Church Hopping

God has me church hopping these days which is something I have wanted to do for quite sometime. So in light of Hebrews 10:25 and a call from a Gittite (2 Sam. 15:15-21) – more on friends from Gath later – I found myself on the other side of the pulpit.  Amazing what God can show you when you pray, “Lord, open my eyes to see what Thou has for me to see, open my ears to what Thou has for me to hear, and teach me whatever it is Thou has for me to learn”.  Pardon the King James use of “Thou”, but it sounded a bit more holy than “You”.  God really does bend an ear when you pray in such a manner!  Aside the joke-  if you are willing, it is amazing what God will show you.

I awoke Sunday morning at 6am to spend some time in the Word and the throne of grace.  Those things teeter-totter for me.  Read a little until the Holy Spirit shines light on a passage and then pray a little.  Contemplated going to the 9am service and after much internal debate – Hebrews 10:25 came to mind – “forsake not the assembling together as is the habit of some”, so it was off to the 11am service because I didn’t want to be categorized with the “some”.   I have to say, for a pastor there really isn’t an option to attend church when you are speaking, but should it be any different because you have a spiritual gift other than pastor-teacher?  Selah.  You have to be careful of the pharasaical trap that obedience to assembling/attending church is something you do to be righteous or blessed by God.  Actually, you are righteous and blessed whether you attend church or not and God loves you just as much as He does Jesus Christ – attendee or absentee.  THAT IS GRACE!

The cars poured into multiple parking lots staffed with attendants and police officers.  They even had a shuttle service from the lots in Egypt.  In my slacks and open collar dress shirt I felt a little over dressed as most everyone was California casual – flip flops, T-shirts and shorts.  I also noticed very few people actually had a Bible in hand – did that make me anymore spiritual or positive to Bible doctrine?  Selah . . . only if I were a self righteous arrogant legalistic Pharisee, lol.  As I entered the church, I was handed a trifold handout which set the tone of the ministry.  It even had a perforated prayer request card that I could drop in the offering bucket.  The first song we sang was a contemporary version of “How Great Thou Art” which I really enjoyed as well as the second.  Both were directed to the Lord – a refreshing change to singing “Little is Much”.  Although I love the hymn, it is not praise directed to the Lord who should be our focal point – I think the Scripture tells us somewhere to fix our eyes on Jesus, hmmmm . . .

After the time of praise, there were two baptisms preceded by prerecorded testimonials that everyone could view on the jumbo-tron screens.  There was a sense of joy when everyone applauded and I have to say nothing was contrary to sound doctrine.  Then there was the message from Matthew 5:43-48.  The Sermon on the Mount standard was clearly taught, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.  Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ meant exactly what He said and no smoke and mirror exegesis can get one around the heavenly standard.  The crowd was energized by the preaching and the modern day application was humorous.  I enjoyed the message very much and the speaker is definitely gifted yet everyone walked out of church with a standard that they pondered.

Be perfect, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, forgive as God has forgiven you . . . yet thousands of attendees left without the how.  That’s the subject of next Bible class which will be posted to the website as soon as we are finished recording it later this week.

Standards are clearly established in the Word of God for all of us, yet for those of us who have been taught the “how” our experience reveals we continue to fall short.  Hence the commands to forgive, put up with, love, and confess.  There is a book I will review in the coming weeks titled, “Extreme Righteousness: Seeing ourselves in the Pharisees”.  It will be excruciatingly painful to read for many but only if you employ a few “Thees” and “Thous” !