The Most Dangerous Phrase in the Church

When a church values past methods more than present ministry, it risks becoming spiritually stagnant and ineffective. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

And good midday. This is uh podcast is being recorded on Friday, and it's noon. Some of you are enjoying a good lunch, I hope, and some of you are making plans to go somewhere to eat today. It's Friday, and I'm glad that you had a successful work week. The Preacher Man podcast is um back with another uh I guess you could say added lesson uh for this week. I had the opportunity to speak at West Side Church of Christ here in Maha with uh Brother Ratcliffe and uh the church that the congregation that meets there. Wonderful, wonderful congregation. It is a um all black congregation. Uh they have been in Mahaia for a very, very long time. And uh when I first uh came here, one of the things that I wanted to do was to um establish a relationship with that church and with that preacher there because um I just wanted to have fellowship. I wanted to uh get to know those people and get to know that church and and and do whatever we could do with them. Um I could go on and on and on about how wonderful of an experience it has been to uh have a friendship with uh brother Willis Ratcliffe and the West Side Church of Christ. And uh they uh we always try to do something together, whether it's uh going to one of their singings that they have or them coming here and being with us. And um we strive to always try to do that as best we can. Sometimes you know with scheduling and depending on you know the time of year it is, it it can prove difficult, but as long as we can maintain that kind of relationship and it grows and gets better, um I can't think of a better way to show uh unity, to show harmony than to meet with uh other congregations in our towns and in our communities to uh just just uh be able to have uh uh maybe a different kind of fellowship, a different kind of worship that um is um always found in in in different congregations that are independent, like you could say, like Church of Christ is. But it does involve the ideas of um highlighting and putting uh man-made traditions in front of what God says is important to do, and what God says is important in our lives and our churches and in our Christianity. So we're gonna go ahead and uh start it up. This is the most dangerous phrase in the church today. Um I you I rem the main scripture is gonna be found in Mark chapter seven, the first thirteen verses. I also uh dive into uh the book of Isaiah verses uh chapter 43 as well as um talk about what Moses did when he made the when he was uh writing the laws and uh showing them what is important from when it comes to from uh what is important about the sh the showing of honor to our fathers and our mothers. And after this we will be back for a few closing thoughts. That we can have a relationship like we have. Um love the family that meets at Westside, love Brother Ratcliffe, love his wife, and uh I'm just so privileged and honored that uh I can be asked to come and speak to you uh this afternoon. Um there is a a lot of things that um are happening in our world and in our town. Uh some of them are good and some things are well not so good. Umticed about uh Mahaya, and I'm sure that it's not just here, but it's in other places as well. There is a an epidemic of a separation in the relationship between uh the parents and the the teenager. And it I find it kind of heartbreaking sometimes, almost to the point where it kind of really upsets me, makes me, almost makes me mad. Um, but there seems to be a growing um separation in involvement in the parent teenagers' lives. Uh it almost seems like that the only time a parent will have an interest in the uh in their child uh is if if they're doing something uh sports related or extracurricular related. And if they're not, then that parent is uh basically uh treating uh in many ways. I see how sometimes that there are parents in our communities who are basically treating their teenage children like roommates and um not really um having an interest in what they do after school lets out, what they do on the weekends. And uh really maybe it's because they just are they're so uh stressed out with anxieties or other situations. I don't know why, but um there is a a big disconnect between a family going to uh worship together. There's a disconnect in family involvement that um I I don't know why it is. I don't know if it I mean and I get it. I know some people, many, many people in our communities, they have to work not only during the week, but they have to work on weekends. And I understand that. And uh I'm not I'm not I'm not uh I'm not trying to put them in the same category, but um I hope that we can do our job as as God-fearing Christians to encourage uh the family unit to get back into a attitude of uh understanding that the family that worships together is a family that is stronger. I appreciate the prayer that was led before I got up to preach. Uh, not only prayers for me and my lesson that I have a ready recollection, but for the prayers of the men in the congregation, the prayers for the fathers particularly, uh the the numbers don't lie. Uh the statistics still show that if a father goes to worship, the family goes to worship. And so I'm glad he prayed for dads in our lives and in our areas. The title of my lesson this afternoon is uh one that um I hope will be encouraging and uplifting, but there's a little bit of a warning in here as well. The title of my phrase my lesson is the most dangerous phrase in the church today. And and and the reason why I call it that is because it is a dangerous phrase. It may not be said, it may not be in our bulletins or put on PowerPoint screens, or uh in in many ways, and sometimes in some churches, yeah, it is said, but I can guarantee you, in many cases, it's been thought of. It's been thought this way. And I would submit to you this afternoon that the most dangerous phrase in the church today is this. That's the way we've always done it. We don't want to uh uh uh do a lot of changing. We don't want to, we don't want to do a lot of thinking outside the box, we don't want to do a lot of revisiting on things that we've done. Really, what I'm focusing on here is the the man-made traditions versus the traditions that we find in God's word, the traditions that we have had uh since the church got started. And when I use, when I talk about the phrase, that's the way we've always done it, um, it's because what it does is many times we want to elevate the human tradition above God's living word. When a church values past methods more than present ministry, it risks becoming spiritually stagnant and it also risks becoming insignificant. I would encourage you to turn in your Bibles this morning to this morning. I did it again. We don't we don't have a lot of afternoon services at Northcrest, and so uh I'm I'm probably gonna use a lot of this morning today. I apologize. So let me try that again. I want to encourage you this afternoon to turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 7, and we're gonna read Mark chapter 7, the first 13 verses of Mark chapter 7, starting in verse 1, where it says this the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered to him after they came from Jerusalem and saw that some of his disciples were eating their bread with unholy hands, that is, unwashed. Verse 3 for the Pharisees and all the other Jews did not eat unless they carefully washed their hands, thereby holding firmly to the traditions. Here's that word again, the traditions of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they completely cleanse themselves. And there are many other things which they have received as, here's that word again, traditions to hold firm that firmly hold, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and copper pots. Verse 5. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, him being Jesus, why do your disciples not walk in accordance with the traditions of the elders, but eat their bread with unholy hands? And Jesus said to them, Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, and in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men, neglecting the commandments of God you hold to hold to the traditions of men. He was also saying to them, You are experts at setting aside the commandments of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and the one who speaks evil of father or mother is certainly to be put to death. But you say, if a person says to his father or his mother, Whatever I have that would help you is Corbin, that is given to God. You no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother, thereby invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as that.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

