Tree of Life Blog

Maybe you have friends who are falling for inclusionism. Maybe you are pastor or church leader having to deal with this problematic issue. I haven’t actually preached this, but it is a short sermon outline I have penned to refute inclusionism and call people to the need to believe and receive the good news, not just to get saved and to walk in the promises of God.

• Matthew 7:23 “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” Let’s start with the words of Jesus Christ Himself. He is talking about the fact that at some point, some people will not enter Heaven. That’s the truth. Inclusionists say that no one will ever have to depart from Christ, but that is not what Jesus Christ Himself says. In dealing with inclusionism we must start at this point – some people will one day have to depart from Christ, and we must go to the words of Jesus, go to the Bible, and make sure that we are among those who do not have to depart, rather than just make up – against the words of Jesus Himself – a lie that no one will ever have to depart from Him. We have to agree with Jesus here. we cannot disagree.

• John 6.47 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” So, in making sure that we are not in the group of people who depart from Jesus, we go to the words of Jesus. Jesus starts this verse by letting us know that He is telling us the truth. The way to have everlasting life is not to find out that God forced it on us, but to believe in Him, to put our faith and trust in Jesus! That is the pathway to salvation. We are not saved by works, we are not saved by doing nothing either. We are saved by grace through faith. We have to believe. It’s that simple, Jesus said it and that’s the truth.

• Romans 1.16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” Unsurprisingly Paul agrees with Jesus! The good news is the proclamation of Christ that has power to save us when – and only when – we believe it. The gospel is not the announcement of a God who has set us free whether we like it or not – it is the announcement of freedom paid in full and all we need to do is believe. Notice that both Jews and Gentiles have to believe! The path of salvation and the principle that we must believe the gospel to receive the power of the good news is universal to every single human, no matter their past or background.

• Hebrews 4.2 “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” Look at how strongly it is preached here – the gospel does not benefit everyone! It only benefits those who believe it, who put their faith in it. The idea that everyone is included before they believe holds zero weight when it comes to the Scripture. There are precisely zero benefits to a gospel that is not mixed with faith. And that is the clear teaching of Scripture.

• 2 Cor. 6.14 “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” One of the mandates of the New Testament is that we do not yoke together with unbelievers. That makes no sense in an inclusionist world. Why does believing or not believing matter? Why does it matter unless believing saved us and puts us in the place where we are going a whole new direction. No inclusionist has discussed this or thought through the moral implications that faith has no role in salvation or obtaining anything from God!

• 1 John 3.15 “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” Just want to bring John into the mix here as well. John points out here that there are people – unbelievers – who have no eternal life inside them. That is exactly the opposite of what inclusionists teach. Inclusionism teaches we are all born born again, we all have eternal life and we are all saved from the beginning. But John deals with this head on and points out some people do not have eternal life inside them. This verse also builds on what we said about 2 Cor. 6.14, there is a way to live as a Christian, and the way and power to live that way comes from believing. Believing and receiving is how the whole kingdom of God works. To eliminate faith from the Scriptures butchers the entire New Testament. To say that everyone has eternal life contradicts Jesus, Paul and John. It leaves us without a moral framework, without a way to live and without a way to conquer, without a way to reach others and help them receive eternal life. Rather it weakly proclaims to a murderer – ignore the Bible, ignore that you just murdered someone, ignore all the hate in your heart – you honesty, really, truly, have eternal life. It’s nonsensical and unbiblical, but people still proclaim this!

• Romans 3.22 “even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:” There are so many Scriptures that could be put in place to finish this message, because the necessity of faith in God’s promises is all over the New Covenant, from Galatians, to Hebrews – which has a whole chapter on how people change the world “by faith” – but I wanted to wrap up with this verse from Romans, because it doesn’t just refute inclusionism, it helps us all understand the heart of the good news.

We were not born “born again”, we were not born righteous, we were not born right with God. We were born in sin. We needed a way to gain righteous not just so we can get into Heaven and not have to depart from Jesus, but so that we can pray and get those prayers answered, so we can enjoy the grace and mercy and blessings of God every day. So the power of salvation can flow through us and into this world. We are not automatically righteous and we cannot behave our way into righteousness. But because of God’s goodness and because of the work of the cross, righteousness is freely available. It is there for all of us, but it is not forced on any of us. It is unto those who believe. Anyone who believes can receive the righteousness of God. Anyone. But if you do not believe, it is not forced on you.

If you are a believer today, you are now as righteous as Jesus. You have the righteousness of God. It was a gift from Him! Your believing in Jesus opened the door to Him to be able to freely give you the same righteousness that He had on the earth. You can approach God without fear, without shame, without any sense of being second best. How wonderful! How glorious! But you have to believe to receive. You can believe and receive, or you can doubt and do without. God is love and love does not force salvation on anyone without consent. But all you need to do is believe and that belief gives God the consent to transform your spirit from sin to righteousness and pour His eternal life in you. It’s that simple!

This is where inclusionism is an issue for us as Christians – it doesn’t help people, it doesn’t create better more fruitful disciples, it cuts people off from what they need to move forward and be a life success.

We had a lady in our church who was clearly growing in the Lord. She was moving into a very fruitful life and seeing the promises of God manifest in her life. Then someone on social media sent her a link to some teaching on inclusionism and she watched the videos and found them really exciting. This is one of the problems with people – we have itching ears, we like things that sound new and intriguing. We tend to reject solid, established truth, we like to be cutting edge. “New” doctrines definitely appeal to our ego!

Now there is only a handful of things that if you do you will grow spiritually. One of the most important is going to church, another vital key to walking in abundance and life is tithing and giving, and another thing that every healthy Christian should be doing is reading their Bible. In addition, it helps us as well as helps the world to share the good news with others!

However, inclusionism leads invariably to people stepping back from these four key things:

• I cannot quite get the link straight in my mind, but I have found that whenever someone embraces inclusionism they step away from local church. I think it is due to a feeling superior than the local church, and superior to everyone else who believes you must believe the gospel. Also, if the will of God is forced on us and salvation is pushed on us without consent, I do wonder if deep down that makes it difficult to worship God – thinking that He forced salvation on us. Finally, why bother going to church if faith means nothing, and it is all grace. Why bother going to a place that is going to give you the Word, equip you and encourage you?
• Inclusionism is very much linked with a lack of giving. As soon as someone switches to inclusionism, their tithing stops, their giving goes down. Sowing less will lead to less harvest! It will lead to less success. But when people get into inclusionism, they will often say sowing and reaping is legalism, tithing is not for today, and they will attack those who teach otherwise.
• If faith is not important, then people stop reading their Bible. I have heard several inclusionism teachers even mock people for reading their Bible, and one prominent teacher say publicly “I never even read my Bible anymore”. That’s foolishness!
• Finally, if everyone is already saved, then why risk persecution and rejection by sharing your faith with them? You are missing out on winning people to the Lord and missing out on the joy and benefits of sharing what God has done for you.

So this lady drifted from church, stopped giving, stopped reading her Bible and stopped sharing her faith. It doesn’t take a prophet to work out what happened next – she backslid, she stopped living in victory, life’s problems started to overwhelm her and she ended up in a mess. We have helped her a lot, but we haven’t been able to get her to realize that it is her bad, unbiblical doctrines that are causing the problems.

Inclusionism is presented as a freedom, but it is not a freedom. It leads to a lack of discipline, a lack of generosity, a lack of serious Bible study, a lack of fellowship, a lack of wisdom. That’s not freedom, that’s bondage. And the fruit of it is a lack of success, a lack of joy, a lack of peace and a lack of victory.

This is my main concern with inclusionism. It leads to fruitless lives. There are no inclusionist ministers having healing services! There are no choices full of testimonies of God’s goodness and power. If you have embraced inclusionism, how is it working for you? It isn’t. It is that simple. The truth is what the Bible teaches:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God to all who believe (Romans 1.16)

If you embrace a doctrine that says we do not need faith, we do not need to believe, and you neglect believing, what will happen is you will disconnect yourself from the power of God. That means no miracles, no healings, no favour, no life changing prosperity, no increase, no peace, no joy. Without the power of God you cannot produce those things in your life. That is the harm of inclusionism.

Our next post will give you Seven Scriptures That Invalidate Inclusionism. It’s going to open your eyes!

The first time I encountered inclusionism in the Tree of Life Family, was in one of our churches when a couple were – in a very excited and very animated way – explaining how wonderful it was to me. They brought the discussion around to how inclusionism proves that Jesus is better than Adam, and that the traditional way of understanding salvation makes Jesus worse than Adam!

They explained to me that because Adam’s sin affected every single human without their choice, then obviously Jesus’s redemption must affect every single human without their choice. As I tried to suggest to them the Scriptures that I mentioned in my previous post that we have to choose life and it is not forced on us by God, they then told me that if I believed that I believed that Jesus was not as powerful as Adam. They were very insistent on this point – that for me to say you have to choose salvation is the same as me making Adam more powerful and more wonderful than Jesus.

But are they correct? is this what the Bible actually teaches? It all comes back to Romans 5 (which incidentally is my favourite chapter of the Bible). Let’s look at verses 12-15:

¹² Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

¹³ To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

¹⁵ But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5.12-15, NIV)

Look carefully at verse 15. It clearly tells us that the gift is not like the trespass. They are not the same. But the inclusionist will tell you they are different because the gift is better than the sin, and that Jesus is so good that just like everyone fell because of Adam and died spiritually without choice, then everyone is given the new birth by Jesus without choice. For the inclusionist, to say otherwise is to say Adam is greater than Jesus and that grace is greater than sin.

But that’s not a “much more” work. That’s the same work! If Adam’s sin brought death to everyone and Jesus’s grace gave the new birth to everyone, that’s not a greater work – that’s the same work. What the work of Jesus did is not the same, it’s so much greater. Let’s compare the two:

Adam’s sin brought death to all humans. Every man suffers from spiritual death because of Adam, without any choice at all. That’s not a good work, that’s a terrible work. We had no choice. Adam, without your choice, brought death to your planet and your family and your spirit. It was forced on you. That’s not a great work, that’s horrible. Now if Jesus did the same thing and forced salvation on you without your consent, that’s two things forced on you without your consent – sin by Adam and salvation by Jesus. That’s not fair, that’s not good. Your free will is more important to the Lord than forcing you into Heaven or the blessings of heaven.

Let’s keep reading Romans 5:

¹⁶ Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. ¹⁷ For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! (Romans 5.16-17, NIV)

The gift of God cannot be compared with the result of sin! One is forced on you by Adam’s failure, and one is a free gift, that verse 17 is very clear on: you have to receive it. It is not forced on you – you have to believe it and receive it. You have to choose life. That makes what Jesus did not the same as what Adam did, but so much greater!

Then the inclusionist will say, but look at verse 18. They love verse 18. It might be their favourite verse. Let’s read it:

¹⁸ Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. (Romans 5.18 NIV)

“Can you see” this couple said to me, “this verse proves that all people are made righteous by Jesus”. If Adam condemned everyone, then Jesus justified everyone? No – that’s not what happened! The cross does not impose itself on you without your choice. You always can choose life or choose death. The cross opened up the choice of life. True life, abundant life. You have a choice – are you going to believe in Jesus’ work or reject it. To deny that choice is to reduce the free gift of God’s grace and make it a forceful action pushed on us without consent.

Your ability to make choices matters too much to God to force salvation on you, like Adam forced sin into your spirit! God loves you so much He gave His only begotten Son but He also loves you so much that you have to believe to benefit from it, He will not force it on you. God loves you too much to give you His grace without your consent. For God, no means no. He wants you to make a choice for Him, a choice for life, because that’s the nature of love – it lets you choose, it does not force itself on us.

For inclusionists the gospel is not good news to be believed, it’s an announcement that a God who does not care about consent has already secretly forced the new birth on us and all we need to do is find out about after the event. That is not love, that is not grace, and that does not make Jesus better than Adam!

In our next post we will look at the harm that inclusionism does to individuals and the church.

Ever felt harassed? The Greek word for harassed means literally to forget who you are. You are under so much pressure you don’t even remember who you are, you forget the basics. Ever acted in a way that you look at yourself and think “I don’t even recognize myself”, “I know better than this”, “This isn’t me! Or is it…”

Ever felt helpless? The Greek word for helpless means you are moved by something other than yourself. Ever felt like a sickness, a situation, the Covid is too much for you? Ever felt that the woman I saw in the park the other day with a Doberman – I wasn’t sure who was taking who for a walk. Ever felt like life is taking you for a walk rather than the other way around. Ever felt helpless before the storm.

I can tell you why you feel that way, and I can give you the solution. It’s actually really simple.

Let’s read the Word.

³⁵ Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. (Matthew 9.35 NIV)

Look at what is going on here. These people were being taught by Jesus! Jesus was their teacher! Some of the greatest Bible teachers in the world are friends of mine. I love teaching, and I love hearing good Bible teaching, but I bet no-one I have ever listened to could hold a candle to Jesus. I reckon Jesus was the best Bible teacher in all of history. I reckon these people were the best taught people ever. I reckon you could watch TBN and God TV for weeks and weeks and not be taught as well as these people who were taught personally by Jesus! These people were well taught. They had a great teacher.

In addition, Jesus proclaimed good news to them. That’s the ministry of an evangelist. I love great evangelists, I know several people who are precious evangelists winning tens of thousands of people to the Lord around the world. I love people who proclaim the good news. I love good evangelists. But again, I don’t reckon any of us have ever heard someone proclaim the good news as well as Jesus did to these people. These people were the best raught people in the universe and the best evangelised.

In addition, these people saw Jesus heal the sick. They saw Him heal every sickness and disease. That’s a whole lot of miracles.

You would think that these people, having had the best teaching in the world, the best preaching of the gospel in the world, having seen miracle after miracle after miracle, would be the most godly, most successful, most victorious people in the world, but they weren’t. Read on:

³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9.36 NIV)

The crowds, even after the best teaching in the world, the best evangelism in the world, after seeing so many miracles, were still harassed and helpless. Why? They were missing a shepherd. The Greek word for shepherd is poimen, the word for pastor.

I meet so many people like this as I travel as a speaker, or through our TV lines, or who just contact me because the harassment is too much and the feeling of helplessness overwhelms them. And they are doubly confused because they hear great teaching, they watch Christian TV every day, they have been to great Bible Colleges, they have gone to great conferences, they have gone to big crusades, they have seen healings and miracles, so they think they should be successful and full of peace.

But the solution is not more teaching, they will not stop the harassment by more conferences, there is not a Bible College module that will end their feeling of helplessness. Christians are helpless and harassed not because of a lack of teaching, a lack of miracles, a lack of conferences. They are helpless and harassed because they do not have a pastor, they do not go to church, they are not part of a church. They are not being led to green grass and still waters. They are not being prepared a feast in the midst of their enemies, they are not in a place without lack because they do not go to church. It’s that simple.

If someone contacts me and starts sharing about being helpless and harassed, it won’t be long until I ask them “what is your pastor’s name and why are you not going to them” and always the answer is they do not have a pastor, they don’t really go to church. That is the problem. That is why they are helpless. That is why they are harassed. They need a pastor.

There are two kinds of people need to make a response to this post. If you are a Christian and are not being pastored, you are not part of a local church and being discipled in that church, then you need to make a change. And don’t say the words “virtual church” to me. Virtual church means virtual growth, virtual maturity, virtual fellowship and virtually no benefits. It is better than nothing, lockdown has forced us to adapt, but under normal circumstances you absolutely need to be out of bed, off the sofa, out of the house and assembling with the people of God.

Or stay harassed and helpless forever. Keep sliding away from your identity, keep doing and saying things you never thought you would do, and keep floating downstream with the dead fish rather than being in charge of your life and walking in victory. It’s your choice. But choose church, choose life!

And if you are in church and you love Christians and want to help them, then pray. Jesus told His disciples: ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 9.37-38 NIV)

Pray for God to raise up workers. Not just teachers and evangelists, who are both great ministries doing great jobs, but pray for more pastors. More pastors mean more churches mean more workers mean a greater harvest!

Selah.

In our first post on this topic, I explained what inclusionism is, and now we will hold it up to the truth of Scripture.

One of my favourite Scriptures is Deuteronomy 30.19 which says that God has set before us life and death and we can choose. We are told to choose life, but it is definitely seen as a choice. We have the power to choose life or choose death. You have the power to choose life or choose death. God has never and will never force us into the path of life.

This is the worst part of inclusionism – it presents a God who has forced us into the path of life. It denies the Biblical instruction to choose life and the loving, kind God who lets us choose life, and instead gives us a God who forces life on all of us. This destroys faith and harms people’s trust in God.

Ephesians 2.8-9 tells us we are saved by grace through faith. For many years, the church has struggled to grasp the role of grace, and praise God recently many people have been travelling the world and getting on media and sharing about the power of grace and there has been a grace awakening around the church. But inclusionism attacks and misrepresents salvation from the other side: it minimises the role of faith. But doing that makes the grace message equally unfruitful as legalism does.

In trying to exalt grace to the highest place, inclusionism forgets that we are saved, healed, blessed and succeed in life by grace through faith. When you teach that everyone was included in the resurrection of Jesus, that everyone is born born again, then you are ignoring the blessed truth that we need to choose life, we need to believe the gospel, we need to embrace God’s will for our life willingly.

God does not force His grace on anyone. Forced grace is not grace. Grace that was shoved into your life before you were even born is not grace. A God who will not respect a “no” for an answer is not a God of love.

Do you realize inclusionism presents a God who forces Himself on us and will absolutely ignore our choices, refuses to listen to our “no”, and will not ever wait for us to believe His Word? If you realize this then you will realize that inclusionism is absolutely incompatible with the idea that God is love. Inclusionism tells us “everyone is saved”, but the Biblical truth is this: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (Acts 16.31).

Biblically, God has moved by grace at the cross, and now God waits us to respond by faith to His move. Our faith will then receive salvation from the grace. The gospel is presented so clearly in Scripture:

⁸ But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. ¹¹ For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” ¹² For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. ¹³ For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10.8-13 NKJV)

Read that passage very carefully. You have to believe, you have to confess, you have to call on the name of the Lord, to be saved. It is not automatic, it is not done for us. All the payment is done for us, all the grace has been provided for us, but we have to believe to receive, it is not forced on us.

So, let’s go back to the beginning of this article. If grace is not forced on you, if life is not given to us without our request, without our consent, then you have to do what the Scripture says: choose life.

I really believe it is essential that I address the foolish and insidious nature of the doctrine of inclusionism. It has to be addressed and the Biblical truth has to be proclaimed. Before we go any further though and examine this idea, I have to explain what I am talking about.

Firstly, I need to say I believe the gospel is inclusive. Anyone can be saved – no matter their gender, race, previous religion and past. None of that is a barrier to what Jesus did at the cross. However, many things are good until you make an -ism out of them. Inclusion is the same, we all love inclusion, we love everyone, we love being included. We should include people. But if you start to make it an -ism, you distort it so badly and create a teaching that is more than just wrong, it is absolutely harmful to people. As a pastor, I have seen so many people harmed by inclusionism and I want to help people not harm them, so here are my thoughts on the matter.

So, let’s outline what inclusionism teaches. It’s not easy to explain, it’s not a simple system of belief, it is rather awkward and vague. Indeed, many people who teach inclusionism are – in my opinion – deliberately vague about how they teach it because they know how much it will shock people and deep down they know that it does not match the Scripture. But I will outline the key point.

Essentially, inclusionism is the belief that after the resurrection of Jesus everyone is saved. That when Jesus died on the cross, every human died with Him and when He was resurrected, every human was resurrected with Him. So every human subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus was born saved! Or to say it another way – every person was born born again.

So, everyone right now on the planet, according to inclusionism, is born again. Every atheist, every Muslim, every Buddhist. Everyone. Everyone is already righteous, everyone is saved, everyone is in union with Christ, everyone has a living spirit. Through the complete work of Christ, everyone is a recipient of God’s grace whether they believe it or not and whether they like it or not.

So every inclusionist is a universalist – they believe everyone is saved. In inclusionism you do not need faith to be saved, you just are.

That is what inclusionism is, and in my next post, we will look at it in the light of Scripture, specifically the freedom that God has given all of us to choose life.

26 “Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim woven into them by a skilled worker. ² All the curtains are to be the same size—twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide. ³ Join five of the curtains together, and do the same with the other five. (Exodus 26.1-3, NIV)

The Tabernacle of Moses was portable. You could dismantle the whole thing, carry it around and then erect it again in a new location. I believe this is an image of Jesus on earth – moving around from town to town bringing the good news. The Temple of Solomon was certainly not portable and represents Jesus in Heaven, reigning from His throne.

The tabernacle was made from a frame of acacia wood, but was wrapped up like a tent with a curtain made of four different layers, the inner layer being finely twisted linen, which we will look at in this post. Finely twisted in the NIV is fine twined linen, and what it means is the whitest of all white linen. When you realize this, you will be reminded of Mark 9 where the clothes of Jesus became “dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them”. Jesus in His glory was not just whiter than Daz white, He was whiter than any white ever.

In Revelation 7.14, white robes are seen as a symbol of righteousness. And one thing we know about Jesus is that He is righteous. He lived the perfect sinless, righteous life and that was the qualification to be our Saviour. He took our sin and gave us His righteousness.

Now, here is something so powerful. You could not see the inner layer from the outside of the Tabernacle, only the priests could see the white linen. That is a very powerful image. When we meet as church and start singing about Jesus, starting thinking about His grace and goodness, we see His righteousness, His grace and His life. But those who are not priests, not Christians, cannot see how precious and pure Jesus is. You have to come inside to grasp how wonderful He is, and the more we come inside to the Tabernacle and join with Jesus and His body the church, the more pure we see Him as.

Jesus wants to reveal Himself to you as pure and precious, white, righteous, pure, and wonderful. Come inside and see!

Next week, we will look at the other layers of this amazing curtain!

⁸ Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. ⁹ I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, ¹⁰ but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. (1 Tim. 2.8-10 NIV)

Now, this is an interesting issue. What you find a lot in the Bible is it is penned by people who understand something that has been forgotten in our “smart” modern age – that men and women are different. In Ephesians 4, talking about the home life, Paul tells men to love their wives and women to submit to their husbands. But elsewhere he tells us all to love each other and all of us to submit to – to honour and reverence – each other. So, why tell the men to love and the women to honour? Because men generally live in a culture of honour and relate to one another with honour, and need to be reminded to cherish their wives. And women tend to live in a culture of love and relate to each other with love, and need to be reminded to honour their husbands. Doing this will bring both husband and wife together in the middle of the road and bring unity to a home.

