way of the Cross is not agreeable to man’s corrupted nature so that even Christians face many struggles as they follow Christ.  

The way of the cross of Christ requires precision, diligent singularity of purpose and the employment only of the means that delight God.  You, your denomination or your church cannot imitate your world and delight God at the same time (Js. 4:4).  Worldly imitations trigger sin that in turn introduces unrestrained apostasy from the God of the Bible.  This forsaking of God’s statutes and commandments can have national consequences:

“The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 also produced intense hostility to religion and the Churches.  In 1793 the government and Assembly in France that had replaced the monarchy, and sent king and queen to the guillotine, declared Christianity to be abolished.  In it place the Worship of Reason was proclaimed.  A certain Mademoiselle Maillard, an opera dancer, wearing the three colours of the new republic, was enthroned as the goddess of Reason upon the high altar of Notre Dame, the Roman Catholic cathedral of Paris, and there she received the homage of the revolutionists.  The Christian calendar was abolished and a ten-day week was instituted.  Church bells were called ‘the Eternal’s geegaws’ and melted down, cannon and coin being made out of them.  Death was declared to be but ‘an eternal sleep.’  Church services were forbidden, but every tenth day it was arranged that philosophical or political ‘sermons’ should be preached; alternatively, popular banquets or balls were arranged.” ^1

Temporariness is the mark of scores of professing Christian bodies.  They are not truly Christian because rather than being married to Christ, they are betrothed to dead formalities and false confidences.  They have no king but themselves (Judg. 21:25).  

^1 S. M. Houghton, Sketches From Church History (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), p. 235.

Your beloved nation is experiencing a spiritual famine. The foundational problem is not in the failure of a nation, but the failure of the church. Scores want to attend to this by addressing the form of church services, but the problem is not in the Sunday practice of churchianity; rather, it is in the deadness of the hearts of those within the church and particularly those leading the church.

Some innovators believe that if they can move away from the authority-image of the preacher, the vaulted learning of the pulpit and the aristocratic white starched shirts and ties they will arrive at the remedy – they are wrong. You can remove the history of the church, the biblical traditions of the church and the ebenezers to the help the Lord has allowed in the past and you will birth a continuing downward spiral in scriptural Christianity. The problem is in the hearts of the churched rather than the structure of the church.

Though biblically thoughtful churchmen are aware of the cultural meltdown attending their increasingly anti-Christian society, well-intentioned evangelicals have adopted worldly weaponry in their failing attempt to provide a remedy. They are failing to recognize that the modern church is fostering a religion requiring little risk, moderate standards, undemanding entry into membership, limited involvement in the lives of the members and no disciplining of the members. God’s church needs a tidal shift in its perspective coupled with an awakening to the Bible being the only means to a genuine Christian consensus.

The tame church preceded the trite society. The church became indistinguishable from the society; so the society became colorless in its Christlessness. Its humanistic rationalism, feministic naturalism and therapeutic existentialism are fostering its floundering insipidness. As the church in America sanitizes itself from the inspired, inerrant and infallible word, it shall discover its waning influence over the ways of its people (II Ti. 3:16f.). The uninfluential church is robbing a great nation of its greatness.

God has determined to do His work in this land through His church (Eph. 3:10). The scantiness of holy authority is the product of generational slumbering. Perhaps the season has arrived for God’s people to once again think and live generationally rather than just for this moment in time. Perhaps God is preparing His people to cease their tasteless innovations, lay aside their golden calves and look to imitating Him (Eph. 5:1).

Every life is an experiment. Most lives are spent in trading away commitments for comforts; avoiding sacrifice by refusing economic challenges; exchanging dreams for conformity to what is common and classifying defeat as victory. Myriads of churchgoers claim the name Christian, but they are merely evangelical in their disobedience (which does in no way militates against the heinousness of their sin!).

God is calling for His people to access His Spirit so that He through them might bring about a revolutionary, reformational, generational, societal awakening. Only then shall the church of the living Christ be positioned to capture its former glories. Nevertheless, churchmen once again must acknowledge that a sovereign holy God has in His providence placed you here in this place at this time in His history to make an eternal difference.

