ARE YOU LEARNING NOT TO BE TOSSED TO AND FRO?

By on Sep 27, 2012 in Current Issues, Devotions, Features

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-15)

Satan Would Rather You Not Want To Learn

You see in the confusion of this growing apostasy within mainstream Christianity the devil would rather people be lazy and not even use the Scriptures to discern past his many lies. In fact, this is exactly the same ting he has been counting on of centuries now. He’d prefer that you not study and learn why e.g. the spurious Spiritual Formation aka Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM)passed off by Quaker mystic Richard Foster has no place in Protestant theology in the first place. However, its even in the New Calvinist camp now.

Satan’s been quite happy using his Emergent Church, the Trojan Horse he has used to bring this CSM into the mainstream through popular Emerging Church icons like former EC rock star pastor Rob Bell, to go about deceiving the undereducated—and thereby gullible—Christians for years now. Frankly, it was well said elsewhere, “The devil’s not fighting Christianity so much as he’s joining it.” Satan has been deceiving the much of the American Christian Church from the inside since at least the early 1900’s.

And it‘s growing worse and worse all the time. Do you remember this Scripture — Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and — didaskalia daemonion (literal Greek) — teachings of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). Now how do you suppose this can come about except that people simply stop studying the Bible for themselves and instead start going by what others tell them to believe. In particular to do what “feels” right.

Yet this is exactly what happens to the person who is not willing to make the effort to learn, and who instead says — “I don’t need to be taught anything; I have the Holy Spirit and He can teach me what I need to know.” Really now? To be clear, because of growing abuses within church leadership—and false teachings about the local church—we need to be very careful who we listen to. We need to be good Bereans and test by Scripture what we’re taught. I encourage you to check out what I’m teaching you.

That said, notice that our text above informs us when the Lord ascended to Heaven — And he [Jesus] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. We need to ask why would God do this if everyone with “the Holy Spirit” would no longer need to be taught? So what is the function of these people; the next three verses provide the answer:

 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ [His Church], until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (Ephesians 4:12-14).

Well, I don’t think it’s too hard to see that we are nowhere near the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God nor are we very mature and attaining to the whole measure of the stature of  the fullness of Christ. One need to look no further than at the world of Christian bookstores, with their over-priced merchandising; the so-called Christian television networks; the world of Christian “entertainment,” and the semi-pelagian pseudo-Christianity of evangelicalism to see it’s largely being:

tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

The truth is, there is little of any of the above that ethically I could even recommend to you. Rather, the majority of the Seeker Driven playpens in the church visible are fleshly exhibits of mere children, [being] tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. And I submit to you that this is a pathetic state but, it is O so true to him who has eyes that see. May God have mercy on us all as the 1 Peter 4:17 judgments begin to fall…

Further reading