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Part three of a series. Read part two.
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Today's church has many equivalents of the chariots and horses that Solomon purchased from the ungodly.
Once again let me call your attention to God's "master commands" to Israel and its future kings, as we find them in Deuteronomy chapter 17. Today our focus will be on the words that are shown in italics:
When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, "I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me," you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, "You shall not return that way again." Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.
Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and be careful to observe all the words of this Law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:14-20)
Direct Violation of God's Commands
Thus far we have seen that God established boundaries to guard Israel and its kings against compromise in relationships, which is the area in which compromise most often first occurs, and then leads to other forms. Secondly, God commanded the kings of Israel not to compromise with the unbelieving world regarding resources. God told them not to go to the pagan nations to obtain the means that were necessary to support and sustain the kingdom. We read in First Kings chapter 10 and elsewhere that Solomon very directly violated God's command by going to Egypt and the other pagan nations for the chariots, horses and other resources that were, as he thought, necessary for military power and strategic advantage. He also went to the pagan nations to accumulate personal wealth. Solomon sought strength from the arm of flesh instead of the arm of God as He had commanded.
The Church's Equivalent of Solomon's Chariots and Horses
In our time, the church has its own equivalent of those chariots and horses. Much of the church today is seeking to accumulate the trappings of the world in order to be attractive to the world. In many places today, the church service is not a service for the worship of God, it is a multimedia production for the worship of man. Man is the focal point. The trappings of the flesh are the focal point.
Today there is a very popular monthly magazine today called Church Production. This publication, and others like it, promote the church's acquisition of the world's resources to transform the so-called worship service into a stage production that entertains and emotionally manipulates the audience in the same way as a rock concert or a Broadway show. Just this week I saw an online advertisement for a church that does this sort of thing, and they actually touted the fact that people tell them that their church productions remind them of Broadway.
The people behind these publications cultivate this mindset and hold it up as a virtue. They conduct conferences and seminars designed to convince pastors and church leaders that without the proper resources their church will be third-rate at best. A few years ago I attended one of these conferences, not as a participant but as an observer, to see exactly what these people are promoting. The keynote speaker - a pastor - tried to guilt pastors and church leaders who aren't using the world's resources by asserting, "You can't invite people to a service that s__ks" (and here he used a five-letter profanity meaning "is inferior").
The conference I attended took place in a large convention center in a major U. S. city. Given the nature and the purpose of the conference, I expected those attending to be a young crowd, mainly people in their twenties and thirties, perhaps a few in their forties. I was surprised to find that the average age of the several thousand pastors and church leaders present was between 45 and 55 years old. There were even elderly men going around on canes and walkers.
Why were they there? One middle-aged pastor put it to me this way: "I am here to learn how to do what it takes to bring the un-churched into my church. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to get, my church is going to do it, and I'm here to learn how to do it."
The Resources of the "New Worship"
A huge area of the convention center was devoted to a trade show. Nearly a hundred companies exhibited the products and services that they provide, in order to help churches implement the world's counterfeit of worship. Some of the biggest names in technology were there -- Sony, Philips, Epson, Panasonic, and Yamaha, just to name a few. These and other large corporations now have dedicated teams of sales people who are focusing on what they call the "worship market," which is now a multi-billion dollar business.
They were selling the same kinds of laser light systems that they sell to theme parks, night clubs, and theatres. They were selling stage scenery and props. They were selling strobe lighting. They were selling big moving globes -- so your church too can have a big globe on the platform, just like Joel Osteen. These are the resources of the new so-called "worship." They are, in fact, its pagan idols.
But none of these were the most popular product on exhibit. The most popular product in the exhibit hall was fog machines. A church can literally generate fog, even different colors of fog, on the platform and throughout the congregation, to create the desired mood in a so-called worship service.
Those fog machines were a metaphor for the entire conference. The thousands of pastors and church leaders who were there, enthusiastically taking all of this in, talking excitedly about what they were going to do with all this technology when they got back to their churches, were in a thick fog of utter confusion about the true nature of the resources God calls upon His church to employ.
Why has this happened? It has happened first of all because so many churches have entered into a relationship in which the spiritually polluted tastes of the unbelieving world dictate what is done inside the church building.
You see, relationships matter. Spiritual separation matters. What has happened in so many once-sound churches today is that so many unbelievers have been brought into the congregation, without hearing the genuine Gospel of Christ, without being confronted regarding their sin and their need of salvation from the wrath of God, that in many places the unsaved now numerically dominate the church congregation.
The natural course of events is that some of these people are recruited into leadership positions in the church. The church ends up with the unsaved in the leadership. Unsaved people in the leadership of the church are not going to seek the resources of God to build His church. They are going to seek the resources of the world, because they are natural men, not spiritual men.
And so the church, no matter how architecturally fine it may be, no matter how polished a production it may put on each week, no matter how many programs it may have, the so-called church is a failure. It is nothing more than a social club that uses religious language, and most of its members are on their way to Hell.
What The Compromising Church Forgets
Compromise in relationships within the church leads to compromise regarding the resources the church decides to use. It leads the church to reject God's powerful resources in favor of man's weak resources. It leads people to forget, just as the early Corinthian church forgot, as we are told in First Corinthians chapter 1, that
the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For as it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."...
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom [its false wisdom] did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
For the Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom [in other words, they are interested in trappings and not substance]; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)
Christians, we must not compromise in the area of relationships, and we must not compromise in the area of resources. When we do so we exchange God's wisdom and power for man's weakness and foolishness. We prop up the world that is perishing, and trample the Kingdom of Christ underfoot.
Next: Compromise Regarding Religion
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