Safeguarding Your Christian Life Series

Now the current rage which is enveloping many otherwise conservative Christian churches and colleges is acceptance of gay rights and the LGBTQ ideology. Just read in World magazine about Seattle Pacific University in the Northwest, a Christian and biblical college where now 70% of the faculty support LGBTQ rights—in other words the faculty and staff at this formerly biblical university want to include practicing homosexuals as part of the body of Christ. The board hasn’t caved yet, but the handwriting is on the wall. Also I just read that Baylor University, the largest Southern Baptist University in the world has now chartered a club for LGBTQ students. So many otherwise biblical churches are caving to political correctness in the culture in this one area—and a false gospel that says you can be perverse and immoral sexually and still be saved—that you wonder, in our country, which Christian churches and institutions will be left standing when the smoke clears. We’ve got to resist these unbiblical and heretical tendencies. And in some cases believers will be forced to abandon formerly orthodox biblical churches and institutions if they want to continue worshipping and serving the true Christ of the Scriptures.

So the writer recognizes the question might be asked by these Jews, how then do we worship God since the Old Testament sacrificial system is obsolete and since the sacrifices offered in temple no longer benefit those worshipers. And the answer is given in verses 16 and 17. The appropriate sacrifices are to offer sacrifices of praise and service, rather than bulls and goats.

Verse 15: “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” In other words, actively and continually love God by praising Him—Sunday mornings and every day—and love your neighbor, love your brother, by offering sacrifices of doing good and sharing. Because under the New Covenant, God is pleased with such sacrifices as these.

So two dangers have been specified. Two warnings applied. First, about varied and strange teachings that equate the external and physical with being means of spiritual growth, and gaining approval from God, when the truth is that only the grace offered through Jesus Christ can do so. And second, don’t abandon Christ to continue with an apostate religious institution. Be it a mainline denominational church, an apostate bible-teaching church, or whatever. When human institutions cave to cultural and worldly pressures, political correctness or the laws of the land, don’t cave with them. Abandon them if necessary so you don’t abandon Jesus Christ and His truth. For to be a friend of the world is to be at enmity with God, according to James.

A third warning has to do with how we relate to spiritual authority in our churches. How we relate to leaders—leaders like pastors and elders, even deacons might be included in this exhortation. A very natural tendency is to rebel against human authority, even when it’s God-given human authority. All of us want to do our own thing in the natural, in accord with our sin nature. Rebellion is endemic to our sin natures, so we’re not to live by them. But we are to humbly submit, even obey, to the leaders God has placed in the church.