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A
Pastor’s Perspective
“Don’t
Drift!” by Mike Hill, pastor of Calvary Chapel Aberdeen (mjhill@ida.net)
Horrific
screaming. Famous atheist
Voltaire cried out to his physician in desperation, “I
am abandoned by God and man. I will give you half of what I am worth if
you will give me six months of life. Then I shall go to hell and you
will go with me, oh, Christ, oh, Jesus Christ!”
Tragic! It didn’t
have to end that way, you know. In
his growing years, Voltaire was exposed to the Bible and the teachings
of Jesus. What happened? I suspect as he drifted away from truth, he doubted, became
dull, and ultimately, despised the Bible.
After cursing Christ, he arrogantly boasted, “In 20 years,
Christianity will be no more. My single hand will destroy the edifice it
took 12 apostles to rear.” The
irony is that soon after he died, his home was transformed into a depot
for the Geneva Bible Society to distribute Bibles throughout the world.
Voltaire is now gone, but the good news of Jesus is still
proclaimed.
My
brother-in-law booked a fishing boat for my bachelor’s party.
Fishing off the coast of California with a bunch of good buddies
verges on sounding like one of those corny commercials with someone
saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
That was the first time I ever used live bait, which, well,
didn’t remain alive very long. When the captain stopped the boat to
give us a chance to fish, it sure seemed and felt like we were still in
the same spot an hour later. But
the instruments had indicated that we had drifted.
Our relationship with God is like that.
We may feel like we’re in sync with Him, but when we check the
instrument, that is, His Word—the Bible, it may show that we’ve
drifted away from Him with the current of the world’s way of thinking.
The danger is that if we continue to drift, we doubt the Word
more, then become dull to its teachings, and begin to despise it.
Consider the gospel message.
People who drift from the simplicity of the good news of Jesus,
doubt, become dull, and despise the genuine grace of God by trusting
their own works instead of Jesus for forgiveness of sins.
Paul described the
eternally unchanging details of the simple gospel in 1Corinthians 15.
Paul indicated that if a person receives this message by faith,
he or she is saved. To be
saved means rescued from hell, having sins forgiven, and having
everlasting life. Paul
proclaimed, “Moreover,
brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which
also you received and in which you stand by
which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to
you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all
that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to
the Scriptures, and that He was
buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve”
(1Corinthians 15:1-5).
Simple! Notice what
he did not say: “The gospel is also following the church laws, being a good person,
trying your hardest…” Nope.
The gospel is all about what Jesus has done for us; it is not
about what we can do to save ourselves.
The thief on the Cross didn’t trust his own works—he trusted
Jesus to save him (Luke 23:42-43). Paul called stuff that was added to this simple message
“another gospel.” Apparently,
there are lots of other so-called gospels, but only one gospel has the
power to save souls. Paul
marveled that the believers in Galatia turned away so quickly from the
true gospel of grace to a different gospel.
He had some heavy words to say concerning those who would pervert
the gospel of grace: “But
even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than
what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).
Voltaire
openly ridiculed the idea that the Bible was inspired by God.
He despised the Jesus of the Bible.
Sad and eternally tragic for him.
Don’t drift! Anchor yourself to the Word of God, the Bible.
You’ll be secure in this life and in the life to come.
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