Friday 16th
Hebrews 13:9-16
NIV (v9) – ‘Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.’
ESV (v9) – ‘Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.’
The writer has spent so much time encouraging and supporting those who he has written to that he wants to make sure that they remain not just grounded in the faith, but grounded in the truths or the doctrine of the faith. He is coming to the end of his letter and he says to them ‘Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings’. The world was no different then as it is today, with so many choosing to distort the wonderful truths that are found within the Scripture, or which had been taught by the apostles. Seeking to gather around themselves those as Paul refers to as having ‘itching ears’, that is folk who want to hear what they want to hear rather than what the Word of God has to say, or the teaching of those who have received it by revelation and is now recorded for us in what we call the New Testament.
There are so many offering ‘diverse and strange teachings’ today, we see it in the religions of the world, we see it in the cults and the ‘isms’, but sadly we see it also within what would be considered the Church and we need to ensure that we are grounded in the word of God, with at least a basis ability to be able to discern truth from error. I have mentioned before there are those things that we can consider the non-essentials were we may have a difference of interpretation, but there are those things which are essentials, where there cannot be a difference of opinion, for they are the foundational truths of the Christian faith. Things which are essential to our believing and to the preserving of the integrity of Scripture, faithfulness toward the gospel and of what it really means to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we can access so much through books, through radio and through television, and although there is a lot of good, there is also a lot of rubbish, there is a lot of troubling theology being preach and espoused as being faithful to Scripture but when you dig deeper you will find it is a distortion of truth to satisfy the ‘itching ear’ and sadly too often it is to line the pockets of those who are preaching it.
My prayer is the same of that in this word of advice from the Hebrew writer mixed with some words from Paul in Ephesians 4, ‘that we are not led away by diverse and strange teachings’, but rather remain faithful to a proper understanding and exposition of Scripture, ‘that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.’ (Ephesians 4:14-16)