Theological Liberalism

Revelation 2:18-29

 

            I studied music in college. I was a saxophone player, and my ambition was to play jazz professionally. For four years I practiced between six and eight hours a day six days a week, and a large part of the practice was devoted to playing scales. For two hours each day I played scales over and over again. I literally knew hundreds of them because they were imperative to what I was trying to accomplish. When a jazz musician performs a solo they are seldom playing something that is written. Most of the time they are improvising. To do this they must understand the chords that are being played by the piano and bass. They must also know what scales go with those chords, and use those scales as the chords change to play something that fits that particular song. Many believe it to be easy to improvise like this because it does not require the musician to read music, but it is very difficult to do it well.

            I attended high school with a friend who was a very good saxophone player. His dream was much like mine: to be a musician. He was encouraged to go to college to study music, but he always responded in the same way, “I don’t need to study scales and theory to make a saxophone sound good.” The summer after my first year of college we got together with some friends to play one afternoon. We played for only a short time before one thing became very apparent. He did need those scales to sound good. He needed them because it is that knowledge that frees the instrumentalist to express himself. A musician could conceivably play whatever they want to play, but unless it fits into the framework of the song it is just not right. We must play within the guidelines and rules.

            In some ways, our study and application of the Bible is like music. God has given us freedom to express our love to Him, and to serve Him. But these things must be done within a specific context. These things take place as we live our lives within the boundaries of what we learn in Scripture. This is the issue faced by the early Christians of Thyatira. They had knowledge of what it meant to live their lives in fellowship with Jesus Christ, but they allowed a teacher in their midst to go beyond the boundaries that Scripture puts in place. They allowed this woman – referred to here as Jezebel – to mislead the people of God, and follow teaching that was beyond the purview of the Bible. What they faced was an early form what we would consider theological liberalism, and the statement that Jesus made against them was not because it existed, but because they tolerated it.

            Theopedia defines theological liberalism in this way: “Liberalism tends to emphasize ethics over doctrine and experience over Scriptural authority…It has often been relativistic, pluralistic, and non-doctrinal.” It can also be defined as “a movement in modern Protestantism that rejects biblical authority.” The movement in Thyatira was to redefine the truth that God had revealed. This teacher sought to reinterpret Scripture so that it fit the ever-changing whims of a sinful society. Though we are separated from Thyatira by nearly two millennia, we continue to face the same desire within Christendom.

            Just as the would-be musician convinces himself that he does not need the discipline and boundaries provided many Christians refuse to place their lives under the full authority of God’s Word. We redefine the truth until it becomes something that is palatable to those who are lost in sin. We turn away from the depth of the Word, and settle for the equivalent of spiritual milk so that we can live in a way that requires less sacrifice on our part. We live in a day that is very similar to those of Thyatira. The greatest danger to the church is not the world around it. The greatest danger comes from within. When liberalism takes hold of God’s people, and they begin to look to their own reason and knowledge the church has set herself on the path to apostasy. Lillie McCutcheon explained, “Truth is ever the same. Inward foes of evil cause decay and death more rapidly than outward foes of persecution. The longest letter of the seven is written to this church with the least outward danger.” Consider the dangers of our attempts to remove Scriptural authority over our lives.

 

Liberalism Focuses Only on Immediate Circumstances

 

            This “prophetess” in Thyatira taught the people of the church to join those of the world in their corruption. The sinful paganism of man continually encroached on the early church, and the easiest way to deal would have been to tolerate it. That’s exactly what this Jezebel taught God’s people to do. Thyatira was known for some of the earliest trade guilds. If the people were to earn a living, they needed employment. Many times this employment required them to take part in the pagan rituals that initiated them into the trade guilds of their time. The false teaching of “Jezebel” taught the church to accept the worldliness that ran rampant around them. She taught them to commit sexual immorality and eat food that had been sacrificed as part of heathen worship. This loose view of the standards of God’s Word destroyed the distinction between God’s church and the world, and the church was reprimanded for tolerating it.

