Four Good Words For The Christian Life- Part 2

The third word for our consideration is “stranger”. We see a use of this word in Genesis 15:13 “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;” “Stranger” has the idea from the Hebrew of a “sojourner, a temporary inhabitant, a newcomer who is lacking in inherited rights”. He has no rights of citizenship. A good Greek word would be “xenos” which add the insight of a “stranger” being “a foreigner or an alien.” A “stranger” is simply one who does not belong. He is out of place. This is how the Christian should feel as he is in the world. We are only here temporarily, with the hope of leaving one day to go to our (heavenly) country and home. We certainly are out of step here. Our language is different as we speak the Canaan language that is not understood in or by the world. Our dress is different from that of the world. Our conduct and manner of living are both “strange”. Our history and culture are different. There are these differences because we are talking about two different kingdoms. We, as Christians, have citizen in the Kingdom of Heaven but we are currently dwelling in whatever nation we are living in here on earth. This world is under the control of the god of this age, Satan, while our allegiance is to the King of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ. These are two diametrically opposed systems and kingdoms. They simply cannot co-exist and they cannot be reconciled. One must destroy the other.

The world looks at us and they cannot figure us out. We do not run to the same riot of excess that they do, so they conclude that we are “strange”. The world can’t understand why we go to church twice on Sunday and then again in the middle of the week. They might go on Christmas and Easter and that’s quite enough for them. But we go three or four times a week and the world simply cannot understand that. They can’t grasp our desire to attend a prayer meeting than to go to a bar and get drunk. This is simply beyond their comprehension. And then the fact that remnant saints tithe! They give at least 10% of their income to the church. When worldlings go to church, they may put a dollar or two in the offering plate, and that’s if they are feeling generous. I never saw anyone really tithe in my years in the Roman Catholic Church.

But the unsaved are also strange to us. We think it strange that someone would live a self-destructive life, ignoring God and the free offer of the gospel, to gamble with one’s own soul, with the possibility that you could die at any minute and drop into hell. Christians just can’t understand why anyone would want to live a lifestyle of sin, especially since we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and we have experienced the delights that a Christian life brings. They drink, run around, fornicate and who knows what else, and they call that “living”. Christians call it a lifestyle of death. Christians have a life and hope that so much better that we try to share with the unsaved and they reject it and march merrily into hell and we cannot understand such a mentality.

The world ought to think the Christian is strange. If the world is comfortable with you and your church, then you’d better make sure that you are walking the pilgrim walk and that you haven’t compromised or gone contemporary. We live in a day where the church growth movement and the seeker-sensitive movement have attempted to make our churches comfortable and “non-threatening” to the lost and have sought to remove the offense from the gospel. That is not Biblical Christianity. If any unsaved person came into our services, he ought to come under conviction and get uncomfortable. To do anything else in our preaching and witnessing to the unsaved is to sell-out and compromise the gospel.

The last term we want to consider is “wanderer”. We see this term in Hosea 9:17 “My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations.” This verse has a doctrinal application to the nation of Israel in judgment and it is not really a positive verse, but we do notice the word “wanderer” there and that is what arrests our attention, especially the last part of the verse. The Hebrew idea of the word is “to flee, to depart, to remove, to wander”. One of the verbal forms also has the idea of “to be chased away”.

A wanderer is someone who has no home, at least not on the earth. He lives in tents, like Abraham did in his wanderings. He has no certain dwelling place. He does not stay in one place for too long. When I was a boy, my father was in the Air Force and we moved every year, sometimes twice a year. I learned want it mean to wander all across the country. We never settled down until my father retired from the Air Force in 1976. As Christians, we also wander as we have no place spiritually that we can call home. We have no denominational home. We do not look to any city. The Muslim looks to Mecca. The Roman Catholic looks to Vatican City. The Mormon turns his gaze to Salt Lake City. Many Baptists or Fundamentalists may choose Greenville, Nashville, Pensacola or some other city as their “holy city”. But Abraham had no continuing city here. He looked for a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:10; 13:14). The city Abraham looked for was not on this earth and it was not under the control of a denomination or a church. We’ve never seen it with the physical eye but we know it is there by faith.

