God’s chosen people in the Old Testament were a segregated people and His purchased people in the New Testament were bidden not to integrate with this world. This is not physical separation, for we must live among the souls we are to evangelize. We are to be utterly distinct in spirit. Our approach, our motives and objectives and attitudes toward everything must be totally different, for we have the mind of Christ. This goes deeper than non-participation in dancing, card-playing, social drinking. Paul list the incompatibles that take in everything. Righteousness and unrighteousness: today these have become not merely relative but nonexistent in the modern mind – “the new morality” proves that! Light and darkness: when light comes in, darkness goes out-today a twilight has been created, neither day nor night, and men creep around in conditions of low visibility. Christ and Belial: no “concord” there – today some thinkers would include the world in the church but the world’s friend is God’s enemy. The temple of God and idols: We have let Jezebel set up her altar to Baal beside the altar of Jehovah, mix the mystery of iniquity with the mystery of godliness. We need a new segregation of the church but the swing is entirely in the other direction of integration with the age. Thereby the church loses her identity and merges into the society she was meant to change. Of course it is part of the program of Antichrist, but God will have His faithful few in Sardis who shall walk with Him in white, for they are worthy.
Devotion of the Day
The Technique of the Towel
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
John 13:14.
Our Lord steps from magnificence to meniality: “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands…began to wash the disciples’ feet.” From sublimity to service!
In the early days of Communism one leader wanted to admit all who accepted the theory and purposes of the movement. Lenin insisted that only those who were so devoted as to be willing to do the most menial tasks be received. “Fewer but better” was his motto. He said, “Give me one hundred fanatics rather than a thousand indifferent followers.”
“The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Considering how we have to coax and beg church members to do a few things for our Lord, we can easily see how we are loaded down with excess baggage, nominal disciples who agree in theory but have never learned our Saviour’s technique of the towel.
The average church member would do well to look in his concordance and see how many columns it takes to list all the “serve,” “servant,” “service” references. We come to church to sit but will not go out to serve.