            We allow a lot of things to happen in the modern church in the name of tolerance. It seems to have been elevated to the status of “virtue” and is often more celebrated than the truth itself. We revel in the idea that we will accept everything, and openness has become something that we seek above all else. Many spiritual conversations are ended with the statement, “You’re just narrow-minded.” However, Jesus told the church of Thyatira that when it comes to the Word that God has inspired, narrow is not so bad. We might even look back to statements that tell us, narrow is the way that leads to life….

            There are times when it becomes evident that the church has endeavored to serve as editors of the gospel. They want the world to believe them to be tolerant, so the bar of God’s standard is lowered to include things that were previously considered sin. I’m not talking about things that Scripture doesn’t address, or things that we’ve added, but clear statements about sin. We don’t want to tell anyone that what they are promoting is wrong, so we ignore what Scripture teaches so that we can just “get along.” But we have forgotten that almost every New Testament epistle warns us against false teaching. In fact, John warned us against those who bring another doctrine and told us, he who greets him shares in his wicked work. Whether we want to admit it or not, there are some things that the church should just not tolerate. David Ravenhill explained, “The sin for which this church was being corrected was having tolerance for what should not have been tolerated. If we consider what the Spirit is saying to us today through this letter, it is this: We, too, err when tolerance takes priority over holiness.” How many Christians have come to that point today? How many are more interested in tolerance than holiness? We claim that we are free to pursue any doctrinal idea that pleases us while forgetting that a doctrinal standard does not confine us, but frees us to carry out God’s work. As Os Guinness wrote, “There can be no liberty for a community that lacks the means by which to detect lies.”

            Our desire for tolerance betrays the focus of the church. We show a great concern for our immediate circumstances while ignoring our eternal circumstances. In many ways, this modern liberalism is nothing more than a return to ancient paganism. Its pluralistic views teach compromise with sin rather than the purity of holiness. We have spent decades trying to gain the favor and acceptance of the world, and yet the church still finds herself powerless. How can this be?

            Our perceived need to find acceptance leaves us no choice but to squeeze the gospel into the mold of worldliness. We do everything we can to look and act like the world so that they will believe that we’re “not so bad.” We plan our services and activities to be sensitive to those who do not know God, and do so assuming that God will work through whatever we do. We believe that as long as we say a prayer (and sometimes we don’t even do that) God is obligated to work through us because we call ourselves His church. But we’ve forgotten that God is not beholden to us, and WILL NOT be manipulated by us. We turn our attention inward as we pursue our ideas and schemes unaware that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways higher than our ways, and when our plans do not work we become discouraged and even more desperate. “When we discover that God is not producing according to our plans, we try to manipulate other forces – gods – to get what we want. All along this dreary way, our commitment to what is right is growing more fuzzy until ‘what is right’ becomes indistinguishable from what we want.” We have turned our covenant with Christ into something that is little more than a pantheistic ritual used to force God to carry out His work in spite of our unwillingness to live up to His standard of holiness. Walther Eichrodt likened that to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day when he wrote, “This legalistic distortion of the covenant relationship into a commercial arrangement between parties of equal status before the law rendered all intercourse with the deity lifeless and trained men in an irreverent calculation of divine obligations, which made any attitude of trustful surrender impossible.” While we claim that liberalism is freeing, at its root, the tolerance that it promotes is carried to the point of intolerance and it becomes a form of legalism in itself. It does not add to God’s standard, but becomes legalistic about eliminating it.

            The tolerance preached by modern liberalism is all about our current standing with the world. It has little to do with our future standing in eternity. It teaches us that we can serve God and still gain acceptance with a sinful world in spite of the fact that Jesus said, Woe to you when all men speak well of you for so did their fathers of the FALSE PROPHETS. By pursuing modern liberalism we have exchanged the gospel’s promise of eternity for temporary security here and now. Liberalism looks no further than that.

 

Liberalism Must Stand on Worldliness

 

            The teaching of the false prophetess of Thyatira stands in direct opposition to the power of the gospel proclaimed by the apostles of Jesus Christ. There is no difference in the compromise of Scriptural truth that is taught today. We find that it is not only short-sighted in its scope, but does not have the power to transform and change lives. In fact, it cannot even stand on its own.

            Revelation provides contrasts for us between God’s church and the world. We see a contrast drawn between the Lamb of God and the beasts of the world; a contrast between Babylon and the New Jerusalem; and a contrast between the purity of the church, and her counterfeit: a harlot seated on a great beast.

            The church is represented by a woman in the heavens in chapter 12. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  This woman is clothed in the light of Christ, and shows the church standing in purity. Notice the difference between this woman and the one revealed to John in chapter 17: And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names…The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. We know that this woman is a contrast to the one in chapter 12, and represents a false church. She has compromised the holy standards of God’s Word and has sought after the riches and security of the world. She has even become drunk with the blood of the saints.

            The specifics of the women are not as important to our purposes as where they are found. The first woman stands with her feet upon the moon. She stands on her own, clothed in God’s light. Look where we find the second woman: seated on a beast! What is the beast? It is something that has been created by man. Daniel has a vision of beasts that represent political institutions. So must these beasts of Revelation. Revelation 13 tells us that the beast comes from the sea. And Revelation 17 tells us, The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. This harlot, who has lowered the standards of God in favor of worldliness rides on the back of a structure created by man. What’s the point? LIBERALISM IN OUR THEOLOGY CANNOT STAND ON ITS OWN! Look at the denominations around us that are most liberal. Aren’t many of them the ones that have the most man-made structure?  Kenneth Jones wrote, “It is not truly helpful to think of the church as an institution, but rather dangerous. It puts the focus on obedience to the human leaders, and detracts from concentration on the relationship with the triune God.”

            When the Word of God is preached in the power of God by the people of God there are not enough demons in hell to stop its power. But when we compromise the world in the name of “tolerance” we find that we no longer have a gospel that will stand on its own. We need to find ways to carry this false doctrine into the world, and we add to what God has given us in His Word so that we can subtract that which will offend from His Word. The harlot has no power of her own to carry her message. When we decide that we must have a large man-made organization to carry the message, it may be time to reconsider our message. The Word of God is powerful, it does not need our help, it need only be proclaimed. The same cannot be said for the liberal gospel of our day. It lowers our idea of the church to that of a worldly organization that lacks the supernatural power of the Gospel. Consider the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “Those people whom God has used throughout the centuries have had a great and glorious conception of the Christian church. She is not just a human institution. She is a spiritual society, a church of the firstborn. And it grieves their hearts to see her in rags and in worldliness and in utter confusion. Do we have this concern for the honor and the name of the Christian church? And do we long to see her functioning as a church, uttering no uncertain sound but the certain sound of the gospel and clothed with might and power and glory?” It is only the Gospel preached in purity that has the power to bring glory to God.

 

Liberalism Confines Us to Immaturity

 

            The rejection of Biblical authority leaves the church without power, and the Christian without maturity. It is God’s word that nourishes our spirit and provides us what is necessary to grow in our relationship with God. By eliminating the truth we find our relationship with God hindered by sin and impurity. We find that we struggle through this life hoping in vain for something to draw us closer to God, but our view of His holiness is obscured by our view of Scripture. Liberalism looks at the Bible as something that is subject to our preferences. This confines us to only the most basic principles and places us with the Hebrews, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. We nourish ourselves, not with the meat of Scripture, but only with those things that allow us to continue in the lives we live without a change. We look around us and see a world filled with Christians who have never grown to maturity in their spiritual life. They believe that the purpose of the church is to please them and meet all of their felt needs, and the church is ever-willing to promote this mentality. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