But his methods do.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

And I believe we have to we have the responsibility to hold fast to what I would refer to as unchanging truth while also making sure that we are letting go of outdated traditions, but keeping the traditions that we know are good and useful and right to do. And the question that I want you to think about is this if our church, if this church or Northcrest Church, was completely had completely closed its doors today or tomorrow, would our surrounding neighborhood actually miss us and our ministries? Or would they only notice that the building is just now empty? I like to laugh, I like good jokes, I like to hear clean comedians talk about stories of things that are going on in the world today. One of my favorite comedians was a fellow by the name of Jerry. Jerry Clower. Jerry Clower liked to tell stories of things that happened in his life growing up as a boy living in Mississippi. And he said one time he said that they that they that they called a meeting at the East Fork Church. And it was an important meeting. Uh, someone had left that little church uh a good sum of money, and they were going to decide what they were going to do with that money. And Uncle Verse, who was up in years, uh didn't go to many deacons' meetings, but because there was money going to be talked about, he decided that he ought to go and uh and meet because he had some young folks, and um they he knew that these young folks would care about what's going on with church business. So he loaded up his truck, he got all of his family to go with him, and he took Mardell, Udale, Odell, Adale, Clovis, and Rufus with him. And when they got to that minimum they sat down in the meeting, and uh the the the they talked about the fact that they were going to spend some money, and so they got all it all together and and had this meeting, and the meeting started out with this Mr. Chairman, I propose that we purchase a new chandelier and have it brought in and put in this church, and another deacon second that motion. Yes, I too agree. I second the motion of having a chandelier for the church, and then finally the the chairman, the moderator, the the one who was in charge of making sure the meeting was going in order, asked, are there any discussions? To which old Uncle Versailles raised his hands and he said, Sir, I would like to speak. He says, I want you all to know that if we're gonna buy this chandelier, we're gonna have some problems. Because, first of all, there ain't nobody in this church who's got enough education to spell chandelier, therefore, we would have difficulty ordering it from the Sears and Robux catalog. And second, even if we did were able to order this chandelier when it got here, there would be nobody here in this church who knows how to play it. And third, the thing is what we really need in this church is not a chandelier, but we need better lighting in this building. So I propose that we have a discussion about that. It's very funny how sometimes when we don't know what's going on and we want to make changes, we've got to make sure that the changes that we're making are clearly understood and sought out so that there will be no mistakes when we decide to do something different. Because the last thing we want is to have that statement made, especially when it's very counterproductive. When we respond to any situation with that's the way we've always done it, sometimes we may not even remember why we're doing it in the first place. In the text that was read this morning, I did it again. In the text that was read this afternoon, the passage, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law notice that Jesus, his disciples, are eating food with unwashed hands, or in the Bible it refers to as unclean hands. And so what you have here is a conflict between Jesus' followers and the Pharisees and the scribes and the teachers of the law who were followers of the law. Many of you know this for sure, but it doesn't hurt your reminder. They had mistaken the idea of the law in self in itself simply because of the fact that they believed that the law would save them if they could follow the very letter of the law, every stroke of its pen, that the law would save them and keep them in good standing with the Lord. When the truth of the matter is that they had forgotten why the law was written in the first place. Paul tells the church in Galatia that the law was written so that we would know what sin was, but it was also written as a gatekeeper, a schoolmaster, to keep us from going so far away and getting so far out of touch with God that we would no longer be able to come back. That's what the law was for. The Messiah was to come to fulfill the law, and so therefore, what saves us is the blood of Jesus, not trying to follow the letter of the law. But I want to point out something that the that I want you to understand. See, the Pharisees were not upset about physical hygiene, they were upset about ritual tradition. And over the centuries, religious leaders added hundreds and hundreds of strict rules to God's actual law under the guise that they wanted