Is the Gospel for the Poor?
Copyright © 2007 Good News Publications
Today I want to show you a misconception that I believe dominates the Christian Church and has distorted our view of the truth of prosperity. In the Gospel of Luke, Christ said,
Luke 4:18: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,"
Now, having heard this, what picture comes to mind? Most people say, "Look, it says it right there. The Gospel is to be preached to the poor. Doesn't this sound familiar? Almost everyone has bought into it, but I say that it's wrong. Look where it takes your thinking: - We preach the Gospel to the poor - They are the ones who need God's Word - The rich don't need God - The rich don't want God - That's why I never want to be wealthy and get to the place I don't need God - That's why money is bad.
All this thinking is wrong and the reason is, we don't understand the word "poor". People think it is talking about money, but the word "poor" simply refers to lack or meager supply. Have you ever heard the term "poor health"? Does that mean that his or her health has no money? Have you ever heard a farmer say the land was "poor"? Does that mean the land had no money? In both cases it is lack-lack of health and lack of nutrients in the soil.
In verse 18 of Luke 4 it says that he was sent to heal the broken hearted-they were lacking a whole heart and thus poor. He preached deliverance to the captives-they were not free and thus poor. He helped others recover their sight both spiritually and physically-they were blind and thus poor.
It is religion that has taught us that prosperity and wealth are wrong.
Psalm 35:27: Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.
As wonderful as this verse is, it takes on even more meaning when you realize that the word for "prosperity" is the word "Shalom" which means "peace". It is a beautiful translation. When you are at peace, you are content, you don't have any needs or lack and that is the perfect picture of prosperity.
Abundance without God is folly: you are spiritually poor so you are not prosperous. But most Christians don't think they have the right to be wealthy or prosper. Prospering is part of being whole; if you don't have it, you aren't whole and that is not how God planned it. You are not whole until you are financially whole and in order to receive that wholeness you must believe that this is at least part of what God wants for your life.
How often have you heard, "You're being spiritual so, you don't need money or abundance-that will just distract you." Distract you? Some of the most distracted people I know are the ones who can't pay their bills. When my checking account is overflowing, I'm not distracted by bills at all-in fact I have more time to spend with God because I am no longer concerned about money. The fact is the only time you don't need money is before you came into this world and when you leave it-but while you are here you will need material things and God wants you to have them in abundance.
Now, I am going to teach you something that will really open your eyes and you had better be careful about sharing it, because you could make some people very mad.
Psalm 112:1-3: Praise ye the Lord. Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon earth: the generation of the upright shall be blessed. Wealth and riches shall be in his house: and his righteousness endureth for ever.
Here is a man whose heart is with God and God has blessed him abundantly.
Psalm 112:9: He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.
In verse 9 it says that this man has given to the "poor" and here is where you might get upset. E.W. Bullinger says in his Companion Bible that the word "poor" means "working for a living; poor, not in extreme want, but simply having only what one earns, having nothing superfluous, living sparingly".
How many Christians use their meager living on bare necessities as a badge of their Christian faith, when God says plainly that they are poor? Don't get mad at me; I didn't write the book. So does living meagerly represent God? Not according to this section of scripture.
Now please understand that if you are just getting by, God's Word says you are poor because there is lack. And if you have a billion dollars, but lack health or don't know God-you are also poor because of your lack. So to go back to our original question, "Is the gospel for the poor?" Yes it is, but just make sure you understand what poor means.
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Duke Clarke is a writer/teacher/coach/lecturer and minister. He has started a new website http://www.TheThinkingChristianInstitute.com to get people to think about their lives and walk with God. He is nondenominational in background and invites anyone to visit and take a look.
Showing posts with label gospel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gospel. Show all posts
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Christianity - The Religion that is Not
Christianity - The Religion that is Not by Rev Michael Bresciani
In the seventeenth chapter of Matthew the Apostles Peter, James and John were with Christ when he suddenly was transfigured (glowing or glorified) and was seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Instead of trying to hear what was being said between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter decided that building a shrine to commemorate the event would be a better idea. A voice came from above that changed Peters mind and is still changing minds to this day. The voice said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Mt 17:5
Here was a microcosmic but very typical example of mans penchant for religion and God’s answer to it. Peter wanted a shrine, a building or edifice to mark the spot where something happened. God wanted them to hear and see Jesus. To understand this is to see what separates real Christianity from religion.