            By pursuing the philosophies of the world we have limited what was intended to be an unlimited power. We have replaced the power of God, which originates from the throne of heaven with the ideas of fallen man. It is not, nor has it ever been, our place to redefine the gospel. It is not subject to our own opinions or those of the scholars in whom we trust.  It is for God alone to determine the message that represents His people. “The scholar has a vitally important task to perform within a carefully prescribed precinct. His task is to guarantee the purity of the text, to get as close as possible to the Word as originally given. He may compare Scripture with Scripture until he has discovered the true meaning of the text. But right there his authority ends. He must never sit in judgment upon what is written. He dare not bring the meaning of the Word before the bar of his reason. He dare not commend or condemn the word as reasonable or unreasonable, scientific or unscientific. After the meaning is discovered, that meaning judges him; never does he judge it.” The liberal commitment to liberalism in our modern theology obscures our view of the Living Word. When Jesus does the preaching, the fullness of His Word is in view. We mature is it impacts our lives and explodes in our hearts. The Word reveals Him to us, and empowers His work.

 

Liberalism Sets Us at Odds With Jesus

 

            By obscuring the Word which is embodied by Christ, liberalism works to redefine Him. It focuses on select characteristics while leaving out others. There are many who want to talk about the love of Jesus, and the miracles He performed. But we find that there are few who will discuss the character that caused Him to clear the temple and warn us of false teaching.

            Modern liberalism projects our ideas onto Jesus. It projects onto Him our views of “fairness” rather than God’s characteristic of justice. We look at the world through the lens of what we believe should be as opposed to what Scripture teaches God’s ideal to be. Never does a day go by when we don’t hear the talking heads on television telling us what should be done in the name of fairness. Many even appeal to Jesus to accomplish this. But Jesus Christ did not come to establish fairness, He came to reveal a God who is defined by justice.

            When we redefine the character of Jesus, we have redefined – and set ourselves at odds with His work. Consider the things we are told we must emphasize today in the church. Many of them are simply not emphasized by Jesus to the extent we stress them. “The fact of the matter is, if you read through the instructions to the New Testament churches you will find few explicit commands that tell us to take care of the needy in our communities and no explicit commands to do creation care, but there are dozens and dozens of verses that enjoin us, in one way or another, to be holy as God is holy.” The liberalism of our day has turned the work of Jesus into social activism. It teaches us to “play nice together” rather than to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The focus of many liberals in our day is to make the world a better place, but not necessarily a more Christ-like place. We attempt to bring people together in communities that lift up our ideas of what is fair, teach them to live in “tolerance” of diversity, and hope for the best. We have turned Jesus into little more than a first-century community organizer. But all of our human niceties mean nothing without the power of the unedited, unadulterated gospel. It is only this gospel that has the power to transform depraved humanity into the church of God.

           

            The prophetess, Jezebel, of Thyatira taught the people to do what would be accepted by the world, but did not teach them the discipline that is necessary to walk with God. She taught them tolerance and fairness, but not holiness. The only thing that will save the church today is the only thing that would have saved the church of Thyatira: Revival! A move of God’s Spirit, through His Word in the hearts of believers. We have tried for decades to use the methods and means of man to carry out God’s Work. We have amended the gospel, redefined its subject, and reinvented its purpose to make it palatable to the world, and what has it produced? It has produced a worldly, impotent church. Jesus called the people of Thyatira out of their liberalism, and back to a disciplined pursuit of the truth of God’s Word. He continues to call us to this end today. Will we pursue this call?

A Godly Vision of the Church

When you think about, or talk about the church what do you envision?  Some think of a building, and others an organization.  For some, corporate worship comes to mind, while still others think of some of the difficulties that take place within the church.  We all have ideas of what the church is supposed to look like, and how it is supposed to work.  We know what we think Christians should do, and how they should live together and we spend great amounts of effort and resources to see those ideas brought to fruition.  But is it possible that sometimes we forget what God envisions when He thinks of the church?  Has His vision and His plan been lost among all of our ideas and organization?

