Sold to the Highest Bidder!

An Auction
Another Auction
Church Shopping
Auctioning of Principles
Demas
Gehazi
Money Changers
Coming of Babylon
Test of Faith
Gau-Hong
Auca Missionaries
Not For Sale
Professor or Possessor?

SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER!

An Auction

The auctioneer starts the bidding off,
“What will you give me for this beautiful little item? We’ll start the bidding at one hundred; do I hear two? I hear two; do I hear three? Who’ll give me three? Who’ll give me three?” The bidding continues until others cannot keep up with the bids and the auctioneer finally says, “Going once, going twice, sold to the highest bidder!”

Auctions are well known in the cities. Goods that individuals want to sell are brought to the place of auction. Bids are taken as to the amount the people want to pay and the highest offer gets the item put up for sale. Usually the sale item is sold within a five minute time limit so this means that the bidding becomes fast and furious as those involved try to outbid each other and seek the attention of the auctioneer.

Another Auction

There is another type of auction going on today in various places of society – the auctioning off of principles and consciences. All over the world we see in the news people who are selling out and defecting from their previously confessed principles of right conduct. Sometimes these people even change their beliefs many times, like the wind, and are always ready with the excuse that what they did was right according to their principles and conscience.

True believers and disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ recognize that it is normal for those who only live for this world to act this way, as they are living for their own benefit. However, this auctioning off of principles has absolutely no rightful place in the Church of Jesus Christ.

I am not thinking of church bazaars, bingo games (gambling), dances or “harambees” or anything else that solicits money from the unbelieving world to support the work of God. While all these things show how worldliness has entered into the Church, a far worse evil has crept in among the saints of God and it is the basis for believers being turned and led away from “the truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21 KJV).

All acceptable offerings to God have to come from true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and be given under the direction of the Spirit of God. Proverbs 15:8 reminds us that “the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD.” By contrast, we are told that it was “by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (Heb. 11:4).

Church Shopping

The auctioning we see being done in the professing Church is done by people who call themselves true Christians but who attend and give their services to the church which offers them the most material benefits. Regardless of the differences in doctrine, these professed followers of Jesus Christ are ardently church shopping. They are the “wachumi” of the religious world, out to get the best buys they can possibly obtain.

These so-called believers are becoming servants of various church groups not because of spiritual convictions based on the Bible but because their allegiance is based on the principle of “the auction” – sold to the highest bidder!

Some of the material benefits they are seeking are schooling, travel abroad, a monthly salary, a place of honor or greater respect. All of these things may be good in themselves, but to have material benefits affect our obedience to the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to draw us into disobedience to Him has to be recognized for what it is – sin!

The Lord Jesus said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” (Lk. 6:46). The apostles were threatened with beatings and imprisoned for being faithful to the Lord but they told their accusers, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). They never sold out to the highest bidder!