to protect it. And so when they witnessed something that was out of place, out of character, out of tradition, they demanded to know why Jesus allowed his followers to break the traditions, it says in Mark, the traditions of the elders. And so, like any conflict, there's going to be confrontation. And Jesus doesn't hold back. Jesus calls them hypocrites. He quotes Isaiah. He quotes, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are merely human rules. Jesus uses incredibly sharp language here. He says, You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your traditions. And if you were to put this in a more definition type finding or definition type terms, you would see that anything you put in front of God, innocently or on purpose, then becomes an idol, and you will wind up following that idol more than you would be following God. And so when there's conflict, when there's confrontation, there's also consequences. And so Jesus shows that their traditions actually are causing them to sin. By dedicating their money to the temple under the custom called Corbin. They claim that it didn't have enough money left to take care of their aging parents. Now I know that there are plenty of things that we need to do in this world today, but if we are not taking care of our family, that's the first problem that we should definitely want to try to clear out of our way. The Bible is very clear. There is no point in me calling myself a Christian, a man of God, a follower of Jesus, if my family and my parents, if they're still alive, are struggling. I need to be able to take care of my biological family if there was a need. Now, my dad has been dead and gone for four and a half years. But daily I still think about how do I show honor to him? I can't give him money, I can't give him medication, I can't give him food, but what I can do is I can live in a way that brings honor to him. And if I ever was given the opportunity to take care of my mother in a physical way, in a financial way, then that's another way I show honor to my family before I even think about what I'm going to do for someone else. But the Pharisees were trying to use human religion tradition to break a clear commandment to honor their father and mother. And Jesus says, you are being very hypocritical here. And so to wrap up this lesson this morning, I want to provide you with three distinct spiritual dangers that we need to avoid. The first thing we need to do, we need to avoid the traditions that can blind us to the present work of God. When we are focusing entirely on the rearview mirror, we miss out on what's in front of us, as it's found in Isaiah 43, 18, where God says this do not call to mind the former things or consider things of the past. Behold, I'm going to do something new. It will spring up. You will not be aware of it. I will even make a roadway in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Now I like to go and travel the country. I like to go on trips where I can see lift different kinds of landscapes and beautiful things. And I can guarantee you, if I rolled up and I recently I drove through the Sam Houston National Forest, and there's a road that cuts right through the middle of it. I guarantee you this if I drove here in the next couple of days and saw a new highway going the other direction, or a crossroad and a highway being put into that forest, I would say that was amazing because that wasn't there not a week ago, or two weeks ago, or three weeks ago. But God says He can do things like that. And some people enjoy going out and looking out at the desert oasis, where there's nothing but sand, rocks, maybe cactus, and maybe a few critters running around. That vastness, that desert type atmosphere can be and can be seen as attractive to some people. And they would tell you that if they were showed up at a place where they knew where every rock was, every cactus was, every stone was, and every uh way the landscape looked, if they showed up the next day and there was a river flowing through it, they would say that was miraculous. But God says He's going to do stuff just like that. There's no reason for us to look in, look to the past to find things that might have worked or didn't work. If there are things in the past that we have done, we should rejoice and celebrate and give glory to God because that worked back then. But if we spend too much time focusing on what we've done and not taking hold of the opportunities and the harvest fields that are in front of us, we're going to miss out. The second danger, spiritual danger that we need to avoid is that we can preferences, things that we prefer, things that we adlike, things that make us comfortable, can easily be mistaken for commandments. There's a huge difference between what I would refer to as sacred doctrine. Sacred doctrine is things like the deity of Christ, that the salvation is found by being saved by grace through faith, the authority of the scriptures. Those are what we would, I would say, can be defined as sacred doctrine. There's a difference between sacred doctrine and cultural preferences.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