            The book of Revelation is the vision of the church that the Apostle John received from Jesus Christ Himself.  Through the imagery employed by the beleaguered preacher we see the difficulties that the church should expect to endure, but also the heights to which God will raise His people.  When it comes right down to it, that’s what this seemingly mysterious book of the Bible is about – God raising His people, and His church up to be what they could not be apart from Him.  It is about God receiving glory through you and me, and every Christian who has wholeheartedly served their God throughout history. 

            We spend time in our congregations and even in our personal lives looking for vision and trying to understand where God is leading us.  We like to use the verse from Proverbs 29:18 that tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” but many scholars teach that a more accurate translation of that verse is, “Where there is no revelation people cast off restraint.”  Is it possible that the church lacks power and authority today because our vision comes from the wrong places? 

            A lot of the conversation we hear today regarding vision is focused on being “practical” in the things we do within the church.  We want people to readily understand everything we teach and preach and try to avoid things that will require more thought than can happen during a Sunday morning service.  While there is nothing wrong with trying to ensure a better understanding of doctrine contained in Scripture, many times those teachings are compromised or left out altogether in the name of pragmatism.  But what consequence could this be having on the church?  If Scripture is God’s revelation, we are missing a great deal of His heavenly vision because we are not willing to search the Scriptures for it.  We consider doctrine impractical and hindering, but when we come to the Bible looking for God’s vision for His church that same doctrine becomes that which delivers us to the heights at which God has called us to live and function as the church.  We see these visions throughout the Bible.  If we will take the time to prayerfully seek the direction of His spirit we will find that God has not left us alone to come up with “our vision” for the church.  Pastors and laity alike are lifted to new heights by subscribing to the descriptions of the way God sees and empowers His church.  That’s what we see when we read John’s description of the “New Jerusalem” coming down from heaven.

 

            Despite the claims of what we hear on television and read in popular culture, the visions of this 21^st chapter of Revelation are visions of God’s church - the culmination of a thriving, victorious church.  This is the vision God has put in place for the church.  John tells us in verse 2, “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”  Though many claim that someday God will open up the sky and a city will fall out, John makes the bride of Christ (which we know represents the church) and New Jerusalem synonymous.  And it does not only happen once, he reiterates the same thing in verses 9 and 10.  This is clearly something more than what we are so often led to believe.  This is the church!  It is the vision that God sustains for His people, and the beauty in which He sees them. 

Many Christians look at the church as a failed institution, something that needs to be radically altered to fit our modern culture.  They spend their time looking for “new vision” and something different.  The radical alteration that the church needs today is not one that will cause us to fit the worldly culture, but one that allows us to bring the world a different culture.  We need to catch the vision that God provided to John so many years ago, a vision of a great movement that will bring the culture of heaven to earth.  The purpose of the church has never been to conform to worldly culture, but to bring into a lost world a great counter-culture known as the Kingdom of God.  We see, through God’s vision of the church, the capital city of that kingdom, a triumphant people and a benevolent king.  God has NEVER called His people to stumble through this world in mediocrity trying to “find” some vision and direction; He has created us, and called us out of the world into His holy light to be a triumphant, victorious church - a church that has overcome the world and all of its sin and despair.  That’s why Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18),” and why the Apostle Paul reminded us that we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom. 8:37).” 

We sit through meeting after meeting looking for direction when Scripture is filled with examples of those who have – through a humble heart – come to know the power of God.  But there is a stark contrast between the lives we live for God and those of the heroes of the faith: We concern ourselves with the earthly they concerned themselves with the heavenly.  We concern ourselves with leading, they concerned themselves with submission.  We spend our time looking for the practical while they spent their time looking for the unimaginable.  These were men and women who did not limit themselves to what they knew they could accomplish because their human accomplishments would never compare with what God can do.  They approached God, not to find approval for their vision, but to seek His vision and allow Him to lift them to greater heights than the world had ever known.  They weren’t looking for worldly things to help them get by for a few years until the culture around them changed again, they looked ahead for what God wanted to do in the world THROUGH THEM.  “If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, A HEAVENLY ONE.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:15, 16).” 

