I wasn't preaching this Easter Sunday, so I
took my teenage daughter and we visited the
fastest growing church in a southern city.
They had three services that morning and they
were packed to the walls.
As we entered the building, we passed a
coffee bar in the lobby where people were
getting their lattes and bringing them into the
church sanctuary to drink during the service.
I hesitate to call what I saw a
sanctuary.
It was more of a nightclub than a
church sanctuary.
The stage was painted black and there were
neon blue light decorations all around the platform.
The worship band began and I soon realized
I was at a rock concert.
A smoke machine was next to the drummer
and smoke filled the platform of blue jean
dressed musicians and singers.
A strobe light flashed behind them.
The music was so loud my ears were
still hurting two hours after the service.
The worship minister yelled out between songs, you
don't have to wait for the invitation to
be saved.
Just put your faith in Jesus right now
and get it settled so you can sing
along as a believer.
Just do it now.
And then the music pounded in my ears
so loudly I could barely stand it.
The woman in front of me had on
a backless dress and her back was covered
with tattoos.
In her one hand she held a coffee
in a styrofoam cup and her other hand
was raised over her head as she waved
it and she shook her rear end to
the music's pounding beat.
And I looked around that auditorium and every
seat was full and everybody there was gyrating
like that woman in front of me.
And my daughter and I just sat there
and suffered through it.
Then the pastor got up on stage in
his casual clothes and he told a story
based on his perception of what Easter was
to him.
He was funny and the audience laughed and
laughed while they drank their coffee during this
Easter service.
And as I sat there I was sick
to my stomach.
I was literally nauseated as I tried to
make sense of what was going on in
that place called a church.
I sensed a presence there.
It was a prominent presence but it was
not God's presence.
It was a demonic presence.
A spirit of deception pervaded the atmosphere of
that room.
From the pastor to the music minister to
the people in the seats they all worshiped
this presence and mistook that evil demonic presence
for good.
And as I sat there I was baffled
at how so many people could be so
deceived and believe they were serving God and
worshiping God when it was so evident to
me that this was an oppressive evil presence
there.
Finally my daughter tapped me on the shoulder
and she said, Daddy can we leave?
I can't take this anymore.
We got up and left in the middle
of the pastor telling another story.
As we walked out into the sunshine of
the pretty Easter morning my daughter turned to
me and said, I'm glad we left.
That was horrible.
I turned to her and said, baby girl
that is not what church is supposed to
be but I'm afraid that's what church has
become in America today.
And on the drive back she showed me
pictures she took of the woman's bathroom.
How elaborate it was.
Flat screen TVs were all along the wall.
Ivory sinks had stress relieving soap dispensers.
Soft couches were all along the wall of
this huge looking spa which was the woman's
restroom.
My daughter said she thought it was gaudy
to be in a church like that.
I agreed with her but that's the norm
in America today.
The church is centered around the creature comforts
a man.
My daughter asked me what the church was
like when I was a boy.
I said it was common back then to
walk into a church sanctuary and find a
prayer meeting going on where men and women
and boys and girls were on their faces
at the altar crying out to God because
the presence of the Almighty was there and
that the carpet in the sanctuary was wet
from the tears of broken hearted people weeping
over the sins of the land and praying
for the lost in their community to come
to Christ.
That the church back in America in those
days was a house of prayer not a
house of entertainment like it is today.
Then she asked me how the church got
to be the way it is today.
This is what I told her.
I said that somewhere back a few decades
ago the church in America started to change
the gospel message to be a less offensive
message.
It became a only believe gospel and preachers
quit preaching on sin and omitted the need
for man to repent to come to God.
They quit preaching the lordship of Jesus Christ
and holiness in the life of the believer.
The gospel became a watered down version of
the original.
Then the American church got on a mad
rush of empire building that made them expand
their bulging campuses to try to become the
biggest church in their city.
Pastors could not wait to read the hottest
new book on church growth and adopt that
mentality to their program.
Pastors in former days read books on being
anointed with the Holy Spirit and living a
holy life but the pastors of today and
the recent past just want to grow their
church to be as big as it can
be and they had to make it attractive
to the masses so they had to change
the way they did worship so they tossed
out the God-centered hymns and brought in
man-centered entertainments.
Then they did away with the weekly prayer
meeting because they did not want to wait
upon God any longer when they could get
the job done with money and manpower a
lot quicker anyhow.
And the bottom line was they walked God
to the back of the church and pushed
him out the back door and opened the
front door of the church and let the
world in.
They wanted to add something new and different
to attract the modern crowd because they felt
the old ways couldn't get the job done
anymore.
And anytime there is a mixture of something
it is no longer pure.
A little poison will pollute an entire stream.
One fly in the ointment is all you
need friends.
And when the American church mixed a little
religion with a lot of the world it
became an impure church a worldly apostate church
that is greatly deceived.
And I stressed to my daughter that there
are still a few good churches in the
land and I knew the pastors of many
of them and they didn't do church like
what we saw that Easter Sunday.
But she said most of the churches were
like the one we visited and I said
yes that's true the majority of the churches
in this country are deceived.
And that's the title of my message this
evening.
A deceived church in a degenerate land that
the land is degenerate is a stark fact
today when good is called evil and evil
good and God is nothing more than a
cuss word in this nation today.
It's a degenerate land.
And as we drove in the car my
daughter informed me what Easter fell on this
year.
It was 420.
