The question of numbers and their relation to success or failure in the work of the Lord is one that disturbs most Christians more than a little. . . . There are Christians, for instance, who dismiss the whole matter as being beneath them. . . .They prefer to sit around the Lord's Table in a select and tight little circle, admiring the deep things of God and, I very much fear, admiring themselves a wee bit also.
This is a kind of Protestant monasticism without the cowl and the beads, for it seeks to preserve the faith of Christ from pollution by isolating it from the vulgar masses.
Its motives may be commendable, but its methods are altogether unscriptural and its spirit completely out of mood with that of our Lord.
The other and opposite school is the most vocal and has by far the largest following in gospel circles today.
Its philosophy, if it can be called a philosophy, is that "we must get the message out" regardless of how we go about it.
The devotees of this doctrine appear to be more concerned with quantity than with quality.
They seem burned up with desire to "bring the people in" even if they have not much to offer them after they are in.
They take inexcusable liberties both with message and with method. The Scriptures are used rather than expounded and the Lordship of Christ almost completely ignored.
Pressure is exerted to persuade the people (who, by the way, come to the meetings with something else in mind altogether) to accept Christ, with the understanding that they shall then have peace of mind and financial prosperity, not to mention high grades in school and a low score on the golf course.
The crowds-at-any-price mania has taken a firm grip on American Christianity and is the motivating power back of a shockingly high percentage of all religious activity.
Men and churches compete for the attention of the paying multitudes who are brought in by means of any currently popular gadget or gimmick ostensibly to have their souls saved, but, if the truth were told, often for reasons not so praiseworthy as this.
verse
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
— First Corinthians 2:1-2
thought
Have we given way to a superficial, bouncy, fun-filled, engaging, culturally-in-tune Christianity in order to attract people? Jesus Christ and Him crucified is our message, which means death to self ? a message geared to spiritual quality rather than quantity.
prayer
O Lord, may I in no way try to diminish your Lordship or disguise Your cross or mine. "Thou, O Christ, art all I want; more than all in Thee I find."
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The question of numbers and their relation to success or failure in the work of the Lord is one that disturbs most Christians more than a little.
On the question there are two opposing schools of thought.
There are Christians, for instance, who dismiss the whole matter as being beneath them. These correspond to the lovers of high-brow music who firmly refuse to admit that there is anything of any real value other than that composed by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. They know they are in the minority and glory in the fact, for in their opinion it is a very, very superior minority and they look down their noses at all who enjoy anything less complicated than a symphony. Of course this is cultural snobbery and tells us a lot more about such persons than they would care to have us know.
They remind one of the unco-learned of whom Colton wrote, "So much they scorn the crowd that if the throng by chance go right, they purposely go wrong."
Now among religious persons I have met a few who are guilty of a kind of spiritual snobbery of which they are doubtless wholly unaware.
These have recoiled so violently from popular, cheap-Jack Christianity that they simply have no longer any sympathy with crowds.
They prefer to sit around the Lord's Table in a select and tight little circle, admiring the deep things of God and, I very much fear, admiring themselves a wee bit also.
This is a kind of Protestant monasticism without the cowl and the beads, for it seeks to preserve the faith of Christ from pollution by isolating it from the vulgar masses.
Its motives may be commendable, but its methods are altogether unscriptural and its spirit completely out of mood with that of our Lord.
verse
Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself . . .
— Psalm 4:3
thought
There are those whom Yahweh sets apart for Himself. And there are those who set themselves apart ? seeing themselves as a spiritual elite above the throngs of "common believers."
prayer
Lord, deliver me from conscious or unconscious elitism. Only You can make me godly. I am and will always be a sinner saved by Your grace!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The last cause I shall name is nonobedience.
Truth is given to be believed and obeyed.
Certain truths can only be believed, the reason being that they are revelations of fact and contain no command or instruction to be carried out.
Other truths must be obeyed or for the hearer they have no meaning. "I will come back" (John 14:3) is a statement of fact which cannot in the nature of it be obeyed; there is nothing in it to obey; it can only be believed. "Go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) is a command which can only be obeyed. It is addressed to the will, and the only proper response is obedience.
We cannot possibly discharge our obligation to such a passage by trying in some dubious manner to "believe" it, though I am sure many try to do just that.
Is it any wonder that confusion arises?
We will go far to simplify our religious concepts and unify our lives if we remember these four points:
First, truth is a spiritual entity and can be grasped in its inner essence only as the Spirit of truth enlightens our hearts and teaches us in the deep, mysterious recesses of our souls.
