Building In Truth

At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, “an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool. -Joshua 8:30, 31 (ESV)


When the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built. -1 Kings 6:7 (ESV)

When I was growing up I used to build model cars. Each one had different parts, and there was specific way all those parts went together. If the models were going to be assembled properly they had to be put together according to the instructions that came in the box. If you read closely, the instructions for most of the things we build say that ALL OF THE DIRECTIONS should be read before the project begins. This was no exception. The most difficult model I ever build was the one that had black paint spilled on the instructions. I had a pretty good idea where the parts should go, but did not know exactly how to make them fit together the proper way.

In some ways, the church is like the model cars from my childhood. God has revealed His will to His people through Scripture, and guides us in Scripture through His Holy Spirit. They are God’s “witnesses” (Rev. 11) to us today. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ will build HIS church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). But what does that church look like? How do we know the ways the church should function and interact with the world? We know through the inspired Word of God.

When God instructed His people to build He gave them instruction for what to build and how to build it. When Moses built the tabernacle God commanded Him to build it, “exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle…” (Ex. 25:9) There was no room for Moses or any of the craftsmen to make any modifications, or to personalize their work - it had to be done in accordance with God’s holy character. Every instruction was given by God to specifically suit the needs of the work of God. The church today is not so much different from those Old Testament buildings. This building may be spiritual in nature, but God gave specific instruction for its structure, nonetheless. We find this instruction by devising plans and gaining vision regarding the church from the Word of God and prayer. We do not do the work of the church based on the ideas, the tools, or even the resources of man. If what we are building is the church of God it MUST be done according to His plan.

Despite the ideas that are promoted within the professing church today, the Bible is still the Word and the rule of God. It is where His character is revealed to us, and the place from which His teachings proceed. Sometimes we seem to feel as though we can pick and choose which doctrine (yes, I said doctrine because it’s important) we will follow and which we will ignore. We explain away differences and variances as if they make no difference whatsoever. Os Guiness tells us, “If truth is truth then differences make a difference.” If God is going to use us to build His New Testament temple then it is imperative that we “see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain (Hebrews 8:5).”

For too many years we have attempted to build the temple of God with tools of iron. We have used our gimmicks and our ideas, our books and our knowledge. We spend our time seeking out the “brightest and best” rather than humbling ourselves before the Lord so that we may be exalted (James 4:10). There are catalogs and web sites filled with ideas about what WE CAN DO to see the church grow. We plan and organize and work until we just cannot work anymore, and at the end of the day, what has it done for the church at large? We have pastors and laity who are completely burned out. We have as much immorality, divorce, and sin within the ranks of the perceived “church” as there is in the world.

If the day is ever going to come when the church rises up to be the mighty army of God, it will be when the man-made tools of iron are cast out of our midst, and we simply bow ourselves before a holy God, consecrate ourselves to Him and let Him sanctify us for His work (1 Thess. 4:3). It is time the church cease its work with our self-fabricated tools and to get “Back to the Blessed Old Bible.” For too many years the sounds of our hammers and chisels have rang out in the temple. The clanging of our iron tools has done little good and has only served to drown out the “still, small voice” of God (1 Kings 19:12). It has hidden and obscured His direction and turned our attention to things of the world.

Scripture tells us, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5).” If God is building the structure, He will provide the tools. The problem we face today is that too many people within the church want to be architects and builders rather than stones. God is building His church. He is building it on a foundation of holiness and truth. If we are to be a part of God’s building, we must put off the tools of man and stand simply on His truth.

Does Truth Still Matter?

I was recently reading a blog that commented on a publication put out by a group that wants to emphasize the importance of doctrine.  The critique of this periodical was that it looks like something that comes from the 1970's, and "no one under 40 would take this seriously." 

Am I the only one that finds this idea offensive?  I am under 40 and am far more interested in truth than the flashy presentation of a magazine.  Is this how the younger generation is perceived?  Do those who are leading us really believe that we will respond only to something that looks good whether it contains substance or not? 

Scripture tells us to "buy the truth (Prov. 23:23)."  There are some people who not only believe that, but make every effort to find the truth that God wants to reveal to us.  Far too many times the church has compromised truth in an effort to gain popularity with the "younger" generation.  Here's some advice from someone of this generation.  JUST TEACH THE TRUTH!  Young people are growing weary of listening to politicians pontificate and beat around the bush when they are supposed to simply teach us what God is revealing through His Word.

