Daily Lesson for Wednesday 23rd of April 2025
God’s dealings with Israel provide rich insights into His dealings with the New Testament church. In fact, in many ways, the nation of Israel served to foreshadow the errors of the church. Far from being able to claim any kind of superiority to ancient Israel, Christians have been, and still are, very much susceptible to the same temptations.
Read Matthew 20:25-28. What error did Jesus warn His disciples to avoid in establishing the work of the Christian church?
Image © Pacific Press at Goodsalt.com
Israel asked for a human king, a request that led to the moral downfall of the nation. The kings became progressively more wicked until God allowed the Babylonians to take His people captive as a matter of course correction.
Something similar happened in the history of the Christian church. Even though they were not to structure themselves like a Gentile nation, when Constantine came to power and professed to be a Christian, believers were relieved—persecution was now ended! That in itself was a blessing, but then it occurred to the church that they might be able to leverage the power of the emperor to their own advantage.
Several major disputes broke out among Christians in the fourth century, and when the church found itself incapable of resolving them, it allowed the emperor to intervene. Gradually the bishop of Rome rose in prominence, where he had once been one senior bishop among equals. The church allowed the state to intervene in the religious matters, and once the state had a foot in the door, things went from bad to worse.
Like Israel of old, many of the darkest chapters in Christian history are the direct result of the church compromising with the world. Where Israel turned to idol worship and her kings were corrupted by their appetite for power—to the point of offering children to idols—the church gradually adopted many of the means and methods of a pagan empire to the point that many faithful believers were martyred because they were perceived as threats to the church-state institution.
|
In your own culture, your own society, what are the ways in which these same temptations can jeopardize the integrity of our faith? |
(0)Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25b-04-the-rulers-of-the-gentiles/