Secondly, since God is love we must surrender ourselves to love or we can never know the truth of God in its higher meaning.
Thirdly, we must come to the Word with the simple faith of a child, ready to believe it whether we can understand it or not.
And lastly, we must obey the truth as we see it, trusting God with the consequences.
verse
He replied, 'My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice.'
— Luke 8:21
thought
There is truth stated declaratively ? we are to believe it. There is truth given in imperatives ? commands ? we are to believe and obey it. It is the Spirit who teaches as we listen in faith and who empowers us to obey what we have heard. But we must put it into practice.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes treating imperatives addressed to me as just declaratives. Is is for me to rise up and carry out those imperatives.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Now lest I be misunderstood and so succeed only in confusing things still further, let me assure my readers that I am and have always been a staunch advocate of theology, and regularly teach doctrine systematically in pursuance of my pastoral calling.
I joyfully recognize that there is an outline of divine truth fitted to the human mind and intended by its Author to be received by it.
I think no one can become a strong Christian who is not a theologian of some sort, but it is altogether possible to be a theologian and not be a Christian at all.
Bible doctrine without love is but a shadow of truth; doctrine held in love is very truth indeed, and we dare not allow ourselves to be satisfied with anything less.
Another source of religious confusion is unbelief. The writer to the Hebrews attributed Israel's failure to benefit by the truth to a breakdown in their faith. "But the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith" (Hebrews 4:2).
The thought of holding holy truth in unbelief is a frightening thing.
For the unbelieving mind to tinker with the truth of God is as terrible as was the unauthorized act of Saul when in fear and unbelief he offered a burnt offering at Gilgal. "I thought, `Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering" (1 Samuel 13:12).
So the king explained his act, but there is something spine-chilling about it all.
An unholy man tried to do a holy act and tragedy followed.
From that hour Saul's life degenerated till at last, deserted and terrified, he died by his own hand.
verse
For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.
— Hebrews 4:2
thought
There is truth we hold at arm's length. We believe it intellectually but are not living it. There is truth we embrace and lovingly practice. There also may be truth we are rejecting altogether.
prayer
Father, may I receive Your truth in faith and lovingly live it!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
— First Corinthains 2:14
I said that the causes of religious confusion were four, and I named misunderstanding of the nature of truth as one of them. The others are lack of love, unbelief and nonobedience. "Wisdom is a loving spirit," says the Wisdom of Solomon. "He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way" (Psalm 25:9), says David, the father of Solomon, and these set forth a truth which the whole Bible joins to celebrate; namely, that love and wisdom are forever joined and that soundness of moral judgment is for the meek alone. The humble, loving heart intuits truth as the Scriptures reveal it and the Holy Spirit illuminates it.
The Spirit will not enlighten an unloving mind; and without His enlightenment the mysteries of Christian truth must forever remain a stranger to us. To the loving mind God gives the power of immediate apprehension, and to none other. The theologian who is only a theologian must work out the teachings of the Scriptures as a child works out a jigsaw puzzle, fitting piece to piece with painstaking labor till at last he has a body of doctrine bearing some resemblance to the Biblical revelation. The difficulty (and the source of confusion) is that certain pieces will fit anywhere and others nowhere, so they may be forced into place or tossed back in the box at the whim of the student. But where love and illumination are, the picture always comes out right. The Spirit says one thing to all loving hearts.
thought
Divine illumination is necessary to savingly understand God's self-disclosure because Satan is active in blinding the minds of humankind (2 Cor. 4:3-4). The Holy Spirit opens minds to understand spiritual truth (Acts 16:14).
prayer
"Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me . . . Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine." That's my prayer, Lord!
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
— James 3:1
. . . Invariably the newly learned, like the newly rich, overdo everything, and that is just what the evangelical-rationalists are doing. They forget that Moses, David, our blessed Lord Himself, John, Luther, Wesley, Bunyan, Schopenhauer, William James (to bring together a few very different but very effective teachers), could state their doctrines in language as simple as childhood talk and as clear as distilled water. These modern teachers aren't so easy to comprehend. They write in an academic jargon that only another of them can understand. At the rate they are going it will take at least one generation for their teaching to filter down to the man on the street and the worshiper in the pew. And maybe that is good after all.
thought
A major task of the teacher and preacher of the Word is to translate theological terminology into the language of the pew. It is the Spirit who must enlighten us but may our teachers not confuse us!
prayer
Father, remind me to pray for my pastor and teacher that they may be used of the Spirit to explain Your truth, not to obscure it.
