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Water is essential to physical life and in many cases, we rely on wells to provide that water. That was certainly the case back in ancient times. We’re going to continue our look at a story found in Genesis 26 about Abraham and his servants digging wells in the valley of Gerar. Many years later, after the death of Abraham, Isaac came to that same place and we read what he found.

Genesis 26:17-19 “And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water.”

There is a very important spiritual lesson in this Old Testament narrative. We began this study last week comparing those wells of old to the well of living water that Jesus brought to us. You remember how Jesus taught the woman at Jacob’s well a lesson about who He was and the salvation He brought to earth by likening it to water from a well (John 4). But just as in the days of Abimelech, Isaac and Abraham, so the Philistine enemies of truth down through the ages since the establishment of the church have polluted, obstructed and filled in the wells dug by the inspired apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. We read even in the epistles how the apostles remained busy during their ministries, in the very infancy of the church, cleaning out the wells polluted by Judaism (Galatians), polluted by pagan immorality and idolatry (1 and 2 Corinthians), and so on.

Yet as we look at history since then, the attacks and departures would simply keep coming upon the faith as it was originally authored by Jesus Christ and revealed by His apostles. It is time that sincere men and women re-dig the ancient wells of truth. The church was established by Jesus upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20). Their inspired teachings were to be the only creed and rule for the church to follow for all ages.

Jude 3 “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”

The faith was delivered once for all time. But very soon man began to default to human reasoning and philosophy. They began to go beyond the authority of the apostles whom Christ had appointed to rule over His church. This did not take the apostles by surprise and it did not take the Lord by surprise either. The apostles had warned that apostasy was coming soon after their deaths. In fact, the seeds were already being planted.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.”

Acts 20:29-31 “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

As the church spread through the Roman empire, scores of people were converted to Christianity, but trouble was brewing because they brought many of their pagan and idolatrous ways and practices into Christianity with them. There were a series of changes that therefore took place very early on in the church that was established by Jesus. The first changes to the apostolic pattern for Christianity were seemingly small and therefore easy to make. These small changes seemed very logical. The first thing that occurred was that the government of the church was corrupted.

When we read through the book of Acts and the epistles, we see that each congregation was governed not by some large superstructure of power over the brotherhood; rather, each congregation was governed by its own duly qualified and appointed elders. Therefore, each church was autonomous.

Acts 20:28 “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

Paul was telling the elders of the church at Ephesus to feed the church of God that was among them, to feed the flock among them.

Acts 14:23 “And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.”

So, every church had its own elders. Those elders fed the flock and oversaw the affairs of the church that they were among. In Titus 1, Paul gives the qualifications for men who would fulfill this office. It’s very clear that an elder is the same thing as a bishop. The two terms are synonymous, both referring to the same group of men who were overseers over a single congregation. That is the New Testament pattern for church government.

Here’s where the problem began: smaller, younger churches began to call upon elders in larger, more mature churches to weigh matters and render decisions in spiritual matters. That seems logical, doesn’t it? But it was contrary to the plan of God. The result is that congregations lost their autonomy, and elders began to exercise authority outside of the congregation they were appointed to serve.

Not only was that within itself a departure from the pattern, but it put the church on a very slippery slope that led to grave problems that exist yet today. You see, that human arrangement necessitated logically that one elder be chosen to preside over the others. I mean, if you’re going to have all of these elders coming together to make decisions for churches outside of their own, it would seem necessary to have someone preside over all of these elders. So, they began to make a distinction between the office of elder and that of a bishop, even though the Bible does not make that distinction. That was the beginning of a hierarchy of power that set the stage for a complete apostasy in doctrine and in practice from the church as Jesus had established it.

After a while, they began to make a distinction between the clergy—that is, the elevated class, those considered in authority or overseer roles in the church—and the laity, or common Christian, so to speak. By 200 A.D., they had begun to refer to elders in a congregation as priests, therefore establishing a separate priesthood in the church. One that is separate from the priesthood of every believer, even though Revelation 1:6 teaches that all Christians under the new covenant ARE priests unto God. We are our own priests unto God, with Christ being our High Priest. Very soon, bishops were appointed to rule over a group of churches in a given area, each church being served by a priest. These regions or groups of churches in a region began to be known as a diocese, and a bishop would oversee a diocese of churches.

Human wisdom then saw it necessary to provide oversight of the many bishops who were now ruling over these groups of churches, so the office of archbishop was created. The Bible says nothing of any of this. The government of the church truly became universal or catholic in nature when they created the office of cardinals to preside over the archbishops overseeing the diocese and bishops who were overseeing the work of priests in the local churches or parishes, which were made up of the laity or common Christians, you see.

