Friday, March 5, 2010
The Gospel, Pure and Simple
It often amazes me how hard it is to be a Christian and identify yourselves with any particular denomination, church, or particular flavor (i.e. pentecostal, evangelical, emergent, or home-church, just to name a few). I'm thinking about Pentecost. Peter preaches one short sermon and 3,000 people are added! And these guys and gals were serious. They devoted themselves to the apostle's preaching, they broke bread together, they prayed and praised, and they were filled with awe at what they were experiencing. And all of that without church membership, sunday schools, weekly home fellowships, new believer's classes, or coffee hours. Just repent, be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, and welcome brother or sister. How unlike what we are used to. I mean, which of our churches would know what to do with 3,000 believers at an altar call? Why for goodness sakes are we praying for revival, we wouldn't know what to do with a large influx of people if they came. Or, we'd do with them what we have always done and little by little they would stop coming. Why do we make Christianity so darn complicated, when pure and simple it is found in these words of Jesus, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and heavily laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me...and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light." Everytime I read those words I have this feeling that this is not a message Jesus is offering to the unrepentant and lost, but to those that already belong to Him. Why is it so difficult to live as a Christian in the church today? It's at that point I hear another gospel warning, "Woe to you...you shut up the kingdom of heaven from those around you; for you will not go in yourselves nor will you allow those who want to enter to go in." It's time to lay aside all of this denominational and congregational nonsense and get back to the gospel, pure and simple.
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I agree with you in prinicple, but I think as life goes on the need for ministry shows up really soon. We see that with the Greek widows being left out of the daily distribution shortly after the 3000 came in. John shortly after starts dealing with doctrine issues with the Gnostics. Paul deals with the outward religion issues concerning Jews and Gentiles. I don't think that stuff will ever go away. Personally a lot of that perference stuff goes out the window if we can get a biblical worldview from Scripture in regards to people. When 1 in 3 people die in 3rd world countries due to lack of clean water suddenly when you baptize, with what kind of water, and how isn't as important. Where the balance is I don't know, but doctrine is important at the same time as bearing one anothers burdens.
ReplyDeleteI like the quote, "Church would be perfect if there weren't any people in it." As long as there are people there will be problems.
God is still working all we have to do is engage Him to be part of it. Praise the Lord.
Good insight. I certainly am not suggesting we go inside and isolate ourselves from the needs of community around us. That has to be at the very heart of any fellowship. But what I do feel is that it should not be so darned hard. It seems we have not yet found the right balance in it all.
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