In church, we have the same problem. Some churches in the UK are ridiculously feminized, they are not hospitable environments for men to walk into, unless those men are feminized. Paul here is teaching us how to behave in church and again his plan is to move us both to the middle.

He first of all tells the men to pray. Prayer is a lot more natural to a woman than a man, on average. At the end of the day, prayer is communing and communicating with God, and we all instinctively realize women are generally better than men at communicating. So, Paul says “hey men, I know it’s not your strength, but you should be at the prayer meeting, you should be praying to God, you should be praying for the nation to change. Paul also reminds the men not to get angry or get involved iwth disputes. Men would often rather argue a point of doctrine, and have long discussions over a drink, then lift up their hands and commune with God and believe for a better nation.

We need to be taken by the hand by Paul here and be led into the prayer closet. Men, listen to me, when you go to church, you are there to encounter God, to commune with Him in the worship, to hear Him speak to you during the preaching. If someone comes to me at the end of a service to discuss a minor point, and miss all the major points we agree on, nine times out of ten it is a male! Why? That’s our tendency. We break things down into component parts. So, the solution – go to church to pray, to encounter God, don’t worry about the spelling error on the notice sheet, don’t worry about when the preacher misquotes the Bible verse number, don’t worry about disagreeing on one point in the sermon, but rejoice in the 99 points you agree on and love those points and let those points drive you further into communion with God.

Women do not generally need to be reminded of that. So Paul has different instructions with them. He starts off by mentioning dress – he says dress modestly. Now, this has often been taken to refer to not dressing in a salacious or sultry way, and that’s important in church that you shouldn’t look like you are going clubbing, but it’s more than that. It’s about a problem that happens when your culture is relational, you start to compare. You start to look at each other’s clothes. When a woman dresses in a certain way, most men do not notice or comment. It’s women that get upset if a woman wears the same dress every week in a row, it’s women that get upset if two of them wear the same dress to the same event! Paul is saying church should not be like that – it should never be like that. There is nothing wrong with dressing up and looking nice, Paul is not saying that. He is not saying you cannot do your hair up and put some make up and jewellry on, Paul is saying – that is not your adornment. That should not be your purpose in growing to church – to show off the dress.

If you have to show off, then show off your good works. And this is the cruz of the matter for the women – you love God, you relate to God, you pray more than your men, so do something! Sometimes you need to get your head out of the prayer closet and help someone and care for someone and do something. Stuff will always need doing, and sometimes it is hard to do because you have to learn how to do it, it’s boring, you prefer the relationships. Don’t leave all the work to the men! And especially do not leave all the work of the ministry to the men either!

If the men make sure they are interested in prayer, and if the women make sure they are adorning themselves with good works and getting stuff done then the church will come together. If not, then the women will think they are more spiritual than the women, the men will think the women are not doing anything, and the church will divide on those lines. It sounds foolish, but I have seen it happen.

The truth is men and women are different, but we both need the insights and wisdom of each other. If we can all humble ourselves, learn from each other and come towards the middle of the road, the whole church will function better.

³¹ “Make a lampstand of pure gold. Hammer out its base and shaft, and make its flowerlike cups, buds and blossoms of one piece with them. ³² Six branches are to extend from the sides of the lampstand—three on one side and three on the other. ³³ Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms are to be on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand. ³⁴ And on the lampstand there are to be four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms. ³⁵ One bud shall be under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair, and a third bud under the third pair—six branches in all. ³⁶ The buds and branches shall all be of one piece with the lampstand, hammered out of pure gold.

³⁷ “Then make its seven lamps and set them up on it so that they light the space in front of it. ³⁸ Its wick trimmers and trays are to be of pure gold. ³⁹ A talent of pure gold is to be used for the lampstand and all these accessories. ⁴⁰ See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. (Exodus 25.31-40 NIV)

We are talking today about the source of light in the Holy Place, a lampstand. The KJV calls this a candlestick but it was not a candle like you would think of a candle, it was an oil-fueled lamp. Moses was very clear only oil could be the light in the Holy Place (Lev. 24.2). The lampstand was one of three objects in the Holy Place, the showbread we mentioned in our last post and the next post will discuss the altar there. This was where the Levites served daily.

Now, the lampstand is unusual as it is the first object in which we are not given dimensions for. It had to be hammered out of 120lb of pure gold (that’s nearly £2 million worth of gold in today’s prices), the gold reminding us of Jesus – that He is precious and divine! This lamp would have been large, as large almost as the table of showbread that it was opposite.

The bread on the table as we said was Jesus our sustainance, our bread of Life, our growth and maturity. But Jesus is also the lamp shining on the bread. Not only does Jesus feed us – He shows us the way to feed on Himself. He is not just the life, He is the wisdom that shows us how to live the life!

Now Jesus is the light of the world, but this light was not shown to the world. There is a light you can only see inside the tabernacle, and there is a light that only the righteous can see. There is an illumination that we can only have as we turn to Jesus. The light shows us Jesus.

The lampstand had seven cups and they were filled with oil and lit for the light. Oil is often a picture of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been sent to us from Jesus to reveal Him to us, to point us to Him, to exalt Him. What a powerful picture – the Holy Spirit is the light fueling our minds illumination to reveal the Bread of Life to us.

Now to get the lamp to the correct shape to bring light, it needed to be hammered. The Hebrew word is miqshah, and it means to beat the whole object over and over again. To turn a single piece of gold into a lamp without breaking it and just by beating it takes a lot of skill and energy. But think of that image, this block of gold was beat over and over again – and as it was beat it became our light.

Jesus Christ, the God-man, was beat over and over and over. He was whipped again and again, He was nailed to a cross, His beard was ripped off, His head was bleeding, His hands and feet were nailed to the cross, and He died of that beating. But He rose again on the third day, the beating had changed His shape. No longer the one and only Son of God, now He is the first born of many brethren. His suffering transformed Him into the captain of our salvation. His beating made Him the light of the world. And He is still our light today.

What a powerful image of Jesus! The light shines out of the darkness. The dark beating and death of Jesus, his face marred beyond all recognition, his form no longer looking human, has released the light of glory into the world!

2 I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;

² For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

³ For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;

⁴ Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2.1-4, KJV)

When we read 1 Timothy in the light of the fact that Timothy is written by Paul to show us how to behave in local church, we can then put everything penned in the letter into the context of local church – and that includes prayer! Prayer should be at the heart of every local church, every church should pray together, and pray in a variety of different ways.

I am not going to give a general teaching on prayer, but I will tell you that prayer should happen within private and also at the same time in the local church. If you do not have a local church, your prayer life is missing an essential direction. I cannot emphasise that enough – if you are not having success in your prayers and do not go to church, those two things are absolutely related. You need to pray with not just other Christians, not just the Christians you meet in the pub, not just your fellow Bible College students (if none of them go to church, you are all a bunch of clowns) – you need to pray with your church. The first time the prayer of agreement is mentioned by Jesus in the Word it is agreeing in prayer with the people from your church! The first time the prayer of binding and loosing is mentioned it is in the context of local church praying together. The first time Peter is jailed for his faith, as soon as he leaves jail he goes to his own company to pray with them. If you do not have your own church, your own company, you have missed the point of Christianity. It really is that simple.

So when we gather we should pray and not just pray for your knees and my back. We should be praying for the nation and city we live in and pray for the leaders of the town, nation and region. We absolutely must be praying for those. Then we should be praying for all people! Why? Because God wants people saved and God wants people to know the truth. Those two concepts – the world being saved and people knowing the truth are summed up in two words: evangelism and discipleship. God wants the church to be evangelistic and God wants the church to make disciples. So, God put praying together into the church. The more we pray, the more we communicate with God and we find out the wisdom, the strategies, the flow of the gifts to help evangelise and disciple the world.