Why the Church is Dying........
Whether you look at the church as brick and stone or flesh and bones the church is dying. COVID-19 has proven that both physical churches of brick and stones, as well as humans spiritual churches of flesh and bones, are struggling with lost members, doubts of faith, and people choosing to walk away from the community with God. When gathering together in a physical place becomes optional for believers it often leads to many who then make God himself optional in their daily walk.
The church for many years has fought to be relevant. Coffee, lights, and other means to woo non-believers into attendance have in many cases become the driving factor to feed believers. While there is nothing wrong with those things should always become secondary to teaching the whole Bible, praying with fellow believers, and remembering that gathering together as a church is not about you, but about the corporate worship and adoration of God. Today many choose a church for what they can’t get, or how comfortable they can be rather than where God is being lifted high first and foremost.
Their doctrine has become gospel and feel-good messages have replaced the life-changing power of the entire Scriptures.
The entire Bible was written about promises given to a Spiritual Nation made up of physical people. The church cannot exist outside of those promises. Those promises were first given to a man named Abram, who had a life-altering encounter with God.
Today many in the church are not aware or taught that they are saved by the same salvation first talked about with Abraham. A covenant was made before the physical nation of Israel was established. A promise that through Abraham’s faith all the nations of the world would be blessed through his seed. The same seed that produced our Messiah.
Today we see many using ethnic terms to physically differentiate themselves. This isn’t new. Jew and Gentile. Ring a bell?
There is no such thing as a Spiritual Gentile.
Gentile was a term used to describe the nations. One who was not a Hebrew. Physically you could be a gentile. You could not be of the bloodline of a Hebrew. Yet Spiritually if you are in Messiah your bloodline matters none. You are Israel, you are a Hebrew. You don’t have a separate list of promises.
This confusion comes from using ethnic terms to define spiritual matters. Our nationalism or ethnic bantering makes us no better than Aaron and Miriam as outlined in Numbers 13 when they had some issues with Moses’s wife's ethnic background. Yet at Sinai God did not show partiality to race, gender, Hebrews, or Egyptians.
Exodus 11:
So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5 and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’
Every firstborn will die except for Israel. The offspring of Jacob, one of Abraham’s seeds. Not all Hebrews were Israel. Israel was defined by those who heard and obeyed. If the blood wasn’t on the doorpost to signify they were Israel every firstborn in the house died. That could be your grandmother, son, daughter. Generational housing was a thing, every person in a household could have died.
Egypt was a physical gentile nation. Israel was a spiritual nation. Those who obeyed he crossed over.
Messianic is a spiritual qualifier yet Jew is an ethnic group. Not all Jews are spiritual. It doesn’t mean they aren’t physically a Jew. Apostle Paul talks about this difference in Romans Chapter 2.
The term Christian and Messianic are spiritual terms not ethnic. Believer and non-believer are spiritual terms, not ethnic. To be a Jew meant literally From Judeah.
We all have an ethnic identity, but we don’t all have a spiritual identity. We see this problem currently in the church. I am a Baptist, I am a Pentecostal. Terms are meant to further define us and also differentiate us.
Lacking spiritual identity is the absence of God. If you profess that Jesus is your Messiah then God is never optional. If God isn’t optional then His promises aren’t as well. Those promises come with responsibility on our part. To walk in those promises.
Believers are engaged in the wrong type of tribalism. Denominational boundaries become your identity rather than what your creator identified as your identity. This has caused many to see the church as optional because we have made our faith conditional. Conditional based upon: music, coffee, types of people, forgivable vs unforgivable ins, don’t ask don’t tell sins, the time of day we meet, the level of influence you have there, and any other condition we can place to make church and God about us.
Jeremiah 11: 1-23
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man who does not hear the words of this covenant that I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God, that I may confirm the oath that I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day.” Then I answered, “So be it, Lord.” …
Jeremiah clearly defines the men from Judeah and the others in Jerusalem. Jeremiah warns both groups equally that we are not to transgress the covenant made with the Hebrews who left Egypt.
Deuteronomy 6: 1-25
“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
We must believe the Lord is God, we must hear, and we must obey. God is not optional, God is not conditional. The covenants made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) are your covenants and we should not forget.
What does it mean to be a Christian or a Messianic? Boil out all the doctrines. To be a believer in Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ha Mashiach.
What does Paul tell us in Galatians? Any believer in Messiah is Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. What promise? Where did God give Abraham a promise.
(Genesis 12:1-3, ESV).
Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3, ESV).
Then continued on in Chapter 15.
Genesis Chapter 15
15 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue[a] childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son[b] shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give[c] this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”
Why would God ask Abram to number the stars during the daytime? Why would He say “So shall your offspring be?” It was daytime. It wasn’t about how many stars it was that Abram trusted and had faith in God. That faith alone was his salvation. Many have said that he saw the sun and thus saw the Messiah. It is possible and we cannot be 100% certain.
Then God made a covenant with Abram and to Abrahams's seed. Go then walked through that covenant, Abram did not. The same way Messiah walked through the covenant of the cross.
If you are in Messiah you are in the same covenant as Abraham. You are heirs according to the promises God made with him. Those promises weren’t so that you could fight physical ethnic battles. It was that all the nations of the world would be blessed.
People are longing for identity. Spiritually your identity ties all the way back to Abraham, if you are a Christian your identity is to walk like God commanded the offspring of Abraham to walk. John in his writings makes it clear in his writings. If we are a believer we are to walk like Messiah. We are to keep his commandments, we are to celebrate His feasts, we are to be heirs according to the promise. Through us, all the nations of the world will then be blessed. You cannot separate Abraham’s seed the Messiah from his forefather.
This church is dying for its identity. God gave us His word to show us our identity. It isn’t to be a Jew or a Gentile, it isn’t to be a Baptist or a Pentecostal. It is to be an heir according to the promise.