Raising The Next Generation of Pharisees

In the modern church, there are many of us who are diligently striving to raise up our children in the Word, to provide that Biblical foundation above all else.  We are careful with the shows we allow into our children's eyes as well as the lyrics of songs we allow into our children's ears.  We are standing in the gap for the next generation we're nurturing.

And yet, when I look at my own generation's "us versus them" mentality that we're transferring onto our children when viewing the lost world, I can't help but think there is something serious missing.  A look into Revelation 2 and the seven letters to the seven churches may hold the key, as this passage reveals churches that are missing one thing or another in their service to Jesus.

In all seven letters, Christ is a good teacher, first commending the churches for what they're doing right before showing where their faith is lacking.

Of the Ephesians, He says, "I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate " (Rev. 2:2-3, 6).

In this passage, there is so much good Christ finds in the Ephesians' faith.

First, they were not content to be pew-warmers. Instead, they are living a faith in action, working hard for the cause of Christ. A glance at the Greek shows the word "toil" as meaning "to grow weary, tired, exhausted (with toil or burdens or grief)"* This group takes seriously the Great Commission, demonstrating to the point of exhaustion their belief they are not saved to sit but saved to serve. Even in their physically weariness, Christ says they "have not grown weary." Despite physical weariness, they were still strong spiritually.

Next is the Ephesians' commendation for "perseverance." The very fact that this group is persevering implies that there is something they were having to persevere through. They are steadfast. They are enduring great trials and suffering, yet remain loyal to Christ.

These hardships are alluded to when Christ says, "have endured for My name's sake." The King James version renders this phrase as Christ knowing what this congregation "hast borne." This wording seems to better reflect the symbolism offered by the original Greek's "bastazō," which means "to bear, to carry"* From this, it is easy to envision the Ephesians bearing the burden of claiming Christ's name and metaphorically "carrying" His cross. It seems they are taking seriously Christ's edict that "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me" (Lk. 9:23).

And finally the Ephesians are seeking out and expelling any who deviate from the true gospel. Unlike today's Christianity where small concessions of false gospel here and there are splintering churches and watering down denominations until the gospel is completely ineffective, the Ephesians seem to hate false apostles just as Christ hates them.

BUT (and here's where the Ephesians went awry), Christ finds something specific wrong with their faith: "But I have this against you, that you have left your first love" (Re. 2:4).

This problem is so poisonous to the lost world around them.  They hated as Christ hated. BUT, they did not love as Christ loved.

They did not love with Christ's "agape" love, a love only available to those infused with the Spirit, a love not possible by any human means.

Somehow, they lost this kind of love. Whether the Ephesians lost Christ's love because they grew cynical after booting too many impostors out of their church or whether they lost that love in the busy-ness of "doing" for God...I don't know. Maybe it was a little of both, which made them become Pharisees, so focused on busily standing guard at the front door to keep out the false teachings that they exchanged a passionate, merciful love for legalism.

And perhaps then this legalism led their righteousness to turn into self-righteousness...an all-too-easy leap to make when you know you hold the truth and forget what pit God's grace saved you from.

In America today, I see Christianity being painted as a legalistic, self-righteous religion, mainly because too many Christians are using their swords of truth as weapons of hatred and self-righteousness when standing against such polarizing sins as abortion and homosexuality. This using legalism as a justification for not demonstrating agape love reveals that we, too, have left our first love.

While this heart problem affects our witness to a lost world, it also affects our teaching of our own children.  Even when we are doing what is right by raising our children in the Word and carefully guarding their hearts and minds, if we are teaching them the tenets of our faith but are not routinely showing them, ourselves, our love for the world beyond our doorsteps--if we don't consistently give them opportunities to demonstrate that love of Christ beyond the walls of our families and our churches--then we have left our first love.

Even as I write this, I'm still not sure how to walk that line of hating as Christ hates yet loving as Christ loves. They seem so opposite. But I think it goes back to what Jesus pointed out as the top two commandments--to love God and then love my neighbor as myself.

