O you who love the Lord, hate evil! – Ps. 97:10 ~ There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. – Pro. 14:12
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? – Jeremiah 17:9
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:23
Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. – Romans 13:14
Here then, is one striking evidence of the deceitfulness of the heart. It produces ignorance of ourselves; it keeps men strangers to their own character; and makes them fatally presume that they are in friendship with God, while they are enemies to Him in their minds and by wicked works. ~from THE DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART by David Black
From Pulpit and Pen~(hattip: Berean Examiner)
Discernment Challenge: If You See Something, Say Something
FTA: Not a day goes by that Pulpit & Pen doesn’t get a question in the email or Pulpit Bunker that goes something like this…
Someone in my friend’s list/church/family/workplace shared something from [insert false teacher] or [insert false teaching]. What should I do? How do I handle this?
Days, weeks, months, and years go by with discerning friends stewing in their annoyance and general antipathy toward their colleagues, peers, friends and family posting visions from Beth Moore, sexy intimate God-time with Ann Voskamp, direct and divine revelation from Sarah Young, general eisegetical poppycock from Perry Noble, nonsensical and steroid-fueled Jack Handey-style Deep Thoughts from Steven Furtick, or the latest attempt to build bridges by Rick Warren with whatever cult he’s been most recently invited to speak.
We know the pain. We feel your pain. (read the post here)
“If you love Me, keep My commandments. – John 14:15
We must not talk about our fellowship with Christ, or our being separated from the world unto Him, unless we make Him our Master and Lord in everything. Some public teachers are not true at all points to their convictions, and how can they look for a blessing? A Christian man, anxious to be useful, ought to be very particular as to every point of obedience to his Master. I have no doubt whatever that God blesses our churches even when they are very faulty, for His mercy endureth for ever. When there is a measure of error in the teaching, and a measure of mistake in the practice, He may still vouchsafe to use the ministry, for He is very gracious. But a large measure of blessing must necessarily be withheld from all teaching which is knowingly or glaringly faulty. God can set His seal upon the truth that is in it, but He cannot set His seal upon the error that is in it.
The Lord is very gracious and pitiful; but yet He is a jealous God. He is sometimes sternly jealous towards His people who are living in neglects of known duty, or in associations which are not clean in His sight. He will wither their work, weaken their strength, and humble them until at last they say, “My Lord, I will take Thy way after all. I will do what Thou biddest me to do, for else Thou wilt not accept me.” The Lord said to His disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature: he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” and He promised them that signs should follow, and so they did follow them, and so they will. But we must get back to apostolic practice and to apostolic teaching: we must lay aside the commandments of men and the whimseys of our own brains, and we must do what Christ tells us, as Christ tells us, and because Christ tells us. Definitely and distinctly, we must take the place of servants; and if we will not do that, we cannot expect our Lord to work with us and by us. Let us be determined that, as true as the needle is to the pole, so true will we be, as far as our light goes, to the command of our Lord and Master. ~ C.H. Spurgeon
https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm
2 Kings 17 reveals that God’s patience does run out where the paganized worship of Him is concerned…christianized paganism leads to paganized worship of God which does descend into worship of another god, another Jesus. And, is not pagan/papist “holy” days, traditions and rituals, an idol when one cannot loose their grip of them when confronted with God’s Word saying, do not do as the heathen do for their gods in our worshiping Him? If one must justify, apart from scriptural authority, or, with scriptures contorted, doing that which God forbids then the thing being done is an idol.
Now, if God judged and punished the Israelites for their syncretic worship of Him, why do Christians believe they will get a pass for doing the same?
