How to start? With a discussion of the pressures on the church from without? How we are accused by all sorts of things? In church yesterday I Cor 6 was read in its entirety, with the clear teaching to flee fornication, for you do not sin against others and God, but against your own body as well.
And I thought to myself — how do we protect our youngsters, who have a sexualization by education, which is being made mandatory? Then I thought about how the enemy tries to make scandals where people have uncovered scandals
There is an enemy and he prowls. trying to ruin and destroy. As it was said on Sunday, during a discussion on how the church should be run, without the Holy Spirit all systems can become corrupt. Besides, we have some warnings to heed.
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
“And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you.
“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
If I am to continue the mecha analogy from yesterday, it is at times like parts of the machine do not want to obey central command. They will not work in synergy. They want to do what they wish: they do not understand why the blessing and power are elsewhere while they sit, or stabilize.
Any time I am in they gym I am not worried as much by the big muscles: my quadriceps, my triceps — but the small muscles that stabilize core and knee and shoulder. If those are weak, I am not strong.
The apparently weak and frail and humble and childlike are very important. Firstly, many of these will grow. We don’t come onto this earth as fully formed adults. If we grow too fast, bad things happen.
There are plenty of empty megachurches. They compromised with the world, were praised, grew fast… and then fell by scandal or idolatry (of the pastor) or heresy (which followed).
Indeed, be afraid when you are being praised for your enlightened attitudes and progressive work. You may find that you are being fitted with a millstone and cast into the ocean, for that is a better fate than engineering the damnation of the next generation.