The Old Paths
By Dr. Ken Matto
Jeremiah 6:16 (KJV) Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask
for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find
rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.
In the midst of God's uncompromising indictment against Judah, He is impressing
upon them that they are to seek the old paths, the old ways. The old ways here
is when the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt and received
the law. God is calling them back to obedience to the law, which made them a
strong nation. Israel saw the many battles which God won for them, and God is
telling them to reflect on these things, because if they turn from their wicked
ways, they will experience the strength of God on their behalf when God routed
and dealt with the enemies of Israel. (Mal 4:4 KJV) Remember ye the law of
Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the
statutes and judgments. Of course, we read that Judah did not pay any
attention to the warnings God gave them, which resulted in their captivity. They
forgot the law of God, which resulted in them falling prey to the false
religions which surrounded them. (Jer 7:18 KJV) The children gather wood, and
the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to
the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they
may provoke me to anger. This was the religion of Astarte, which later on
became Diana of the Ephesians. It is identified in
many world religions under the category
of the "Cult of the Virgin." In modern
times we know it as Roman Catholicism.
Is there a message here for us? How many times do we see ourselves going in the
wrong direction, not necessarily sinning intentionally against God, but just
adopting a wrong teaching or practice? God is encouraging us to go back to the
Scriptures. The Scriptures contain, among many things, guidelines for living.
This is why God wants us to come back to the Scriptures, so they may redirect
our steps. God called Israel back to the old paths, but they did not listen.
Sometimes we tie ourselves to religion, or to teachings which may place more
burdens on us than is required in Scripture. God does not want His Children
living under the bondage of religion. Judah got to the point they were
sacrificing their own children. Actually, God did them a favor by sending them
into captivity, because it stopped the sacrificial killing of children. Today,
we can call child sacrifice "abortion." This is because we in the USA have
walked away from the Word of God and spurned its teachings. So we degenerated
into a society that murders its unborn but if we ordered our life according to
the Scriptures, we would see that life is a precious gift. When the planes hit
the towers on 9/11 and three thousand people died, the world cried but who cries
for the fifty four million murders committed in this country? So we have much in
common with the nations of Israel and Judah. We both started with the Word of
God and left them, and have deteriorated to murdering our own children. The
term, "Valley of Slaughter" is apropos for today's abortuaries. (Jer 7:32
KJV) Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be
called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter:
for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place. Let us seek the old
paths, before we become as those who have none!
Our society has become numbed to reality and that includes the church.
There is more outcry over an abused dog or cat than there is over the
murder of babies in the womb. This
is what happens when we depart from the old paths, the world makes us hard and
very apathetic to things which really matter.
We begin to walk in the wilderness of the world and it seems that our
Christian walk has become non-existent.
What used to interest us does not seem to interest us now.
Remember when we loved to hear about missions or to hear a visiting
preacher? Now all we care about is
sticking headphones in our ears and shutting out the cries of the unsaved world
as they slip into a Christless eternity.
Remember when souls were your priority and you couldn’t wait to get out
on the street and hand out tracts?
Now you go home from work and hunker down in front of the computer and remain
there until it is time to go to bed.
The
apathy which is running rampant through Christianity is absolutely horrifying.
Christians don’t care about what kind of bible they read, they don’t care
about what type of unholy alliances they make, they don’t care about their
commitment to the Great Commission, they don’t care about who they send money to
(if they send any at all), they don’t care about what theology they follow, etc.
If the Apostle Paul or Peter came back today, they would not recognize
Christianity as it was in the first century.
What happened to cause us to stray so far from the truth?
The main culprit is the organized church which chose to keep up with ways
of the world, only adding a religious dimension to worldly modernism and it
failed! What they did was to
abandon the old paths and attempt to forge ahead with new paths.
They became willing victims of their own failures with a continued
refusal to seek and abide by the old paths.
In
the modern churches, they always want to try something “new” to reach the youth
and yet the youth are abandoning the churches in droves.
They fail to realize that the soul of a youth is the same as the soul of
an adult, it is ageless. The modern
church does not take the admonition of Scripture to seek the Old Paths.
When I was growing up our church services were much more subdued and
reverential. Today the average
church service is nothing more than a soccer game.
There is no reverence for the church and none for God either.
Whenever something is written twice in Scripture it means that God is
emphasizing a point which we need to heed.
In two passages in the Old Testament, God commands the people of Israel
to reverence His sanctuary.
Leviticus 19:30 (KJV) Ye
shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 26:2 (KJV) Ye shall
keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.
The
basic meaning of “reverence” in these two passages is to be afraid or to revere.
John Calvin has a great comment on these verses:
“The expression, "fear the sanctuary," is a figurative one; but is equivalent to
this, that they should shew by their very reverence of the sanctuary how truly
and sincerely they fear God, who had promised that He would be present there,
whenever He should be invoked.”
Whenever we attend church, we should be in a sense in awe of God and His
greatness and it is He who we should be focused on, not some praise band at 100
decibels or some worship leader or a pastor who dresses like he slept in his
clothes all night. There is always an
exchange principle at work, and that is, when there is no reverence for God in
His sanctuary, then it is exchanged for the irreverence of a modern crowd, most
of whom try to outdo the ones sitting next to them.
When Jacob’s life was getting disheveled God gave him good advice in the
following verses of Scripture:
Genesis 35:1-3 (KJV) And God
said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an
altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau
thy brother. {2} Then Jacob said
unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods
that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments:
{3} And let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an
altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in
the way which I went.
God had spoken to Jacob and told him that he should go back to Beth-el (means
house of God) and that he was to make an altar unto God.
Then before Jacob and his family begins the trek to Beth-el, he tells his
family that they are to put away the strange gods and by doing that they will
cleanse themselves of any false religion which they may have clung too.
He also tells them to change their garments which means that they may
have dressed according to some false religion and now they were too shed those
garments and be clean by doing away with the strange or false gods.
The time frame here is about 25 years from the time Jacob made the altar
unto God when he about to face Esau for the first time after he cheated him.
There is an important principle in these verses.
Jacob told them to put away any strange gods that are among them.
As we grow older in our Christian walk, we tend to pick up beliefs and
even some false beliefs that are not in line with Scripture.
We may also tend to start dressing like those who bring in false
movements into the church such as those in the emergent church or purpose driven
church. Their people dress like
slobs including the leaders. The
principle that God is giving here is that sometimes during our Christian walk we
may have lost proper perspective and it is necessary to go back to the beginning
of our Christian walk and hit the reset button.
Then we can find out where we went astray and remove those things from
our Christian walk and once again walk in obedience.
We would be seeking the Old Paths whereby we can once again regain the
spiritual strength for our walk. If
we keep pursuing the modern style of Christianity, we will continue to go astray
to the point that we will lose all interest in spiritual things, where God will
have no choice but to place us on a shelf where we will be of no use to
Christianity or to the world in terms of reaching it for Christ.
This is why we seek the Old Paths because they bring us back to our starting
point or another designated point in our Christian walk and we can then assess
and get back on the right path.
Modern Christianity has become so infiltrated with strange beliefs that when one
compares it to Scripture, it is basically unrecognizable.
The New Paths will lead us astray while the Old Paths will keep us on the
straight and narrow. Now is the
time to seek those Old Paths to see if you have been derailed in any way.
If you feel you have lost any power in your ministry then you probably
have been derailed by the New Paths.
If you have not grown in your spiritual walk, then no doubt you have been
derailed by the New Paths. With
false religions on the rise and false teachings on the rise, it is necessary
that we seek the Old Paths to make sure that none of those satanic philosophies
have attached themselves to our beliefs.