If we maintain or reclaim our first love for God, His Spirit will help us show agape love, which will then infect everyone around us, and the rest will follow.  Yet, if we do not, then my fear is that despite our best intentions to set ourselves apart from the world, we Christian parents will be raising another generation of Pharisees who will hate as Christ hates but who will not love as He loves. 

* www.blueletterbible.org

How Your Life Affects Mine

It started five weeks ago,  an unignorable ache in husband's jaw after a routine dentist visit.  The dentist repeatedly assured him this ache was normal after a new crown.  Still, he knew in his gut that something was wrong.

Days passed as the throbbing steadily grew to where husband could feel each steady heartbeat pulse in his cheek.  After two weeks, he went to a specialist who easily identified the true problem. When filling another small cavity that same day, the dentist had drilled directly into a nerve, killing the tooth.  

One tiny nerve, invisible to the naked eye, was powerful enough to affect the entire body.  What's more, one tiny nerve didn't just affect my husband.  It drained our entire family, with the children not being able to play with daddy as they were wont to do and this wife having to pick up the slack when husband was too sick to help out around the house.

It never ceases to amaze me how something so small can have such a big impact.  An invisible grain of pollen settles inside my nose, and I have a full blown allergy attack that puts me to bed.  A rose thorn pierces a pin-sized hole in my child's finger, and the pain is enough to make her intolerably grumpy for the next few days.  Even something as simple as a half hour less sleep at night is enough to throw the body out of whack the next day.

The human body is a fine tuned machine and a fragile one at that.  The fact that it functions at all is a miracle.  One cog loses a spoke, and it is weakened, to affect one body that affects another body that affects an entire family...an entire world.

Paul makes a similar comment about the importance of all body parts functioning together, only he speaks not of the physical body but the corporate body of the church.  

Paul states, "For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ...For the body is not one member, but many.... But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'; or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it..... And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it"  (1 Cor. 12:12, 14, 18-23, 26).

Just as I tend to forget how each part of my body must be in perfect working order for the rest of my body to work as it should, I also forget the same about the body of Christ.

When someone is absent from worship service, when someone in the body is suffering with family issues, when someone in the body is physically ill--I have the tendency to think it doesn't affect me, personally.  Don't get me wrong.  I sympathize with their situations.  I pray for them.  I might even cry in sincere grief over the pain they're going through.  Yet, still, for the most part, I don't really realize the impact they have on me and me on them.  I look at it as their problem, as my problem. 

But according to Paul, I am dead wrong.


Each of these persons is a member of the body of Christ, just as I am.  Each person in the body is needed to work as it should to fulfill its kingdom purpose.  As Paul makes clear in the verses above, I can no more say "I have no need of you" to another believer in Christ than I can say to my feet, "I don't need you today."

Yet, I am guilty of thinking just that, of writing off immature believers, of unreliable believers...of thinking it's just easier to do the work without them.

What's worse, I forget that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (v. 26).

No wonder Christians are not having the impact in the world that they should.  We don't envision the body of Christ as we do our own physical bodies--composed of frail, individual parts; dependent on each body part to function at its greatest potential; impacting the rest of the body even when one part suffers, is righteous, sins, fails, or succeeds.

As a result, we're going out on the battle field blind with one arm in a sling and one leg amputated beneath the knee...and that's if we make it off the sidelines at all because we have too many body parts missing or because one body part is burnt out, exhausted because it is trying to do the job of two or more body parts.

I don't know the complete solution to make the church body function as the body Christ intends us to be.  But I do know it begins with each of us reaching out to those around us in the body.

We must seek out those who have fallen away.
We must minister to those who are in need.
We must disciple those who lack maturity in the faith.
And we must not allow our egos to convince us that we are more important than another part of the body. 



Image: Poor husband ready for his first root canal.

The Best is Yet to Come

Two years ago, my church sat one last time in the gymnasium, its blue plush chairs lined in rigid rows before the altar. While we sat together in body, we were divided in spirit by a rift so wide, I wondered how long it had been silently growing. Where one church gathered, at night's end, two churches went their separate ways. My heart bowed with my head as I listened to sounds of feet shuffling away--my friends, sisters, brothers, mentors.

