Then we looked at a similar, but larger issue called “religious tolerance.” We then looked at several issues that are symptoms of religious tolerance such as the Ten Commandments being taken off the Missouri State Court building, and taking the words “under God” out of the “Pledge of Allegiance. We left our discussion perhaps a little frustrated or irritated, with the promise that this week we would find God’s balance around this topic.
We said that we were going to hinge our class on three Scriptures:
Phill 2:3
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
Eph 4:2-5
2Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-- 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Gal 3:28
. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Is tolerance, in general, a good and noble ideal? Yes it is.
Intolerance, likewise, is not evil. I remember my father using the expression, "I won't tollerate that in my home." There are many things we do not tolerate and that doesn’t make us egotistical or judgmental.
If we refer to God as “intolerant” don’t be offended. It just means things that God does not allow.
The problem with religious tolerance is that world is trying so hard to be tolerant of others that the culture of God is being diminished, and Christianity is being disenfranchised.
One question to keep in mind, “Can any of this ever diminish God?” No!
We always need to put God first in all of our thinking.
How did God feel about religious tolerance?
Let’s look at a few Scriptures.
Exodus 20:1-7
1And God spoke all these words:
2"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3"You shall have no other gods before me.
4"You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7"You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
Here, in the foundation of the Law, we have the first three of the Ten Commandments.
What strikes you as tolerant or intolerant about God’s commands?
God wanted to be THE God of the Israelites, and the ONLY God of the Israelists. Here He declared Himself as sovereign.
Deuteronomy 7:1-7
1When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations--the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you-- 2and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
In this passage, God essentially is commanding the Israelites to do what?
Utterly destroy these other people.
Why does it say (verse 4) that God ordered this assault?
Because they would turn the Israelites away from God. Remember our discussion on Christians needing to be salt and light, that we need to be an influence? Always remember that influence can work both ways.
Deutoronmy 20:16-18
16However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites--as the LORD your God has commanded you. 18Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.
In this verse we see the same command again, but we also see what God meant by "utterly destroy." God was so interolant that he ordered genocide so that apostasy is circumvented.
Numbers 32:11-13
11`Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years old or more who came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-- 12not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the LORD wholeheartedly.' 13The LORD's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the desert forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.
Here we see that God even punished those that believed, but not wholeheartedly. We would call them luke-warm today.
God clearly was not tolerant of other religious beliefs.
However there was another class of people called proselytes.
What are proselytes?
They were converts to the Jewish faith. They believed in the one true God.
God not only allowed this, he embraced it.
Among the non-Israelite worshipers of the true God in the OT are:
- Melchizedek
- Job
- Ruth
- Rahab
- Naaman
- Uriah the Hittite
- Ninevites at the time of Jonah's preaching.
God welcomed people from other religions when they were converted to follow the one true God.
So to recap the OT study:
- God is intolerant about worshiping other Gods.
- God is intolerant about those that are luke-warm.
- God always provides a way for those that do not know Him to turn and find Him.
However, things may have changed under the new covenant, after the sacrifice of Christ.
Let’s take a look.
Matthew 22:36-38
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
37Jesus replied: " `Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment.
So Jesus is still teaching too wholeheartedly love and honor God. That doesn’t seem to have changed.
But perhaps His example shows us something different.
Matthew 21:12-13
12Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13"It is written," he said to them, " `My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a `den of robbers.'"
Ok, so it’s fair to say that Jesus was not too tolerant of the irreligious.
Mark 7:5-9
5So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with `unclean' hands?"
6He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
" `These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
7They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'
8You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men."
9And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!
Jesus didn’t seem to have tolerance for the luke-warm.
John 4:1-41
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
This was astonishing considering that women were undervalued and Samaritans were dispised.
10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
Jesus reached out to minister to her about a need she had, the need for water.
16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17"I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
Jesus got her attention with a miracle.
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Jesus reaches out to her even though she worships incorrectly!
27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the ChristB?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying `One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.
Jesus opened the door to someone that was uncharicteristicly approchable (a Samaritan women) and through that door introduced Himself to them.
Finally, we read:
John 14:6
6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Not only does He teach that there is one God, he also teaches that there is only one way to that God, through Jesus.
What do we see about Jesus religious intolerance?
- Jesus is intolerant about worshiping other Gods.
- Jesus is intolerant about those that are luke-warm.
- Jesus always provides a way for those that do not know Him to turn and find Him.
What about the teaching of the Apostles?
Were they religiously tolerant?
We see Paul writing to the Galatians Church about people teaching alternate religious views. Galatians 1:6-9
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
Clearly Paul, like God, and like Jesus, had little tolerance for those teaching other than the one true God.
2 Thessalonians 3:11-15
11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. 13And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.
14If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. 15Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
Here we see that Paul had little tolerance for the hypocritical luke-warm.
Acts 17:16-23
16While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." 21(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
Here we see that Paul was distressed. He was not tolerant, but he was accepting of those that may have hearts to turn to God.
So we see in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the covenant of the Law, and the covenant of Christ, as well as in the teachings of Paul, the same pattern:
- Intolerance about worshiping other Gods.
- Intolerance about those that are luke-warm.
- Always having a heart for the lost and providing a way for those that do not know God to turn and find Him.
Before we look at how to apply this pattern I want to get a couple of truths on the table.
Acts 17:24-28
24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28`For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'
God does not NEED anything from us.
He doesn’t NEED our protection, our support, or our vote.
He desires us but He does not NEED anything from us.
Romans 1:18-2018The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
God does not NEED our publicity.
He doesn’t NEED a billboard, or His name on our currency.
He doesn't NEED His name spoken in our pledge of allegiance.
He doesn’t even NEED the Ten Commandments on our governmental buildings.
Without any of the publicity, God makes Himself known so that man has no excuse for not knowing of Him. Now I want to ask a tough question or two:
- How many of you have seen the Ten Commandments displayed in Missouri?
- How many of you say the Pledge of Allegiance every day?
- How many of you saw the atheist statement at the capitol building in Olympia?
- How many of you have looked at a piece of currency and really truly felt comfort by seeing the words, “In God We Trust?”
Then why do you care?
You may feel a little offended by that question, but it’s important that you understand your own motives for any kind of advocacy. What should be our motive to stand up against some of these issues?
- Reputation? Because God's reputation is at stake? No, He can take care of Himself.
- Support of God? Because God needs our support? No, He is self-sufficient.
- To prove “them” wrong? To belittle those that think differently? No, that's not Scriptural behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment