Monday, January 23, 2012

Encroachment



It's always the world system that endeavors to encroach on the church and tragically the church sooner or later seems to welcome that encroachment. | John MacArthur

The church has a pretty important job.  To stand up for biblical truth in the face of great pressure from nearly all entities outside itself.  But the alarming thing is that many times it doesn't work this way.  Much like Helm's Deep in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings (Lord of the Rings) we see that the walls of defense protecting the church are only as strong as its weakest part.  A church satisfied with the status quo of a simple Sunday morning worship service is setting itself up for inevitable failure. 

As Pastor John MacArthur points out in his quote above, the world's systems (which are usually in direct contradiction to the Bible) have always aimed to encroach on the churches attempt to stand for biblical truth in a fallen world.  However, the true tragedy is that in most cases its not a matter of if a church will collapse, but instead when this collapse will come for those churches that put no real significance on building a community with a solid biblical foundation.

Failure is inevitable for a church not investing significant energy and effort to ensure that all of their congregants are grounded in biblical truth.  The more a church allows sin to go unnoticed or unchecked, the more susceptible it will become towards growing apathetic to these sin indefinitely.  The more comfortable a church becomes ignoring the sinful behaviors of its congregants in an effort to be loving or tolerant, the more likely it is for the hearts of those inside the church body to grow callused or hardened to these areas that were once recognized as sinful.  The stronger a church's passion for upholding and exhorting the truth, and living it out as individuals and a church body, the stronger their defenses will be against the luring pleasures of broken and sinful worldly systems.

Our aim is to stand up for truth in a fallen world..and to be the opposite of what we see in Isaiah 5:20.  Evil is evil, and as a church body we need to ensure we are protecting ourselves from the constant and inevitable attacks from the world.

For His Glory,


Jason

No comments:

Post a Comment