I grieved that most of those relationships would be permanently severed, even though I honestly just wanted healing and reconciliation. While I have been blessed to keep in loving contact with a few of those who left our fellowship and have even had the pleasure of catching up with a few others in Chick-Fil-A and Wal-Mart, I have felt real anger from others who have literally done a 180 upon seeing my face or, if flight were impossible, given a mumbled hello before coldly moving away.

There has been such heartache, such loss.

This past Thursday, an elderly lady I loved dearly went to be with the Father. She rocked my babies, was a spunky example of how passionately active for Jesus I want to be when I am her age. Every so often, she would call out of the blue just to ask how the children were doing or to talk crafts with me--how did I sew on the felt pieces to the Christmas tree skirt, how much poly-fill stuffing did it take, had I used this yarn before. After she left, though, the phone calls stopped.

I didn't call her either. It's not that I didn't think about her. I did. I prayed for her, thought about stopping each time I passed her house. I simply didn't know what to say, how to talk around the elephant in the room...or whether my friendship would still even be welcome.

Friday evening, I slipped into the wake early, wanting to pay my respects without making a scene. Her children were and still are beautiful, kind people. I caught up with many others, us both stumbling through the awkwardness with love. And yet, there was still the one whose hostility at my presence was exposed, unconcealable. When I turned to leave, I heard that one say, "She's one of the ones who..."

I kept walking, cursed my excellent hearing. Still...still...I was the enemy. Back in the van, it was all I could do to put the vehicle into gear and not burst into tears.

In times like these, it is so easy to think of the "good old days" before the split, when the church pews were mostly filled for worship services and our voices raised loudly as one in unity, when there was no one I was alienated from, when no one who was bitter at me over where I chose to worship.

It is ironic that my personal remembering coincides with this weekend's tenth anniversary of September 11. There's been a lot of us looking back over the past few days.

Remembering is good. We learn. We mature. We grieve. But in the past is not a place we can remain if we want to truly live. To daily compare the bad now to the good before the tragedy is to cultivate within our souls an attitude of ingratitude toward what God has given us in the present.

In the book of Ezra, when Israel returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, rebuilding the temple was of great importance to restoring Israel's sacrificial system, their only way through the law to obtain forgiveness for sin. Once the temple's foundation was built, there was great celebration as those born in captivity celebrated this symbol of progress.

Yet, the ones who had seen the former temple wept: "Yet many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people" (Ez. 3:12-13).

While some of the weeping was due to happiness over this restoration, many tears were shed because of how ordinary this temple foundation was in comparison to the luxurious original built by Solomon, because even when physically restored, God's presence was not residing within the holy of holies as He once had.

This concept of disappointment is confirmed when later at the temple's completion, God spoke through the prophet Haggai: "'Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it seem to you like nothing in comparison?'" (Hag. 2:3).

God then reminded the people to be courageous and not look only to the past and what was but to the future and what is to come: "I will fill this house with glory...The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former' says the LORD of hosts, 'and in this place I will give peace,'" (Hag. 2:7, 9). Here, God told them to not look backwards but forwards to the Messiah's coming, to what was to come for the millennial temple--a future where every nation would bow before Christ in His holy temple, its holy place illuminated by a Savior whose glory would be undimmed by wrappings of flesh.

The people obviously listened and understood because after the temple's completion, Scripture says, "And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had caused them to rejoice" (Ez. 6:22). This time, there is no reference to weeping. This time, only joy.

"In comparison," our today may seem "like nothing" when looked at through the rosy lens of the past. Yet, just as the Israelites chose to not focus on what was once great but on God's great blessings in the present, so should we, too.

Perhaps these are truly the last of the last days. Perhaps America may never return to her former "glory days." Perhaps our families will never be what they once were.

Even so, we must be thankful, give honor for whatever blessings He offers in the here and now, and as always, keep our eyes fixed on the Savior and His return.

We know how the book ends. The best is always yet to come.

"You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine...Wait till you see that sunshine place ain't nothin' like it here"

Image: The Best Is Yet To Come Wall Decal @ Etsy