The Fear of God Being Taught by the Precept of Men

 

The Fear of God Being Taught by the Precept of Men: a Jeopardy

“Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the precept of men” (Isa. 29:13).

“Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mt. 15:7-9). “He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Mk. 7:6).

Bible things, particularly the knowledge of God, must be communicated to other men with Bible words, words which the Holy Spirit teaches  (I Cor. 2:13). They must be communicated by those who are “living epistles”, having been begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. [How shall they hear without a preacher?]. The Holy Scripture is a precious compendium of spiritual vocabulary: spiritual words that are especially suited to acquaint men and women with God’s thoughts and ways. Scriptural words are the divinely ordained containers for imparting to men the knowledge of God.  They alone are able to make men “wise unto salvation” (II Tim. 3:16).  It has “pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (I Cor. 1:21).

Whenever men seek to communicate the knowledge of God with the wisdom of men’s words, they cause their hearers to stumble and to err.  The knowledge of God must be communicated by the means which God has both provided and ordained.  When this divinely appointed means is ignored, the tragic result is that of the fear of God being taught by the precept of men.  The hearers who subject themselves to the wisdom of men’s words  may become “religious”, but they are woefully ignorant of the God revealed in the Scripture, whom to know is life eternal (see Jn. 17:3).

Language Describing this Phenomenon. “That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD : Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us” (Isa. 30:9-11).

“HEAR ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the LORD , and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; The LORD of hosts is His name” (Isa. 48:1-2).

“CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of Me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God” (Isa. 58:1-2).

The Lord Jesus Christ, addressing such corrupters of the Word of God, declared: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Mt. 23:15).  These proselytes were being taught by the religious elite of that day, and yet the result of that instruction set the hearers on a course that ultimately leads to damnation, rather than them being set on “the way of holiness”, even the way that leads unto life eternal.

In our day religious instruction of one sort or another abounds on every hand, even in the name of Christ.  Every sect poses as an official representative of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and yet each religious faction is saying and emphasizing completely different things from the others. There are multitudes of approaches for finding God, an abundance of agendas for serving and pleasing God, yet in the vast majority of these sects, the fear of God is taught by the precept of men, as Jesus said.  As striking evidence of this, for the most part the people of which we are here speaking are strangers to Bible things, and strangely unfamiliar with the God who sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is the tragically fatal result of the fear of God being taught by the precept of men.

Leaven

I closed my eyes in prayer this morning as I sat in my garden and prayed for the people in my building. I could hear a chorus of little birds singing and thought of St. Francis who preached the gospel to all creatures. He looked at a little bird and said, “It has nothing, yet hear how it sings to God. Just a few berries and it praises God with its song.”

Then I thought of how sad it would be if the birds stopped singing. So it is on the Island of Guam. Some brown snakes who are not native to Guam were imported – no one knows how for sure – and they had no predators on Guam. Soon they multiplied by the millions and devoured every singing bird on the island. Their sweet singing is heard no more.

The snakes are everywhere on Guam and there is nothing that can control them. They are around the children’s feet as they play in their yards. They are in the kitchens where women are cooking, in the living rooms under the chairs and in the sofas. They are on the floors where babies crawl. They are everywhere in the houses, cities, and countryside. They hang from trees, and fences surrounding the airport where people try valiantly to keep them from spreading to other countries—like ours--by hitchhiking on an airplane. I hope they do not come to our borders.

So it is with sin. Like one small pair of breeding snakes, sin enters the life of someone who lets it in. Soon it fills the life and destroys every good and beautiful song of praise.
Leaven represents sin. The Bible give examples of boasting and hypocrisy as examples of “leaven.” “Your boasting is not good.” (Matt. 6:11a) “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” (Luke 12:1)

Leaven also represents false teaching. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” (Matthew 6:11b-12)
If you let sin and false teaching into your life, it multiplies like yeast until it fills you body, mind and soul. Your whole being becomes ungodly.

What will happen to ungodly sinners? The Bible is clear: “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, 11 whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. 12 iBut these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction . . .” (2 Peter 2:9-12)

What can a person in this horrible state do? Only one thing: turn to Jesus.
Do you think your sins are so small that God will not destroy you? Do not be deceived. “Do you not know a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (I Cor. 5:5-8)

Come. Come as you are. Come now. Christ died for the ungodly. That means he died for me and for you. Receive Him by faith and follow on to know Him more day by day.

Say to God, “Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love! Grant me grace to seek Your face every day. Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path.”