Why Back to the Word?
Let me briefly tell you how this all started with our church and why I believe we are different than many churches you will find. When God first planted the vision in my head that I was called to start a new church, the very first question I had for Him was why? What I meant was; “Why do we need another church?” There are so many churches out there already and to me, it still appears that so many people are still so lost. My question was how would another church or more specifically, another Christian church help? So my question again simply was; “Why another church?”
The answer He gave me took me by surprise. You see His answer was that we do not need another church! We do not need another religious system with its man-made doctrines, beliefs and traditions but what we do need is to get Back to the Word, back to God’s Word! We need to get back to the relationship that God had intended for us all along. Back to how it was before all of our man made doctrines, traditions and religious beliefs separated us from God. Back to God’s true words and His revelation to us.
You know this is nothing new, Jesus fought that same battle when He was on earth. In fact in Mark chapter 7 and in verses 1 through 9 we read this account:
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So 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 defiled hands?”
He 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. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human traditions.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”
The Pharisees wanted the people to follow the traditions of the elders and Jesus wanted the people to to follow God’s commands. In fact, Jesus said you worship Him in vain when you follow the man-made traditions and teachings instead of His Words. So which do you want to follow?
The Bible is God’s love story to us but so many people don’t know what this story is about. It tells us how He loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus) so that we, each of us, could have eternal life with Him. It’s not a difficult story at all in fact God made it so simple that everyone can understand it. But it seems that His words have become so confused and misunderstood that now only some specific denomination, a Doctor of Theology, or some other learned academic can tell you what they really mean. At least that’s what these people want you to believe.
But are God’s words really that confusing or is it just that we doubt His words so we become confused? I for one believe that doubting God’s word is the very reason why so many people are lost and confused today. But you know this is nothing new. When we doubt God’s word we become confused and ultimately we become lost. This is the method that Satan used to drive a wedge between God and man from the very beginning of creation and it is still his method of choice today.
In Genesis chapter 3 and verse number 1 we see this first seed of doubt planted into mankind. God had made a wonderful creation and had given man everything that he could ever desire. Man was intended to live forever but even more importantly man was intended to have a close, personal, relationship with God. God walked and talked with man in the beginning. We know this from Genesis chapter 3 and verses 8 and 9. Knowing God, having a close personal relationship with Him and walking and talking with Him was our ultimate purpose and this has never changed.
So what went wrong? What prevented us from being able to do this – what separated us from God? All we need to do to see what happened is to look back at the first verse in Genesis chapter 3 to see what caused all this. In Genesis 3:1 we read: Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
“Indeed has God said”; just four little words. Four little words that caused Eve (and Adam) to doubt the meaning of God’s word, to disobey Him and ultimately to fall from Grace. From the next few verses in this chapter we see how quickly that happened. From the beginning, the root of all sin was to doubt God’s word and to disobey Him. Satan pushed Adam and Eve to question God’s word and the rest, as they say, is history.
Satan said; although God said it – He didn’t really mean it. With those words he drove a wedge between man and God by simply telling man that God’s words didn’t really mean what they say. Satan caused man to doubt God’s words and to make up the meanings of what God intended for themselves. Do you think this is still happening today?
Have you ever heard anyone say; “Yes I know that is what the Bible says but that is not really what it means – it was written in another age, for another people and its words cannot be taken literally!” How many of us have ever heard these words? The same seed of doubt that Satan used at the beginning is the same seed of doubt that he uses today. Indeed has God said?
Satan even tried this method against the Lord Jesus when he tempted Him in the wilderness as we see in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 4. But as you will see in that chapter the method that Jesus used to defeat Satan was the word of God. Jesus stood on the word of God, He did not doubt God’s words for a second; or say they really don’t mean what they say He simply believed them. Of course Jesus knew God’s word so that’s why He could stand on them. It’s difficult to stand on words you don’t know and today so many do not know God’s words. We know some of them but we don’t know all of them and besides - weren’t those words for another time and place? Are they even still relevant in the twenty first century?
Today doubting God’s word is everywhere. Why do you think there are so many religions and so many different denominations? The Baptists say the Presbyterians are wrong, the Presbyterians say they Evangelicals are wrong, the Evangelicals say the Methodists are wrong, the Methodists say the Catholics are wrong, they all say the Jews are wrong and on and on it goes. Each of these denominations, or religious sects, believes they have the correct interpretation of God’s word. So many different denominations, and all of them have their own doctrines and traditions. And in many instances they hold those doctrines and traditions in higher esteem than they hold the Bible itself which contains God’s very words.
It all comes back to those four little words; “Indeed has God said.” I believe this is why God called us to a start this church in the first place – to get His people Back to the Word. But before we can get Back to the Word we need to know what God said in His word. That’s why we are here, that’s why we started this church all those years ago and that’s why we have started this website to get people Back to the Word. So join us either in person or on the web and let’s get Back to the Word together. Thank you for reading this and may God bless you. Now let’s get to work doing God’s business.