Spare Your People O Lord

The ELCA has officially decided now to allow homosexual clergy in their churches. It is good that the signers of the Augsburg confession are in heaven where there is no sorrow, otherwise doubtless their hearts would be broken. They were willing to risk earthly honors, political quiet, and even war for the sake of the Gospel and their descendants in America are not willing to bear with the disapproval of the world and its agenda.
That on its own is sad enough, but as this morning as I have been contemplating the state of the Church in general, I have had the realization that this will likely not be the last denomination to do this. Those of us who are not Lutherans look and say, “whew, I am glad I am not Lutheran.” Yet, I must wonder how much lower must the Church come before It awakes. We are like the Germans in Nazi Germany, who looked the other way when the Nazis persecuted the Jews, because they were not Jewish, then ignored what they did when they came for the Catholics, because they were not Catholic. At last there was no one left to turn to.
Let us awake and cry out to God.

Joel 2:27 - Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"

It is a reproach to Christ when any church that has preached the Gospel in any measure is given over to rule by any open sinners of any variety. The people of God are His heritage, those that have His Name upon them. It is an exceedingly grievous thing when any of His sheep are under such leadership. Yet again Christ comes to His own and His own receive Him not. This is an often repeated scenario, repeated by nations, churches and individuals. We would crucify Christ again if it were possible, the cry goes out, “not this man, but Barabbas!” We would rather have a murderer or other notorious sinner in our midst than the very Son of God!

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. During the Arian controversy many, many churches were under men who denied the Deity of Christ in any real sense, and some who did not deny it themselves compromised for the sake of imperial favor. Many centuries later, during the heyday of the Puritans, men like Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, George Fox and many others had a hard time in their youth finding ministers who were sober in the pulpit, let alone able to lead others in the way of salvation. The Church has weathered both of these and other storms and this one shall also pass. However we must pray that God would spare His people, that He would not let the heathen rule over them. Perhaps if we turn to Him with our whole heart He will relent and not allow the Church to be plunged into further darkness.

Let us not be like Ephraim or Samson who sunk so low as to not realize their own decrepitude before it was too late to avoid a serious captivity (Hosea 7:9; Judges 16:20).

Spare Your people O Lord! Turn our hearts again toward You!