Ecclesia is the Greek word used in the New Testament to describe the church. It has nothing to do with a religious system or a building. It refers to a called out body of believers made up of individuals. The church is a group of believers with or without a cathedral or building. The idea of going to church has long supplanted this definition. But such a connotation of the word cannot change the definition. The believers themselves are the church.
Christ was very careful not to instruct his disciples to build churches, shrines or an edifice to centralize his deity or worship. He told them rather to go out into the world and live out his message and tell it to others. How well he knew that we would make another religion out of his life in record time. It had already happened with the previous revelation God gave to the Jews.
The Mosaic form of religion reached its height around the time of Jesus. With the Temple in Jerusalem at its center it was a swelling complexity of oral and written traditions that would be hard to contain in the largest computer data bases of today. Christ spent a good deal of time resisting the extremes of that system and rebuking its leaders for their shallowness and misconceptions about what God really wanted and who he really is. He called its leaders a generation of snakes and said they used their religious rules and codes to laden men with mountains of unnecessary restrictions and meaningless rules.
In the Christian era it is said that Catholicism with its centuries of encyclicals, patristic teachings, ex cathedra and pontifical statements is ancient Judaism’s twin. In this late hour in time many churches have slouched into the same patterns including many historical denominations of the protestant movement. These religious bodies are not wrong just because they are burgeoning but they are heavy with the weight of their own complexity. Resultantly they offer much less to a troubled world that doesn’t even have time for itself, much less a fat religion that only adds to the stress of the modern day.
What has happened to Catholicism has been the problem for all the once great Christian churches or movements. They laid a construct over the simple gospel one single strand at a time. Doctrines, viewpoints, rules and codes some explicit, some implied and some harshly enforced.
Like the ancient Jews who had ceremonial laws, hygienic laws and moral laws to deal with, the more external forms of the religion finally cover the more important spiritual and moral aspects of it. The construct that so carefully was laid out now becomes the mask or the obstruction that keeps anyone from seeing the original all important first messages. When the simplicity of the gospel is covered by mountains of rules, liturgy and ceremony it becomes a sort of vaccination that keeps people from getting the real thing. The real thing is a way of life not a religion.
When the believers in the first century had not yet formed any denominations or sects they were told to tell others about Christ’s new way of life. “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” Acts 5:20. Jesus had told them often that he came to bring life to men not another religion.
Knowing that mans proclivity to religion was second only to his tendency to sinfulness Christ instituted two and only two outward ceremonial ordinances. They are partaking in the Lords supper (communion) and water baptism of repentant adults, not children or infants. Religious leaders added statements of faith, extra biblical doctrines, ceremonial observances, liturgies, rules of conduct, sacraments and the list goes on and on. If Christ were on earth today he would rarely ever be invited as the guest speaker in many churches. He would no doubt be found rebuking the religious nonsense of today’s church as he did centuries ago.
What really separates true Christianity from all religions in the world is simply that it is not a religion at all. Men have devised complex systems of piety and religious observance of every kind in an effort to placate or appease God. In Jesus Christ, God holds up a stop sign to the world. God says stop guessing who and what I am and what I want. I will show you who I am and what I want and in the process give you what you need…life.
The remaining difference between faith in Christ and all other religions is that Christ alone will show up at the end and judge the living and the dead. He alone will take the governments of the world away from man and rule as Sovereign Lord of all.
We debate religion but God will judge the souls of men, not by some religious belief system but by the example he showed of his life, his death on the cross for the sins of the world, his resurrection from the dead and every word he uttered during his life. We will not be able to argue the matter of our lives or offer God our adherence to some religious system as an answer. Jesus said, “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48
Religion based on true Christian teaching is not necessarily bad. It must be used as a supplement and never a substitute for the real thing.
Rev Bresciani is the author of An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ, Xulon Press His articles are read in every country in the world. Please enjoy a visit to http://www.americanprophet.org
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
In the seventeenth chapter of Matthew the Apostles Peter, James and John were with Christ when he suddenly was transfigured (glowing or glorified) and was seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Instead of trying to hear what was being said between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter decided that building a shrine to commemorate the event would be a better idea. A voice came from above that changed Peters mind and is still changing minds to this day. The voice said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Mt 17:5
Here was a microcosmic but very typical example of mans penchant for religion and God’s answer to it. Peter wanted a shrine, a building or edifice to mark the spot where something happened. God wanted them to hear and see Jesus. To understand this is to see what separates real Christianity from religion.
