Every false religion is entirely man-centered in its theology and worship. What separates true Christianity from every other religion is the fact that it is entirely God-centered. It is the Lord who initiates, regenerates, saves, justifies, and adopts us; he will sanctify and glorify the believer. We will spend all eternity in awe of his greatness in God-centered worship. It is God-centered worship that not only regenerates our soul but also revives, strengthens, nourishes, sanctifies, grows, and prepares our soul for heaven. We worship a sovereign God to whom all glory goes.
Today’s churches are filled with a cursed, man-centered worship where people know nothing about this sovereign God. It is all about the preacher; about the felt needs of the people; it is all about their devotion, their self-righteousness, and what they can get from God. Some places are almost like Jesus has to thank them for their worship and faithfulness, and sometimes even ask for forgiveness for allowing suffering in their lives.
These are not small churches; they are the biggest churches in our city. It may outwardly seem harmless and appear as if they teach the Bible in a very enjoyable and practical way. It is in fact very natural for unregenerate people to enjoy such worship, feel so good in man-centered worship, be attracted, and feel that everything is right there. This is because we are born worshipping ourselves. That is why so many people crowd to go there; it mostly attracts huge numbers of young people, and these preachers cater to their base, unregenerate instincts of man-centered needs. It may seem good and harmless and appear as though the Bible is practically taught, but it has a terrible, devastating impact on the souls of those who participate in such worship. Just to state a few:
- No soul connection with the true, living God. The soul regenerates and grows in spiritual life by connecting with God in worship. God-centered worship is born when the theological truths of who God is and what he has done are clearly taught from the scriptures. They are never taught that; it is all the “Bible made practical.” Because of this, they develop a distorted view of God and never learn the true attributes of God. The most blessed truth of the sovereignty of God is always hidden from them, so their soul can never make a true connection with the living God, but with this distorted mental idol. You don’t see them prospering in soul, or growing in the knowledge of God, grace, or prayer and meditation on God’s word.
- Man-centered worship will make souls unconsciously reject God’s truth. This is a great ruining of the soul. If there is one thing that stops our soul’s destruction and heals and saves our soul, it is found in James 1:21: “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” Man-centered worship completely blocks our reception of the word and so never allows their souls to be saved. This is because man-centered worship is based on speculative theology on what the preacher teaches to appeal to the flesh, which is a kind of idol worship. It creates a distorted mental image of God in people’s minds. This mental picture makes them think they know God. Such a mind will inevitably take their theology from men, will not make any attempt to understand revelation, and will neglect God’s revealed will at every point. Such a mind will never be interested in any serious Bible study. You observe all these people have no interest in understanding the Bible; the mental idol blocks any interest. This is a great danger Moses warned against in Deuteronomy 4. He sets two things against one another: mental images in opposition to heeding God’s word. They are completely exclusive of each other. He reminds the people that at Sinai, though they saw tokens of God’s presence, they saw no visible representation of God himself, but only heard his word, so he exhorts them to continue to hear his word and not allow any mental image before their eyes to distract them. If you allow any image, you will not listen to God’s word.
- Man-centered worship brings God’s worst soul judgment. We saw that 1 Thessalonians says, “because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
- Man-centered worship can lead to depression. God’s word shows that true joy and blessings come to us by looking to him and glorifying him, not by focusing on ourselves. But this worship trains us to always look at ourselves, our needs, and how God is just a genie to resolve our needs. It never lifts them above their situation. These preachers make people believe the world should revolve around them. All good things will happen to me; God is going to bless me; everyone will admire me; God is going to turn water into wine; I am special. None of that actually happens, so they are most times depressed. They are never taught about the sovereignty of God or the providence of God. Even small problems in life or sickness make them completely depressed, fearful, and tense. They feel guilty they are not blessed, and feel helpless and weak, with no strength to manage. See how the soul suffers and destruction happens.
- Man-centered worship leads to pride and wrong relationships with others. Instead of teaching how depraved we are as sinners and that “blessed are those who mourn,” and “poor in spirit,” it is only mourning for our sin and being poor in spirit that makes us blessed, as the next beatitude says, “blessed are the meek.” This meekness will teach us to be gentle and patient with others’ sins and weaknesses in family and other places. But these people don’t teach any mourning of sin. They fill us with a sense of self-worth and pride, minimizing our sin and maximizing the sin of others. So this leads to terrible relational problems and impatience with spouses and others in families. When someone offends us, oh, how offended they become; how impatient and barking they become. Notice how there are almost always fights in the homes of those who go to such places. They become giants of anger.
- Man-centered worship becomes noise in the camp, not worship. When the Israelites kept the calf idol and said, “This is Jehovah, let us worship him,” Joshua said to Moses, “there is a noise in the camp.” Today, in the name of worship, there is noise in the camp, not worship of the living God. This is because the crowd comes as consumers; they don’t come to worship God; they come to be entertained and served. So, church services are more like rock concerts. Sermons are all about the preacher; the autobiography of preachers; what he thinks, what he feels, what he experienced. It is all hundreds of his stories, not what God says.
I can go on. We will see more in application, but man-centered worship completely hardens the soul and ruins it completely. I speak out of a great burden, not to accuse anyone. But there is “noise in the camp.” We have to stop that noise by preaching and breaking the tablet law on their heads.
If you have any man-centered worship, think of this: If there is one sin which God sees as hating him, one sin that makes God jealous, one sin whose consequences affect not only me but also my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and their children, what a horrible sin that must be. It is not murder or adultery. It is the sin of wrongly worshipping God. It is breaking the second commandment. Why does God so much guard his worship that he says he is jealous? If I am jealous about something, no one should touch that. Why does he give the greatest threatening consequences not only to me, but to the whole family group, community, and tradition that comes from me? They will be punished and cursed. We see the effect on many whose forefathers were in the wrong traditional church worship. Whatever you tell them now, even if it is a den of thieves, it is as if a curse holds them there. They cannot come out. Those who attend such worship not only destroy their souls but also bring curses on their children and their children’s children.
Someone said you are all preaching the Old Testament. But if there is one time when the humble, loving, infinitely patient Jesus was so very angry with red-hot eyes, and even took a whip and vehemently drove people out and turned tables, it was when he said, “My Father’s house is a house of prayer,” meaning a sacred place where souls communicate with God and grow in the image of God. But “you have made it a den of thieves,” where people are exploiting others for financial gain, giving false promises that God will prosper them, and teaching them how to be rich, successful, and healed. Hear me: God will not bless you, but your soul is ruined by such places.
You don’t believe the second commandment’s serious threat? God not only threatened with his second commandment, but also executed it when people broke it. We saw that in Leviticus 10. I have been cruising through Leviticus until here, but I am not able to move from here because I think we need to sound this alarm when we hear this “noise in the camp,” where God’s worship is abused. So, we will see this point by point in this chapter. This chapter brings all these points. God is using a teachable moment again to teach the Israelites the seriousness of the regulative principle of worship by the death of two sons of the High Priest Aaron, the death of Nadab and Abihu.
Today’s worship lesson is from a sobering funeral procession: by their funeral, we learn that worship should not be man-centered, but regulative worship should be God-centered. God should be the center of regulative worship.
We learn that lesson from a sobering funeral procession in 4 through 7. Imagine someone dies in our church in the midst of our worship. What will we do? We will forget about all the service, stop the sermon, and then look at the person and their family. In some cases, we may be right to do that. But see here what happens in the midst of worship: two men, not just any men, two sons of the High Priest, are dead in the church. All about them were struck with horror, and every face, as well as theirs, gathered blackness. Great consternation, no doubt, seized them, and they were all full of confusion but were about to burst into lament and crying. Whatever the rest were, the man of God, Moses, who is a matured saint and knows more about God, was composed. Notice what he says: “And Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord spoke, saying: “By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified.”‘”
God must always be worshipped with holiness and reverence and exactly according to his own appointment. If anyone plays in worship, it is dangerous. We come to him in worship. Come very reverent and serious in all acts of devotion, to perform every religious exercise as those who believe that the God with whom we have to do is a holy God, not carelessly or casually as we like. By the way we come to worship, we glorify him before all the people. By the way we come near him, others also should be affected with it. Our neighbors should see how serious we are. Our unsaved children should see that we seriously come to the temple. By the way we behave and pray, they should get the impression that the living God is in our midst. Not playing, disorderly, or careless, as they get the impression we ourselves don’t believe God is holy.
Verse 4 says, “Then Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, ‘Come near, carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp.'” Verse 5 says, “So they went near and carried them by their tunics out of the camp, as Moses had said.” Two cousins of these two, Mishael and Elzaphan, he tells them to scoop up these two men.
See how he brings focus on God even at this time. Though it touched him in a very tender part—they were his brother’s sons, like his sons—this is the worship of God; there is no room for personal emotions or affection. In the temple of God, we should keep good order and a due decorum in the sanctuary. To keep the focus on God, he calls two cousins, Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron. They were Levites only and might not have come into the sanctuary; he tells them to carry the body.
We could see it maybe in our mind’s eye, cradling them, one arm behind the neck and the other arm under the knees as they carry each of their cousins out. The limp, fire-struck, thirty-year-old dead bodies. Leviticus keeps telling us that at the age of thirty years old, a man qualifies to be a priest in the service of the living God. Whenever we hear death news, we ask how old they are. These were young men in their thirties who were in the full flush of their strength. It is twice noticed in scripture that they died childless, which is very sad. God justly blotted out their names and laid that honor in the dust for playing in worship.
These men are carried out of the tabernacle, their dead bodies. Remember, the whole nation is standing around the tabernacle, probably a narrow corridor that had been formed by the silent multitude of the stunned Israelites. Doubtless, it was a very awful and affecting sight to the people. They all see the children of the High Priest carried as dead bodies, still in their priestly garments. None of them moves from their place.
All saw them grandly dressed going inside the temple. Now their dead bodies come out. They saw their presumption going with strange fire, and now all see their doom. God made all to see with their own eyes what will happen if you play in the worship of God. All saw God’s worship dishonored by their hands, and all must now see God’s worship honored in their death.
Think of what a heartbreak this was to the people. Now Moses and Aaron are old and are going to live only a few years. After them, people may have thought the next great leaders are Nadab and Abihu. They became very great and honorable among them. They were now lifted to the priesthood with a special dress and honor, and were looked upon as the great favorites of heaven. Now all hopes are gone, as they see two dead bodies. They were carried with grand priestly dresses, with the visible marks of divine vengeance upon them, as sacrifices to the justice of God. Thus the impartiality of God’s justice was proclaimed, and all the people were made to know that even the priests’ garments would not protect an offender from the wrath of God. And it was easy to argue, “If they escape not when they transgress, can we expect to go unpunished?” They could not help but cry out, “Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?” (1 Samuel 6:20).
Maybe only a few relatives went out, tore their clothes, and followed the sobering funeral procession. They all had to go outside the camp in the wilderness and bury their dead bodies. They carried them out (and probably buried them) in their coats, and the garments of their priesthood, which they had lately put on, and perhaps were too proud of. And the priests’ clothes were so soon made grave-clothes.
Moreover, imagine Aaron, the father who sees his two eldest sons’ dead bodies. Look at what Moses tells them in verses 6-7: “And Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and Ithamar, his sons, ‘Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and wrath come upon all the people. But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord has kindled. You shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die, for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you.’ And they did according to the word of Moses.”
Moses tells Aaron and the surviving sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, and he prohibits them from doing something that would be very natural. He prohibits them from participating in the mourning and weeping over the death of their sons and brothers.
Notice in verse 6, there is a threat that is given. “Don’t uncover your heads, don’t tear your clothes that you might die,” is the threat. If you do it, you will not only be struck dead like them. If you do it, Jehovah’s wrath will come out against the whole congregation. “Lest you die likewise, and lest wrath come upon all the people, who may be in danger of suffering for your irreverence, and disobedience, and ungoverned passions.” Verse 7 says, “And therefore, they are told that they are to not go out from the doorway. They are to stay in the tent.”
They are not to follow the wailing procession to the outskirts of the camp. Now, it may have been in the hearts of these three a question in their grief. Why? “Why, Lord, must we damn up our swelling hearts? Why must we hold in this natural, heart-bursting of our souls?” We even think of the pain of Aaron. Imagine a loving father with all fatherly compassion for his two elder sons. How it must have been a striking grief to Aaron. These are not rebellious sons like Eli’s children, but good sons who followed their father and became priests; and were given the work of a priest. In their first worship, they are dead. Aaron was not like a European or American who swallows all their grief and is very silent in funeral homes. No, Aaron was a Jewish individual like Indians whose hearts and whose emotions are very passionate and very volatile. They express it strongly by tearing clothes and throwing mud on their heads and hair. But he is told that he is to hold it all in. Why?
Why were they silently carried away? Why should Aaron and his brothers control their natural affection and emotion? Why? Because in the regulative worship of God, God should be the center of the worship. Moses, now a matured man, remembers how he was fearful, giving excuses for going to Egypt. All these years he has learned about the glory of God and seen the holiness of God, and he knows this is God’s worship; the focus must be 100% upon God and his glory. It is God’s day. The worship is to be God-centered, and these two dead men are not to have the primary focus. Though these are cousins, his brother’s sons, he kept the focus on God and told them to carry their body.
The responsibility to make it centered is the job of the priests, leaders, and today’s pastors. Well, the rationale is given in verse 7b: “for the Lord’s anointing oil is upon you.”
The reason why you must not mourn like the rest is because you have been elevated to a high position as representatives and priests of God. And this is a unique position as his priests. It is your primary duty then, God is saying, to identify yourselves entirely with my viewpoint as my representatives and as my mouthpiece. The honor of which must be carefully preserved by your doing the duty of your office with cheerfulness.
You are not to arouse any suspicion in the minds of the people of God that you condoned your sons’ sin. It could be that if they were left to grieve and to wail, the congregation may illegitimately interpret this as either a countenancing or an agreeing with their sin. And on the other hand, it could be interpreted as a disputing with the justice of the living God.
And therefore, there was silence. There was silence and submission from these three men, that believing father and those aching brothers. And this silent submission was an eloquent testimony of their ultimate allegiance to Jehovah at whose altar they had been commissioned to serve.
Aaron and his other sons must neither be diverted from nor unfitted for the great work that was now upon their hands. “Let the dead bury their dead,” but they must go on with their service; that is, “Rather let the dead be unburied, if there be nobody else to do it, than that work for God should be left undone by those whom he has called to it.”
They were now actually waiting, doing a great work, which must by no means cease. Moses says in verse 6B, “But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord has kindled.” Not only the loss of their priests, but especially the displeasure of God which appeared in it. They must bewail the burning that was kindled, that it might not burn further.
Let me give a few applications here.
- God should be the center of our worship. Worship is done primarily to glorify God. Do you realize why we do what we do? Only seven things God has commanded in the New Testament:
- Prayer – 1 Timothy 2:1, “I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.”
- The reading of the Scriptures – 1 Timothy 4:13, “Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.”
- Preaching of God’s word – 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”
- Singing – Ephesians 5:19, “speaking to one another with psalms, hymns.”
- The Lord’s Supper – 1 Corinthians 11.
- Baptism.
- Offering – 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
I titled this message, “Man-centered worship will ruin your soul,” because as we saw, God’s divine redemptive presence comes to us when we worship God according to his word. As we saw in chapter 9, there is a blessedness of redemptive presence. That presence revives our soul, strengthens our inner man, makes us grow in grace, and nourishes our soul.
