I hear constantly from people about why they don’t go to church. I ‘m sure you have heard these same statements or even made them yourself. Some of the most common are:
“Well all those people down there are hypocrites.”
“Those people down there are all judgmental.”
“The church is responsible for so much injustice how can I be apart of that?”
“The church is just a way to control the masses.”
These statements are usually made by professed Christians. I’m just raising the question can you say you love God and hate His bride? If you called me your friend but said you we really hate that wife of yours. I mean your really nice and all but she, she’s not so great. You and I aren’t going to be friends.
Luke 4 says “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.”
Jesus went to church as was His custom. Should He not be our example? Jesus doesn’t like hypocrites either, that is why He was always calling them out in the gospel of Luke. Read Luke 10:13-16. That’s why Jesus says in the last day that no true hypocrite will have any part in His kingdom.
There is a story in Luke Chapter 8: 40 -45. She had a degrading issue of blood flow. She had the condition for twelve years. She had one last hope, Jesus. Jesus however was thronged with a huge crowd of people. She decides that Jesus is worth it, no matter what the crowd will say. You see this woman is within the context of this society unclean. She is not allowed to enter the temple or touch anyone. She is lonely, an outcast. I’m glad the crowd didn’t stop her from coming to Jesus.
Today many times the crowd keeps people from coming to Jesus. The crowd may say certain things about your lifestyle. The crowd forces you to think a certain way about yourself, tells you that you’re not worthy. The crowds for you might be what people say about you when you come to Jesus. For others of you the crowds might be what I mentioned earlier “there’s too many hypocrites around Jesus, there double standard compromising lives, that’s why I won’t come to Jesus or to church.
It seems to me that the greatest hypocrisy is to see the truth about Jesus and allow some lame excuse about people who are not Jesus to keep you from doing what He says. Is that not hypocrisy? Why are you sitting around using other people who may or may not know Jesus as your excuse for not doing what you know Jesus would tell you to do? Do you see what I’m getting at …..?It’s almost like having a bad doctor who was a nut; you don’t give up on the whole medical field do you? “I saw this story on 60 minutes one time about a doctor who ripped people off, so I’m not going to the doctor anymore I’ll just drink herbal tea.” That is not wise. If Jesus is who He says He is then He deserves you full attention.
How hypocritical is it to sit around and judge the people down there at the church for being hypocrites. Are you not doing the same thing they are doing, being judgmental? Imagine for a minute that a person that looked almost identical to you stole your driver’s license, your credit card, your clothes, your car and went around for a week pretending to be you. They did all kinds of horrible things, told lies, judged people openly, all in your name. You came back to find out that all this had happened. This person had misrepresented you. People have misrepresented Jesus for ages but this shouldn’t stop you from doing what you know to be right. The church is the power source by which God wants to bless you and use you. I can’t make an apology for the entire church but the Bible says that we need to be connected to the body of Christ. Can the eye say to the ear we don’t need you?
When we say that we don’t need the church as Christians were basically saying that I would rather live over here on my self righteous little island. That I have a higher view of morality than the church, than everyone else. That I must be able to do things better on my own than I could with a group of like minded believers. You are only righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ, declaring yourself righteous is not true righteousness. Is this not the whole point of the gospel anyhow? Should we not expect churches to be a little messed up, that’s what makes the gospel so great is to see a bunch of messed up people thrive together in unity. When a group of people who have nothing in common come together around one commonality: Jesus, which puts on display the glory of God. Seeing the injustice in the church and turning away to your own secluded way of living doesn’t put the glory of God on display. Imagine Jesus showing up to earth and saying “God, I just can’t work with these people, they’re a bunch of sinners. They can’t get anything right. They are all hypocritical.” The fact that Jesus was willing to go that far with us means that we should go that far with each other, even when they don’t deserve it.
The church is not perfect, if you are a professing Christian then the gospel tells you this. If we were all perfect then Christ wouldn’t have needed to die for our sins. If anything the Bible tells us that we are going to have problems, this should be even more of an opportunity to exercise mercy and grace with each other. Watching people act differently than Jesus did should be the chance to speak truth to one another in love not judge them and walk away forever.
Last thing: by not going to church, even if you read your bible every day then you have left the interpretation of the scriptures solely up to yourself. You have no pastor, brother/sister in Christ to bounce your interpretation off of. You may exchange the truth for a lie [Roman1:25] You may interpret the Bible to fit your agenda. The human heart is deceitfully wicked and is inclined toward sin. My sin and yours will gradually try to bring us into a state where we read the Bible with rose colored glasses on, where we try to force it to mean what we want it to. This is the trap set for us when we think we can interpret scripture and be righteous without the body of Christ to help us. Ultimately the blood of Jesus Christ makes us righteous before God and the Holy Spirit helps us along the way. The church however is the power source by which we get plugged into that power.
