Mark 8:14-21
Being
a sniper is one of the most challenging jobs in the military. It takes nerves
of steal and a very sharp mind. The calculations involved in making shot are
incredible. Distance, wind speed, temperature, sunlight, altitude, angle of
descent and probably some more. They now have small computers to help make the
calculations. It only takes a slight error in any of those to make the shot
miss its mark.
When
cooking, especially baking, you have to get the proportions of the ingredients just
right if you want your masterpiece to be masterful. And you want fresh
ingredients. Meal worms are no fun! If one ingredient is bad, say an egg, then
the whole recipe will be ruined, inedible. Once it is mixed in, there isn’t
much you can do to fix it.
It
only takes a little error in your belief system to get you completely off track
in your faith. The closer the error is to the center of the Gospel, the further
off course you will end up. If you believe that Jesus only died for some
people, then you must twist and turn to apply the Gospel to the world. You have
to qualify all the all’s and everyone’s of Scriptures. You put the mental
filter on every time you read or hear the Word. You have to constantly adjust
the Word so that it will fit your belief system.
If
you don’t believe that God is able to communicate to the world in a manner that
enables people across time and culture to hear His Truth, then you will
constantly be placing your own cultural filter on what your read. Or you will
place your carefully constructed theology over Scripture and correct the
Scriptures every time they contradict your theology. In the process you become
the ultimate source of truth. You become god.
Certain
teachers today introduced very small error into their teaching which in the end
leaves what they teach very much short of the Gospel. They leave out punishment
for the wicked, for instance. They talk about money all the time. They take an
eraser to Scripture and eliminate the politically incorrect sins, and with a
swoop of their pen make every behavior they choose acceptable in God’s eyes. Or
at least they think that it is acceptable. Or they want you to believe it is
acceptable.
This
is not a new problem. Our text talks about how Jesus warned His disciples about
the corrupting influence of the teaching of the religious and political
leaders. The religious teachers hadn’t taken away from Scripture but added to
it, and in the process had invalidated some of God’s most basic principles
about our relationship with Him. The political climate had taken away the
uniqueness of the LORD, and made the Jews and their beliefs just one of many
acceptable belief systems. Sounds like political correctness at its worst.