The church has always been these faithful men and women who will seek God’s will and God’s vision above everything else.  It is not the doormat that so many of us want to make her as we talk negatively about the church and try to hide our association with her.  The church is described as something beautiful, in fact, Psalm 50:2 goes a step further by saying, “Out of Zion, THE PERFECTION OF BEAUTY, God shines forth.”  Are we looking for the same thing God is looking for?  The Apostle Paul reminded us that Christ died for the church, “so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:26, 27).”  Many Christians in our day don’t even look at a life of holiness as a possibility, but that was GOD’S VISION when Jesus hung on the cross and died at the gate so His people could be sanctified.  If this is God’s vision, why are we so willing to settle for less?  Why do we no longer insist on transformation of lives through the power of the Holy Spirit?  Why is a sanctified life no longer a necessity for the Christian, but some type of optional addition to our faith?  That is not what God intended.  God does not want us to drag His work down into the gutters where we live, but He wants to raise us to the heights of holiness and the altitudes of heaven itself.  That’s why John tells us in verse 10 that he was carried away to a “high mountain” to view God’s vision of the church.  That’s the only place from where you can really see such a thing.  And this vision is given freely to us today if we will allow God to raise us up to new heights through our submission to His Spirit and His will.  There is nothing that keeps us from experiencing the fulfillment of this vision of God except for us.

 

Look what God is teaching us about His church:

 

The origin of God’s city is ALWAYS Heaven.  That is as true today as it was nearly two thousand years ago.  If we are to experience God’s work it will always be when we turn our attention away from the sinful things of the world and toward heaven.  Scripture teaches us that the voice of God rings out from heaven, “The Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered his voice (2 Sam. 22:14).”  God’s salvation came from heaven when Jesus Christ came to earth to dwell among us.  His power came from heaven when the Apostles and disciples heard the sound of a rushing wind and the Spirit filled and empowered the church.  And God’s city, the New Jerusalem, is seen “coming down out of heaven from God.” 

            God has a vision for His church, and this vision can never be accomplished by means that originate with man.  Only those things that come from heaven are sufficient to accomplish the will of God in the world.  That’s why Scripture places such emphasis on knowing the mind of God.  Because, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:9).”  Scripture continually teaches us that God’s work must be done His way, and His way always comes from heaven.  It never comes from a board meeting, a policy, bylaws or bureaucracy.  The things of God originate with God in heaven!

            John was even shown the difference between the things of God and the ways of man in this book of Revelation.  Chapter 13 verse 1 tells us, “I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten [crowns] on its horns and blasphemous names on its head.”  John saw visions of beasts that would be worshipped by the people.  These are systems that draw man away from God, just as the beasts in the book of Daniel represent ungodly political systems.  The problem we face is that man has a way of climbing onto the back of these beasts and going wherever they happen to go. 

Even the church does this at times.  John goes on in the 17^th chapter to show us this.  In contrast to the pure bride of Christ we see in Scripture he saw something completely different.  “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters’…And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names…The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls…And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abomination (Rev. 17:1-5).’”  If a pure woman represents the church established by God, this prostitute represents a false religion, one that takes people away from God.  She is adorned with all the things valued by the world, jewelry, gold, scarlet.  But look at the position she has placed herself in:  She is SEATED ON A BEAST!  When we see visions of Jesus in Revelation the “Son of Man” is seated on a horse.  Horses can be domesticated, and they will listen to the one who rides them and take them where they want to go.  YOU CANNOT CONTROL A BEAST!  It will go wherever its nature takes it.  This woman has placed herself in a position where she is not in control of her destination.

How does this all apply to us today?  Revelation 13 said the beast rose up out of the sea.  Revelation 17:5 tells us, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.”  This false religion is built on something that rose up from man.  This woman is seated on something that man created and subsequently lost control of.  We spend our time devising structures and programs that we are sure God will bless, though we have spent little time seeking His direction.  We get together with other Christians to talk about ideas, potential and vision without much thought given to prayer and study of God’s word.  We cast a vision that turns into 5 and 10 year plans that have come entirely from our own knowledge and limited earthly wisdom, and then we CLIMB ON TO THE BACK of that beast and go wherever it leads us.  We create programs that are supposed to lead us toward God and what we have really done is set loose another beast that will carry the people of God further and further away from the city of God. 

The works of man are NEVER a substitute for the work of God.  The method Scripture teaches us of discipleship and building of a relationship with God comes not from studies and statistics, but submission and prayer.  The revival in God’s church that so many long to see comes from a submission to the word and the will of God.  A desire to see Him glorified through the church and a willingness to pay whatever cost may come with that.  God’s ways come from heaven and will lead us to His city, and His vision of what the church should be, while man’s ways lead away from that very thing. 

“After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven….and he called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great (Rev. 18:1, 2)!’” Consider what this angel was proclaiming:  Babylon IS FALLEN!  It does not say that Babylon is falling, or has fallen.  It says it “is fallen.”  From their beginning, the ideas of man that are substituted for those of God are fallen.  They were never pleasing to God, and could never really accomplish His purposes.  When we take our live into our own hands and cease to look to His Word and Spirit to direct us we have placed ourselves at the mercy of a beast that was fallen from its start. 

When we begin to see this vision of God’s church, and the lives that her people live, then that prayer life that we have been neglected suddenly becomes important again.  The opportunities to hear the proclamation of God’s word suddenly become vital and “practical” and the fallen works that have replaced them are no longer so important.  We begin to understand – just as God’s people have understood in days gone by – that the church has never been built on the works and thoughts of man, but on the doctrines revealed by God.

 

John tells us that the God-given vision of New Jerusalem revealed a city that was built on the foundation of the Apostles.  “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (v. 14).”  We talk a lot about what is essential and what is not essential in the Christian life, but if we are to live a life that sees the heights to which God would raise us it must be built on the doctrine we see in Scripture.  When God began to add to the church in the book of Acts we read, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ DOCTRINE and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers (Acts 2:42).” 

This revelation shows us the relationship God wants with us.  It clarifies and fulfills the revelation in the Old Testament.  John tells us that there were twelve gates surrounding the city and the twelve had the names of the tribes of Israel.  When John saw God’s light in the city he pointed out that these gates were always opened.  Too many times, we stumble around in the darkness of this world trying to “find God.”  The truth is, we stumble around in vain.  He has revealed Himself, AND CONTINUES to reveal His will.  God has a vision for our lives, and for His church, and that is shown to us as we begin to study, and allow the Spirit to guide us into, the depths of His word. 

When we allow doctrine to begin to work in our lives we experience something more than what we could create for ourselves.  We don’t have to wander aimlessly through the dark anymore, but are led into an ever-closer walk with God as we follow the light that He reveals to us.  We see God’s grace and vision in ways that we may never have imagined.  We look back at the Old Testament and see a God of judgment that causes us to tremble and fear.  But when we look at it in light of God’s vision we see something greater.  We see the depth of God’s mercy when we look at the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden.  We understand when we look at God’s perspective that they were not cast out as punishment, but they were removed from danger.  God eliminated the possibility of them eating from the tree of life and living eternally in their fallen state.  The flood of Noah shows us the lengths to which God will go to preserve His people.  The flood restricted the evil that had spread across the earth like a cancer and allowed His followers a new beginning.  Even the tower of Babel shows us the protection that God sometimes gives us from ourselves when he confused the languages to keep man from building a structure that would have turned their attention away from Him.  (Sound familiar?)

