Mark Huey of Outreach Israel Ministries delivers the following message, “Visionless Perishioners,” as we focus upon the vision and calling that the Lord has for each and every one of us.
For the lack of vision the people perish…
The above statement is what many people think of, perhaps quoting from Hosea 4:6 off the top of their heads. When my sister was dying in the year 2010, this is what I used in order to give her some hope for her future. Weaving in a Biblical concept was one way of pointing her not only to the Holy Scriptures, but also to the universal principle that an individual, family, organization, or even a people/nation—frequently needs some kind of vision for the future—or it may find that its long term survival is threatened. At the time, my sister did need some encouragement, as we discussed her physical deterioration, and all of the hard work that is required to press on with all of the unsettling medical procedures and disruptions in the normal flow of life.
Several years earlier my sister had founded and had been the motivating force behind a community organization named Parental Engagement Network, formed to help educate naïve parents about many of the challenges of parenting in modern times. I tried to give my sister a vision for expanding her concepts to a much broader level. My suggestion was to take the existing local template and make it regional, or perhaps even national in scope. Giving someone a reason for living—beyond just the normal human desire to live—can not only be therapeutic, but inspiring on many levels. So in additional conversations throughout my 2010 visit, I frequently pointed to the future of the enterprise she had birthed and nurtured along for over six years.
Contemporaneously, with these discussions over the last week of December 2009, I was also reviewing some e-mails from a number of acquaintances within the Messianic community. These individuals were voicing some serious concerns about the spiritual challenges they were facing in their local areas. Not surprisingly, the issues of alarm were very much a repeat of bad teaching that our ministry had already directly addressed in the past. They included matters like people being encouraged to sell everything, take on a bunker mentality to prepare for the imminent rise of the New World Order, and be ready for the start of the Great Tribulation. Rehashed teachings that endorsed polygamous marriage relationships, which we thought were largely over, were present in an assembly. And, the ongoing challenge of the Divinity of Yeshua, a debate that does seem to be recycled over and over again, was mentioned. Injected also was: the calendar debate, whether the Torah is to be followed by all of God’s people or only the Jews, and how today’s Messianics can strive for more unity. The list of blights just seems to go on and on, without people really maturing and growing in their faith.
Things have not changed that much, even now with us in the 2020s!
The more I received and responded to these e-mails, the more frustrated I became. After all, one would hope that over time, people who profess to be followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would not be susceptible to aberrant teachings and opinions. Then, one morning in prayer and meditation, it dawned on me that many of these people have either a distorted vision for their future—or do not have any clear vision at all and are therefore visionless. The Hosea quote I shared with my sister came immediately to mind: those without a vision are doomed to perish. But a simple play on the word “perish” also reminded me of the religious term pronounced “parish,” which regards the field of activity within the scope of a church or location of worship.
Thinking about this a little more, the concept of a “visionless parishioner” surfaced. Satirically, the pun of changing the word parishioner to “perishioner” popped in my head. All of a sudden, I had another concept to further extend my conversations with my sister over breakfast. While the sincere explanation did not go very far with her because of her other challenges, I did not forget about it, and proceeded to share it with my wife upon returning home.
The beauty of having a godly spouse, like Margaret, is her ability to know the same Scriptures, and to point out aspects of them that you might not be considering. Immediately upon sharing my extended conversations, and what I thought was a quote of Hosea 4:6, and my play on words—she reminded me that the critical thing Hosea was communicating is that the reason people perish is because of their lack of knowledge of God’s Torah. (What I thought was Hosea 4:6 is actually the KJV rendering of Proverbs 29:19: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he,” which obviously has a similar thought in mind.) With this pointed out to me, I had to turn to the wider message of what Hosea had spoken, for a much needed refresher on the issues he had to address many centuries ago:
“Listen to the word of the LORD, O sons of Israel, for the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear. Yet let no one find fault, and let none offer reproof; for your people are like those who contend with the priest. So you will stumble by day, and the prophet also will stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. The more they multiplied, the more they sinned against Me; I will change their glory into shame” (Hosea 4:1-7, NASU).
The Prophet Hosea was called by God to demonstrate how Ancient Israel’s sin had caused it to be separated from Him, and how they were no longer the kingdom of priests and holy nation He had intended (Exodus 19:6). Lamentably, his pleadings fell on deaf ears. Hosea’s life, in very real terms, served as a literal manifestation of what God’s plans of judgment were to Israel: including his marriage to Gomer who became a prostitute, and the naming of his children (Hosea chs. 1-3). In many regards, the cyclical patterns of Israel falling away, its judgment, and its return are noted. By the time one arrives at the opening verses of Hosea 4, Israel has very little, if any, knowledge of God. The lack of faithfulness and kindness, coupled with licentiousness (epitomized in swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery), has even the Promised Land itself “mourning” for righteousness to return. Hosea notes that the priests and prophets are without respect, and even insinuates that they are culpable with the general population.
