Death in the pot

“The stew was poured out for the men, but as they began to eat it, they cried out, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” And they could not eat it.” 2 Kings 4: 40 NIV

In this verse the prophet Elisha had told his servants to make stew for a group of prophets staying with him. In the process, one of them went into a field to gather herbs. He found a wild vine and cut gourds from it. They added them to the stew even though they did not know what they were.

When the extra ingredient was added it ruined the entire meal. This can be compared to the gospel. It is life saving and remarkably simple. If you acknowledge Jesus as the son of God, ask Him for forgiveness of your sins and accept Him as your Savior – you are saved. That’s it. The bible can teach us in all areas. It is the word of God and can be utilized for anything you face in life. But within it, the concept of grace remains simple.

I have been thinking about this topic for a couple of weeks. It started when I heard an advertisement for a new church starting. The ad mentioned the churches roots in the Southern Baptist faith. I grew up Southern Baptist, so it got my attention. It went all the way south pretty fast.

The ad proclaimed the need to rescue the 20,000 lost souls in my community. It went on to refer to using the King James version of the bible because it is the only true version and stated that all other versions were misguided. They claimed to know their true path meant for the bible was for “English speaking” people of faith. I am not trying to pick a fight here. Some people come to Christ without ever having read any version of the bible.

I have a lot of opinions. Some are accurate. Some are not. But I want to make sure that anything I write does not poison the truth of the gospel. Jesus is the answer. Any message meant to attract people to a new church, or to an existing church should line up with the bible. Any message in the Free Spirit Devotional should as well. If anything I write seems to twist it, I want to clarify it – I believe Jesus is the answer to salvation.

The teaching within the ad was easy enough to pick apart. First, Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, not English. The King James version was compiled by a group of 47 scholars around the year 1611. The process itself boiled down to a democratic process, disagreements on translation was settled by a vote of those scholars. There is nothing wrong with it. I read it for the first 20 years of my life. But the KJV certainly is not the only way to teach, reach or preach the gospel.

Why do I care? Why should you? Maybe you should not. That is a good topic to pray about. I grew up in church. My wife grew up in a different church. Both of those churches assumed and taught that theirs was the only way to salvation. Both were wrong. Jesus is the only way to salvation. No one has a copywrite on that.

We have mixed in our own gourds. We just disguise them as political parties, denominations, the outcome of elections, the overturning of election results we don’t agree with, the color of skin, economic success, fit or fat, sermon styles, proper day to have church, vaccinated or not and any other thing you can think of. The truth is that God loves you so much He sent Jesus, who loves you so much He died for you. Even better, three days later He came back for you. He wants a relationship with you. There is death in every single thing we add that makes it harder for people to come in contact with our Savior.

What is your relationship with Jesus?

Growth, learning, teaching, preaching and writing can all be useful in the development of a relationship with Jesus, but don’t let me or anyone else add ingredients that God did not intend.

Challenge: Grace. Accepting it for ourselves. Giving it to others.

Rick Claiborn