OK! So What? We All Sin After All....

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The last few posts started out with my resolve that I'm not going to argue and I'm not going to seek out the wrongs and sins of false ones, but just keep my eyes on the True (Jesus alone is true and EVERY MAN -- HUMAN -- IS A LIAR Romans 3:4)

AND THEN....

I go on to speak on some of my pet peeves and a few that popped into my view right after my new resolve. I sympathize with Jeremiah in chapter 20, Jeremiah had resolved to shut up but it burned in his being to speak up....

And did my thoughts change anyone's mind? I doubt it.

A couple of years ago I had brought up to a blogger friend a particular sermon I enjoyed by John MacArthur. She replied by telling me that she did not trust JM because he has so many masonic and globalist ties and that he has sold out to these worldly things rather than being fully sold out to Jesus. I didn't believe her, well, I semi-did but I thought she was splitting hairs over nothing. We are all in this world after all, we all make compromises from time to time, don't we? I wrote her back the day before yesterday to apologize and to thank her for staying true to the truth. It took me quite a while, a couple of years, so perhaps others are seeing these things as well, and like me, will take a year...or two...or three...maybe never will see it, it is as the Lord knows will be so, it is ok. It's a lonely path and it usually loses you "friends"....but were they ever REALLY friends?

We cannot avoid compromisers or evil people, but we can avoid those who claim to be ministers of the truth and show evidence of a different kind of rotten fruit. Paul tells us:

1Corinthians 5:9-11 

I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: 

Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, 

or with the covetous, 

or extortioners, 

or with idolaters; 

for then must ye needs go out of the world.  

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, 

 if any man that is called a brother 

be a fornicator, or covetous, 

or an idolater,

 or a railer, 

or a drunkard,

 or an extortioner;

 with such an one no not to eat.

How much worse if anyone who calls himself a brother and a pastor and is an extortioner of souls? ...or covetous of the world's friendships and wealth and ease....

.....which would have to be sacrificed if the whole truth were to be held to and preached in full humility and full of the Holy Spirit confessing one's own shortcomings before men? Should we not avoid such men too? Well, at very least we shouldn't put them on too high a pedestal only reserve praise for Jesus, and of course we are to pray for these leaders, or so-called leaders, God can and does use anyone to bring his lost sheep to Himself, so in season or out of season, at least the gospel is being preached even if there are ulterior motives involved, God can and does still use even those for good (Romans 8:28!!!yay! Praise God!)