The culture around us changes with each generation.  I do not dispute that.  But the truth will never change.  It is reliable and relevant to every culture and every generation.  We are spending our time and resources trying to "repackage" something that God has ordained and empowered.  Why?

What Do We Value?

One of the most prominent topics in the church today is leadership.  We have all kinds of ideas about what we expect from leaders.  What kind of character they should possess, and what kind of training they should have.  We go to seminars and read books and articles about it.  There are hundreds of lists of the traits that we must develop in leaders if the church is to be successful.  As I read these lists its seems that I continually find one trait that is left out: Holiness.

Titus 1:8 tells us that and "elder" must be HOLY.  Paul also gave this instruction to Timothy in regards to leaders (1 Tim. 3:10).  The trend that continues within the church is that we look to the world to see how leaders should be developed, and how they should act.  I have taken college courses on church leadership where the textbooks are secular.  Every chance we get we seem to want to act like the world.

What happened to the standards that God set in place for leaders?  Where is the requirement of holiness?  It seems like the church is more worried about the talents that people possess than we are about the holy life that they live.  Here is my contention:  If we live the lifestyle taught in the Bible God will empower us to be the leaders we need to be.  Is it possible that trying to develop leaders in worldly ways is a misplaced priority in the church?  Is it possible that by not focusing on holiness (without which no man will see the Lord) we are wasting our time on peripheral things?

The Necessity of Fellowship

"Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."  -Genesis 2:18

Adam was the pinnacle of God's creation.  Created in the very image of a holy God.  He lived in the place that God had created for him and lived in harmony and fellowship with God.  In spite of all this, God still saw a need for man to have someone else.  Someone with whom he could share his joys and all the things of life.  God created man with a need for fellowship.

So often I hear people say, "I don't need to go to church to be a Christian." Where does this idea come from?  What makes us think that we do not need relationships with the people of God?  God had looked at all that He had created and proclaimed it to be good.  But for man there was something even better.  It was a relationship with others.  It was fellowship.

We sometimes look at fellowship as simply having a meal together or spending a little bit of time together.  It is so much more.  God created us to share with one another our joys and our burdens.  Our sorrows, trials and triumphs.  God has put us all here together to pursue Him alongside of each other.  We are not alone as we seek to know Him.  We are always accompanied by other people who are in pursuit of the holiness of God just as we are.  Too much of the Christianity of our day is focused on "what God can do for me" and not living in a fellowship of holiness together.  As I search Scripture for the meaning of the fellowship that God has given us, I become increasingly convinced that it is so much more than what we often experience.  God has placed us here so that we might experience holiness together.

"But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another..." -1 John 1:7

The Departure of the Spirit

King Saul had as much potential to do great thing for God as anyone in human history.  He was hand-picked by God to lead the people of Israel.  He was anointed by God's prophet and guided by God's word.  The story of Saul, however, is largely one of wasted potential.  In spite of all that God had done to prepare him, scripture tells us in 1 Samuel 16:14, "the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul..." 

Whether we like it or not, we must acknowledge that the Spirit left Saul because of his half-hearted commitment to following the commands of God.  He wanted God's will to be done, but he wanted to do it his way.  He was not interested in the instruction God had given in regards to HOW to follow His will.  This seems to be the case within the church today.  We read and write our books and come up with our slick organizations and marketing schemes.  We know that God wants us to win the lost, but we have determined within our hearts to leave Him out of the process.  We want nothing more than to o it by ourselves.  We all work hard to apply the principles of "Natural Church Development" (I still contend that we need "supernatural church development because if it is natural, it's not of God) and every other book that comes along, but is God's will really being done?  I keep hearing from the same people who promote these man-made methods that the vast majority of congregations are in decline.  What good have all of our methods done?

Maybe it's time that we consider the possibility that we have fallen into the trap of King Saul.  In spite of the availability of power through the Holy Spirit, God's call to holiness, and His written word, we continue to try to do His work our way.  As we forge ahead with our plans the church continues to lose influence and authority.  Could it be that in many cases the Spirit has already left and we are so focused on our ideas that we haven't even noticed?