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
— 1 Corinthians 2:4-5
There has emerged lately in American Christianity a school of religious thought conceived in intellectual pride and dedicated to the proposition that everything of value in the Christian faith can be reduced to philosophical terms and understood by the human mind. The notion seems to be that anything God can utter we can comprehend, allowing possibly for the need of a little divine aid with the heavier stuff. The brethren who are promoting this movement seem to feel that the trouble with evangelicalism is that it is not scholarly enough, that it cannot state itself in scientific terms. They appear to be chagrined by the chuckles of the learned liberals at the allegedly ignorant fundamentalists and have been needled into an attempt to prove that we evangelicals are not so dumb after all.
They hope to make their point by equating Christian theology with Greek philosophy and the findings of modern science, and demonstrating that if the truth were known the Christian revelation is just good clean reason, nothing more. I pass over the pretty obvious fact that there is in all this more than a trace of the taint of mind-worship. And am I just seeing things or do I detect a deep and painful inferiority complex on the part of these apostles of evangelical-rationalism? But I won't call attention to it. I know how they feel. Well, I believe these brethren are wrong. I believe they are as badly mixed up and confused as the peddlers of old wives' tales in Paul's day or the snake handlers of our own Ozark Mountains ? only, of course, in a different and more respectable way. If they succeed in reducing Christianity to a philosophical proposition, they will do more damage to the true faith of Christ than liberalism, Catholicism and Communism combined.
thought
Between eloquence and superior wisdom that impress the listener and the demonstration of the Spirit's power that changes people, there is a tremendous difference. It is the latter that is overwhelmingly convincing.
prayer
Lord, I can prayerfully study and trustingly proclaim Your Word but only You can demonstrate Your power among Your people.
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
— First Corinthians 2:13
Having as the High Priest of our profession the incarnation of all divine wisdom and having as our source book of religious knowledge the holy Scriptures, the soundest and saltiest work ever written, why do we tend so easily to become confused about things spiritual? I believe the causes are four, and I propose to state them in this and the next chapters. The first cause of religious confusion is our failure to understand that the truth as it is in Christ Jesus is a moral and spiritual thing and not something intellectual merely. Let a man approach the burning bush of divine truth with the desire to grasp it in his hand and the intensity of the fire will blind his eyes and cauterize his hands and face to the point of insensibility. Before the awesome vision of revealed truth, the human intellect should kneel and hide its face in trembling adoration.
Because Moses was afraid to look upon God, the Lord could speak to him face to face as a man speaks to his friend; but God hides His face from the man who does not instinctively hide his own. Intellectual pride, then, with its corollary, irreverence, is one cause of religious confusion. Satan's original doctrine, "You will be like God, knowing . . ." (Genesis 3:5) has been accepted by millions of religious persons through the centuries and commands a big following today even among professedly orthodox Christians. In spite of all Christ said while among men and all His inspired apostles wrote after His ascension, we seem never to learn that the inner essence of truth cannot be apprehended by the mental faculties. We still come at the awesome supernatural reality headfirst.
thought
Indispensable in uderstanding divine revelation is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is truth our minds cannot grasp but our hearts can fully embrace. The things of the Spirit are spiritually, not intellectually, discerned.
prayer
O Holy Spirit teach me. Not that I may merely understand with my mind but will obey from my heart.
There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.
— Philippians 1:6 (The Message)
There comes a time when the true believer must take his stand on the oath and covenant of God and refuse to be shaken. He must lift high his happy affirmation, not in arrogance, but in faith and in deep humility. Perhaps his declaration of independence will go something like this: I am not yet perfect, but I thank God and my Lord Jesus Christ that I am done with the past and I do now trust in my Savior for full deliverance from all my sins.
I cannot pray like Daniel, but I shall never cease to praise God that He inclines His ear to me. I am not as wise as Solomon, but I glory in this, that "I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day" (2 Timothy 1:12). I have not the gifts of Moses or Isaiah or John, but I'll be everlastingly grateful that I have been given the moral perception to understand and appreciate such men as these. I am not what I want to be, but thanks be to God that I do want to be better than I am; and I am sure that "He who began a good work in [me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6). Here I stand. I can do nothing else, so help me God.
thought
We can't grow by our own effort and determination. But we can fully commit ourselves to God, trusting Him for empowerment. As we submit to His control, the Spirit will grow us!
prayer
Father, complete in me the transformation You have begun. For Jesus' sake