Ecclesia is the Greek word used in the New Testament to describe the church. It has nothing to do with a religious system or a building. It refers to a called out body of believers made up of individuals. The church is a group of believers with or without a cathedral or building. The idea of going to church has long supplanted this definition. But such a connotation of the word cannot change the definition. The believers themselves are the church.
Christ was very careful not to instruct his disciples to build churches, shrines or an edifice to centralize his deity or worship. He told them rather to go out into the world and live out his message and tell it to others. How well he knew that we would make another religion out of his life in record time. It had already happened with the previous revelation God gave to the Jews.
The Mosaic form of religion reached its height around the time of Jesus. With the Temple in Jerusalem at its center it was a swelling complexity of oral and written traditions that would be hard to contain in the largest computer data bases of today. Christ spent a good deal of time resisting the extremes of that system and rebuking its leaders for their shallowness and misconceptions about what God really wanted and who he really is. He called its leaders a generation of snakes and said they used their religious rules and codes to laden men with mountains of unnecessary restrictions and meaningless rules.
In the Christian era it is said that Catholicism with its centuries of encyclicals, patristic teachings, ex cathedra and pontifical statements is ancient Judaism’s twin. In this late hour in time many churches have slouched into the same patterns including many historical denominations of the protestant movement. These religious bodies are not wrong just because they are burgeoning but they are heavy with the weight of their own complexity. Resultantly they offer much less to a troubled world that doesn’t even have time for itself, much less a fat religion that only adds to the stress of the modern day.
What has happened to Catholicism has been the problem for all the once great Christian churches or movements. They laid a construct over the simple gospel one single strand at a time. Doctrines, viewpoints, rules and codes some explicit, some implied and some harshly enforced.
Like the ancient Jews who had ceremonial laws, hygienic laws and moral laws to deal with, the more external forms of the religion finally cover the more important spiritual and moral aspects of it. The construct that so carefully was laid out now becomes the mask or the obstruction that keeps anyone from seeing the original all important first messages. When the simplicity of the gospel is covered by mountains of rules, liturgy and ceremony it becomes a sort of vaccination that keeps people from getting the real thing. The real thing is a way of life not a religion.
When the believers in the first century had not yet formed any denominations or sects they were told to tell others about Christ’s new way of life. “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” Acts 5:20. Jesus had told them often that he came to bring life to men not another religion.
Knowing that mans proclivity to religion was second only to his tendency to sinfulness Christ instituted two and only two outward ceremonial ordinances. They are partaking in the Lords supper (communion) and water baptism of repentant adults, not children or infants. Religious leaders added statements of faith, extra biblical doctrines, ceremonial observances, liturgies, rules of conduct, sacraments and the list goes on and on. If Christ were on earth today he would rarely ever be invited as the guest speaker in many churches. He would no doubt be found rebuking the religious nonsense of today’s church as he did centuries ago.
What really separates true Christianity from all religions in the world is simply that it is not a religion at all. Men have devised complex systems of piety and religious observance of every kind in an effort to placate or appease God. In Jesus Christ, God holds up a stop sign to the world. God says stop guessing who and what I am and what I want. I will show you who I am and what I want and in the process give you what you need…life.
The remaining difference between faith in Christ and all other religions is that Christ alone will show up at the end and judge the living and the dead. He alone will take the governments of the world away from man and rule as Sovereign Lord of all.
We debate religion but God will judge the souls of men, not by some religious belief system but by the example he showed of his life, his death on the cross for the sins of the world, his resurrection from the dead and every word he uttered during his life. We will not be able to argue the matter of our lives or offer God our adherence to some religious system as an answer. Jesus said, “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48
Religion based on true Christian teaching is not necessarily bad. It must be used as a supplement and never a substitute for the real thing.
Rev Bresciani is the author of An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ, Xulon Press His articles are read in every country in the world. Please enjoy a visit to http://www.americanprophet.org
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
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