Finally, by the year 296—nearly 300 years after Christ established His church—the bishop of Rome was first referred to as the pope, and by the year 535 A.D., the papacy was established and the pope was then considered the successor of the apostle Peter. He was viewed as the vicar of Christ and therefore the sole inerrant interpreter of scripture; thus, the ultimate authority on earth in religious matters. You see, it started small, and then turned into an unscriptural hierarchy of authority and power over the universal church.

I want you to think about that in relation to the types of governments we see in the many churches and denominations that exist today. Make a note of that because we’re going to come back to it in a few moments. This corruption of government and this development of human authority over the worldwide church paved the way for a series of doctrinal changes and ultimately, a complete apostasy from the teaching of Christ. Here are just a few examples.

As soon as 120 A.D., the use of so-called ‘holy water’ was introduced into the church by a bishop named Alexander. He contended that the water used for baptism had to be blessed or made holy. By the second century, they were saying that this ‘holy water’ had to be holy in order to frighten away devils, to do away with distraction in order to expose the mind to complete devotion, but the Bible says nothing of the sort. The baptism taught by Jesus and His apostles was a simple act of obedient faith–a burial in water—and its efficacy was NOT in the water, but in the blood of Christ that was reached by faith when a sinner obeys the gospel.

So, where do they get this idea of ‘holy water’? Robert Brumback, in his History of the Church Through the Ages points out that it came from the pagan’s custom of dipping their hands in water and sprinkling it on themselves as they entered the pagan temples. I told you that as Christianity spread throughout the pagan Roman empire, many of the converts brought paganism with them. So, the influence of paganism began to pollute the well of pure Christianity as it was authored by Christ and His apostles. That was made very easy because at the time, a worldwide hierarchy with centralized power could teach, practice and enforce this in all of the churches. That’s how apostasy works.

By 157 A.D., the doctrine of penance emerged. It took about 300 years for it to be fully developed and it wasn’t until about the year 1022 when the apostate church fully embraced it. The doctrine of penance says that if a person left the church, they had to meet certain requirements in order to return and be accepted back. Some requirement was imposed by human beings upon them to show that they had truly repented. These penitents were classified in at least four different categories and were dealt with accordingly. But men don’t have the authority to make rules and requirements to bar one from the kingdom of heaven. That’s Christ’s prerogative and His authority as expressed through His apostles and therefore in the word of God.

The unscriptural idea of penance eventually led to the idea of a human intercessor: if a person confessed to a clergy member or priest, and satisfied that expectation, then the priest has the authority to absolve the sins of the penitent one. We’re very familiar with this in religion today. But the New Testament teaches no such doctrine. Again, the well is being stopped up by the Philistines, as it were.

By 190 A.D., we have the first mention of the apostle’s creed. In the first century, men were told simply to confess their faith in Christ as the Son of God (Acts 8:37, Romans 10:9). But that simple confession later became a long, intricate list of doctrinal affirmations that consequently has been changed numerous times throughout history.

The only creed we need and the only one we should subscribe to is the New Testament–nothing more and nothing less. No matter how many true things it may profess, if the so-called apostle’s creed or any other creed is only saying what the New Testament says, doesn’t that beg the question why do we need the creed anyway? Why not just simply speak as the oracles of God and follow the teachings of the apostles as they are laid out in the New Testament? But men were polluting the well of truth. Today, what do we have? Look around. We have the Westminster Confession, the Philadelphia Confession of Faith, the catechism, the church manual…on and on and on…Again, I want you to make a note of that because I’m going to refer back to it in a little bit.

In the year 220 A.D., Origen advocated the doctrine of purgatory, and eight hundred years later by the year 1070, it was fully embraced by the Roman church. That being the belief that sinners go to a place of torment from whence they can be redeemed by the prayers and works of the saints on earth. The Bible teaches no such doctrine.

By 350 A.D., the priests began referring to the Lord’s Supper as the mass. By 666 A.D., pope Vitalian authorized the use of instrumental music in Christian worship. For six hundred years, it was not practiced, but the pope authorized it and it began to be practiced. By 1123, the clergy were forbidden to marry.

We could go on and on. In fact, we’ve just touched the surface of it all. We could talk about the introduction of sprinkling for baptism, infant baptism, the false doctrine of transubstantiation, etc. You see, the general shift that began occurring soon after the first century snowballed into a complete corruption of New Testament teaching and practice, and produced the full-blown Roman apostasy.

But the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came with the sale of indulgences. That doctrine began as early as 820 A.D. and was embraced by the year 1190. Indulgences were a source of revenue for the church and were sold to people under the guise of offering them pardon from their sins. This doctrine was contrary to everything the New Testament teaches about repentance and redemption.

