Posted on 09/06/2010 3:34:08 PM PDT by Gamecock
Donald Grey Barnhouse illustrates how dangerous it is to preach moral ethics minus the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Here is what he said on CBS radio, over half a century ago:
All of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," and churches would be full every Sunday...where Christ is not preached.
When preaching is full of moral instructions like, "read your Bible" "share your faith," "don't look at pornography," "teach your kids," and "be honest in your taxes," without setting Jesus forth as the only path through which this can be accomplished, you produce a bunch of moral legalists, nice people with nice smiles, who are either too good or too terrified to take an unbeliever to lunch, babysit a stripper's child, or share the gospel with a man in a drunken stupor.
Moral instructions are biblical and wonderful. Bryan Chapel observes that "Be messages"—be like, be good, be disciplined—"are not wrong in themselves; they are wrong by themselves." Without Christ it is external legalism. When we call people to moral duty, feeding their lust for religion that makes them feel like good people, without showing them how utterly impossible it is to consistently obey even one of these commands on their own, we encourage them to the idolatry of religion instead of worship of Jesus Christ.
Consider how the commands of Paul were rooted in the gospel. In Ephesians 4, he tells Christians to serve others because "grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift" (Eph 4:7). In Ephesians 5, he commands husband to love their wives "just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). He tells the Corinthians to tithe, and then motivates them with the gospel of Jesus Christ:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor 9:9).
It is so human of us to measure our righteousness by how well we obey instead of by Jesus Christ alone, letting all our obedience be in response to what He already did for us instead of motivated by sheer moral duty! John the Apostle did not say, "We love because we are supposed to love!" No. He wrote, "We love because He first loved us!"
(1 John 4:19). That gospel-motivated love! Now are we supposed to love? Yes! The two greatest commandments in all the sixty-six books of Scripture command us to love. But if this love is not preceded by, rooted in, and motivated by God's love for us through the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is not pleasing to God, will leave us proud, arrogant, and smug, and castrated when it comes to loving the others, both saved and unsaved.
Charles Spurgeon told the story of a man who loved his King. The king loved carrots, so the man grew the fattest carrot he could. On the day he presented the carrot, the king was overjoyed and gave him five more acres of land to see what kind of carrots he could grow with that.
An official in the court overheard this conversation and thought, "He got five acres for one carrot! Let me see what I can do!" The official brought in his finest horse and presented it to the king. "Thank you!" said the king. But the king offered him nothing in return. The frustrated official whined, "A man gives you a carrot and you give him five acres of land. I give you a thoroughbred steed and you give me nothing!"
The king replied, "When the farmer gave me a carrot, he gave it for me. When you gave me a horse, you gave it for yourself." It is very easy to be moral for ourself, and not for Jesus.
We are drawn to find our selfworth and pesonal identity in our tight family, regular Bible study, or consistent church attendance, replacing Jesus as Lord with religion as Lord, which at its heart, is another form of idolatry, no different than cussing, physical abuse, or bowing before a statue of Buddha.
Tim Keller features this beautifully in his book, Prodigal God. He paints God as the prodigal. "Prodigal" means not only to waste, but can mean to lavish. God is a prodigal. He pours out grace in huge amounts!
But then Keller shows that both the older and the younger brother are in desperate need of this grace. There are two ways of being lost. You have the moral relativist illustrated by the prodigal son; and you have the moral religionist, illustrated by the older brother, who Keller rightly observes is as lost as the one who left home. Who was closer to the kingdom of God? The Pharisee or the tax collector? The rabbi or the prostitute? Jesus answers this question in a different context: "Truly I say to you [the religious, the temple attenders] that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you" (Mat 21:43).
Often unbelievers, says Keller, are not rejecting Christianity but the older brother syndrome in us. We become the stumbling block to Jesus Christ, eclipsing His glory with our worship of religion instead of the Son of God. When unbelievers around you, what emanates from your words and actions? Religion or Jesus Christ?
So how should the preacher preach? He must preach Christ! Not to the neglect of Christian commands, but as their motivation to, end goal of, and pathway to these commands.
Bryan Chapell wrote,
Messages that are not Christ-centered inevitably become human-centered...These preachers do not deliberately exclude Christ's ministry from their own, but by consistently preaching messages on the order of "Five Steps to a Better Marriage," "How to Make God Answer Your Prayer," they present godliness entirely as a product of human endeavor...No message is more damaging to true faith. By making human efforts alone the measure and the cause of godliness, evangelicals fall victim to the twin assaults of theological legalism and liberalism—which despite their perceived opposition are actually identical in making one's relationship with God dependent on human goodness.
May we not fall under Christ's indictment of those not willing to come to Jesus, by not being willing to preach Jesus, "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life" (John 5:39-40).
You’d have Ithica, New York.
All of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," and churches would be full every Sunday...where Christ is not preached.
We seem to think there would be drunks in the gutter, protitutes on every street corner, smoking and sassy children dancing.
I think Barnhouse was right.
Perhaps it would look like Utah.
Detroit
Thanks. This is actually what our pastor preached this last Sunday, using Keller’s example. Great sermon.
A couple of weeks ago I heard a sermon on the Prodigal Son preached by Dr Sinclair Ferguson.
He really railed on the older son. Great stuff.
Or DC
The first challenge is for Christians to learn what The Gospel is so they can preach it! It's rather sad how many serious church attenders don't have a clue about preaching The Gospel.
Or Washington, DC.
I knew someone would have posted my thought already.
I’m trying to understand this in light of The Reverends Jackson and Sharpton.
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2010/09/04/chicago-gang-members-hold-press-conference-to-slam-police/
Cool. Got a link?
There is a story about a Sunday school teacher who was teaching about the Prodigal son. At the end she asked some questions about the story. At one point she asked “who was upset when the prodigal son returned.” One kid raised his hand and said, “The fattend calf.”
Good news... many people miss the part of the older son, overlooking a central part of Christ's message.
LOL
When I taught Sunday School to JR high kids, I had one young man ask who do you think ended up running the business after the Dad was gone. Before I could answer one boy shouted, "the one who knew how to handle money".
You’d have:
Chicago,
W.D.C.,
Miami,
New York City,
Los Angeles,
San Francisco,
Detroit,
Gary, IN, etc...
It woulf look like Babylon or San Francisco or Salt Lake City under Brigham Young...
Immorality and paganism anf humanism would reign...
Good piece. In no way do I advocate being unabashedly rotten to the core as long as you claim to accept Jesus, but there’s no getting around it: crotchety Christianity that has nothing better to do with its life than judge others puts people off. Jesus wasn’t advocating social liberalism, moral relativism or acceptance of sin when he said to be kind to sinners. He was teaching us how to market our faith to potential believers; righteous behavior will follow naturally from humbling oneself before God. If crotchety Christians marketed their products in the same way they tend to market their faith—by scaring potential buyers away with warnings, do-nots, strings and fees before they can even get through the door—they would have no customers.
Thanks for posting that. That website is great. I’m listening to Seth Kniep on defending your faith. This site will be on my favorites list.
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