We just can’t get comfortable down here. We go into one church and realize they have apostatized. We consider a certain denomination only to discover they have fallen away to the contemporary spirit of our day. We are forced to take an independent path. Most remnant and pilgrim ministries are independent. They are independent of men, movements and machines. If we can’t find a spiritual home, we have to make our own. It may be small and humble, as a tent. We won’t have a lot of money invested in buildings and equipment. But since our tents are small, we can pick it up and move at any time, like a pilgrim. You could move the pilgrim tabernacle. It was difficult to move the massive temple, built by a settled people. If we have to move on short notice, it is much easier for the pilgrim to do so since he is not tied down by any spiritual constraints.

Another insight regarding the “wanderer” is “one who has been chased away”. A lot of wanderers are such not by choice, but because they were driven away from their ecclesiastical identifications. They got alone with God and He began to deal strongly with their heart and the pilgrim began to grow deeper with God and began to go on with God. These results were not popular among the ecclesiastical leaders. The growth of the pilgrim brought conviction on the part of the others in that organization. Many of these who were brought under such conviction were not going on with God and they demonstrated little desire to do so. When carnal people get under conviction, instead of dealing with it rightly, they tend to persecute the people who were responsible for bringing that conviction upon them. They tend to chase away the pilgrim to remove the condemnation that has been brought unto them when their carnality was exposed. Ultimatums were issued “don’t rock the boat, get with the program or leave.” And the pilgrim left. Many pilgrims were forced out of their churches in just such a way. They no longer had a home there. They were no longer welcomed and they did not feel comfortable there any more.

Four Good Words For The Christian Life- Part 1

It would be profitable for us to take a look at the Biblical presentation of the word “pilgrim”. It is a very honorable term in the Word of God. The word “pilgrim” does not appear in the Scripture although the word “pilgrims” (plural) does, twice, in Hebrews 11:13 and 1 Peter 2:11. But those two verses are not the only ones that give a presentation of the idea of a “pilgrim”. Other words that give additional insight are scattered through the Bible. We want to take a look at some of these more important words that will expand our understanding of a Christian pilgrim.

The first word is “remnant”. This is also a very precious word for our consideration and our encouragement. A “remnant” is something that is left over. We are familiar with an example of a piece of carpet. You may buy an area of carpeting to carpet a room. If you end up with too much that you do not need, the leftover carpeting is a remnant. It is usually put aside because it is not needed. But a “remnant” has a more honorable presentation in the Word of God. The word itself is used over 90 times in Scripture and it has the idea of people that are small in number and weak in power. Important verses include:

Ezra 9:8 “And now for a little space grace hath been shewed from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in his holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage.”

Nehemiah 1:3 “And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.”

That also describes the condition of God’s remnant today. They are in great affliction and reproach in the religious world. Many of them came out of various denominations and churches because of the apostasy in those organizations. The contemporary Christian philosophy and practice captured these organizations. These remnant saints had to leave as they no longer had a home. But only a small percentage of people ever leave these compromised churches. Many may stay in with a puritan heart, with a hope to somehow rescue the churches and denominations that they love. They acknowledge the falling away but they stay behind in hopes of somehow rescuing it. But history has demonstrated that apostasy cannot be remedied. It can only be condemned and separated from. When these saints come to the inevitable realization that such hopes or rescue and restoration of the apostasy are futile, they will leave and take on a pilgrim heart to replace their puritan heart. I had to do that when I was in the Roman Catholic Church. I was saved when I was 13 years old but I remained within the Church of Rome until I was 18 years old. I had no real hopes for any sort of reform, but I was too naïve and ignorant of the true depths of the apostasy within the Church of Rome. When it finally dawned on me that the Church of Rome was beyond any hope, I left. When people leave such churches, they become part of the remnant. Then people tend to talk against them, attacking them for their attitudes and stand. Legal action is even brought against them at times by the churches they have separated from, especially if property and church buildings are involved.

In Romans 11:5, Paul mentions that “even at this time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” That refers to the nation of Israel theologically, but practically, it could refer to any group of people who have developed a pilgrim heart and a pilgrim attitude.

As we go on toward the Second Coming and as the apostasy deepens, “remnant” is becoming an increasingly desirable word. It is being embraced more and more, even with the reproach that goes with it. “Remnant Christianity” and “remnant churches” are becoming more honorable.

I used to be identified with the Baptistic brand of Biblical Fundamentalism. I had to leave that movement because of its apostasy and compromises. But I think I found a higher and nobler title than “Fundamentalist”- that of a “Remnant Christian”. I also found a higher “movement” than “Fundamentalism”- that of “Remnant Christianity”. My “spiritual dog tag” now reads “Remnant Christian” and that is my spiritual identification. I am still a Baptist but the title “Remnant Christian” is even higher than that and is a more accurate and precise identification.