The striking indictment that Ancient Israel will perish not just because of a lack of knowledge, but because they willfully rejected the knowledge of God, is very sobering. As a result, the Lord will reject them from being His priests because they have forgotten the instruction of His Torah. The added judgment is that He will also forget the progeny of Israel, because the lack of knowledge from His Torah has multiplied sin, and changed God’s glory into utter shame.
Restudying this passage of Scripture can be somewhat alarming, given the context of the current struggles we have witnessed in the broad Messianic community of faith. After all, is not a simple return to studying the Torah on a frequent basis, gaining knowledge about and even embracing the laws of God, something that should be setting us apart from those who choose to ignore it (liberal Jews and Christians who falsely believe that Jesus abolished the Law)? If a renewed focus on God’s commandments should aid His people in holiness, then what is the problem? Why are people still wallowing in deviant teaching, which continues to encumber undiscerning souls?
I would like to suggest that a serious problem with a lack of vision, or a conflict of interests among all the competing Messianic visions vying for supremacy, is what has manifested. This is an appalling reality, because as suggested in the play on words above, the visionless will perish because proper knowledge and application of the laws of God will be either neglected or misconstrued for the self-aggrandizing. Is there a solution to this dilemma? There is:
What about first determining what the actual vision and mission of God is, and then working to accomplish His purposes and will?
How many of us are really that consciously aware that humanity will eventually be returned to an idyllic state even better than that witnessed prior to the Fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden? Revelation chs. 21-22 depict a new Creation devoid of any death, suffering, war, or disease! However, because of the introduction of sin by Adam and Eve desiring to be like God (Genesis 3:5), the process of history has to move ahead so that all of the evil introduced since can be judged and rectified. This is no simplistic process!
For many thousands of years, humanity has struggled with a debilitating, innate sin problem, inherited in Adam. When the Second Adam, Yeshua, arrived, His redeeming sacrifice did pay for the penalties of human sin, making restored communion with the Father fully accessible through Him (John 3:16-18). Now, we await the next major event in salvation history: the return of the Messiah to rule from Mount Zion for a thousand years, to then be followed by the inauguration of the eternal state (cf. Revelation 20:5-15ff). Born again Believers are to be stimulated from the Scriptures to be about the work of the Kingdom, spreading the good news of salvation and living a life that is pleasing to the Lord. The Apostolic Scriptures are replete with instructions on how to function as children of God (John 1:12-13; Acts 17:29; Romans 8:16-21; Philippians 2:1-15; 1 John 3:1-11; 5:2), so that we can be useful vessels for the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17; 15:13; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 1:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:15-16; Hebrews 6:4; 2 Timothy 1:14; 4:7; 2 Peter 1:21; Jude 20).
Nevertheless, as religious history often attests—a direct result of the influence of the world, the flesh, and the Devil (cf. 1 John 2:16; each entity a worthy adversary in its own right)—there has never been universal agreement about how the followers of the Creator God should function. Since the First Century, there has been a proliferation of different Jewish and Christian sects. Since the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, there has been almost boundless multiplication of different religious groups appealing to the Holy Scriptures—so much so that today each individual person may make up his or her own “denomination” to some degree. Needless to say, many of the different visions from each of these groups and individuals have resulted in some disunity, strife, jealousy, envy, bitterness, and a testimony that is frequently not very attractive to outsiders witnessing these actions (cf. Romans 13:13; 1 Corinthians 3:3; 2 Corinthians 12:20-21; Galatians 5:19-21; Philippians 1:15; 1 Timothy 6:3-5; Titus 3:9).
As we find ourselves now entering into the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, one would hope that with the increase in knowledge as prophesied (Daniel 12:4), things might be different. Now that people can almost instantly access Ancient Near Eastern texts, data on archaeological sites verifying the claims of the Scriptures, and consult research conducted in the relevant fields—you might think that the synergies inherent in those sincerely searching out the truth would tend to draw people together. Thinking about the relevance of the Scriptures for our time and our generation is something very exciting! Instead, access to increased knowledge appears to have had just the opposite effect.
