Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

10 March, 2007   comments: (0) Back To The Bible   Reconciling Scripture: "Jesus versus Jesus" John MacArthur teaches a "works based salvation", the Parable of The Wheat trumps Jesus' command to beware of false prophets. Those are just a couple of things that I was confronted with in a conversation late last night. Aside from MacArthur's implied anathema, the other claim related to the parable (if true) - threatens the very purity of the church. After all, if we believe what this person says - there is no way pastors can protect against certain wolves, and they must allow anybody into the church who simply says they are "a Christian". In addition to those implications, we'll also look at whether being a "fruit inspector" is akin to "playing god". I have some software on my computer that keeps an eye on over 50 blogs for me, and it's been a bit of an eye-opener, several times over the past week, to see titles scroll past me that involve my name along with the word "liar". Such has been the case, ever since I decided to point out one case of scripture-misuse by an Emerging Church pastor. In the comments of the latest "Jim is a liar" post from last night, I tried to clear-up some of the misunderstanding, and it actually generated some helpful comments I think. If you read through the comments, you'll also see that our friend has some rather ominous eternal implication for John MacArthur (as well as myself since my salvation beliefs are similar to MacArthur's). That's almost funny that someone who does not want anyone to judge anyone else's salvation, essentially did exactly that - indirectly by implying that MacArthur has another Gospel that is somehow based on judging people's works. But, one of the points that he brought up in the conversation did actually get me thinking, and that's what I want to talk about here. Our Emerging Church pastor's premise has been refined since his original declarations against any kind of judging at all, to now being an issue of "we should never judge someone's salvation". He bases this on the assumption that the only way to know if someone is truly a Christian is to judge their inner motives. Now that's actually true in many cases, but his error is in assuming that it's always true. At one point in the conversation I talked about Jesus' words: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. --Matthew 7:15-20 But our Emerging Church friend compared that to "playing god" and said: "If you want to be a fruit inspector go ahead." His argument there is really against Jesus and not me, as he seems to be struggling with Jesus' own words there. But the next thing that he said after that got me thinking: "Jesus said the wheat and the tare will grow together and will be separated at the appointed time... if you think you can do a better job than Jesus go ahead" So now we have a challenge to Jesus' words in one place USING Jesus' words from somewhere else. He's referring now to the Parable of The Weeds in Matthew 13:24-30, and if he's right about this passage, perhaps even if he is unaware of it, this passage is a threat to a pastor's ability to do biblical church discipline. Here's what it says: He put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" So which is right? Do we go with Jesus' teaching to beware and inspect fruit? Or, do we go with Jesus' other words to let weeds and grain grow together and not try to do any weeding? You can see how some people in the Emerging Church would like to use the latter viewpoint as a defense against traditional Christians who make judgments of their new methods and beliefs. Well after doing some further bible study on this, I started reading a little bit from my AW Pink CD-ROM, and here's what he had to say in his work entitled Interpretation of The Scriptures. "Some have even drawn from Christ's forbidding His disciples to pluck up the tares an argument against the local church's exercising such a strict discipline as would issue in the disfellowship of heretical or disorderly members - refuted by His teaching in Revelation 2 and 3, where such laxity is severely rebuked." In speaking of the Parable of The Weeds in his commentary on Joshua, Pink had this to say about church membership as it relates to whether someone is a Christian or not: "[Regarding false believers] applying for membership in the local church. In view of the Divine prohibition, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" 2 Corinthians 6:14, 15, how it behooves each Christian assembly to examine prayerfully and carefully the qualifications of each one seeking fellowship therewith!" And finally, Arthur Pink gives the dose of remedy that our Emerging Church pastor has needed all along, in his crusade against anti-judgmentalism; it's the need to reconcile scripture in it's entirety, and not just pick and choose the verses that seem to support your point of view: General statements must be qualified if to interpret them in an unlimited sense clashes with other verses. A case in point is our Lord's prohibition, "Judge not, that ye be not judged" Matthew 7:1, for if that injunction be taken without any restriction it would flatly contradict His precept, "judge righteous judgment" John 7:24; yet how often is this precept hurled at the heads of those performing a Christian duty. The capacity to weigh or judge, to form an estimate and opinion, is one of the most valuable of our faculties, and the right use of it one of our most important tasks. It is very necessary that we have our senses "exercised to discern [Greek "thoroughly judge"] both good and evil" Hebrews 5:14 if we are not to be deceived by appearances and taken in by every oily-mouthed impostor we encounter. Unless we form a judgment of what is true and false, how can we embrace the one and avoid the other? We are bidden to "beware of false prophets," but how can we do so unless we judge or carefully measure every preacher by the Word of God? We are prohibited from having fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but that requires us to determine which are such. Christ was not here forbidding all judging of others, but was reprehending an officious or magisterial, a presumptuous, hypocritical, rash or hasty, unwarrantable, unfair, and unmerciful judgment. Much grace and wisdom is required by us to heed rightly this word of our Master's. Well, it's been interesting. For those of you looking in, hopefully this ordeal will help you to see how dangerous are the bible interpretative errors of Selective Citing (choosing only verses that support your point of view and neglecting verses that don't) as well as Subjective Interpretation (judging a verse's meaning based on how you feel about a topic). I think that he and I are actually waging two different wars (so to speak). He wants to keep 'watchblogs' from judging him and his Emerging Church friends, but what's been on the top of my mind has been a church's ability to conduct church discipline, and to maintain the purity of the church. For if we were to believe much of what comes from this pastor's blog about judging, it would have major ramifications for churches and pastors everywhere. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.656   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism