House of God ??

“Horrible Things”

My eyes play tricks on me. Do yours do the same? I look at something and look away, but when I look back, it seems to have changed completely. It was like this when I read Hosea 6:10 this morning. It says this, “I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel. There Ephraim is given to prostitution and Israel is defiled.”

What I read at first sight was this, “I have seen a horrible thing in the house of the Lord. There Ephraim is given to prostitution and the house is defiled.”

Whoa there! That’s a big difference, so I asked the Lord why I had seen it thus first time around. He said, “Welcome to My perspective.” He seemed to smile as He spoke to me but there was an underlying seriousness about His tone. So I listened a bit more and this is what I heard. “My Gospel has been prostituted in favour of several that tickle the ears of the listeners. My People have turned aside from sound teaching and are giving attention to those who preach the Gospel that my people want to hear. Sound teaching is going in favour of new ideas. Ideas that were never mine. Ideas that corrupt my Gospel and cause my people to go far astray.” See 2 Tim 4:1-5

Then He took me to Malachi 3:8-10 “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.”

I pondered all this for a while and, again, the Lord spoke to me. “This is not all I have against you. You have invented new doctrines to suit the thoughts that you are following.” When I queried this, I understood Him to mean the “Prosperity Gospel” , the “Name-it-and-Claim-it” gospel, and so-called ‘Replacement Theology’. I also wondered about other doctrines – but I didn’t hear anything further. What I did hear, however, was this, “What is the purpose of your tithes? It is so ‘that there may be food in My house’. So why do so many churches and ministries grow fat on the gifts and tithes brought to them? Many do support many widows and orphans, but equally as many support themselves and their lifestyles first before the widows and orphans.”

This is what the Lord means by ‘prostituting My Gospel and the House of God’. I have heard of ministers who boast of the many cars in their garages and of their millions of dollars homes. The Word of God says that they have received their reward in full. I wonder what the Lord thinks of when He sees their possessions which “moth and rust will eat away”. I wonder how He views their riches and compares them to their giving. I suspect that He may ask how many cars they need or what they will do with all this when they die. Oh, I know it costs a lot of money to maintain a large church with a large staff, but it also costs very little extra to feed some additional widows and orphans.

Jesus made a whip and drove the businesses out of the temple saying that His Fathers house was a house of prayer but they had turned it into a den of thieves and robbers. There seems to be a contest, at the moment, among churches that vie one with another over who can build the biggest and most lavish church.

Prostituting the Gospel appears to be a profitable business – purpose built for this age it seems. I wonder, how would some of today’s ministers react if told by the Lord to sell all they have, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus?