Blurred Confusion

Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. (Ezekiel 22:26)

And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean. (Ezekiel 44:23)

What is the difference between acceptance and compromise? What is the difference between accommodation and confusion?

As you may be aware I rarely join trending debates unless I feel that God will judge me if I kept quiet. If I can remember well probably the debates I have lent my voice in concerned Tusker Project Fame and the one with a topic going along thinking like billionaires. I leave much of the arguments to those who have a lot of time to ‘spend’, many times because very few of the arguments being put across add much value to the confusion the topic creates. I know there are some very sober and scriptural arguments even amidst that chaos and I commend those that patient to bring sense out of all that baggage. Very few ‘Christians’ really care to know what the Bible has to say about those topics.

I hope you won’t mind if I joined this hot topic being debated about this so called church that uses pornography to reach the youth as that is the language the youth understand.

Who tells you what those youth understand? Do I have to become a client of a prostitute to develop a language to reach her? Do I need to start drinking to create a rapport with the drunkards I want to reach with the gospel? Must I become a drug consumer or pusher to reach that segment of the society? Must I be corrupt to understand the language I need to reach the corrupt?

Whatever happened to revelation? Is God that quiet that we must go to porn sites to get our sermons? Is a headline more powerful than revelation? Or probably the question to ask is do we even entertain the fact of revelation, especially from God?

What was Jesus like? How trendy was He? How did He reach His world? How did He reach the unreachables and untouchables?

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. (James 4:4)

I am writing this not just in response to that poster. It goes much deeper than that. It boils down to the levels we go to ‘attract’ people we want to ‘reach’ with the ‘gospel’. I think we are bending too low that we are ending up being the ones to be converted to worldliness.

You see the world can never be converted. The world has no capacity for transformation. In fact the world is in direct opposition to the Gospel we proclaim. Accommodating the world to reach the world is therefore not only an impossibility but folly and extreme rebellion. And God hates it.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15, 16)

Love and compromise are mutually exclusive. Love sets clear distinctions, not leaves things blurred. It is the clarity of the message we proclaim that leads people to understand how to relate with a holy God. Then they can know the expectation of this Holy God to their lives. Presenting a god who has more or less blurred expectations of the people who come to us for direction makes us teachers of rebellion, something I talked about in my book Perceptions.

Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the LORD. So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month. (Jeremiah 28:15 – 17)

And this is the problem I have with these so called seeker friendly approaches to church growth. We seek to make our churches comfortable to the seekers to the extent of sacrificing the fundamentals of our faith to make them comfortable. We seek to make the gospel leaven without knowing that sin is the only thing that the Bible describes as having the leaven effect. Righteousness never can be introduced in doses. It is either presented as a complete package or it is not the Gospel at all.

When I take secular music to attract disco addicts to the church it many times stumbles someone who has been rescued from them by the Gospel. One time we were listening to a gospel concert when a lady in our company almost shouted. She could not imagine the depravity that song reminded her of when she used to rave. Putting Christian lyrics on it will amplify the memories instead of dulling them. Worse is the fact that they might pull someone back to the lifestyle they had left. I one time walked with a friend who told me that he could never shop in a supermarket with the name Tusker because he knew what God had rescued him from and never wanted to associate with anything that reminded him of that past life.

Homosexuality is an abomination. At least that is what the Bible says very clearly. Why is it that very many pastors are scared of just quoting the Bible in that respect? Who tells us that welcoming them in our churches will challenge them to change? Does God clap for us when we have a homosexual who is comfortable with the gospel we preach? How can that be the Gospel of Christ?

Christ is love. But Christ has no compromise. The fact that among His followers were tax collectors and prostitutes never means that He accommodated such lifestyle. His love drew them to Him with the sole purpose of changing them.

‘Go and sin no more’ is one statement we see with Christ when He accepted the sinners. Simply saying He welcomed people to Him and His love challenged them to change. No sinner continued in the sin he was rescued from once he joined Christ’s team. Is it in order when we are advertising sin to draw people to Christ? Would we then be able to challenge them to change from the same sin we used to invite them to our church? Can we be that foolish?

For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

Can we inspire people to righteousness using the lure of wickedness? Again can I challenge a prostitute to change by being her customer?

Why did Jesus chase people from the temple yet what they were doing had the sanction of the scriptures? Was it just because they were buying or selling? Was it due to the noise of a market (though that has no fact in scripture so is an assumption)?

I believe that they had transformed a godly thing for their own purpose. And that is the reason Christ reminded them the chief purpose of that temple. These other activities were the accessories to the main purpose which were meant to make the main purpose as worshipful as possible. Changing the purpose to these accessories was therefore defilement of the whole temple as they diverted the reason for the existence of the temple.

Has God ordered us to do these things we are doing in our churches? Does He give us some of these sermons we preach? Does He release the information we share in these interviews we hold?

Whatever happened to the offense of the Gospel? How come the world is so comfortable in our churches without needing to change? How do worship leaders enjoy leading in worship yet openly living in sin? Why are we scared of addressing premarital sex and poor dressing in our sermons? Was Jesus like that at any time?

And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of the cross ceased. (Galatians 5:11)

Where is the persecution that normally follows the accurate proclamation of the Gospel? Where is the transformation that accompanies that proclamation?

And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them. (Acts 5:13)

How many sinners are scared of joining our churches unless they are willing to be changed by the Gospel we proclaim? Is our Gospel transformative anyway? How can a person walking in sin enjoy the preaching of a preacher with God’s anointing? How can a barely dressed temptress of a girl enjoy the preaching of a man of God year after year without seeing the need to change her dressing? How does a pastor preach year after year seeing bare breasted girls and women on the front pews without being affected by those Jezebels? Is it any wonder only the other day we had two prominent pastors displayed to the world after pursuing that cleavage to its conclusion?

Can a church using porn to advertise ministry really be the church of Christ? Would it not serve its members better if it converted to a club or something like that? Then I won’t waste my time bashing them like I am doing now because they are not crossing my path by using the name of the Lord I revere to pursue interests so different from the Spirit of the Christ I serve.

By the way I am using that ‘church’ because it really represents carnality in its most blatant in that advert. There are many others that are like it, even worse. I suggest they close their doors and seek to know the lord they are serving then reopen them with a clear agenda instead of blurred lines.

Am I judging? Yes. That is something the Bible tells me to do. Does the Bible not say do not judge? No it doesn’t. It just gives the guidelines to our judging that are consistent with scripture. Read the chapter with that verse you use to cover sin and wickedness and tell me what it says. I won’t quote it because you pretend to know it. I will just give you other verses.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. (1Corinthians 2:14, 15)

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1John 4:1)

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. (1Thessalonians 5:21, 22)

By the way an ‘innocent’ picture with a blurred message, however much we defended it has an appearance of evil. And the one being debated is far from innocent as even ‘sinners’ have a problem with it especially in its use for ‘spiritual’ advertising.

I do not mean we put a sign on our assemblies saying ‘no sinners allowed’ as some do. But those who know me know that I relate to the lowest in my ministry as a friend and minister. But I will be failing Christ if a person I am ministering to continues having a blurred sight concerning sin due to my love because then it would be compromise on my side. The holiness of God is one thing that a minister points to in their life and message. The presence of God will without fail challenge people to at least desire to change as they see the difference between God and their former lives.

And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? (Deuteronomy 4:8)

Rahab was not preached to to leave prostitution. She just knew that the God of Israel would have none of that. The fact that she was accepted into Israel disqualified her former way of earning a livelihood. I am sure the same happened to her whole family.

This is as opposed to the mixed multitude who had left Egypt because the adventure of leaving their homeland was their motivation. That is the reason they were stress to Moses for forty years. Joining God on our terms is really not joining Him, it is just picking his name to profit by it, a thing I suspect these churches are doing.

Zacchaeus was not preached to. But Christ’s love and invitation left no options for Zacchaeus than change. Who told Isaiah that he was so sinful in Isaiah 6? Seeing God was conviction enough. And that is what we see all through the Bible. The first thing that happens when a person sees Christ is conviction of sin in the presence of a holy God. Watering down that expectation is definitely taking them to another god.

We will not draw people to Christ by watering down our message and lowering down our expectation. We might increase our membership and giving but we will not lead those who come on such terms to heaven, unless it is another heaven we are building.

Young people are seeking. They are tired of that language and want nothing to do with it. Speaking it to attract them is therefore an insult to their searching hearts. Using the pictures that have driven them to hopeless depravity is insensitive to say the least.

I will close by giving the story of Peter during Christ’s trial. Peter was really close to Christ. In fact he was the only one brave enough to follow him to the court. But to warm himself he joined a hostile crowd that he could not leave probably because of the cold and lack of company outside. He must have joined in their conversations, conversations that were leaning in the side of the enemies of Christ as we know that they were the ones who had arrested Him. It was therefore inconceivable that he would confess any connection to the said Christ for obvious reasons. He simply would be laughed to scorn, apart from probably being ejected from the fireside and being treated as uncool. That is why he even went one further to curse as I suspect that was the kind of language they were using.

For this reason I make request to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you will give your bodies as a living offering, holy, pleasing to God, which is the worship it is right for you to give him. And let not your behaviour be like that of this world, but be changed and made new in mind, so that by experience you may have knowledge of the good and pleasing and complete purpose of God. [Romans 12:1, 2(BBE)]

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:1, 2)