What happens in man-centered worship is the ruining of souls. As we saw, it makes us reject the only saving means for our soul, but also the healthy soul food for our soul, which is God’s word. Preaching of God’s word becomes boring to such people attending such places. The soul is blessed when it connects to the living God, but this worship never allows us to connect by giving us a distorted view of God, and we connect with mental idols, not the living God. This diminishes His holiness, sovereignty, and the true purpose of our relationship with Him.
See how wrong the priorities are. The entire focus of such worship is on feelings over truth. It’s about emotional hype rather than genuine heart transformation and reverence for God. It prioritizes emotional experiences and “felt needs” over a deep understanding of God’s Word and His character. This hinders genuine spiritual growth because the emphasis is on our needs and desires rather than on learning God’s will and becoming more like Christ. False, distorted biblical truth: To make worship more appealing to people’s preferences, churches might downplay or ignore challenging teachings in Scripture and the call to discipleship, leading to a distorted understanding of God’s truth.
It ruins the soul by making us more self-absorbed. The focus shifts from glorifying God to getting something from Him. People treat God as a means to an end. It weakens the soul with a lack of spiritual depth or resilience to face trials and persecution. This leads to a very shallow, false faith that is easily swayed by emotions and circumstances. Such people, when they have a small problem in life or sickness, have no strength or hope; they become very weak and run to towers and pastors.
Curses: The primary purpose of worship is to glorify God, not to make us feel good. Man-centered worship misses this fundamental point, robbing God of the honor and praise He deserves. Romans 1 curses are all effective in such worship. Given up to a depraved mind and lusts: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”
Such churches or believers never have a gospel burden or interest. They have no sight of its mission to reach the lost and make disciples. This hinders the spread of the Gospel and the advancement of God’s kingdom. The main thing is to get the crowds, not spread the gospel.
Contrast this with God-centered worship: It exalts God. It recognizes His holiness, majesty, and sovereignty. It makes us truly know God, who our God is, and fills us with confidence and faith. It focuses on His Word. It is grounded in Scripture and seeks to understand and obey His truth. It leads to transformation. It produces genuine spiritual growth and Christlikeness. It empowers for mission. It fuels a passion to share the Gospel and make disciples.
I think it was Martin Luther who said, “A great differentiator is this: is this the devil’s worship/teaching or God’s teaching?” Does it lift man or God? Ask wherever you are attending, “Is this worship truly focused on God, lifting God or lifting man?”
Do you see how perverted worship is today? In the name of worship, notice all the songs; it is not about singing great hymns about who God is. One of the impressions I have nearly every time I read the Psalms is how God-centered they are. We worship God; it is all man-centered songs, not about how much God loves, but how much we love God. All the focus is on who we are, not who God is. Just listen to all the songs; it is all about me. The lyrics in our worship music are filled with “me-isms.” Notice how many times “I,” “me,” and “we” are included, and how little “God” is mentioned. For example: “Oh God, I need you, I love you; you are my everything; I desire you.” A large portion of the words of many of these songs are about ME. My feelings. My needs. My fears. My future. My Jesus. My heart. Instead of “you are glorious, you are loving, blessed.” Notice the focus is not us, but God. Our focus should be God and who he is in regulative worship. We have to search for theocentric (God-centered) lyrics over anthropocentric (human-centered) words. Only these songs are distracting the focus away from our Great God and onto self.
When the sermon starts, what is the sermon focused on? Who God is, and what God says. See the truth of God, and in the application, see how we are sinning against God, and we need to change and repent. We need to learn. No, it is all focused on felt needs. It is all about tearing Bible verses from context, with no care for the literary context or any hermeneutics, twisting the Bible and saying something that makes you feel good. You call this the Bible preached practically. The Bible is fully twisted practically. Most of the points from Bethel AG guy are all techniques from self-improvement and personal success stories over theological truth. I have never heard challenging teachings of the Bible or calls to repentance, but only watering down the message.