The Lord once asked “When the Son of Man returneth, will He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)” The implied answer was “no, except for a very small number”. At both the rapture and the advent, there will be only a very few people who will be faithful and who will be “staying by the stuff”. There are many on the “broad way” but very few on the “narrow way”, only a remnant of people are to be found there.

Another term is “little flock”. In Luke 12:32, the Lord uses this term in encouraging His hearers not to fear and that it was the pleasure of the Father to give them the kingdom. That’s a dear term, especially when you are in a small church. My church here in Smyrna, Delaware is a “little flock”, as were my churches in Centreville, Maryland and Mebane, North Carolina. Our average Sunday morning attendance is about 35. Our highest attendance (during my pastorate, starting in September 1998) has been 58. We are not a large church and we are unlikely to ever be a large church numerically, for a variety of reasons that I will not develop here. We have our fair share of people and I’ll always have someone to preach to. It was Evangelist Oliver Greene who once said “God never made a possum but that He made a persimmons tree for him to climb”. God never called a man to preach but that He gave him a people to preach to. We’ll have our fair share of people to preach to, even if our churches never get very big.

I know of churches all over the country and even all over the world that are small numerically, These are good, solid churches, pastored by good men of God. Yet they are small because their stands, burdens and visions are not popular in this generation. Most godly churches will not be large churches. I am not saying that every large church is a compromised church for that obviously not the case. Nor am I saying that any church that is small is automatically good. But in this day, where we have a famine of the hearing of the Word of God and where people have itching ears, waiting to be tickled by hireling preachers and contemporary “ministers”. Truth simply is not welcomed and the gospel is not honored in the majority of churches today. We are simply going to have trouble building a large church. We’ve had plenty of people visit our church but few stay. Most of these visitors hear something or see something that they do not like and that offends them.

There is something about a remnant church and a pilgrim church that will offend many professing Christians. Some people are offended by small churches for no other reason that they are numerically small. A friend of mine, who grew up in a very small church, observed of his congregation “We’re small because nobody comes and nobody comes because we’re small”. That is the trap that many small churches find themselves in. I know of people who left a small church and the reason was that they wanted a larger church with more programs and more opportunities. Never mind how orthodox the smaller church was. They wanted the “prestige” of belonging to a larger congregation since there can be a stigma in belonging to a small church. People may wonder “what’s wrong with that church, seeing it is so small? If the pastor was a real man of God and a halfway decent preacher, more people would attend!” Not necessarily. It might be because that pastor is a genuine man of God who preaches the gospel without compromise that scares away so many people.

The Lord commends the “little flock” in Luke 12:32. We assume this “little flock” is small not because of sin in the church or because of the abrasive personality of the pastor or the general unfriendliness of the congregation, but that it is small because of the Biblical stands it takes. The Lord will commend and encourage such a work that is small through no real fault of its own. The Lord does not despise or discourage the “little flock” because it is precious in His eyes. They are a little flock of sheep, out in the wilderness. Such sheep (no matter how few in number) are precious to the shepherd. The Chief Shepherd never despises a “little flock”, even where two or three gather together in His name. He honors such a gathering by being in their midst. The “little flock” will never be able to “compete” with the mega-churches of our day. They will never have that kind of money. They will never be able to build a 10,000-seat sanctuary. Yet the Lord does not judge them according to their supposed failure to grow numerically.

Thank God the “little church” will not be abandoned by the Lord. We will be brought into contact with other scattered congregations that have the same heart as we do. I tell my congregation with regularity that we have to keep the church going and we have to keep the doors open, the lights on and the grass mowed because every now and then, a remnant sheep will wander into our little fold. There are people seeking out these kinds of churches. They can discern the signs of the times and the spirit of the age and they know what kind of church they need and what kind of church they need to avoid. These Christians want to go all the way with God as well. That is why it is so important for remnant churches to “stay in business!”

What is the “Pilgrim Way?”

What is so special about the phrase “the Pilgrim Way of the Christian Life?” What exactly is the burden behind that phrase? That was a phrase given to me by the Lord in 1992 to define the burden and the vision of my own personal ministry and developing walk with God. It is a vision that I am still working out 17 years later and that I will not be finished with until my death or rapture.

I was saved in 1978 and have been preaching since 1985. Since that time, God has been dealing with me about a pilgrim way of the Christian life, stressing the idea of the Christian Life being a “pilgrimage” as well as a “quest”. It deals with a philosophy of the Christian life and ministry that is somewhat out of the mainstream of Christian thought today. Today, the cry is for “numbers” and “church growth”, not holiness or a walk with God. One of my teachers, O. Talmadge Spence, founder of Foundations Bible College in Dunn, North Carolina, defined it as a “Quest for Christian Purity” in his book by the same name, which examined the compartments of systematic theology and their relation to the Biblical doctrine of sanctification. Spence’s term is just a variation of mine, but they are very similar.

There are two guiding verses for this burden:

Hebrews 11:13 “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

1 Peter 2:11 “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.”

The Bible speaks very highly of the word “pilgrim”. A “pilgrim” is someone who has left his home country, voluntarily or involuntarily, and is now on a journey (which could be a long one) to a better country. He may have left his homeland because he became dissatisfied with the philosophy and the way of life of his neighbors. He has come into contact with something better, something higher, something more noble. This “better thing” is now dominating his thoughts and his heart.

A pilgrim is one who has no home. He is a wanderer, going from place to place, but not aimlessly. He knows where he has come from and he knows where he wants to go. A good example of this is “Christian” in John Bunyan’s classic work The Pilgrim’s Progress. He has left the City of Destruction because he has learned (from reading a roll of scripture) that God will soon judge that city, which is emblematic of his old life of sin. He receives a vision about a better country and a better life and that captures his heart. This place is the holy and heavenly Mount Zion. He leaves his home and even his wife and his children, who are not inclined to share in his vision. Pilgrims often travel alone in their journey for their burdens are most unpopular to the unsaved and to carnal professors. Christian is not going aimlessly for he has a goal and he has a purpose. He knows where he is going, even if that destination is a long way off and even if he can’t see it from where he is, but he knows that where he is going is going to be much better than where he came from. He has a definite view and goal in mind. He may not know what lies between Point A and Point B. He may not know about the dangers and the people that he will encounter in his pilgrimage. But he knows he must leave his old life and his old city of birth. He knows he must wander in the earth. He’s a new man and a new creature, all through the new birth. The old things of this world and the old things of this life simply will not satisfy him any more.

In my own life, the Lord dealt with me like that in the early 1990s when He placed a great spiritual dissatisfaction and restlessness in my soul. I was like the man in Exodus 21, who was a Hebrew servant working for a Hebrew master for seven years. At the end of that seventh year, he was required to make a decision as to whether he would stay with his master or whether he would go out free. I believe every Christian, at some point in his life, is also required to make that decision. He has been saved for a number of years and he has tasted and seen that the Lord is good. He has served the Lord for a period of his life. But now the Lord wants to know if that Christian is now willing to go on all the way in a pilgrimage to a full Christian life, or whether he is going to be content to stay where he is spiritually. He has the liberty to leave his master and to go out free but he takes nothing of the benefits or the fruits of his previous labors with him. He must leave it all behind with his master if he leaves his service. With me, that point of decision came in 1992. In the autumn of 1985, the Lord called me to preach and I responded, Seven years after that, the Lord called me to make my decision whether I would stay with my master or go out free and live my own life as I chose to. The Lord dealt with me about going on and doing better than I had in my Christian life up to that point. I had completed my undergraduate theological education in the period between 1985 and 1992 and even pastored a very small church in Centreville, Maryland. I had done some work for my Master in those years. But then God began to deal with me in a very clear and deliberate way about going on and deliberately and volitionally embracing a mode of life that was based on the concept of a “pilgrim way”.

A pilgrim is one who has deliberately chosen this kind of a walk with God that is free from all earthly and ecclesiastical constraints on the heart. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. I left the Church of Rome in 1983 over theological disagreements that had developed by my own personal reading and study of the Scriptures. I could not reconcile the teachings of the Church of Rome with the Scripture, so I rightly concluded the Church to be in error and the Scripture to be correct, so I separated from the church of my birth. I realized I need to find a church where I could hear the truth. I found a church like that in Elkton, Maryland, where I learned the basics of the Christian life. I’m a Baptist, but I endeavor not to allow a human denominational or theological distinctive to interfere with my search and quest for this desired Christian life. The pilgrim has no such human allegiances. His loyalty is only to God and to His Word as no human theological system or denominational structure is inspired or infallible. Everyone has some sort of theological identification, but they cannot be allowed to interfere or influence the walk of the pilgrim as he searches out the deep things of God for his life. He has human allegiances to his church, his friends, the school he attended, but again, they are not allowed to supersede the dealings of God with the heart. God alone is leading the pilgrim and God alone is guiding him.