“Well all those people down there are hypocrites.”
“Those people down there are all judgmental.”
“The church is responsible for so much injustice how can I be apart of that?”
“The church is just a way to control the masses.”
These statements are usually made by professed Christians. I’m just raising the question can you say you love God and hate His bride? If you called me your friend but said you we really hate that wife of yours. I mean your really nice and all but she, she’s not so great. You and I aren’t going to be friends.
Luke 4 says “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.”
Jesus went to church as was His custom. Should He not be our example? Jesus doesn’t like hypocrites either, that is why He was always calling them out in the gospel of Luke. Read Luke 10:13-16. That’s why Jesus says in the last day that no true hypocrite will have any part in His kingdom.
There is a story in Luke Chapter 8: 40 -45. She had a degrading issue of blood flow. She had the condition for twelve years. She had one last hope, Jesus. Jesus however was thronged with a huge crowd of people. She decides that Jesus is worth it, no matter what the crowd will say. You see this woman is within the context of this society unclean. She is not allowed to enter the temple or touch anyone. She is lonely, an outcast. I’m glad the crowd didn’t stop her from coming to Jesus.
Today many times the crowd keeps people from coming to Jesus. The crowd may say certain things about your lifestyle. The crowd forces you to think a certain way about yourself, tells you that you’re not worthy. The crowds for you might be what people say about you when you come to Jesus. For others of you the crowds might be what I mentioned earlier “there’s too many hypocrites around Jesus, there double standard compromising lives, that’s why I won’t come to Jesus or to church.
It seems to me that the greatest hypocrisy is to see the truth about Jesus and allow some lame excuse about people who are not Jesus to keep you from doing what He says. Is that not hypocrisy? Why are you sitting around using other people who may or may not know Jesus as your excuse for not doing what you know Jesus would tell you to do? Do you see what I’m getting at …..?It’s almost like having a bad doctor who was a nut; you don’t give up on the whole medical field do you? “I saw this story on 60 minutes one time about a doctor who ripped people off, so I’m not going to the doctor anymore I’ll just drink herbal tea.” That is not wise. If Jesus is who He says He is then He deserves you full attention.
How hypocritical is it to sit around and judge the people down there at the church for being hypocrites. Are you not doing the same thing they are doing, being judgmental? Imagine for a minute that a person that looked almost identical to you stole your driver’s license, your credit card, your clothes, your car and went around for a week pretending to be you. They did all kinds of horrible things, told lies, judged people openly, all in your name. You came back to find out that all this had happened. This person had misrepresented you. People have misrepresented Jesus for ages but this shouldn’t stop you from doing what you know to be right. The church is the power source by which God wants to bless you and use you. I can’t make an apology for the entire church but the Bible says that we need to be connected to the body of Christ. Can the eye say to the ear we don’t need you?
When we say that we don’t need the church as Christians were basically saying that I would rather live over here on my self righteous little island. That I have a higher view of morality than the church, than everyone else. That I must be able to do things better on my own than I could with a group of like minded believers. You are only righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ, declaring yourself righteous is not true righteousness. Is this not the whole point of the gospel anyhow? Should we not expect churches to be a little messed up, that’s what makes the gospel so great is to see a bunch of messed up people thrive together in unity. When a group of people who have nothing in common come together around one commonality: Jesus, which puts on display the glory of God. Seeing the injustice in the church and turning away to your own secluded way of living doesn’t put the glory of God on display. Imagine Jesus showing up to earth and saying “God, I just can’t work with these people, they’re a bunch of sinners. They can’t get anything right. They are all hypocritical.” The fact that Jesus was willing to go that far with us means that we should go that far with each other, even when they don’t deserve it.
The church is not perfect, if you are a professing Christian then the gospel tells you this. If we were all perfect then Christ wouldn’t have needed to die for our sins. If anything the Bible tells us that we are going to have problems, this should be even more of an opportunity to exercise mercy and grace with each other. Watching people act differently than Jesus did should be the chance to speak truth to one another in love not judge them and walk away forever.
Last thing: by not going to church, even if you read your bible every day then you have left the interpretation of the scriptures solely up to yourself. You have no pastor, brother/sister in Christ to bounce your interpretation off of. You may exchange the truth for a lie [Roman1:25] You may interpret the Bible to fit your agenda. The human heart is deceitfully wicked and is inclined toward sin. My sin and yours will gradually try to bring us into a state where we read the Bible with rose colored glasses on, where we try to force it to mean what we want it to. This is the trap set for us when we think we can interpret scripture and be righteous without the body of Christ to help us. Ultimately the blood of Jesus Christ makes us righteous before God and the Holy Spirit helps us along the way. The church however is the power source by which we get plugged into that power.