1 Peter 1:18-19 “…knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

But this sale of indulgences was more than some could stand. It was one of the main catalysts that led a German monk by the name of Martin Luther, on October 31, 1517 to defiantly nail his so-called 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting the excesses and abuses of the Catholic church. To his credit, his two central themes were the authority of scripture as opposed to church hierarchy and his contention that salvation was through faith in Christ and not by conforming to the rules and doctrines of men. That event essentially sparked the 16^th century Protestant Reformation. Shortly thereafter, Zwingli and Calvin launched the Swiss Reformation, and the eventual result was the emergence of several protestant denominations divided by varies doctrines and practices, and now today, we have seen the spirit of sectarianism seed the world with hundreds of denominations, sets and factions.

Now, there were some commendable things about the reformers of the 16^th century. They were correct in their complaints and protests against the corrupt and apostate church. You might say that their motive was to clean out the wells of truth polluted with paganism and Romanism and human tradition. But they didn’t go far enough. In fact, what was needed by this point was not a reformation of what then was, but a FULL restoration of what was in the beginning. Why did the reformation not go far enough? Well, what led to the apostasy to begin with? A change in church government.

Did the reformation lead to the Bible model of autonomous congregations of the church of Christ, each governed by its own elders and served by its own deacons? No, many if not most denominations today are organized and ruled according to a very similar hierarchy of authority, as we see in Catholicism with some variations and office titles and their scope of authority. (By the way, the whole idea of denominations within Christianity is sinful and unscriptural within itself according to 1 Corinthians 1:10-13). Denominations have their presidents, superintendents, governing councils, conventions, officers, delegates, etc. None of which are mentioned in the Bible.

Not so with the church of the first century. The apostles were the only ‘universal government’ over the church, and they still serve as such by way of their inspired writings known as the New Testament. Each local congregation is to be overseen by its own qualified elders and deacons and there is not organizational structure beyond that of each local, autonomous church.

What did the reformation produce? It may have attempted to clean the well out some, but friend, the well needs to be re-dug because we have multitudes of denominations bearing humanly conceived names, following many different patterns for worship, teaching conflicting, opposing and warring doctrines, even on such basic matters as salvation! Ironically, in rejecting the human traditions and creeds of Catholicism, protestant denominationalism today has produced more creeds than we can count! Surely we can see the wells of old need to be re-dug. But how? Back in our text, the Bible says that after Isaac re-dug the wells of his father Abraham, he called them by the names which his father had called them (Genesis 26:18). That is the key.

1 Peter 4:11 “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.”

In other words, the Bible is enough. Speak as God has spoken. We don’t need creeds besides the bible itself. We don’t need modern revelations. People lean to conscience, common sense, the views of experts, theologians, tradition, experience… all as the extra-biblical basis for authority in the church. The wells of truth need to be re-dug. We need to simply go back to the Bible and do Bible things in Bible ways, calling Bible things by Bible names.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 

Oh, how desperately in this age of religious confusion, division and error do we need to re-dig the ancient wells.

 

©2016 BibleWay Media. All rights reserved. BibleWay Media grants permission to copy this material for personal use. Permission is also granted to distribute this transcript as long as it is reproduced in its entirety, used solely for its original purpose of spreading the gospel, and attribution is given to the author and Let the Bible Speak.

Click here to watch or listen to this sermon.

Today, much of our water comes from reservoirs, but many communities still depend upon wells. Many rural homes still get their water from wells dug on their properties. Back in old times, wells were even more vital to community life and physical life itself. Our text for today’s lesson comes from the book of Genesis.

Genesis 26:17-18 “And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.”

There is a very timely lesson in those words for us today. This event happened in the valley of Gerar in the land of Abimelech, the king of the Philistines. Isaac’s father, Abraham, had once been there, but years later when Isaac came to this same land, he didn’t find it in the condition that his father had left it. Abraham’s servants had once dug wells there, but the Philistines came along after Abraham died and stopped those wells, filling them with earth. Since Isaac and his cattle needed water, the Bible says that he dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham.

We all know that water is essential to life. Without it, we will die. One time, Jesus compared His doctrine to water. He stopped at Jacob’s well at about noon time. The Lord was tired and thirsty. Along came a Samaritan woman, and He asked for her to draw water from the well for Him to drink. She found it strange that a Jew would ask a Samaritan for a drink. She certainly didn’t recognize Him as being the Christ, so Jesus used His request to teach a great lesson there, not only about who He was, but about the salvation that He came to earth to bring.

