Hebrews 12:18–29
“For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them.”
The Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, must be treated with respect and awe. The modern church treats the King of Creation like He is a buddy, a good friend with whom we can joke around, but that is not to be so! He must be treated with reverence, for He is holy, His Name is glorious, and to even look upon His face would be to taste death. There is a reason we are told to “work out your faith with fear and trembling,” and “do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot destroy the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Fear is a recurring subject in the Old Testament and the Psalms, but it does not mean the common definition of fear. It means a holy reverence, not something scary. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Simply being scared of something that is greater and more powerful than us is not the way to wisdom, that’s the natural state of man. No, to gain wisdom from fearing the Lord would be to honor Him with our lives; to respect Him and all that He does. To treat Him as the Holy Creator of the Universe that He is. “He who is blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion.” Do you see the difference in honor that Paul here uses compared to the modern church? The modern church is flippant about praying to the Lord, they do not give Him due honor or glory, they treat Him as if He’s their chum, not the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. The modern church does not treat the Word of the Lord with respect, carving it up and ignoring bits as they wish to fit their particular narrative. There are communist churches who use the verse “It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven” to say that Christ was a communist. The Eye of the Needle was a gate leading into Jerusalem; the camel, in order to fit through this gate, had to have everything stripped from its back and crawl through on its knees. Or perhaps the modern church overemphasizes the love of the Lord, while downplaying His righteous judgment that will come to all men, and therefore leads others astray by not condemning sin to the fullest degree. If people do not know that sin is abhorrent to the Lord as it is, then they will not do everything in their power to eliminate it from their lives, and “no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him.”
It is disgusting how the modern church twists the words of Christ, and every word in the Bible, really, to fit their worldview. They are only interested in profit and church attendance, not teaching the actual Word of the Lord. They do not give the Lord the honor due to His Name, rather defiling it, spitting upon it, so that they can make a few more dollars here on earth. Fools! Sinners! “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” For the church seems to have many (ineffective) outreach programs, that do nothing but transform someone from a sinner outside the church to a sinner inside the church. If sin is not condemned from the pulpit, then how is a new believer to know that it is driving him to hell? Of course, they can read the Scriptures for themselves, but church almost discourages this as well, like the Catholic Church did in the Middle Ages. For they say that they are the keepers of the Word, and church on Sunday is enough Christianity for the week. Not that we need to be bold, brave Christian warriors for Christ every single day, but that weekly church is quite enough for salvation. “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.” For if someone is cast into the sea, at least they can do no more harm, and it frees the believer from their lies.
I can never implore you enough, beloved, to not rely upon the authority of the church. For just as the Jewish religious leaders were lying to their people for profit, so does the modern church. The Catholics are especially guilty of this, giving the church far too much authority, and letting the catechism do their thinking for them. They give the Catholic Church the same authority as the Word of the Lord Almighty, making themselves equal with God. Remove yourself from the equation and read the Word. Is there a command in there from the Lord that you do not desire to do? Who cares? Do it anyway. It is a command from the Most High God, who are we to set ourselves above Him, to judge Him, and selfishly forgo one of His commands? We must be holy, because the Lord of Hosts has commanded us to be. We must be righteous, forsaking all sin, even though our sinful flesh may desire it, we must deny it. Is there a particular sin that you cherish, hiding from man, hoping that the Lord does not notice? Expose it to the Light and destroy it! Have no more to do with it, cast it from you and trample it into the dust of darkness. “Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it, do not travel on it. Turn from it and pass on.”
