A brother in the Lord has recently started posting messages regarding submission to authority and I wanted to to do a study of the Word and see what New Testament submission to authority looks like.

I'm not interested in doctrines of man, they have got us to the point where we are now. Could you take an honest assessment of the church today and determine that we are more like the the powerful early church, or less powerful? More obedient or less obedient?

We have fallen so much from were the early church was!

Why? I believe there is a simple reason for this, we don't take the WORD OF GOD seriously. I'm not going to use a couple of obscure, hidden, Old Testament scriptures to illustrate my point, I'm going to use two New Testament scriptures. I'm not even going to use tougher New Testament scriptures (that apply to us today) like the wearing of coverings.

To be sure Jesus told us very clearly that some sins are worse than others, and He told us that some commandments are more important than others as well.

Let's take a look:

So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God's laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. ~Matthew 5:19

The point of this article is to show you how easily we take direct COMMANDS of Jesus and disobey them, treat them as 'no big deal'. We deem this scripture more important than that scripture and determine in our hearts that this one here needs to be obeyed, that one there 'not so much'!

Submission to the Word of God

As Christians we are called first and foremost to submit ourselves to God.

How do we do this? We do this by listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and doing what He says. He will always agree with what the written word (CHRIST) says, Jesus IS THE WORD and THE WORD IS JESUS. John 1 tells us:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God  ~John 1:1

There is nothing that Christ Jesus said that we can casually brush off and not pay attention to! The Word is not like a buffet table where you can take the diced ham and leave the peas on the salad bar.

SIDEBAR: A friend of mine is heavily involved in ministry to Muslim's, in one of my discussions with him I noticed that he took umbrage (rightly so) with a new bible translation that removed the fact that Jesus is the Son of God from the new translation in order to appeal to the Muslim crowd because 'the conception' is a major hangup to devout Muslim's.

After giving some thought to what we talked about I can see what an issue it would cause later on.

If a Muslim should read this translation and then be 'regenerated' what is going to happen later on when he reads the correct translation of the Word? If he was anything like me he would be asking (rightly so) "Ok, which testimony is right? What scriptures do we believe and obey and which ones do we ignore?"
 

While this would make the head of an evangelical spin, we do the exact same thing...

Trusting

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. ~Proverbs 3:5-6

We talk about this scripture a lot but we really don't obey it much, in fact we teach the opposite, here's the way that this is interpreted in the evangelical bible:

Trust in your understanding with all your heart, and when you understand God's Word submit to it. ~Evangelicalism 101

I know what you are saying! Earl, why are you making bombastic, ridiculous statements, you must have an axe to grind with someone! Well, let me show you a scripture that is disobeyed EVERY DAY, EVERY WEEK in nearly EVERY CHURCH in the Western World.

When is the last time that you went to church and said "Hi Pastor!" only to have the 'pastor' take you aside and tell you something like this:

"I appreciate what you are trying to do, but please don't refer to me as 'pastor', just Bob will do, we're all brothers..."

A bunch of folks that I know like to take this scripture and use it as a weapon agains Catholics, but they disobey it themselves when they refer to someone as 'pastor':

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. ~Matthew 23:5-12

Here we go again, I know what you're saying, 'you just have an axe to grind with authority because of rebellion in your heart'. Did you notice how quickly the accuser of the brethren told you that?

Notice the onus of that commandment, Jesus puts the responsibility of carrying it out on both the person calling someone 'father' (do not call anyone on earth ‘father,) and the 'pastor, teacher, rabbi' himself (But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi).

Why is this important?

I'll tell you why, because it sends a hidden message to people that consider themselves to be 'general laity'. There is no general laity concept in the Word, we are all considered priests according to 1 Peter 2:9:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ~1 Peter 2:9

As I wrote earlier I beleive (my opinion here) that this is the reason that we are not fulfilling the Great Comission. As long as 'the guy on the podium' is a priest, and I am not, then it's HIS responsibility to preach the gospel, not mine. This is a FATAL ERROR!

