All We Need Is Love. Oh, Really?

Did you ever heard or thought that doctrines are not so important? All we need is Jesus… We don’t need that extra stuff. As Christians, how many doctrines we got so far? Muslims got 5.

1. Allah Akbar – Allah is one.

2. Mohamed is his prophet.

3. Give to the poor.

4. Fast at the end of Ramadan.

5. Try to go to Mecca if you can

People can keep up with them. We got five times more… Too many? Because, as we heard so many times – “all we need to focus is Jesus”… I thought a lot about this. Is like I am telling my wife: “OK we got married 20 years ago, oh… what is your name? … That’s doctrines, that’s detail… no need to charge my memory with such things… I love you – that’s all that matter. And when is our anniversary?”

We can get lost in details, that’s for sure, but I will like to share with you today something - That the separation of Jesus from doctrine is unbiblical, harmful to ministry, and possibly the first sigh of the shaking. I didn’t grow up here, but just recently I noticed that we are developing here in US two churches.

How many of you did you use 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 in your devotional reading? And how many did you hear this text during funerals? Yes, you know the text… Let me walk along this Bible with you…

Let me confess first: I have an addiction. I cannot stop myself from buying Bibles… My wife and my daughter are exasperated by this. I have 17 Bibles so far, different translation (not counting the virtual ones on CD and the on-line stuff). And they are not cheap… But I noticed that some of you read only King James only – and let me tell you how surprise I was when somebody even told me that all others translations except KJV are corrupted. We should not use them, she said, because they are all corrupted, negative. And I was caught NIV positive.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 - "I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren"…

1 Thessalonians is Paul first letter that he wrote - we don’t have the book of the Bible in chronological order neither in OT nor in NT. Galatians and 1 Thessalonians are the earliest of Paul’s writings. And one of the reasons why we don’t concentrate sometimes to capture the essence of the message from those two books is because they are somehow aggressive and confrontational… After the story of Jesus and the apostles in the Gospels and the book of Acts, we discover Paul’s personality in shaping and shaking…

Take a look at 1 Thess. Every single chapter here ends with the Second Coming. Paul is addressing several issues such as morality, call to ministry, church as an evangelistic tool, he is talking about this, about that, but he keeps coming back to the SC of Jesus Christ. And, 10 times or more Paul says: ”you already know this, you already know that… I don’t need to tell you about this, and I don’t need to tell you about that,”… And then he comes to verse 13, chapter 4 - read it again.

He knows why he is saying it: as one more topic that you must understand as a church - and now comes the shock… Should I read it one more time? Read it… “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, and how he is underlining this” - lest you sorrow – and here it comes the shocker – as others who have no hope”.

Do you know what Paul is saying? Elders, deacons, Bible teachers and members, listen to what the inspired Paul is saying here! An uneducated church that is not clear about the vital doctrines of God is on the same level as the pagans, out there in the world. Wow…

If you are ignorant in regarding the state of the dead, you are any better than pork eating-pot inhaling type of 21 first century neo-pagan society. I don’t want you to be ignorant, Paul is saying. That means that every church member should be able to be a teacher, to teach others about the truth, the whole truth.

Verse 14: For if we believe – and now we have a little problem with that translation that I was talking about.

Do you thing English is easy and I should talk as one of you, after 9 years here? (by the way, I spend the first 7 of them here among Spanish, Romanians, Mongolians and other nationalities)… Well, try Greek. In Greek they are 4 different ways to say “IF”, using 4 different words and changing the verb place in the sentence. We have an ‘if”, conditional, they have 4 different “if”… Four options…