What time do services start? Music styles.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

What what uh what what what how are we supposed to dress for worship?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

How long is the sermon supposed to be?

SPEAKER_01 30:05

And how and and and parking spots for specific special people. When we keep fighting about these kinds of things, when we fight to keep the things the way they've always been, we're usually fighting our comfort and not for the gospel. So we need to be aware of that. And finally, the last danger that we need to understand and see and watch out for is if when we focus on this idea of that's the way we've always done it, it shifts our focus from mission to maintenance. Now, make no mistake about it, I spent seven years working in a manufacturing plant. And we had outstanding maintenance men who not only worked on the shifts with us, but they would some but some, they even had a weekend crew. When the plant was shut down, then the weekend maintenance crew would come in and do preventative maintenance. And I believe that there's nothing wrong. In fact, there should be a lot more preventative maintenance, not only in our churches and our buildings, but in our spiritual lives as well. Because you can shut down a piece of equipment for 30, 45 minutes to do something preventative, and then get it back to running and producing and making the products that you're trying to put together. Or you can have it completely break, shut down, get torn up, and have to wait for parts to come in and be down for weeks, even months. And when that happens, you're losing money, you're losing valuable time. So don't misunderstand me. I am all for preventative maintenance. But that's not the kind of maintenance that we're talking about when we have the attitude of that's the way we've always done it. And it shifts our focus from mission to maintenance. Church mission, the church's mission is to make disciples of all nations. That's Matthew 28. A church that is trapped by how we've always done it prioritizes keeping existing members comfortable rather than reaching the lost. If you don't believe me, start reading the book of Acts, chapter 1. There was a church that was established in Acts chapter 1 in Jerusalem. They heard the same Matthew 28 that we did. And you know what the first command in Matthew 28 is? The first command in Matthew 28 is go. It took that church, eight chapters in the book of Acts, and the uh and the stoning of Stephen for them to realize, hey, I don't think we're supposed to be here permanently. I think we need to get out of here and go. And when they did, what happened? The church grew even more. Now, this is just a theory, but it makes sense when you think about it. My mama taught me this. The church was designed and is still designed to be mobile. You think about it. What do you actually need in order to have worship?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

You need people, but you don't need a hand, but you don't need 250 or a thousand, you just need three or more. What else do you need?

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Well, you need to be able to have songs. There's a whole book of psalms that you can use and turn into songs and glory, and some of us we don't even need songbooks. Half the time, the songs that we sing, you know by heart.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

What else do you need? Well, you need a place.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

You need a place where you can where you can be together.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

A house, a rented building, a big old shade tree by a river. That's all you need. You need a way to take communion.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Well, the good news for that is that there's there's not a place in the world that if you have fertile soil, you can grow grapes. And you have a recipe in the Bible on how to make bread that will never spoil.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

You need God's word? You need someone to read out loud God's word.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