They don’t teach how you can live to glorify God and obey God’s word, but how you can use God to solve your problems and become rich. They just give feel-good messages instead of making them deeply think of God’s truths. Is this worshipping God in spirit and truth? This is idol worship. That is why some people come here and say, “Oh boy, this is a very tough teaching.”
Then, they have these celebrity preachers who know how to entertain people. Most of the time, his sermon is nothing but the autobiography of this preacher fellow. “Where I went, what I felt, what I did.” The focus is all on him, not on God.
So brethren, the reason I share all this is we need to recognize that the religious air we breathe is thick with the toxic fumes of soul-killing teachings. Shunning a God-centered worship that glorifies God and edifies man, they are instead infected with a man-centered gospel that extols the preacher, misleads the hearer, and damns the soul. We should watch in our worship and church. God should always be honored. Yes, we have to be compassionate and kind to people, but God and his honor are the center of worship, not people.
But how will people come? Paul is evidently teaching that the regulative worship of God’s people on the Lord’s Day is a more powerful evangelistic tool than preaching things attractive to the unsaved and unchurched. They may gather a crowd, but not grow the kingdom.
The problem today is people lack discernment. Discernment is like the immunization of the soul; you know what to allow into your soul and what not to allow. That discernment comes from scripture. But what to do? These people never give time to learn the scriptures because they lack this. All kinds of soul-destroying teaching and worship are allowed. It comes by knowing the truth. Because they don’t spend time, they cannot attend classes like the 1689 confession, and so they never get discernment and allow their souls to be ruined. My heart breaks to see that.
Long gone are the days of Berean Diligence, when serious-minded believers went back to Scripture to authenticate, corroborate, and validate what they heard preached. These days, a vast number of Christians no longer even bother reading the Bible anymore. Watch all these people in such churches; they are all Bible-ignorant people. If they knew the Bible, they would not continue there. Stay away from such people. Their man-centered theology will bring your soul to ruin.
The second lesson: As true worshippers, our loyalty and allegiance to our Lord supersedes that means it goes beyond our loyalty to anyone, even the most intimate family relationships. Do you see it in the passage? In serving Christ, brethren, our Lord, our Master, our loyalty to Him is to be so steadfast that we are willing to dispense with our heart’s most darling objects, to dispense with our most natural affections in order to serve Him and worship Him.
Now we may see this principle that is drawn in faint colors in this passage. It is drawn in more very bold colors in the New Testament with the Lord Jesus’ comments on this theme in Luke chapter 9:59. A man says, “He said to another, ‘Follow me.'” This is Jesus speaking. “But the man said, ‘Permit me first to go and bury my father.'” “But He said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.'” And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first permit me to say goodbye to those at home.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
What kind of allegiance are we to have to the Lord Jesus Christ as His servants? An unconditional loyalty and allegiance. He is to have our supreme allegiance, even over our most natural affections, like our children, wife, parents, and our family. In Luke 14:26, Jesus says, again to great multitudes following, “fair-weather followers, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” You see, what kind of allegiance does Christ require of us? It’s an allegiance that says, “nothing in this world, as Aaron had to give allegiance, even my own flesh and blood,” oh, the passionate love that we have for those who are dear to us in the flesh.
Doesn’t it sometimes, fathers and mothers, make you afraid about the intensity of that love that we have for those who are dear to us in the flesh? But nothing in this world is to approach the supreme possession that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “I consider all things to be lost in comparison to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And so too, very practically, it may be that in our kingdom service labors, it may be simply as a Sunday school teacher, or as a deacon, or pastor, or maybe a future missionary. It may be that allegiance to Christ may call you not to sinfully neglect your family.
But it may call you to profoundly and painfully inconvenience your dear family for the cause of the kingdom. Inconvenience in a painful way. We may not be able to do some things they desire and may have to deny their wishes and desires. When fulfilling a wife’s, husband’s, or child’s desire clashes with Christ’s word, we should choose Christ.
