I am currently reading Warren Wiersbe’s Your Next Miracle. So here I am reading along in a section dealing with Jesus’ miracles that only Matthew records (17:24-27) about the temple tax. Wiersbe speaks about how Jesus teaches humility in this miracle. I start thinking about so many of the current issues “making the headlines” in the Southern Baptist Convention. At least the important ones to me.
How did these issues become so consuming? Wiersbe writes, “Too many believers today have unconsciously adopted the world’s idea of greatness – position, power, wealth, fame – and have forgotten that true greatness in God’s kingdom means humility, sacrifice, and service.” So why is he writing about that in dealing with this Scripture? Jesus didn’t have to pay the temple tax (the redeemer paid the redemption money; the King is always tax-exempt), but He did. Why? He says so in verse 27 – “So that we don’t offend them.”
I think the non-offensive approach is out of whack at times in the church. Some emergent churches go over board on this one as do the “seeker-sensitive” meetings. The Gospel is offensive and we should not have a desire to change that. My sin is even more offensive to God! At least until I asked Christ to save me from it.
Where Weirsbe goes with his point is what made me write this post. He says:
One of the major causes of division in the church today is the selfish way we insist that others agree with us… God can bless people we disagree with – and He does! The early Christian assemblies in Rome were in danger of fragmenting because they didn’t know how to exercise Christian love and build unity out of diversity.
Unity out of diversity. Huh?
I am reformed in my theology. I would be happy to talk with anybody about why I am reformed. I believe the Bible, being inerrant and infallible, is word-for-word truth. But here is the point, I attend churches that are very free will. I serve on the mission-field with believers who are much more charismatic than I am. But we believe that Jesus is the answer. The only answer. We believe that sin is the problem, but Jesus is the answer.
There was a lot going on in that fish story Jesus told to Peter. Here is a professional fisherman that used boats and nets to catch large numbers of fish at a time. Yet, Jesus send him out with a line to catch just one. This one fish would have a coin in its mouth – no, not its stomach, its mouth. Yet the fish would still be able to take the hook on the end of Peter’s line – before any other fish – with a coin in its mouth. And we doubt that God will use a Reformed Southern Baptist working alongside a Free Will Southern Baptist?
2 Comments
22 December 2006 at 5:23 pm
Great post, Sean. I appreciate your cooperative spirit. Your love for Christians seems to overshadow your love for a particular doctrine or theology, or a denomination for that matter. I believe that is a good thing, because Christ did not die for a denomination, or a theology or doctrine. He died for people, lost people. People are so different, and how they come to know Christ appears to us to be different as well. Some as a result of a hard hitting sermon, others because of the tenderness of a little child. But there are those who would say that there is only one or two acceptable means to draw people to Christ (and it usually is THEIR way).
I agree that the Gospel is an offense to those who are still in their sin. We must be careful that it is only the Gospel that is an offense, not us. Too often the Gospel gets blamed for offending someone, when it was that at all, it was the church or the preacher or the individual witness.
Again, great post. Thanks for sharing.
23 December 2006 at 4:12 am
Thanks for the comment brother. I enjoy reading your posts and comments. God bless. Maybe it is our common Okie blood