Is
your church making merchandise of you?
‘And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingers not, and their damnation slumbers not.’ 2 Peter 2:3
It has become popular for churches to focus on the desires and pleasure of their congregation rather than to be faithful to God’s truth. Many pastors are now expert in tickling ears rather than wounding the conscience. What a shameful contrast with the Lord Jesus Christ, who said to His opponents, ‘I receive not honour from men.’ How different from the Apostle Paul, who wrote, ‘Do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.’ (John 5.44, Galatians 1.10)
The doctrine there is shallow and crowd-pleasing. There is little or no emphasis on repentance, holiness of character or the ugliness or hatefulness of sin. These evil places are precisely described by the prophetic scriptures, ‘For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.’ (2 Tim.4.4)
In such wicked assemblies, blessings are commanded and required as though they were rights, not the result of God’s free and undeserved gift. Satan's war with us is described as our being deprived of rightful privilege, not the vile snare of the love of money, the idolatry of greed, or the crippling effects of pursuing luxury and pleasure. (2 Peter 2.10-12)
These fellowships are often noisy and full of commotion, with much to appeal to the flesh and sense, but little respect to the Apostle’s command for decency or order.
The shepherds of these places are expert not in tending but in fleecing their sheep. Some of them have as many as five collections in one service! The ministers are distinguished not by their piety, humility and self denial, but by their brash and arrogant manner, and their self-pampering lifestyles. These are also the wolves of whom the Saviour spoke (Matt.7.15,.Acts 20.29).
The blood of Jesus is employed used as a pagan incantation, as though the mere pronunciation of His sacred Name conferred power (Acts 19.14). Instead of feeding the people with understanding of the meaning and purpose of His glorious Cross, His work is turned into a new kind of magic. Instead of explaining the nature of his death in the place of penitent sinners, the free gift of Redemption, the purifying effects on the motives and heart of the New Birth, His work is cheapened into a licence for indulgence (2 Peter 2.18). Instead of preaching the power of His liberation from the cruel chains of sex outside of marriage, vicious temper, drugs, drink and the filth of a godless life, these shameful flatterers promise ‘authority’ and ‘dominion’, but the tragic reality of their lives is that ‘they themselves are the servants of corruption’. (2 Pe.2.19)
Listen
carefully to the Bible’s warning, ‘Flee these things; and follow after
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.’ (1 Tim 6.11)
A former practitioner exposes his trade