Do you believe that you were born for just such a time as this? Are you willing to have a conversation with yourself and the holy Christ about where you are in influencing this land for the manifestation of His glory?

Take the pulse of the complexion, movement and direction of your life. Look ever so precisely and thoroughly at the lifestyle you have adopted, the ambitions you are pursuing and disciplines you are employing. Are your thoughts exploring the heavens, your conversations challenging the culture and your goals eternal?   

Are you taken with joy as you consider going to your church on Sunday or as you attend during the week for Bible studies, prayer meetings and other congregational events?  Many churchgoers fail to experience excitement at the prospect of attending the Lord’s house.  Why?

Scores of churches are not “the house of the Lord.”  Numerous churches have become more drama than sanctuary; diversion than enlightenment; happiness than holiness; worldly psychoanalysis rather than Scripture; center of business development rather than a voice of the prophets; man-centered (anthropocentric) than God-centered (theocentric); felt needs rather than Christian necessities.  Christ is not their first love, the holy Bible is not their standard for life and practice, and they have left their eternal moorings.

Has your church compromised her “ekklesia-ship?”  Has she forsaken her being called out of the world?  The loss of the distinction between the world and the church results in the church resembling the world, and the world having less and less resemblance to the church.  The result is that the church becomes less and less Christian and more and more worldly, and churchians lose their gladness for God’s house.

Compare your attitude with Christ’s attitude.  Even as a youngster, Jesus chose to be in the church sitting at the feet of His “teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions” (Lk. 2:46).  He expressed concern when those closest to Him did not realize that if they wanted to be with Him, they had to come to His “Father’s house” (Lk. 2:49).  You meet with Jesus in the church (Lk. 2:27).  The disciples “were continually in the temple, praising God” (Lk. 24:53).  Conversions occur at church (Acts 16:14).   

Is your church a crowd of people rather than a body of believers?  What influence does your church have upon the lifestyles of its members?  What influence is your church having upon the community surrounding it?

The true church consists of those Christians bought with holy blood and those whom God has saved in order to sanctify (I Cor. 1:2).  Those gladdened at the thought of entering their Lord’s sanctuary know that they have been called out from common living to uncommon living – called out for holy purposes – called out for the cause of Christ.  Their lives are to be holy exercises in Christlikeness.  

How many Christians are out of breath even as they sit in their pews?  Their churches have become worldly by making Christians overactive by emphasizing programs and other activities over the primary relationship the churchman is to have with Christ thereby contributing to the fractured family and the disorder in individual lives.  They are out of breath with their attempts to sustain the church by worldly methods.  

Has your church fallen into the mode of protecting territory rather than taking new ground?  Is your church self-limiting in wanting to maintain the status quo rather than involving itself in the labors of the Holy Spirit.  If your answer is in the affirmative, is there any wonder that the congregation does not enter into your sanctuary with gladness?  

Be mindful of the insights provided by your Puritan brethren:

• ” The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.” John Calvin
• “If the Church be holy, be holy if you will be of the Church.” Richard Baxter
• “We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once, and that was to drive profane ones out of His Temple, not to force them in.” John Milton

“Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near” (Heb. 10:24f.).

The Church houses both the biblical Christian and the nominal or social Christian.  Paul captures the “vessel” metaphor to describe the two types of churchmen. God purposes vessels to carry, bear, contain or display something.  Some vessels are merely ornamental whereas others actually function.  The functioning vessel is described by Christ in His address to Ananias concerning Paul when He says, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15f.).

The large house of the visible Church is of a “mixed multitude” that includes the saved and the unsaved (Ex. 12:38).  The invisible victorious Church has no wood and earthenware vessels or vessels of dishonor.  The visible Church suffers much due to the militant rebellion of its members.  Church leaders continue bringing into membership heterogeneous men rather than Christlike homogeneous saints because mere numbers feed their pride and pays for their buildings.  God does not bless the Church nearly as fully when the dishonorable is membered with the honorable. For this very reason, the Church becomes ossified rather than responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit as a vibrant dynamic organism should respond.