What is the message?

Let's say Joe believer is newly converted and the fire of God is burning in his heart, between church services he is devouring the Word of God because the Holy Spirit is leading him to read, read, read. Now he gets to Matthew 23 and asks himself "Why DO people allow themselves to be called pastor?". This is a legitimate question because the Word DIRECTLY FORBIDS IT. He goes to church and asks someone, "Hey Bill, how come we don't follow what the Word says in Matthew 23 regarding being called teacher, rabbi, apostle, prophet, pastor etc.?" He receives some wordy excuse regarding why this scripture is not relevant to us today.

Do you see the message being sent?

Here's the message:

If the so called 'pastor' of this group of believers is free to interpret the clearly written scriptures in a way that benefits himself, then so am I. No one has to tell you this, it's implied. When leadership is free to obey what they want, and disgard what they don't, then so are the rest of the sheep. Otherwise there are two standards, one for you and one for everyone else.

So when pastor so and so is upset about why people aren't listening to his messages, he has himself to blame because, by default he's saying one thing and living another, people are not going to listen to you if you are not walking in obedience yourself. Our testimony should be one of simple obedience to the simply written Word of God.

Imagine I went into my living room and told my kids 'please go clean your room' and after I walked out they started chatting among themselves "What is this strange new teaching that dad has given us? I don't understand why dad told us to do this, when I understand it I'll do it! What deep spiritual message was dad trying to convey to us?"

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Yet we do it all the time...

Here's another one:

DO NOT store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ~Matthew 6:19

The evangelical crowd likes to skip this and go right to Matthew 6:33 and the "all these things shall be added to you" part as if Jesus is somehow contradicting what He said in verse 19, He does not.

DO NOT, means the same thing to every person, every time that it's written. The words in "DO NOT commit adultery" mean the same thing that they do in Matthew 6:19 'DO NOT store up for yourselves treasures on earth'. We make a grave error when we emphasize this, and de-emphasize that.

Here's the way that evangelicals add to this scripture:

Except for you, INSERT YOUR NAME HERE, DO NOT store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ~Matthew 6:19

And just to be sure, what does the Word of God say about adding to and taking from the Word?

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. ~Revelation 22:18

Brothers and sisters, my motivation (as always) is to see the church walking in the power that was intended for us to walk in, not to be critical.

I'm tired of revival tarrying! I'm tired of hearding 'used to be', 'used to do', 'used to happen'. I want to see a victorious revived church welcome back the King of Kings!

Well, brother Paul said it better than I ever could:

For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband--Christ. ~2 Corinthians 11:2

I share Paul's heart in this!

My motive is to present you as a pure bride to Christ when He returns, nothing less. Pray that I would remain pure as well, I love you much!!

~Much Love

One of the things that amazes me about Jesus is the way that He taught amazing, eternal truths using language that even the simplest of people can understand. Isn't He wonderful?

Take the following verses from Matthew:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
~Matthew 7:3-6

There is so much to learn here in only FIVE sentences!

There are some obvious things here that everyone who is a Christian (an even non-Christians) know.

Here is the obvious teaching:

"Make sure you are not in the same sin that you see in someone else before helping out another brother or sister."

The bigger sin in this story is the hypocrisy of the person who is 'removing the speck', it's much bigger than the little piece of sawdust!

Here's a little revelation that I got about this story

If you have children you will probably remember a time when they got a little piece of dirt in their eye. It's amazing how a little tiny piece of dirt can make even the largest man stop in his tracks and focus on one little piece of dirt.

Think about how gentle, surgical, and loving we approach removing this piece of dirt from our chilren's eye! We don't roughly start poking around in there with our fingers, no way! We set them down in an area where there are no particles floating in the air so that we don't cause worse problems. We take them to the light, so that we can see what we are doing. Then we gently pull back the eyelid to see if we can see the speck of dirt, from there we WASH AWAY the dirt with some water very, very, gently...