The pilgrim has no continuing city here. It certainly is not Rome, Mecca, Greenville, Nashville, Salt Lake City or any other earthly city. He will not drive down any theological tent stakes here on earth. He will not “settle in” but he must keep pressing onward and forward to the heavenly city. A pilgrim is going to follow truth wherever it leads him and he will follow it even at the expense of whatever theological system he may hold. He will sacrifice human theological systems and teachings if he finds they contradict with the truth as God is revealing it to him. The pilgrim knows his spiritual goal but he is not always sure about the path that he will be led into to achieve his goal. He doesn’t know what sacrifices might be required of him.

It’s interesting to see how God deals with individuals like this, whose heart is open to truth and to the leading of God. It takes courage to follow truth to wherever it leads you. You might have to abandon a denomination. You might have to abandon a theological identification. You might have to break a few fellowships. Any Christian who has been saved any length of time has had to do that if he is in the pilgrim way. I realized that there was a possibility that any theological system I might have identified with might have been too constraining on me, so I had to amend my beliefs and adjust my practices to conform with the additional light that the Holy Spirit was giving me. What am I allowing to influence me? Some of these externals might have been trying to influence me away from a pilgrim walk, so I had to abandon tem before they did me any harm. Many pilgrims who were active in a church or in a denomination actually were criticized and discouraged from going on with God when they announced the great things that God was doing in their souls. Yes, there will be the “Daughters of Jerusalem” within our churches and organizations that will attempt to discourage us from going on with God! That is difficult to believe but experience will bear that out. A pilgrim in revival will “show up” the carnal ones around us, so for them to “save face” and avoid confronting their own spiritual shortcomings with God, they will seek to silence the pilgrim and to bring him back to their own low level of spirituality.

There is a distinctive and a definite way to a Christian walk. There are certain things that do not lend themselves to pilgrim ways and pilgrim walks. Human religion does not do that. Those that have been involved with denominations and fellowships understand that man tends to squelch the free exploration of the things of God. It is difficult, when you are trapped in a theological system or in a human ecclesiastical organization to follow truth because there are rules and expectations imposed on the pilgrim. A pilgrim must be free to wander. Pilgrim walks are independent walks. You have to follow God and when you are following God, you often will not be able to follow man. You have to be independent from the constraints of human teachings. You do not ignore them totally, but you do not allow yourself to be bound to them at the expense of truth or of following the Lord fully. There are a lot of good things that man can help you with. I have a personal theological library of several hundred books that I use with regularity. These authors help me. They are an asset to me. But the ultimate source of my pilgrim walk is God, not my library. God controls the heart, not man. We are to give our hearts to the Lord, not to ecclesiastical organizations of human theological systems.

Our own “self-ways” tend to interfere with a pilgrim walk. This is an internal enemy, as contrasted with the external forces discussed above. You can’t follow God in a pilgrim walk if you are dominated by self, looking for your own personal glory and advancement. Too many preachers are consumed with climbing the ecclesiastical ladder and making a name for themselves in the church. They tend to seek the approval of man more than that of God. But the pilgrim was died to his own self and such personal glory-seeking. Just like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, he has left the old city and the old life. His old life, with all its associated pride and ambition, mean nothing to him anymore. The praise and approval of men mean nothing as he is instead seeking the praise and approval of God.

The pilgrim goes on alone with God as it is a lonely walk. Very few people will go on with him and few will encourage him in his pilgrimage. The pilgrim way is not a crowded way. It is like the narrow way that the Lord spoke of in Matthew 7:14. There are very few people on this way. It certainly is not crowded. The pilgrim must go on, though none go with him. He goes on though none understand him or encourage him. Men always encourage us to support churches, programs, fellowships and systems, but the pilgrim receives little, if any encouragement, to go on alone with God. But God is encouraging him. He knows God will go with him. This is the encouragement of the pilgrim walk.

The pilgrim walk is also long. You are traveling from earth to heaven and it is all uphill and against the wind. Heaven will not be gained in a single day. It will take the rest of your life to complete this trip. The Christian life is a marathon and not a sprint. It requires supplies and stamina and heart that will not fail in the times of discouragements and failures that will surely come. And the pilgrim is also aware of the dangers inherent in this walk as there are fears within and fightings without. Christian met numerous foes in Pilgrim’s Progress, all of whom sought to do him harm. But the long march is worth it for look at the reward at the end of the journey!