As we grow in our Christian walk, and look for direction for the church, it is imperative that we remember that God had a plan for us, and for His church before we ever came along.  That plan is eternal, and the beauty of the works He wants to do in us and through us exceeds any life we could ever create, or church we could ever organize.  God’s plan originates in heaven and it is built on nothing less than the eternal wisdom of our all-powerful God.

 

When we think about God’s vision for the church we see a city built on what He has revealed.   We also see a city with a specific purpose: to be a “Light to the nations…”  The God-given responsibility of the church is to reflect the light of God’s presence into the world around us.  If this is to happen, God must first live among us.  In John’s vision we see the city where God lives among His people, and is an active part of their lives.  He provides for their needs and displays His power through their lives.  The greatest part of this vision of such a city is that God is BUILDING THAT CITY TODAY among His people.  He is working through His church to shine His light into a darkened world from a city that transcends man-made divisions, race, geographical boundaries and every other barrier that has ever kept His people apart.  That’s why John tells us “the sea was no more” in verse 1.  Remember what the sea was?  It was “nations, tribes, people and languages.”  In God’s city there are no more nations, there is simply one nations: the Kingdom of God.  We are not divided by various cultural influences because we are all a part of one culture, the culture of heaven that has come to earth through the work of Jesus Christ in our lives.  You see, culture is what this is all about.  God’s vision is not to call people out of the world who will spread a program, or an organization.  God has called people together from every part of the world to live and spread a culture, maybe even a counter-culture that reveals a greater set of values, and a higher world-view than anything promoted among man.

This culture of God stands out from the world and shows the lifestyle to which God has called us.  That is why Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden (Matt. 5:14).”  The church is responsible to shine ALL the light she receives from Jesus Christ.  He lives among us and instills within us the values held by all the hosts of heaven.  C.E. Orr taught us, “He was the light of the world in his incarnation, and now the church, his body, is the light of the world.  Incarnate he was a light because of his purity and power, and he lives the same pure life and manifests the same marvelous power in his body, the church…”  We wonder why we see so little of the power of God at work in the lives of His people today, but we so seldom allow His culture (taught in Bible doctrines) to permeate our lives.  But God’s intention goes much further than that.  This culture must become so much a part of our lives that it follows us everywhere we go.  The culture of heaven should be the culture of our homes, the culture of our workplace, the culture of our relationship, and yes, even the culture of our congregations.  That is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” 

Jesus did not come to establish a culture of independence from God’s word as some are teaching today.  He did not come to usher in a culture of independence from God’s holy standard.  But He did come to show us something more, something greater.  He came to raise us to the heights of heaven during this life on earth.  He came to live the culture of heaven here among man, and to empower us to live that very same culture everywhere we go.  He taught us through His nights spent in prayer a culture of dependence on the power and provision of God.  He taught us in His work with His disciples a culture of perseverance.  He showed us through miracles and healing a culture of empowerment.  And He displayed through the resurrection a culture of victory.  The church has been left with the charge of carrying this culture into all the world, and creating it wherever we go.  Is that happening?

We spend a lot of time praying for our needs and our personal relationship with God, and we should, those things are very important.  But how much time do we spend looking at, and praying over God’s vision for all of us together – the church?  As we search for direction and vision it is imperative that remember what God has already revealed to us.  We spend so much time trying to re-invent the wheel, and so little time looking for a great move of God through which He will establish His vision.  In a day when we literally have the world at our fingertips, and unmatched potential for personal and corporate growth, we must be continually more careful to make sure that the vision we are pursuing is a vision that comes from God.  The church can no longer afford to release uncontrollable beasts into the world.  How long has it been since you have spent time at an altar praying for something bigger than yourself?  As the world speeds on at a torrid pace toward hell, are you willing to cast yourself at an altar and pray for the one hope, the body of Christ – the church?