We all seem to know when God is moving us to start a new ministry.
It’s something we love, or love the idea of.
It’s not currently being done.
And our heart pounds with excitement at the very thought of doing that for God.

But what about at the other end?
For sure not every ministry is intended to run forever.
So how do we recognize that it’s time is over? It’s time to stop doing it and move on to something else.

And, logically speaking, if we don’t. Then we should have.
If the ministry time is over, then God must want us to move on to something else, and by continuing the dead one, we’re not doing that. Something God wants done, is not being done.

The ministry is no longer a ministry. It’s become an institution.
Something that just is because it is.

Dare I say the Pharisees were an example of this?
They started as a devotion to Yahweh, and to keeping and preserving his law. To encouraging Jews to keep the law of Yahweh. That sounds like a good thing.
They started devoted and based on the Law, but ended up so full of traditions made up by men, even about ridiculous things like how to wash a cup or a bowl, that they became beyond useless.
They became an institution, to the point that they not only didn’t recognize him when he was standing in front of them doing miracles, they even directly opposed Yahweh’s son Yeshua, and tried to have him killed!

Maybe it wasn’t so much that the Pharisees time had come, but they had drifted so far away from where they began that they were no longer fulfilling the ministry Yahweh had in mind when they started.

A bit like when the king commanded that the temple be cleaned out in 2 Kings 23.
They found all sorts of things which shouldn’t have been there. Even offerings to Baal!!
And some old writings … “The Book of the Law”… which they had forgotten about!
The temple and teachings of Yahweh had been long forgotten. It had become just an institution run by the ideas and teachings of men.

Has the modern church, or some of them at least, wandered so far from God that they have become institutions?
They no longer represent the faith and the Spirit which they had when they started, and they have allowed so many things into the church which should never have been there. Ever.
They have turned a blind eye to things which are very clearly taught in the Bible. And replaced them with traditions and habits made by men.

Be like Hilkiah. Be like Josiah.
Go and have a search for why you got started.
Recognize the things which should no longer be there.
And burn them. Destroy them. Get rid of them like the plague that they are.

And if your church is an institution, and you can’t clean it up and restore it… For your own sake, and the sake of those who look up to you.
Leave.

But whatever you do, don’t let it just keep going like it is.

Don’t become a Pharisee.