Tag: biblical

Cut Flowers Die

Carl Pollard

There is something beautiful about cut flowers. For a little while, they still look alive. Their color remains, and their shape stays intact. But everyone knows the same thing about cut flowers, they are dying. Why? Because they have been separated from their source of life.

Isn’t that a fitting picture of morality without God? A person can cut off the flower and still admire it for a while. And in the same way, a society can cut itself off from God and still hold on to certain moral values for a time. People may continue speaking about honesty, kindness, fidelity, justice, compassion, and decency. Outwardly, the flower is still there, but cut flowers die.

If morality is the flower, then God is the root. If righteous living is the fruit, then God’s word is the seed. Once people sever morality from the authority of Scripture, they may preserve the appearance of goodness for a generation or two, but it will not last! Morality can’t survive long when it’s disconnected from the One who defines what is good.

God Is The Source Of What Is Good

The Bible doesn’t present morality as something man invented. Goodness doesn’t begin with culture, education, public opinion, or human consensus. It begins with God! 

Psalm 119:68 says, “You are good and do good; teach me Your statutes.” Good is rooted in God’s character. He is the standard.

James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” If every truly good gift comes from above, then moral truth does too. Man doesn’t discover morality by looking within himself. He learns morality by reading the Word of God. Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown you, O man, what is good.” Micah doesn’t say man figured out what is good, he says God has shown him. Moral truth is revealed truth! 

Morality Without God Cannot Stand

Many people want the flower without the root. They want the benefits of biblical morality without submission to biblical authority. They want strong families without God’s design for the family. They want justice without acknowledging the Judge of all the earth. They want dignity, value, love, sacrifice, and truth, but they don’t want the God who gives those words meaning.

But once morality is detached from God, it becomes unstable. Why is honesty good? Why is murder wrong? Why is sexual purity honorable? Why should someone sacrifice for another person? Why should the strong protect the weak? Why should truth matter more than desire?

If theres no God, then those questions have no fixed answer. Morality becomes preference, tradition, social convenience, or majority opinion. And what one generation calls virtue, the next generation may call oppression. What one culture honors, another may reject. Without God, morality becomes negotiable! 

Judges 21:25 describes the chaos that results when God’s rule is cast aside,

“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” That is the natural end of morality cut loose from God. When man becomes his own standard, he doesn’t gain freedom, he finds confusion. 

Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” What “seems right” isn’t enough. Human instinct isnt a trustworthy moral compass. Feelings change, cultures drift, and hearts deceive.

Jeremiah 10:23 says, “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.” Man can’t author a lasting morality because he was never meant to be his own god.

Cut flowers are beautiful, but eventually they whither and die. Moral decency without God is doomed to fail. 

Are You Dogmatic?

Neal Pollard

Brett Petrillo, one of my co-workers at Bear Valley, showed me a word (in Colossians 2:20) I did not know was in the Bible. Actually, it’s in the Greek Bible, and the word is “δογματίζω  (dogmatizo). According to BDAG, it means “to put under obligation by rules or ordinances; obligate” (Arndt, et al, 254). Kittel adds that these are rules that seem to be right but are put forward as if “to establish a decree” or “to publish an edict” (Kittel, et al, 178). The shorter form, “dogma,” is found a few times and simply means a formal, governmental decree that may or may not be in accordance with God’s will (Lk. 2:1; Acts 17:7; Heb. 11:23; it’s also used of the Old Law in Eph. 2:15 and Col. 2:14, translated as “ordinances” or “decrees”). In Colossians 2:20, the longer, verb form is translated “submit yourselves to decrees” (NASB), “submit to regulations” (ESV), “subject to ordinances” (KJV), and “submit to (the world’s) rules” (NIV). 

It was dogmatic people asking these Christians to submit to their rules. Paul describes and defines the specific rules in the circumstances plaguing the Colossians. Some were acting as their judge regarding food, drink, festivals and days (16), adding fleshly (and, in some cases, heretical) requirements (18), and making rules which did not originate with Christ (21) that he describes as “the commandments and teachings of men” (22). Paul condemns such rule making (19,23). 

How does this teaching apply to us today? We are right to point out those who tell us we don’t have to obey things which God requires of us. Lessening God’s requirements in areas He holds us responsible for is spiritually fatal. This is replacing divine commands for human ordinances. 

Yet, we cannot miss the point that the other extreme is just as wrong. To make laws, regulations, and commands and bind them upon brethren is still to replace divine commands for human ordinances. This very context points out how God feels about this.

The Lord does not need our help. He knew what His will for us was, and we cannot improve upon that. We must make sure that we’re not pressing our opinion, preference, tradition, or judgment, saying that such is the more righteous, spiritual, or godly course of action. If it is a matter of divine indifference, we should never make it a test of fellowship. Those who decide differently from us are not “less sound” or somehow “suspect.” A humble effort to follow God’s revelation will truly make us “people of the book.” To obligate people to more than that is to be “dogmatic.”

dogmatic

Which Is Worse: Lawbreaking Or Lawmaking?

 

Neal Pollard

Scruples, proclivities, judgments, convictions,
“I would prefers” as well as “It’s betters”
Men put these on par with divinely revealed positions
Make laws they bind on others like fetters

Freedoms, liberties, rights, excesses,
“God’s grace” gives me license to sin,
Men loose themselves, and self-will professes,
“No matter how I live I’m still ‘in.'”

Perhaps all men lean to the left or the right
Are prone to rebel or restrict
But it’s darkness to be away from the light
Whichever direction one picks

These extremes are two sides of one penny
Only one way to correct either faulty course
Be sure it’s in Scripture, for way too many
Are self-led and don’t seek a heavenly source

No “thus saith the Lord,” no book, chapter, verse
That in context supports their position,
Instead, they labor under that ancient curse
Placed on binding and loosing, both are sedition!

Our task is most clear, to place ourselves under
The Sovereign will God left in His Work of inspiration
Other ground is sand, leaves our souls all asunder
Such is to build on the only firm foundation!

Man walking and balancing on rope over precipice in mountains