I strongly believe that the emergence of the Messianic movement over the past forty years is a global spiritual move of God, both as Jewish people have come to faith in Yeshua, and non-Jewish Believers have embraced their Hebraic Roots. The return to the ancient paths as instructed millennia ago (Jeremiah 6:16), unfortunately, has not really resulted in unity but rather a plethora of visions that bifurcate the Messianic world in multiple directions. This should not be the case, but sadly it is. One would hope that as Hosea prophesied to Ancient Israel about how the lack of knowledge of God’s Torah would utterly ruin them and their children, that instead the restoration of knowledge and practice of God’s Torah would result in preparing a people for the eventual return of the Messiah.
What is the problem? Is it possible that some are discarding the positive strides made down through the centuries, by men and women of God who were on the same path as us—and are resorting to old patterns of works righteousness—rather than living and walking by faith? Are we just suffering from some of old patterns of sinful humanity? Are we just not learning from those in the past who made mistakes that we do not have to make?
The Torah and Tanach form the foundation of understanding much of what we now experience in this post-resurrection era. In principally referring to the “Old Testament,” Paul wrote Timothy, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16, NASU). The Tanach frequently depicts that new era where “the wolf will dwell with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:6) and where “Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isaiah 2:4, NASU; also Micah 4:3)—future realities of great peace that are to motivate us in the present era. Being people of the future age, born again Believers are to recognize that such eschatological hopes can be realized and experienced in their lives today. The crucified life provided by the salvation we possess in Yeshua (Galatians 2:20), with the Holy Spirit resident inside of us, is to have that future worldwide shalom already present in our own relationships with God and interactions with one another. Believers today possess the Holy Spirit as a pledge that more is to come, as we anticipate what is foretold in the Scriptures (Ephesians 1:13-14). Creation itself has been groaning, as we eagerly anticipate the consummation of our salvation from sins—the redemption of our bodies:
“For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:19-23, NASU).
How do we see this ultimate goal achieved, at least in some degree, in people today? A practical vision for the Body of Messiah goes beyond seeing people redeemed from sin, but in seeing them discover what their unique and valued function is. How are people to be encouraged in exercising the spiritual gift(s) that the Lord has given them? How are all individuals within the community of Believers to truly be helped to use all of their talents for God’s glory? Do we have a Messianic movement that emphasizes these traits, or is it more concerned with maintaining distinctions and separations? How do we learn to really work together, and make sure that our agenda is God’s agenda?
It is essential for people to not only determine what their individual vision is, but also their familial vision, and how their families can contribute to a larger congregational body. Just like my ailing sister who needs a goal or hope for the future, so do Believers need a definite vision for what they have been called to do in their families and the greater Body of Messiah. Without determining what this vision is, a lack of direction can settle into the heart, and with it confusion can result. Eventually if this is not arrested and turned in a direction toward usefulness, then the person, family, or community will be headed—at the very least—toward ineffectiveness. The parishioner mutates toward becoming a “perishioner,” as the lack of knowledge and no clear vision compound into despair.
It is always the steadfast responsibility of Believers to point others to the Savior. We need to always be reminded that the Lord’s hand is not short (Isaiah 59:1), and that He desires that no one will perish: “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). If saving the lost is about as complicated as your vision gets, then your usefulness for God’s Kingdom cannot be understated!
Still, many of us have thoughts about the Body of Messiah that go beyond simply seeing people reconciled to God via the work of His Son. We want to see Believers be all that they can be in Him. Having a vision for your life is essential for you to not minimize your usefulness in God’s mission. But you need to have a vision that will positively impact others, and is not self-serving. It needs to help other people know that they are welcome and that they have a place of belonging in communities of Messiah followers. Your vision for your life as a Believer needs to be concerned with the needs of others (Philippians 2:3-4), contributing to the greater Body of Messiah, and in the process avoid some of the distorted visions and deviant teachings out there.
Perhaps the reciprocal of the Hosea quote is applicable:
With the right knowledge God’s people can achieve everything He desires them to achieve!
If you have a burden to see lost souls saved, young Believers mature in faith, or older Believers motivated to help younger Believers—then it is incumbent upon you to no longer keep quiet with the “visionless perishioners” you may encounter every week. Other people need to know what the Lord has placed on your heart. All of those who compose the “Israel of God” have to be about the work of service to the world at large, in order to share the eternal life He offers to those of blind eyes:
“I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you, and I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations, to open blind eyes. To bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness from the prison” (Isaiah 42:6-7, NASU)
May we be a people with a clear vision, so that we can save the lost from perishing, and save the visionless so that they can see and be used for useful purposes in the Kingdom!
Until the restoration of all things…