I can get my Bible on my phone, and it's still, and you can buy you can buy a pretty good Bible at the at the Walmarts down here at Mahaya. That's all you need. Now, don't get me wrong. I like a nice air-conditioned building with comfortable seating. I like the singing, I like the technology that we have in order to make everything sound and everyone can hear it. I like the fellowship that we have together. But the church, make no mistake about it, the church was designed to be mobile. Sometimes our methods have to change when the culture changes, or otherwise the message can get lost. You think about how the Bible was put together, you think about how the church is organized, it was never meant to come in and overthrow or take over a community or a government or an establishment. The Bible can come right alongside any other legal documents and highlight and give us a moral, a better moral understanding of what a society is supposed to do. And the church should be the same when it comes to our communities. Our churches are not meant to come in and overthrow, take over, and be uh theological, be the theological police of the community. No. We come alongside, we help where we can, we support where we can, and we provide a place where for an hour, two hours, however long you the elders of this church decide to seem to have necessary to come in and have a worship service that anyone from any walk of life can come in and enjoy. Let me close with this story. A young woman was preparing a roast beef for dinner. Before putting it in the pan, she cut off a quarter of the section of that beef and put it aside. And then the rest of the time she spent getting all the other ingredients ready to put into the roasting pot. Her husband walked aside and watched her do all this and asked her, Why in the world did she cut off a third of that roast beef? To which she answered, That's the way my mom always did it. But that didn't really satisfy him or her for that matter. And so she wound up calling her mother and saying, to ask her, Mama, why, when you were making a roast dinner and getting everything ready to put into the roasting pot, why did you cut off the third of the roast and put it aside? To which her mother replied, Well, baby, that's the way your grandmother always did it. Well, once again, that answer did not satisfy the young daughter and the husband. So she gets out her phone and she calls up her granny. And her grandmother laughed so much and said, Oh, honey, I had to cut the end off of my roast or my roast because my roasting pot was too small. The point of that parable, if you want to, oh, that story, is this when a church is full of roasting pot traditions, we often will wind up, I don't know, maybe on purpose, maybe accidentally, we will defend the methods without understanding the original reason it was created. And if we go too far, then we start trying to put chandeliers in churches when we don't know how to spell it and we don't know how to play it. Um there are so many, and and I don't want to um have the attitude of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are some really good traditions that we have in our churches today that I I I know that if we c we we do them, we do them often, and we um are uh and we f and we see the blessings and the benefits of those things. Um just right off the top of my head, the the the concept of a cappella singing is uh found in the Bible. It is um encouraged in the Bible and uh it is often looked at as a a tradition that is just done in in our I guess you could say in our tribes. We're not going to um go out on a limb and call it uh unscriptural, or we're gonna go out on a limb and call it you know a sin. We understand and we I think we've done a good job of saying that the practice of the well the practice of spirit the of the spiritual discipline of harmony is found in our a cappella singing. But the idea of trying to keep that going in our churches today is, I believe, a good thing. Um but we s we can see how uh singing together in harmony with with uh soul, with uh love in our hearts, with the attitude of and and really this attitude should be prevalent in every worship service. No matter if it's um from the scripture reading to the taking of communion from the prayers that are offered to the sermon itself for the time that we allow ourselves to or we have been it's decided that we should come together on a Sunday and meet. Everything we do should be done to glorify Jehovah God to thank him for the blessings, to express our appreciation for salvation and to worship him in a way that no matter who comes into our building to visit, whether they be a church member who has been a Christian longer than some of us have been alive, to someone who is just curious about what we do and is curious about the church. In general, they can come in and for time allotted hour and 45 minutes, two hours, whatever. Can worship or body of like-minded individuals and like like-minded individuals, and uh can say that they've met with a family, the traditions that we also do. I'm sure you can list a whole bunch of them. If those are good, keep them, they have become so important and so ingrained that we have discovered that it's not of we would say is uh doctrine. Maybe we shouldn't consider re-evaluating those things. How important they are. Anyway, thanks for tuning in the lesson today. I appreciate the presence of you all. I appreciate the uh the uh accolades and the uh and the compliments. Um and once again, I always say this. Uh uh I need to do a better job of this also. Um the Preach Man Podcast has a Facebook page. Um you can go to the search bar, type in Preacher Man Podcast, and I'm sure you'll find it. You'll find uh my name, you'll find uh picture of me, you'll find posts on um um things that I put on there so that you can know when the next podcast is coming in. There's also some scriptures, there's also some other things that I put on there. Um and and you can also contact me through Facebook Messenger. And if you have any questions or comments or uh things that you would like to ask me, find out, and maybe we can become get onto the podcast. But there's also uh you can contact me through the internet with uh with Gmail. I have uh an email address which is preacherman1178 at gmail.com. That's preacherman1178 at gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. And uh, as always, thanks for tuning in and listen. Hope you have a blessed day. And I'm gonna head over to you. Have a good weekend. And always remember who you are. And who's you are? You will also find a place where you are loved for who you are, a child of God created by God in God's image. And within that community of belonging and mutual love are faith and renewed. We call this community, the congregation of Christ.