No believer is free from the temptations of Satan. Here is a down-to-earth warning that every child of God w ill find profitable for his da ily wa lk
By Vance Havner no reason why two cannot walk to gether though they be not agreed. Much has been made of the sins of fighting Bible-believers. We readily agree that many blunders and errors and often grievous sins have marred our testimony. Many contenders have become contentious and sins of the spirit have spoiled more than one defense of the truth. But just here Satan sneaks in with one of his art ful devices. He raises such a howl over the failures of individual saints here and there that we lose sight of the issue for which they stood. These occasional mistakes in the heat of bat tle should not make us forget the cause for which they fought. Every great issue in history has been at times poorly represented by its most ardent champions and Satan would stir up such a dust over one molehill that we cannot see a whole mountain of truth. Sound doctrine is as important as it ever was and it will be a sad day when Satan, by magnifying the faults of a few, or by any other device, lures us into a pleasant amiability that mistakes stretching its conscience for broadening its mind. “ Tolerance” is the devil’s pet word in this field today but the man who tolerates error soon endorses it. “ The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” — not tolerate it, and that means evil doctrine as well as evil in any other form. We are to ab hor that which is evil and even the loving John forbade hospitality to peddlers of strange doctrine lest we be partakers of their evil deeds. Nothing would please the devil more than to lure us into a false truce with error. It has begun to sound al most unchristian in many ears to take a stand against false teachers and there is reason to fear that not a few Christians who still believe the truth themselves are strangely ignorant of Satan’s devices. Another of Satan’s devices of which we seem to be ignorant these days lies in the fact that we' are em phasizing the head above the heart.
T he Apostle Paul has been dealing with an erring but now repentant brother in the church at Corinth. He recommends that the church for give thé man and joins them in this action offering as one reason our text, “ Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” We may profitably expand the ap plication of these words to many is sues among Christians today. It would be well if we could say that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices but, alas, for all 'our vaunted wisdom we are easily taken in by the arts of the adversary because we are unaware of his designs. It will pay us to get wise to the trickery of the tempter for he is more cunning than ever and his subtilties these days would deceive even the very elect. I venture to suggest several areas where he prospers with his devices be cause of our ignorance. For years there has been a conflict over the issue of fundamentalism and modernism or conservatism and liberalism or what ever you may choose to call it. There has been undeniably a departure from the faith in churches, schools, and re ligious bodies. Institutions founded to propagate the gospel have turned to another gospel which is not another. Paul’s verdict concerning the preach er of such false doctrine was, “ Let him be accursed” and he meant it so strongly that he said it twice. A pop ular modern preacher tells us that Paul, when he wrote this, was neither inspired nor inspiring but some of us still agree with Paul. It is no new issue of course for unbelief has pla gued the church from the beginning. Lately, however, there is evident in some circles a tendency to grow weary of contending for the faith and sink into a twilight zone where conditions of low visibility prevail and where black and white are merged into a smudge of indefinite gray. The issue that almost broke the heart of Spur geon, for instance, is not regarded now as so dreadful after all and some see
Education is a good thing and it is desirable that a minister should take a course of study before he begins to preach. The value of such schooling will of course depend on where he went to school and what he learned while there. But we have already come to where certain religious bodies allow no man to preach unless he has completed a prescribed training. Such procedure in the past would have ruled out some of the greatest pulpit giants. Of course there will al ways be such preachers for God will continue to produce prophets after His own mold, church councils to the contrary notwithstanding. But it will be a dark day for us when we are more impressed by how much of the alphabet follows a minister’s name than by how much of God’s anointing oil is on his head and how much of heaven’s fire is in his heart. We are carried away these days with the notion that we must be abreast of all the topics of the Athen ians in order that we may hold our own on Mars’ Hill. But the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Our wisdom is from above, our gospel is foolishness to this world and our en tire ministry, the man, the message, the motive, the manner, the method, does not follow the pattern of this age. There is grave danger that we end up merely matching wits with men. Sanctified intelligence is of high importance but as Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons of which the rea son knows nothing.” When our heads outrun our hearts we are in a bad wdy. The deepest need of many a min ister today is not one more post graduate course and an extra degree. More than one Apollos for all his Alexandrian background, though he be eloquent, mighty in the Scriptures, instructed in the way of the Lord, fervent'in spirit and a diligent teach er, still needs to sit at the feet of Aquila and Priscilla and learn God’s way more perfectly. Young Pauls do well to sit at the feet of Gamaliel
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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