THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART XIX)

“The Church Has an AIDS Problem”

By Akin Ojumu

It was a little over six weeks ago that the Part One of this commentary series on John 10:10 was published. Forty-four days and nineteen installments later, we are still barely scratching the surface. If it’s taking this long to expound the meaning of a single verse of Scripture, just imagine how long it’ll take to do the same for the entire Bible.

Romans 11:33

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

This much I have come to realize in my short journey of faith. It’s impossible to plumb the depth of God’s Word. The Bible is like a bottomless well of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. The deeper you dig, the deeper there’s left to go. The more you know, the more there remains to know. No matter how brilliant and wise you think you are, you are never ever going to reach the bottom of this well.

Despite the vast expanse of the riches of the Bible, though, the vast majority of modern-day preachers can’t be bothered with the not-so appealing task of meticulously teaching the Word of God from the pages of the Bible, a verse at a time. In spite of the inexhaustibility of the knowledge that can be mined from the bottomless well of Scriptures, preachers of our day have made a habit of telling tall tales of self-glory on the pulpit. 

As though competing in an Olympics sport where they have to outduel their fellow competitors, each time these tellers of tall tales get on the pulpit to regale their audience with their encounters, they always seem to pour an extra layer of sauce and spice to give their razzle dazzle of a whopper more flavor. In each retelling of the same fib, there’s always an added embellishment to give it the oomph factor. With these spinners of yarns, no flight of fancy is too improbable, no wild exaggeration too unlikely. The more spectacular their made-up story sounds, the more the audience is wowed out of their mind and knocked off their feet.

Colossians 2:18-19

“Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind. He has lost connection to the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and knit together by its joints and ligaments, grows as God causes it to grow.”

Unfortunately, what these fabulists and their undiscerning biblically illiterate followers don’t seem to realize is that any preacher who fails to preach the Word is a thief and a robber whose intent is to pillage and plunder. It doesn’t matter what title the preacher gives himself or how highly his followers revere him, a minister of the Gospel who falls short of exegetically teaching his audience from the pages of the Bible is a Gospel huckster peddling a bill of goods. 

What’s even worse and more dangerous than a failure to expository preach the Gospel is when preachers cherry pick Bible verses, pluck them out of their proper context, and infuse into them their own silly human ideas and opinions in order to promote a preconceived notion or to push a predetermined narrative. The byproducts of such an approach to handling the Scriptures are doctrines of demons and the end result is a defective Gospel.

Unfortunately, those whose daily spiritual diet consists of doctrines of demons are highly vulnerable to spiritual contagion. Because of a deficiency in the essential minerals and vitamins that redound to sound spiritual health, consumers of a defective Gospel develop a compromised immune system. 

2 Peter 2:1-3

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”

Unsurprisingly, individuals with spiritual immunodeficiency syndrome are prime targets for the fabricated stories of false teachers. Their compromised immune system makes them easily susceptible to exploitation by wolves in sheep’s clothing who fleece them for selfish gain. A collapsed immune system renders the victims vulnerable to all kinds of deception and doctrines.

Sadly, the Body of Christ has a serious spiritual Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) problem. This widespread deficient immune system manifests itself in the profound inability of church folks to detect truth from error. The collapsed immune system renders a large swathe of those who call themselves Christians today incapable of recognizing deception. Because of their spiritual AIDS, they are easily led astray by every con man who calls himself a general overseer, apostle, or prophet. 

John 10:2-5

“But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

When, in the above passage, the Lord Jesus alludes to the fact that the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice and that a stranger they will not follow but will flee from him, He is using a metaphor to convey the fact that those who belong to Him, the Good Shepherd, are able to tell His voice from the voice of strangers. The Lord is essentially saying that it doesn’t matter how loud, confident, passionate, logical, and smart the stranger may sound, those who are truly of Christ will not pay heed to and fall for the lies of charlatans.

What equips the true followers of Christ with the ability to distinguish between the voice of Christ and that of strangers is their strong immune system. Because their immune system is uncompromised, they are able to detect deception and fight off dissimulation by strangers.

Hold that thought. We’ll expand on it further next time.