The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back - 04
The problem of the man unwilling to bear imperfection
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Jesus is that He was willing to eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners. When the hypocritically, self-righteous Pharisees confronted him about it, He replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”1
Too often a man leaves a church because he feels it would be “sinful” for him to stay. It may be over some doctrinal distinctive, or a sermon series he could not tolerate, or the less than stellar behavior of a pastor or others. This one leaves out of concern for his purity.
The straw that breaks the camel’s back is often irrelevant, the problem is that the camel had such a brittle back. I say brittle because it conveys thinness and rigidity. It refuses to bend. There is no give to it. And the man who leaves over these things has allowed very little elbow room for others to live and grow. He is too rigid. He exhibits a lack of mercy, grace, love, patience and long-suffering. He lacks the necessary fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Oh, I get it. We are supposed to stand for truth. We are to build our lives and churches upon the Word of God. Jesus understood that as well. And then He ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners. Whereas, He often opposed the scribes and Pharisees. (The scribes and Pharisees were the thinly rigid.)
Someone might wonder, “Where does it stop?” At what point do we need to separate ourselves from someone who says he is a believer and yet is teaching and acting immorally?” When do we apply Paul’s advice from 1 Corinthians 5, where he writes, “…I am writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler-not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
The answer is: It doesn’t stop with you. The individual doesn’t take his family and up-and-leave the church. Paul’s advice was directed against the individual who defies the church. It is against the one who refuses correction. The person who does not wish to be healed. Perhaps, the sinner sees no need to be changed? Paul was announcing excommunication from the church for such as this. He is not instructing an individual Christian to excommunicate the local church, for Christ loves her.
You and I need to stay and care, even when people don’t meet up to their Sunday’s best. You stay and care when your elders are not in agreement with one of your doctrines. You stay and care when your feathers have been ruffled. You stay and care when you find out there are sinners in your midst who need to be better; to be clean.
Staying means you won’t turn upside-down the law of Leviticus and run away from a congregation, pointing back and calling at them, “Unclean! unclean!” as if they have leprosy.2 Rather, a man who is honest with himself, and humble before God and mankind, recognizes his own imperfections and immaturity.
If you aspire to be an elder, you must learn that elders don’t leave. They are stayers. Imperfect? Yes. But stayers. They have to be! God requires it of them.
Matthew 9:10-13.
Leviticus 13:45-46 “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”