God’s kingdom is always built by such Aarons, who continue the work of worship even when facing the death of their two sons. I think of Pastor Bala, who leaves his sick wife and the facilities of a developed country to travel a long distance and come to build a church. Pastor Pitch, for his 70th birthday, you know his children and grandchildren all wanted him there, but he said, “I have this missionary work to go to.”
Shouldn’t we be able to make these small sacrifices, when our Lord Jesus Christ left his eternal Father’s home and came to us, even to die on the cross? Think of his mother, Mary, right in front of him; her firstborn hanging on the cross. What heartbreak for her, and the swords and the spears that struck her soul at this time. How much she would have tried to stop him. No, it is my Father’s will. But notice, he didn’t fail in his duty as a son, did he? He made preparations for her to be taken care of. But he didn’t give room for all her desires at the expense of disobeying the Father’s will. That is the difference. The Lord Jesus’ loyalty to the Father is supreme, even above his own comfort and his own will. Remember Gethsemane, “pass this cup; but not my will, but yours be done.” I will say, “do not sinfully neglect those who are near and dear.” Allegiance to our Lord superseded even the most intimate of family relationships.
There was a man. He was converted, came out of a Roman Catholic church. We find that he found a God-honoring church in the Reformed Baptist church. His soul was being fed, but his wife, who wanted nothing to do with this new form of religion, threw tantrums and threatened divorce. What should the man do? He was godly. He considered allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ to be supreme, even among his most intimate relationships. And he steeled himself against her crying and he made a decision that was seeking the kingdom of God first above all. Later I heard the wife came to his wife and started attending church and was saved. It is when we become spineless disciples that we destroy ourselves and our families.
Or it may be, brethren, that there is some darling habit that you have. In fact, this habit may be so darling that to lose it might be like the death of a close relative to you. It may be as dear as your wife to you. Maybe it’s watching a match on the Lord’s day. We have to steel ourselves for the purpose of seeking the smile of the living God. Allegiance to Christ, brethren, tramples our most intimate worldly affections.
But let me give what would be the most direct application of this theme. Allegiance to our Lord supersedes even the most intimate family relationships.
I believe the most direct new covenant application would be the event of church discipline or excommunication having been leveled against one of your family members. These men, Nadab and Abihu, were cut off from the covenant in their death, struck dead. And we find in the New Testament when an individual has turned away from the Lord Jesus Christ and committed a sin so heinous without repentance, they are to be excommunicated.
They are to be declared as being dead spiritually. In First Corinthians 5, they are to be handed over to Satan. They are to be buried in the minds of God’s people, as it were, outside of the camp of God’s blessing. And you think about it. Who is the one that we’re speaking about? It may be mothers. That dear son that you nursed at your own breast. And now here he is. He’s 21 years old. He’s gone to the waters of baptism and now he has defied the government of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear mother and dear father, you watch this child as the screws of alienation are tightened upon him, as God’s people rightfully don’t speak to him, as he needs to weigh the gravity of his sin. It’s that moment when it’s like this, brethren, that your allegiance to Christ, for God forbid that it would ever happen, but your allegiance to Christ would be stretched to the limit. And there would be a great temptation to disaffection.
Now I assure you, brethren, this is no theory. No mere theory. This is reality. I know families in other churches who have gone through this. And if I could bring each and every family in front of you, they would say that the pull to sympathize and take the side of my son or my daughter over the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and truth was very soul-sifting for me. In fact, some, a couple in particular, came to the very precipice of apostasy because there was this question, “my dear son whom I love” and “the clear principles of the word of God.” It was too painful for me to steel myself because of giving allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Would to God that it would never happen to us as a church, but we would be naive to think that we would be invulnerable to such a thing. Put away in your own mind the heroics of Aaron here who did not flinch. And you resolve in your mind, maybe while your children are still in their fours, fives, and sixes, that if such a thing would ever happen, ultimate allegiance would be given to the Lord Jesus Christ.