Idolizing the Ministers of the Word

Driving home: No true servant of Christ desires to have as his listeners people who are uncritical, superstitious, and undiscerning in the way in which they listen to him.

A blind man groping in unfamiliar terrain cries for a guide. A hand reaches out. He sighs with relief and follows — until he plunges over a precipice. 'Sir, why did you lead me this way?' The voice answers, 'I forgot to tell you, I'm blind too.' Pictures the danger of trusting blind religious teachers.

I wonder if we've ever allowed the force of that figure to come home to us. Picture a poor blind man groping his way very cautiously in an area where he's not familiar with the topography and the geography and all of the dangers and obstacles until finally he freezes in total fear and he begins to cry out, I'm blind, I'm blind, will someone help guide me? I've been told there are ditches and pits and dangers and I dare not move another moment, another foot. And in response to that voice comes a voice saying, I'll help you, stick out your hand.

6:25 - 7:02 Read in full sermon

The point: Even as you love trusted pastors and esteem them highly in love for their work's sake, actively resist the slow drift toward making them into idols.

Poor Moses running himself ragged settling every case until his father-in-law told him he would go to his grave before sixty — the setup for how Israel's interpreters of the law eventually came to eclipse the word itself.

And his father-in-law came along and said, look, Moses, you're going to go to your grave before you're 60. You need some help. You're having to settle all these cases. And so they set up a way whereby the little cases where the word of God needed to be brought to bear upon given circumstances could be handled by men of lesser importance and authority.

27:54 - 28:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Believe nothing, receive nothing, until you see it with your own eyes in the Scriptures — no matter how beloved the preacher who tells you so.

The Pharisees laid heavy man-made burdens on people's shoulders and the people bent their backs and said 'lay them on us' — a picture of what happens when hearers hand their conscience over to uninspired teachers.

Here these teachers have set up rules and regulations that God never gave through Moses. And yet the people come to them and say, Master, Rabbi, Teacher, what should we do to please God? And now they gave out their man-made rules. You know what these foolish people did?

31:49 - 32:08 Read in full sermon

The point: Be wary of popular evangelical doctrines (such as taking Christ as Savior but not as Lord) that have no real biblical substance and persist only because people have stopped testing preachers' words.

Pastor Clark's phrase for those who will twist good ministry into fuel for pride in their own understanding — Pastor Martin's wry acknowledgment that he is feeding some such hearers even as he preaches.

You'll find fuel to feed your own pride if you can understand what you define as good as anyone else.

39:14 - 39:21 Read in full sermon