These vessels of wood and earthenware are secure in their living death because their names are on Church rolls, but much like the church in Sardis, they have a name that they are alive, but they are dead (Rev. 3:1). Christianity is as distinctive and different from the merely moral person as a vessel of honor is from a vessel of dishonor.

Have you ever asked the Lord the requirements of becoming a vessel of honor?  Honorable vessels are sanctified, consecrated (ever yielding themselves to the Lord), purged and being purged, chaste and becoming more pure.  Paul writes to the Roman church saying, “Our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.  Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Ro. 6:6, 13).

A dishonorable vessel is most affectionate toward dishonorable pursuits.  Christianity calls upon the vigor of one’s will.  Christians do not just prefer God – they love Him with all their heart (Mt. 22:37).  Christians never ask how slight their affections may be and them still be considered Christian because that would be offensive to God.  They hate all sin, particularly their own, because the totality of their affections is toward the wholesomeness of God.  

Scores of churches have become societal cesspools, aggregating dishonorable vessels as members who are by nature opposed to the exclusivity of Christ.  This mixed multitude has resulted in them being silent and invisible when Christianity is pilloried; they have abandoned Christianity as a worldview; they teach a divide between what happens in church and what happens in one’s life.  They speak as worldlings rather than heavenlings and they are shallow and culturally ineffectual for Christ.  They no longer stand for truth because they foster accommodation to the children of the spirit of this age.  They pursue acceptance and approval of the unsaved community with such vigor that their address to life is more characteristic of the enemy than of your Christ.  Their definition of holy living is an accommodation for apparent peace that no longer requires denying oneself.

Are you married exclusively to Christ or to your church, traditions, Sunday school, fellowship groups, music, et cetera?  Is your church one of the more culturally fashionable places to attend or is it the most holy place of worship in your city?  Are your principal associates honorable or dishonorable vessels?

God demonstrates by illustration the activities of certain persons who have crept unnoticed into the church, “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). His descriptions of the activities of these first century defilers of His bride are penetrating:
♦    They have gone the way of Cain
♦    For pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam
♦    They have perished in the rebellion of Korah

The behavior of the false teachers alerts you to the caution from King Solomon:

“There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers” (Prov. 6:16-19).

What was the way of Cain? Cain’s way was to refuse to worship God in the manner He desires to be worshiped. Cain did not present to God a “holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Ro. 12:1). Cain did not offer God a spiritual service of worship. Cain’s way was contrasted to his brother’s way: “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain” (Heb. 11:4). Cain’s way was not to sacrifice the sacrifice God wanted sacrificed. Cain’s sacrifice was immoral because he substituted his definition of sacrifice for God’s definition, but Abel’s sacrifice was righteous because he obeyed God in the sacrifice he offered as his spiritual service of worship (I Jn. 3:11f.).

What was the error of Balaam? Peter reports Balaam’s sin declaring that he “loved the wages of unrighteousness” (II Pe. 2:15). Balaam abandoned principled living because the bait of money was his darling weakness. Financial gain removed from his sight any interest he had in the consequences of sin. Balaam taught the people of God the principles that would cause them to stumble by granting them licentious permission to commit acts that their surrounding society did not view as immoral, but God did (Nu. 22-25; Rev. 2:14).

What was the rebellion of Korah? Korah was jealous of Moses – worldly ambition breeds heavenly treason (Nu. 16:1ff.). Korah was privileged as a son of Levi with serving God in the tabernacle and ministering to His congregation, but that was not sufficient for one discontented with merely being near to God. He camped closest the tabernacle of the Lord and handled the sacred objects, but that was not enough for this son of Eve who had taken on the heart of the devil.

Look closely at your way. Do you note any error or rebellion in the way you live your life? Are you refusing to make a holy sacrifice acceptable to God? Does your love for the wages of this world, the pleasures those wages purchase or the creature comforts they insure influence the principles you bring to your marketplace? Are you jealous of anyone or do you covet the blessings God has gifted to others?