John 4:13-14 “Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

On another occasion, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink (John 7:37). This living, spiritual water that Jesus spoke of is just as essential to spiritual life as physical water is to physical life; without it, there can be no spiritual life. But, sometimes wells of physical water become filled with dirt and debris. Their walls may cave, they may become stopped with earth or clogged with rubbish. They may become filled in. In the same way, the well of living water, of salvation, of pure Bible truth can become obstructed and polluted. When that happens, they have to be cleaned out or dug again. What are some of the wells that need to be re-dug today?

It didn’t take long after the gospel was first preached by the apostles—in fact, while the sacred scriptures were being originally written down by the apostles and prophets of the first century, already the word of truth was being obstructed. The water was being polluted by men who soon went astray from the gospel that was first preached to them.

Galatians 1:6-7 “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” 

The word pervert here means to transform a thing into something else; to corrupt something. How is water corrupted? How can we pervert water? It’s corrupted when something is added to it. Thus, tainting it or changing it. If you drop tea leaves into a cup of pure water, it ceases being pure water and becomes tea. It might have water in it, but now it is changed to something else. As good as that tea may taste, the fact is it is no longer pure water. It has been transformed.

Through the ages, there have been many, many things added to the well of truth that have transformed the living water of Christ into a strange concoction of divine truth mixed with human tradition and practice. The problem is, when you do that, you no longer have divine truth. You have transformed it into something else.

As Paul penned this letter to the Galatian church, he was already seeing the corruption of the gospel, or the stopping of the Lord’s well as it were, with the doctrines of the Judaizing teachers. In other words, there were false teachers who had not learned the difference between the old law and the gospel. There are multitudes of people in the same condition today. These men of whom Paul was warning the church were corrupting the gospel by telling new believers that they had to go back and keep the Mosaic law in addition to obedience of the gospel in order to be saved. This is one of the things that made their doctrine so deceptive. They weren’t telling people that they shouldn’t believe in Jesus. They weren’t telling people that it wasn’t necessary to obey the gospel. But what they were doing was seeking to go back and bind the law of Moses upon Christian believers in addition to the gospel.

In other words, it was not enough that they had placed their faith in Christ and been baptized into Christ (Galatians 3:26-27) and that they were now living for Him. They also had to go back and live for Moses and carefully keep the commandments of Moses—especially circumcision, as God had long required of the Jews since He made the first covenant with them. The result was that Christians who were now supposed to be free from the entanglements of that old law that resulted in sin and condemnation, were now being brought back into bondage to it.

This was a great crisis in the early church, especially in the church of Galatia to whom Paul is now writing. Therefore, Paul pointedly dealt with their error and was working to unstop the well that had become clogged by their false doctrine.

Galatians 2:16 “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law (talking about the law of Moses), but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law (speaking again of the law of Moses) shall no flesh be justified.”

He continues in verse 21.

Galatians 2:21 “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law (the law of Moses), then Christ is dead in vain.”

Jesus would not have needed to die if we could’ve been justified and saved by keeping the Mosaic Law.

Galatians 4:9-11 “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements (of the Mosaic economy), whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”

They were being told to keep the old feasts and ceremonies, and observe the Sabbaths and other days and times that were considered holy by the Jews living under the law. Paul clearly says that the gospel frees men from their obligation to the old law, and to go back to those things was to make the preaching of the gospel vain and meaningless.

There are still many today who look to the Old Testament law for their worship, for their rule of living. In fact, many things that we see in supposed Christianity today are directly borrowed from the Old Testament system. There is Sabbath keeping, for example. Even though Paul said:

Colossians 2:14 “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;”

Colossians 2:16-17 “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”

What he is referring to when he mentions meat and drink and these various holy days, the Sabbath days and so forth, are the dietary restrictions of the Old Testament law. He’s talking about the days that were sacred to the Jewish people. He says those things were temporary, they were a shadow of things that were later to come, not the real thing. The body, he says—the reality that cast the shadow—is Christ. So, Paul tells them not to let men come along and judge them in all of these various things that pertain to that former system that was a shadow of that which they now enjoyed in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul continually had to dig out and unstop the wells that were being clogged by the false doctrines of these Judaizers.

I think Paul would have to do the same thing if he were yet with us today. There are many things in religion today that are borrowed from the Old Testament system; for example, the concept of a separate and distinct priesthood in the church, apart from the priesthood of every believer. Some also make a distinction between clergy and laity. That is taken directly from the Old Testament model of a special priesthood distinct from all other people.

