Posted on 06/04/2019 5:50:33 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“Attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law” (Proverbs 4:1-2 KJV).
It doesn’t matter what the local church might do, it might go down into apostasy, which is likely will, but the church of Jesus Christ is going up in glory. When we are resurrected, we get a glorified body—and the Saviour comes back to lead us into glory, I guarantee you, it will be a glorious entering into heaven. There won’t be any failure or fault of any kind, it will be a glorious thing. It will prevail, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it at all. Those are laws.
We could consider physical laws. We have gravity. There is condensation, there is evaporation, physical laws in the physical universe. Those laws are fixed laws. Now, they can be overcome temporarily. Obviously, gravity, as a force, can be overcome by a different force in the other direction can overcome it for a while, but sooner or later gravity will prevail.
Some people believe that the laws of God are not working. There are the laws of sin. The Bible warns us that “the wages of sin is death,” and people sin but don’t die. Temporarily they overcome it, but eventually it will overcome them. The laws of God are fixed. It may take some time for it to work out, but the law is fixed. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” A man might not reap in this year, or next year, or this decade, or that decade, it may be until 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years later, but it’ll catch up to them. Some things might not even catch up to them in this life, but it will in the next. Those are laws, and they cannot be broken.
Paul told Timothy that the doctrines are important. “Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1Timothy 4:13 KJV). Verse on in today’s chapter tells us to “attend to know understanding.” Paul was writing to a young person when he wrote to Timothy, so young people out to learn doctrine while they are still young. What good will knowing all the batting averages of baseball players do you down the road? Learn something practical that will suit you for the rest of your life. The heroes of today are forgotten tomorrow, but the doctrines of God are eternal—they won’t be forgotten tomorrow or through eternity. In verse 16 he says, “Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine.” We have a hard time keeping ourselves straight without knowing doctrine. People say, “Well, you know, we just want to love everybody, and win the world through love and peace.” I’m glad people have compassion, but know they need some good understanding of God and His Word. It’s called balance.
All love and little doctrine is Pentecostalism—just looking for an experience in the flesh. All doctrine and no love is dead orthodoxy. One is just as bad as the other.
Paul further tells Timothy, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1Ti 4:16 KJV). Now Paul is not speaking of salvation here—every time we find the word save in the Bible—we need to realize that it can also be speaking of a temporal, physical sense of being rescued. We see this also in I Timothy 2:15 about the woman and childbirth, “Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing,” is not speaking of salvation and going to heaven—every woman in the world would be trying to bear kids in order to go to heaven if that were the case. There would be a new gospel to preach, “Hey, bear kids, and you’ll be saved and go to heaven!” With all the cults in America, you would think that somebody would be teaching that already.
So, the word “saved” in the Bible isn’t always talking about eternal salvation, sometimes it is talking about the flesh. Likewise, the word, “damnation” isn’t always speaking of hell. Sure, in most cases it is speaking about going to hell, but there are couple of places where it does not. We have to remember to let the Bible be its own interpreter. Paul, speaking to Christians says that they can eat and drink damnation to their bodies (1Co 11:29), in other words, we can destroy our bodies through gluttony. Eternal damnation is the destruction of the soul, temporal damnation is the destruction of the body and health.
If there is any one problem with the Bible-believing crowd, and the King James Bible crowd, it is that they get so hung up on doctrine, and knowing their doctrine, and getting the doctrine right—that they are so doctrinally sound that they are not really much practically good. “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein” (Heb 13:9 KJV).
By “diverse and strange doctrines” is meant those areas that are not generally accepted or believed or taught by the average Christian—but yet are biblically true—just not something that a preacher should go to seed over, such as preaching nonstop about how the universe is shaped like a pyramid. “not with meats,” is constantly preaching heavy or hard doctrine. It’s good to know them, it’s good to be planted firmly, and know what you believe—but the Bible says, “that the heart is established with grace.” It takes grace to suffer, it takes grace to serve, it takes grace to be saved—those are the kinds of things that God gives to the individual to do the things He calls him to do that he can’t do himself. That is how a person is established. That is where we need grace. If we balance doctrine with grace, and compassion and love, we’ll have the right king of life.
Dozens of things are true about balance. “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 11). You can’t just spend all your time learning doctrine, but you also can not completely avoid it. You can’t spend all your time winning souls, or your whole Christianity becomes wrapped up in one element—and you begin to judge others by that one element. You started thinking that folks that don’t win souls are not spiritual, and that folks that don’t win souls are out of the will of God.
Paul wrote: “For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment” (Php 1:8-9 KJV). “Bowels,” are compassion, and inner feelings. “That your love may abound,” the Philippians had plenty of love. The name meant, “lover of horses.” Paul said that their love needed to about with knowledge and judgment. He said that they needed to know “what to love,” “how to love,” when to “stop loving.” We can’t love everybody. I doubt that any man ever loved Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, or any other terrible murderous dictator. We might be allowed to witness to them, but that does not imply that we have any kind of love for them. Psalm 5 says that God hates all workers of iniquity (vs. 5). Christianity is becoming almost pantheistic with all the “love this, love that” mantras. Contemporary Christian music is all about love, but little to do with truth. Paul finishes the thought with, “That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:10 KJV).
Let’s read a chapter of Proverbs a day and see what God might have for us. As the Lord leads, share with us what God has shown you in a special way and by His grace let us build up a devotional repository. Let’s keep our knives and forks handy for some daily bread!
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