And what does the Bible teach us about such behavior: Revelation 2 and 3,
where God, through the Apostle John, speaks to the seven churches in Asia. The message to four of the seven deals with drifting away from what they had been taught:
held accountable. To the church at Pergamus, among other things, they were tol- erating those who were committing sexual immorality – and they were told to repent or be held accountable. To the church at Sardis: “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” And the exhortation is “Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die… Remember what you have received and heard: obey it and repent!” In other words, repent and return to the activities a church ought to be involved in – or else! To the church at Laodicea, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other. So then, because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of My mouth.” What does that tell us about what we call a “maintenance ministry” in Christian churches?
What is the overall impact of this drifting? As a result of our self-imagined
prosperity, we have thrown aside all reasonable restraints on federal, state and local spending, disregarding all Scriptural exhortations about good steward- ship – always presuming that someone else will pay for it, whatever “it” is. We have allowed ourselves to become a militarily weaker nation in the eyes of the world than we have been since a few years after the conclusion of the Civil War. Why? Because we have disregarded Biblical teachings about priori- ties and have allowed false reasoning about political expedience to determine whether we will or will not take a stand for what, subconsciously, we know is right. We have, since our beginnings as a nation, been considered a Christian na- tion and have been expected, more than any other nation, to protect the inter- ests of Christians all over the world. But listen to these statistics and ask what the Christians of America have done or are doing about them: Christians are be- ing persecuted all over the world – even here in America we are suffering from political persecution, and in some communities, physical persecution. How- ever, persecution here doesn’t begin to compare to what is going on throughout the Middle East, and in China, Russia and many European, Asian and African nations. Just in recent years available statistics tell us that probably as many as because they are Christians.
On and on we could quote statistics about the plight of Christians all over the world, and needless to say, America is not solely responsible for these con- ditions worldwide, but we share our part of the blame – primarily because we, more than most of the nations of the world, have been the recipients of God’s guidance and teaching. No other nation has the number of Bibles we have; no other nation has the number of Christian radio and TV stations that we have; no other nation has the number of Christian churches that we have. Yet, we seem determined to disregard the exhortation of our text: “We must pay more careful attention . . . to what we have heard so that we do not drift away.” Friends, God, through His word, has spoken very clearly to us as a nation, as communities, as a denomination, as a congregation, as families and as individu- als. Who among us can deny that such is the case? Clearly, it isn’t a matter of God’s word not being available and known. We have heard! And clearly, He is reminding us today that “We must pay more careful attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away.”
September/October 2023
Challenge My challenge to you today is this:
Take a close look at your life. If you have not accepted Christ as your Sav- ior, and are just drifting through life with no eternal plans, then I urge you to consider letting Him come into your life and give you purpose for living, and guidance for even every day deci- sions. And if you have accepted Christ as your Savior, are you really paying attention to what He has said our lives what you know Christ wants you to be or have you allowed yourself to slowly but surely drift away from the things you have been taught? Unless the majority of the American people wake up and quit drifting we are go- ing to wake up one day so far from the shore that it will be all but impossible to get back. Don’t let that happen to this great nation. There is a story about a corpora-
to dwindle. The board of directors announcement to all the stockhold- ers. They said, “We studied our situ- ation and concluded that the major problem with our company is our policies; we, the directors are respon- sible for those policies; therefore, our conclusion is that you need a new board of directors – and we decided that we will be that new board.” Our claim is that ours is a govern- ment “of the people, by the people and for the people.” We are the peo- ple – every one of us!! And until our individual priorities are straight we have no right to expect our neighbors to straighten out theirs – and until we are willing to seriously face up to our own drifting, our nation is going to continue drifting. And it seems to be a foregone conclusion that as long as America drifts, so will the rest of the world. We must pay more careful at- tention . . . to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away
Rev. Doug Jones is a retired ARP Minister living in Florida.
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