Maybe instead of trying to figure out what WE can do for God, we need to spend some time considering how we can recover our lampstand.

Responding to God (Scriptural Leadership)

God is moving all around us. Even in the beginning His Spirit moved above the waters. His very breath moved about the unfinished creation. He continues to move today. He is working in our lives and in the lives of those around us. He is moving in our families, our workplace and within the church. God may be moving in some of your lives as we speak. His Spirit could be convicting you, or leading you, or calling you in a number of ways. It is a humbling thought to realize that there are about 6 billion people on earth and each of us is still on God’s mind when He works. The question that we face today is not whether or not God works, but how we respond to His work. When we see God move, when He reveals His truth to us, when His Spirit convicts us, how do we respond?


Scripture is replete with examples of the responses of man to their God. There are two that are emphatically contrasted for us in the book of Romans: Adam, the first of God’s creation, and Jesus Christ, God’s Son. “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for man (Romans 5:15).” The Apostle Paul shows us the results of the response of two men to God. Adam was created and placed in the most beautiful place in the entire world. He was created in the very image of God; given every advantage that we could ever imagine. The only command was not to eat from one specific tree in the middle of the garden. Adam and his wife had to respond in some way to that command. Their response was to ignore the command of God and replace it with what was pleasing to them.

Satan convinced man that God was trying to hold him back, to keep him from becoming something greater. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate (Genesis 3:6).” This is how Satan works. He constantly tries to convince us to respond to God based on our temporal view of the world rather than God’s eternal will. The Devil tries to turn our attention downward and inward, even though God has called us to look outward and upward (Col. 3:1-4).

Satan is trying to give us a false perception of the battlefield. Whether we admit it or not, there is an invisible world around us. This world is largely defined in light of the things that go on in that invisible world because that world is eternal. When we allow Satan to turn our attention to the things of this world, we are no longer defining our lives within an eternal context. We are living for what we see now, and not for what is to come. This makes it nearly impossible to respond to the work of God in the proper way since His work is done in the context of the eternal. He is always working among His people so that they “may not perish but have eternal life.” His rewards are not always going to make us wealthy or affluent in this life. He is more concerned with our souls than our accomplishments and achievements, our possessions and our riches. In the beginning man chose to respond to God by ignoring and replacing His commands. He felt that his way was best, and God’s way left something to be desired.

In contrast to Adam’s response to God we see the response of Jesus during the most trying time of His life on earth. As He agonized about God’s call on His life in the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done (Luke 22:42).” Jesus was confronted with the choice that Adam had faced in the beginning. He was faced with the choice that each person throughout history has had to make throughout the course of their lives. How would He respond to the directive of God? When God required more than a nominal commitment what would He do? Jesus proved in His prayer that His desire was to respond in a way that would accomplish God’s eternal purposes. In direct contrast to Adam – through whom sin entered the world – Jesus submitted Himself fully to God’s desires and impacted the lives of every person who has followed Him. “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19, 20).”

These truths contained in Scripture remind us that with each passing day we are confronted with God’s work in some way. Somehow He is moving in and around our lives and each of us must choose to respond to Him. Each Sunday morning we are confronted with God’s Word, and though there may be no altar response, every person who has heard the Word must respond in some way. We can either submit to God’s Word and let Him mold and shape us, or we can ignore God’s voice and Spirit in favor of our own ideas and wisdom.

In light of all this, it is imperative that the leaders of God’s church understand how this affects them. What does it mean as we meet and discuss the work of the church? How can we ensure that we are responding to God in the proper way?

First of all, we find the will of God through the witnesses that He has provided for us, His Word and His Spirit. The Word is the measuring rod against which our ideas and thoughts are judged. All of our actions and our efforts must be conformed to what is taught in the Bible. It is our inerrant, infallible rule of faith. Without an ever-growing understanding of Scripture we can never be the leaders that God has called us to be. The Bible is not used by the church simply to justify our opinions, it is used as a revelation of God’s will. The Spirit helps us to respond that that will.

So many times we spend countless hours trying to reason among ourselves when our God has called us to reason with Him. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord (Isaiah 1:18)...” The role of the leader within the church is far too often looked at as “to make decisions.” A thorough review of Scripture leads us to a contrary conclusion. The role of leaders is to respond to God with submission. It is not our responsibility to “make decisions” but to seek the will of God and actively follow it. That goes against our cultural norms and everything that we have been conditioned to believe, but it does not go against the teachings of the Bible.

