Archived Daily Manna | Rejoice Fellowship | A mission to release people to rejoice in the world.

Message: Today we will look at the “desires of the flesh” in a particular context: How they undermine the church. We don’t want to pick on any particular denomination, for all are guilty here. Moreover, even within denominations and individual churches, these prideful sins burden and damage worship, spiritual growth, study, fellowship, etc. Four of them emphasize how we use a church to serve ourselves, rather than God and each other. These are rivalry, jealousy, selfish ambition, and envy. As a simple example, take rivalry over number of members. The pastor and elders of the First Baptist Church of Centerville count the number of bodies in the pews and compare it to Main Street Methodist. They are happy if they are winning, and unhappy if they are losing. In fact, if a church is losing members, the pastor is likely to be replaced for that reason alone, no matter how well he preaches and spreads the message of Christ. The rivalry in worldly tokens of success is much more extensive, of course. Churches compete in the amount of money they bring in, the quality of their buildings, the size of their playground, etc. They brag about how many missions they support. The root of these sins is Pride. Pastors surely take great joy in seeing a person converted and baptized, even if the person then goes to worship elsewhere. Nevertheless, along with this pure joy is always a teensy-tiny spark of rivalry. Every pastor/rector/priest wants more people coming in the door of his church and sitting in his pews, listening to his sermon, etc. Megachurches don’t get 20,000 members by word-of-mouth. They hire marketing specialists. They have slick audio-visual departments. And many ministers, perhaps unconsciously, will pull their punches, telling their congregations what they want to hear rather than the true and full Word of God — what they need to hear. Monkeys battling snails from Illuminated Hymnal In terms of Christ’s commandment that His followers be unified in love, factionalism and dogma are even more destructive then the green eyes of envy. For Christians have committed major vandalism against rival churches, given diatribes against other Christians, murdered other Christians, and fought horrendous wars in the name of dogma. Dogmatic disputes can become very ugly even in a small church. First off, we must realize that most theological arguments are man-made and meaningless. Take a biggie: Predestination, a concept that has factionalized Christians into vehement, angry enemies. Yet, what difference does it make to us, in terms of our salvation? Where in the Bible does it say we must believe in predestination, or in the opposing theological concept of free will, in order to serve Christ? Is this a commandment Christ gave to us? No! What He did tell us — what He commanded us to do — is to live in harmony with other Christians. The great verse to solve factionalism — and we must turn to it again and again — is 1 Cor. 1:12-13: “Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, ‘I am of Paul,’ and ‘I of Apollos’, and ‘I of Cephas’, and ‘I of Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” We can fill in the names with anyone or any organization, as a bucket of cold water to arguments over personalities or dogma. “Was Billy Graham crucified for me?” “Was I baptized in the name of millennialism?” Ultimately, we must ask ourselves the question: “Has Christ been divided?” Or the even harder question, “Have I been responsible for dividing Christ?”