AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part VIII The Sins of Intellectual Freedom and Lazy Preachers.

REVIEW.

If you've not read the articles on the MENTAL GHETTO I define the Mental Ghetto as the condition common in Evangelical America. That condition is the purposeful ignorance of biblical things. I call this on-purpose ignorance aphronism. The folks in the pew like this condition because hard thought and study aren't required. Clergy like it because they don't have to strive for accuracy and they are allowed to teach just about anything. Corporate "Christianity" likes it because they can keep selling books, music, t-shirts, conferences, and baubles that biblically-informed folks would never touch. So the Ghetto Bosses have a lot to lose if the folks in the pews get wise. And those folks seem to like napping. The ghettos in American cities are populated by folks who get money to stay there and do so because they are lazy. Their enablers are politicians who sell the tax money of hard working folks for votes from lazy folks. The Mental Ghetto is populated by folks who'd rather watch TV than do Bible study. The enablers are preachers who don't want to hold them accountable or be held accountable by them. The pimps are Corporate Christianity in the form of pulbishers, conferences, the music industry and preachers who thrive in an environment where the market is full of folks who don't know much about Scripture and don't care much about the little they do know.

THE SIN OF APHRONISM IN THE PULPIT. Mentally lazy preachers dishonor God and deceive the folks.
A. W. Pink lived from 1886 to 1952 and he disrespected his preaching peers greatly for the sin of aphronism. He said that he and others like him made "the same charge against the majority of the preachers of our day, and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept the teachings of others." (1) So, too, I disrespect the typical ME preacher. Only a very few are godly men doing God's work.

Too strong? Let me lay out some facts from my own experience, many of which you will be able to confirm from yours with only a little reflection. The best preachers preach out of the Greek or at least study the passages for their sermons in the Greek. And when we hear fellows like this, telling us what the text means in the original, we all know we are hearing one of the better workmen filling our pulpits. But wait.

Why only Greek?

Simple. Greek's easier. Greek covers only 27% of Scripture. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Why ignore 72-73% of the Bible? The pattern is skewed for our young preachers-to-be. They hear the Greek expounded, never the Hebrew. As a result, the language many of our schools offer is the Greek alone. They do this to get enrollment up. Money and numbers matter more than obedience. If they demanded that young men learn to read the entire Scripture, some would flunk and some would go to another, easier school. Fewer students means fewer dollars and a lesser stature in their denomination and the ME "church" in general. So they're not about to do the right thing. Isn't it logical to learn Hebrew first? The first Scriptures were written in Hebrew. In order to properly understand the New Covenant, don't we need to know the Old Covenant? How do you recognize a Hebraism in the NT if you don't know Hebrew literature? Indeed, most ME preachers don't understand ekklesia (church) because they've never studied qahal and eydah. A common error is that God's church started in Acts. I didn't. It started in Exodus. But since the OT is seldom sermonized or studied, few know that. The old time commentators knew that. Why don't we? Ancient Israel was constantly called God's bride and spoken about as the wife of Yahweh, committing adultery when she openly sinned. Yet, if you ask the typical ME preacher or member when the bride of Christ started or what it is, they will answer the "church", meaning the believing Gentiles from the time of Acts. They've been told that by lazy preachers who know neither their Bibles nor their history.

Did you know that the bride metaphor occurs only once in the NT, but many times in the OT? Probably not. Blame your pastor. Correct him at your own risk.

And if you think misunderstanding the Hebrew nature of the concept of ekklesia isn't important, you're wrong. Because many see the church as Gentile, many deny the restoration of Israel or even practice spiritual or political antisemitism. We aren't better than the Jews, nor are we their replacement in history. We are'nt a new thing. We are grafted into the old thing. We serve the Hebrew God. WE'RE the redheaded stepchildren, not the Jews. Read Romans 9-11.

Worse still, there are many, many pastors who learned Greek and/or Hebrew in school, but have allowed them to become rusty. I can't even relate to these guys. What are they doing in their study time? Having been given the privilege and responsibility to speak for God to men, they're nonchalant? Why aren't they straining every nerve to be accurate? Inaccuracy was a capital offense in the OT. Read Deuteronomy 18. How can a man be indifferent to that and pretend to be godly? Is this not a sham? It's worse than a sham. It's fraud. When a young man comes to a church and gives his credentials, which include the languages, he ought to use the languages. If he gets hired with these claims, and then doesn't even use the languages, he is defrauding the folks hiring him.

Even worse than "worse still", there are many preachers who've made no effort to learn the languages at all. If God called them to preach, fine. But, in a day when one can buy a grammar and get to work or even learn on the internet, why are they still reading only translations instead of Scripture itself?

There is even need for a caution about expositional preaching. Expositional preaching is an effort to mine the word of God. There's nothing wrong with it and the motivations that have popularized it in so many circles are the most godly imaginable. Preachers and pastors who do exposition from the pulpit are some of the finest we have. However, there's also a danger.

The danger in expositional preaching is an accidental myopia. The nature of the NT epistles is compact and doctrinal. Indeed, a preacher can easily find one verse that could be preached for months without exhausting it. But, it's wise to remember three things. First, even the epistles were letters to be read to a congregation orally. The aim, then was to present a doctrinal argument, detailed as the epistles are, in a single reading. That being so, it cannot logically or biblically be said that a simple reading of chapters or entire books at a time without comment to a church isn't profitable. The congregation will be spiritually fed and served if all that is done is a reading of Romans. Of course, it's quite a question if there is any congregation in America so interested in just Scripture that they'd listen long enough to do that.

Second, most of the Bible isn't compact doctrine, but narrative. Some is poetry. Some is apocalyptic. OLD Testament narrative is full of doctrine. Exodus doesn't expound a single doctrine. But it puts on brilliant display the doctrines of sovereignty, the holiness of God, corporate holiness, individual holiness, redemption, salvation, mercy, forgiveness, the responsibility of man under the sovereignty of God, and even the doctrine of the church. As a result of doing only expostion, some preachers seldom teach from the Old Testament, Acts, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets, OT history, or the Gospels. This has led to deficits like the one mentioned above.

Third, even in the compact, doctrinal epistles, the overview is often lost on the congregation. The end result is two-fold. 1. The listeners often remain ignorant of the theme or general argument of a book and its place in the historical narrative and theology of Scripture even after hearing the preacher expose the entire book. 2. The listener actually learns to view a particular verse without reference to its immediate context, its context in the argument or narrative of the book, and the place it holds in the context of Scripture as a whole.

I'll end this section with a story. I know someone whom I consider one of the best in MEism. He is in full time ministry. I have urged him from time to time to "think biblically". And from time to time he has told me of his irritation with hearing that. Yet, he didn't understand the parable of the wheats and tares. Many preachers have misapplied the parable from Matthew 13 to mean that folks can't be kicked out of the church. What happened? He listened much to other preachers without reading the parable and Jesus' explanation later in chapter 13, just like A. W. Pink said most preachers did even in his day. And Pink was right to call it laziness.

There are many things plain to our forefathers which seem mysterious to ME preachers. How many could name the covenants? How many could tell you when the church began and get it right? How many could easily tell you accurately the doctrine of sanctification?

But lots of them can tell you quotes from Spurgeon and all about spiritual formation.

THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.
Charleston Heston fibbed to us. God's assembly was established in the book of Exodus and that book says lots and lots about God's people being freed from Pharoah's Egypt and the slavery there. And we've been taught that God told Pharoah, "Let My people go." That's a lie. He didn't say that at all. He said, "Let My people go that they may serve Me."

See the difference?

And God didn't say this once. He said it over and over.

Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness. Exodus 5:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the wilderness. Exodus 7:16.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 8:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 8:20.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 9:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 9:13.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 10:3.

I'd say that's a theme.

When I was in college, I wasn't saved, but I was very religious and I went to Campus Crusade. A coed that also attended was preparing to go to seminary. When I asked her about her career plans for after grad school, she said she wanted to be a pastor. I brought up the instruction of Paul concerning men, not women, as overseers. I can remember her answer to this day. The reason I remember it was because at the time I was disturbed by all the church goers who just seemed to be ho-hum toward the strictures of Scripture. It seemed to me that many saw biblical interpretation as a game, as if asking, "What sorts of different positions can I come up with and choose from?" They seemed to consider it quite clever and intellectual to discuss, but not decide. And as long as an argument could be proffered, any position was legit.

That's why I remembered my friend's answer. I don't even remember her name after all these years, but I remember EXACTLY, WORD FOR WORD, her answer just like she said it. When I mentioned that Paul said only men should be pastors, she said, "You can get around that."

Oh.

Does the Bible give us that sort of intellectual freedom? Is this intellectual freedom or just old fashioned lying? The Bible says we're slaves. Before regeneration we're slaves of sin and Satan. After regeneration we're slaves of righteousness and God. The issue isn't freedom as conceived by most Americans. It's a question of who your master will be. Romans 6:16 says, "Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?" This is important in the Mental Ghetto because intellectual freedom is used as an excuse so often that it's hard to understand just why studying is all that important if life in Christ is multiple choice non-test on almost every issue.

Paul wrote specifically and directly to our thought life. We have no freedom except from the tyranny of man and Satan. (And against that tyranny, WE ARE TO BE RADICALLY REBELLIOUS.) God is our Master. II Corinthians 10:5-6 says, "...destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete."

Notice two things about that passage:

1. Speculation is a "lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God". Imagination, speculation, subjectivity, and "listening for God's voice" internally have no place in Christianity.

2. Speculation and NOT being an intellectual slave to God's revealed will in Scripture is worthy of punishment. That is why we shun false teachers and those who follow them and strive for biblical accuracy in our own lives.

Be holy,
Phil Perkins.

(1) Pink, A. W.; The Attributes of God; Sovereign Grace Publishers; Lafayette, Indiana; copyright 2002 by Jay P. Greene Sr.; ISBN 1-58960-320-6; p. 27.

PS--Sorry for going too long. The sin of sensitivity and the hypocrisy it breeds will have to wait for next time.

Comiing in Part IX:
THE SIN OF SENSITIVITY.

SENSITIVE HYPOCRITES.