God gives His vision through Scripture and leads through His Spirit, and the direct response of man should be prayer. “When God intends to do a mighty work, the first thing He does is to set His people praying.” This is our submission to His will. We know that it is God’s will to save the lost. Our response is to pray for His direction in accomplishing that will. It is His will for His people to live in unity and love. Prayer is the means of seeking direction for this.

Countless times throughout history God has moved, not through the structures of His people, but through their submission. When we humbly pray to our God, He will move in a mighty way among us. “Call to Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3).” Leaders do not lead the church because of their intelligence, talents, abilities, finances, or even elected position. They are called by God to lead in submission to His will. They must set this example for each person within the church. If they are not willing to submit to the will of God and allow Him to move, they forfeit the right to expect His work to be done among them.

By continually writing policy and guidelines, we are telling God – much like Adam and Eve – “we have a better way. We don’t really need you because your will can be accomplished through our methods and channels.” We are trying to define for God the ways that we believe He should work. There has never been a time where God has worked through man-made structure. God will not work through us because we sit on the council, or the board, or because we are a part of any other committee. He will work through us because we are people of prayer and men and women of the Word. He will work through us because we are living in humble submission to His Spirit. To place terms on this is to limit the work and the movement of God. If God is to use this specific congregation, His work will begin with the corporate response of the leaders to His will. I say this realizing that it may take more faith than some people within the congregation exhibit. There may be people who are uncomfortable with such an arrangement. The fact remains, however, that our top priority must be to please God. Our focus must be on the things of the spiritual world and not on the temporal world in which we live. His will is always spiritual and eternal, and we must realize that if we are to submit to Him.

By responding to God with our own strategy and our own opinion, we place ourselves in the position of Israel as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had gone up onto the mountain to receive the laws of God for His people. As they waited they decided among themselves that the current arrangement (to wait on God) was just not working. They needed something more tangible. Something they could touch and see. They immediately turned their attention to the worldly and made for themselves a calf of gold to be their God. You are familiar with the story. Their improper response to God led to their judgment by God. However, even evil people like those of Nineveh were restored when they responded to God’s Word in submission. They humbled themselves before Him, and God relented in His anger.

I realize that this goes against the idea that we are elected representatives of the people in the congregation. That is because we are not. We hold positions as “elders” within the church, not because we’re the brightest or the best, but because we are submissive to God. There are times where that submission may cost us dearly. It cost all of the prophets in Scripture. Many paid with their own lives. I once heard Bill Neece point something out that has stuck with me since. “The price has not changed.” Does the church in our day want to be a neatly organized machine that can carry out many social functions among its members? Or do we really want God to move among us? Do we want to see His power and His might? Do we want to see lives changed, families healed and relationships restored? God wants to see those things. He has done them before and the price in our day is still the same.

As leaders, we are confronted this day – and each day – with God’s presence. In what way will we respond? The call of Joshua to the Israelites rings true for us today. “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve…”

No Apologies

I read an article a few weeks ago that was written by a Nazarene preacher.  He was lamenting the fact that we are so often apologetic about holiness.  People ask us what we believe and we tell them as if we're sorry for it.  We try to avoid the fact that Scripture does not condone sin in any form.  We do everything we can to keep from having to teach that we must live a sanctified life.  We don't want to have to tell people that God has called us to be holy.

My new year's resolution for this year is to teach the truth of the Bible (yes, we must be holy) without making apology for it (Not that I've ever been accused of apologizing).  I am well aware that those who are living in sin can't stand the idea that God has called us to live above sin and made provision for us to do so through Jesus Christ.  I know that they call those who teach that truth arrogant and prideful.  I make no pretense about the fact that the church culture of our day looks down on those who endeavor to live "in the Spirit." 

Since when did those people set the standard?  When did the truth of the Word of God become contingent on whether or not we like it, or agree with it?  The culture may be changing around us.  We know that the culture within the church has changed.  We like to water things down to the point that nobody really knows what we stand for.  Doctrinal teaching may or may not drive people away (I'll never be convinced that it does), but the truth is still the truth.  The words that have been inspired by our Holy God are still our sustenance.  They still keep us and for that fact we should make no apology.