Now, preaching is a servant’s work within the church. A man who preaches the gospel does a particular work that he possesses the ability to do and that he has been appointed by the church to do. He certainly does not stand between you and God. He is not a go-between or an intercessor for you. He does not serve as a priest on your behalf. ALL Christians, ALL baptized believers in this economy become priests unto God. The idea that a man can absolve your sins, that he has that kind of authority when you confess your sins to him, or that he stands between you and God, hearkens to a system that is now obsolete and done away with in the church.

Revelation 1:6 “And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”

1 Corinthians 1:2 “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:” 

There is no classification or spiritual hierarchy of men among the church of Christ.

Then, there is the worship of the Old Testament that is so often borrowed and employed by the supposed New Testament churches of today such as instrumental music. Mechanical instruments were unknown to the early church for nearly 600 years after Jesus established the church. For nearly six centuries, those who claimed to follow Jesus Christ did not use them in corporate worship. They are not commanded, nor are they spoken of in reference to Christian worship anywhere in the New Testament. If one wants to find scriptural precedent for them, he would have to go all the way back to the temple worship of the Old Testament. You see, the well has become clogged with the practices of Judaism and it needs to be re-dug by simply using the church that was established by Christ in the first century as our paradigm, as our only model and guide.

But that wasn’t the only well that became clogged with human doctrine and tradition. The apostles also had to clean out and re-dig the wells that were filled with paganism. This was particularly the case with the church located in the evil, profligate city of Corinth. These Christians had been converted out of idolatry and heathenism, and the result was that many of them, being immature in their faith, were holding on to some of their idolatrous ways. It was very difficult to eradicate this church in Corinth of the influences of the Gentile, pagan society that surrounded them. Sexual immorality was a problem in the church at Corinth, just like it was in the city of Corinth. In fact, we can read in 1 Corinthians 5 where a man had become guilty of a sexual sin that was not even common among the Gentile people, Paul says.

But Paul had to deal with this sin that had reared its ugly head in the Corinthian church because it was such a prominent part of the culture in the city of Corinth. Those who lived in Corinth thought nothing of sexual immorality. Paul told them not only to withdraw from the man who was living in sin with his stepmother (chapter 5), but he also warned the other believers in this way:

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” 

And such were some of you: but…Christians were cleansed of such unrighteousness when they obeyed the gospel. Now, being sanctified, they were to live clean and consecrated lives. But in the same way the evil of the time affected the church at Corinth, the immorality and paganism that has saturated our culture today finds its way into the church from time to time. And you know what? We have to clean out and re-dig the ancient well of truth.

The modern church is facing a moral and a spiritual crisis today of worldliness and worldly conformity. The influences of a lewd and pagan culture have had a devastating effect on the American church today, including those who profess to follow Jesus Christ, in many ways that most of us don’t even realize. Many of the religious practices, ceremonies, even the holidays that we get caught up in are directly taken from idolatrous practices.

When Paul wrote to this same church a second time, he said this:

2 Corinthians 6:16-18 “And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

You see, the wells of truth need to be re-dug. The church needs to come out from the world and be separate and holy. But you hear very little today about true sanctification and holiness in the American pulpit. We’ve even seen an effort to assimilate the church to the culture to the point today where the message of Christianity has become totally compromised, watered down and ineffectual in the lives of multitudes of people.

Listen: it is time that those who seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and be faithful to Him come out from the world and be separate, like the apostle Paul says. To lead holy lives and start shining as a light in this sin-darkened world instead of being its reflection!

It wasn’t just the paganism and lasciviousness that was prevalent in Corinth. It was that way in the entire Roman empire. As Christianity spread throughout Asia Minor and Europe, it encountered the people of this pagan empire, and over time, the influence of Rome began to mingle with the truth of Jerusalem until a complete apostasy took place. Over hundreds of years, a false religion emerged that continues, consequently, to cover the earth and spread its influence today.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.” 

He said the mystery of iniquity was already at work. When he visited the church in Ephesus for the last time, they had a tearful meeting and farewell with Paul, as he left them with this ominous warning:

Acts 20:28-32 “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”

This is, indeed, what happened. Whatever Paul was immediately referring to in this speech, we know that it was only a short time until some elders and leaders in the church did, in fact, begin to exalt themselves over others, and an unscriptural hierarchy emerged that completely led the church away from the truth and from its original design.

Lord willing, we will continue our study next week and talk about the wells today that need to be re-dug.

 

©2016 BibleWay Media. All rights reserved. BibleWay Media grants permission to copy this material for personal use. Permission is also granted to distribute this transcript as long as it is reproduced in its entirety, used solely for its original purpose of spreading the gospel, and attribution is given to the author and Let the Bible Speak.