Water can do more damage when not used correctly, can you imagine trying to use a fire hose to rinse someone's eye? We need to listen to the Spirit of the Word and apply it like Jesus would, "for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Corinthians 3:6).

This is the way that a loving brother and sister will help you with a sin. First of all they love you enough to say something about it, very important there! Secondly, they care for your welfare enough to be very gentle and carefully, remove the speck. This is Christian love.

Look at the following verse, it's attached to the first 'speck' parable:

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces."
~Matthew 7:6

Here's another way of stating this verse:

"You had better make sure that the person that you are 'removing the speck' from is a true brother or sister OR they might trample what you have said under their feet and then turn on YOU and TRAMPLE YOU to pieces."

We have no business correcting non-believers and trying to clean up their morals, this was the point in my previous thread "Consider This Before Casting Stones at the Gay Community".

Paul the apostle was executed by Nero, a man who ran the Roman Empire in arguably a 'more godless' fashion than anyone before him. Here's a quote that cites three separate sources:

He was known for having captured Christians burned in his garden at night for a source of light. This view is based on the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, the main surviving sources for Nero's reign.

Nero did not just execute Paul the apostle, he executed MANY believers. Yet as wicked as he was, you never hear of him or Rome's sins mentioned in the bible. Additionally, we don't hear of the church telling people to RISE UP against the evil republic of Rome, or to RESIST the evil republic of Rome.

Why? Because the believers in the early church understood the difference between the Kingdom of God, and the kingdoms of this world. They understood the difference and they had no desire to mix the two together.

Let's look at the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel's interpretation of the dream for some background:

Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and it disturbs him, he invites all of the 'wise men' of Babylon in to tell him the dream, and then to give an interpretation of the dream. (Daniel 2:26). The dream is of a statue that is made of four different 'levels':

The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.
~Daniel 2:32-33

This dream is about 4 different 'kingdoms' that will reign on the Earth prior to the second coming of the Messiah.

Notice the last one and the way that it's described in verse 2:42 and 43:

As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
~Daniel 2:42-43

Iron and clay will never mix and make anything strong, you cannot weld iron to clay and clay to iron.

All we hear now is that "America Needs to Turn Back to Morality!!" This message is anti-Christ, literally.

I haven't heard a single sensible person say 'why would we need to do that?'

Saudi Arabia is a VERY MORAL PLACE to live, they are very harsh on 'imorality,' is God helping them? I would venture to say that they are WAY MORE MORAL than the United States, yet they are no closer to Christ.

The end of the moralists life is the same hell as everyone else who rejects Christ.

What people do not get is: cleaning up a person's morals does ZERO for them, actually Jesus said that the person was worse off than before because now that 'religious person' is 'twice the Son of hell'. This is a separate classification than a run of the mill unbeliever.

There are two different kingdoms:

The Kingdom of God, and it's citizens who are believers.

The kingdoms of this world and it's God hating, unbelieving citizens.

Our responsibility to 'the kingdoms of this world and it's citizens' is to preach the gospel of the 'Kingdom of God' (the same thing that Jesus preached). Doing so will cause citizens of this world to renounce their citizenship to this world, be united to their new King, Jesus, and be transferred into the Lord's Kingdom by the regeneration of their spirit.

It is not to elect deceived Mormons (that think they are Christians) into office or reelect a false Christian who says one thing and does another. Yet you wouldn't think so by reading Facebook, you would think that it's our Christ given duty to ensure that a disciple of Joseph Smith is to be elected into office.

Confusing? Yes, another gospel is always confusing, confusing is THE MEANING of Babylon (or babel).

This mixture of worldliness and the Kingdom of God will never produce anything remotely holy, wonder WHY REVIVAL TARRIES?

This is why my friend, don't be deceived by 'the Christian right' OR 'the Christian left', be consumed with Christ and His Kingdom.