A 420 day the 20th of April.
A 420 day is a day a national
celebration for marijuana use.
It began with a group of California students
years ago who used to sneak outside the
school at 420 in the afternoon to smoke
weed and now on April 20th each year
in this country on every social page on
the internet are posted photos of people holding
up their weed and smoking it in celebration
of it.
And this happened to fall on Easter Sunday
this year.
So each city in America on Easter Sunday
was having a 420 festival in some part
of their city to celebrate a narcotic drug
and summon their noses in the face of
God.
So we have a nation of people who
are high on drugs.
Drugs that are quickly becoming legal in many
states.
And we have a nation of people who
are drunk on alcohol and a nation of
people who are intoxicated with sensuality and sex
and go their own way against the ways
of God.
We can't blame the media for they just
give the people what they want.
It's all supply and demand and Americans want
sex and sexuality as their entertainment and they
want alcohol and narcotics to numb the pain
of the emptiness that grips their heart.
The nation of America lies in a stupor
of degeneration and perversion and it is in
a downward spiral out of control.
And where is the church in all of
this?
The church at large is deceived by a
spirit of deception and it busies herself with
growing her campus and convincing herself she's doing
it in the name of God and religion.
This evening I will elaborate on how the
church in America got in this sad condition.
Number one, there is an unconverted ministry.
Number two, there is a perverted gospel.
And number three, there is an unregenerate church
body.
Our passage this evening is taken from the
Old Testament from the book of Hosea.
You may turn in your Bibles there now.
Listen friends, I have no funny stories to
tell you this evening to make you laugh.
I didn't come here to entertain you.
My ministry is to the slumbering church in
America to try and awaken her out of
her spiritual stupor.
I'm not a popular preacher and I've preached
myself just about out of most churches I've
been in.
Nobody wants my message today.
It's an unpopular message.
I like to preach that when Adam fell
in the garden, he just didn't trip and
skin his knee a little.
Rather, he fell on his head and died
spiritually.
That mankind comes into this world with an
utterly roomed nature and all of Adam's children
are born with a bent toward sin.
Man drinks iniquity like it's water and man
lacks the moral ability to turn to God
and serve him.
If you get saved, it's because God gave
you the grace to be saved.
It is he who gives saving faith so
we can turn to him in repentance and
faith.
I preach that man has a duty to
repent toward God.
If you do not repent, you will surely
die in your sins and drop into a
place of eternal misery called hell.
That hell is hot.
Hell is a place of intense torment and
suffering and it is endless for all eternity.
I preach the necessity of regeneration.
That man must be born again by the
Spirit of God.
God's Word declares that it is he who
takes away the heart of stone and makes
it a heart of flesh.
I preach up the lordship of Jesus Christ
that if you want him savingly, you must
bow to him as lord.
You must throw down your shotgun of rebellion
and submit to the claims and rights that
the gospel has on a follower of Christ
Jesus and you must take up your cross
and deny yourself and follow a crucified savior.
I preach Christ and him crucified and a
bloody cross because of sin.
I preach on the sinfulness of sin and
if you claim to be a Christian, then
you must pursue a life of holiness for
without, no one will see the Lord.
Now most folks don't like that message, but
it's the only message I know.
I will preach it until I die and
go to glory.
I preach a God-centered gospel and I
preach about a risen Lord who sits on
the right hand of the Father and he
earned that right by way of a bloody
cross and I will not stand idly by
while the church in my country falls into
gross error and deception and becomes a church
that Jesus wants to spew out of his
mouth because it makes him sick.
Now we will be in chapter 7 in
the book of Hosea.
Chapter 7 is a reproof of the manifold
sins of the people of God.
The Jews were completely unaware of their spiritual
condition and the spiritual decay which was upon
them.
Listen friends to how this passage so accurately
describes the church in America today.
I repeat there are some still faithful churches
in the land with godly shepherds in the
pulpits.
I know of them, but they are few.
Listen to the word of God and I
pray it stirs our hearts this evening and
awakens us to our great danger.
When I would have healed Israel, then the
iniquity of Ephraim was discovered and the wickedness
of Samaria, for they commit falsehood and the
thief cometh in and the troop of robbers
spoileth without, and they consider not in their
hearts that I remember all their wickedness.
Now their own doings have beset them about.
They are before my face.
They make the king glad with their wickedness
and the princes with their lies.
They are all adulterers as an oven heated
by the baker who ceaseth from raising after
he hath kneaded the dough until it be
leavened.
In the day of our king the princes
have made him sick with bottles of wine.
He stretched out his hand with scorners for
they have made ready their heart like an
oven whilst they lie and wait.
Their baker sleepeth all the night.
In the morning it burneth as a flaming
fire.
They are all hot as an oven and
have devoured their judges.
All their kings are fallen.
There is none among them that calleth unto
me.
Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people.
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth
it not.
Yea, grey hairs are here and there upon
him, yet he knoweth it not.
I will stop there.
In this striking passage of the word of
God we see a people decayed spiritually.
They have replaced the God of their fathers
with false gods.
They have mixed their worship with idols and
they bow down to them.
They have no spiritual power, no influence upon
the pagan nations that surround them.
They are so deluded and deceived that they
are completely unaware of their great spiritual declension
and rotten condition.
They are like a cake, half-baked, done
on one side but raw on the other,
a mixture no good to anybody.
They have grey hairs on them and know
it not.
So sad is their spiritual decay that they
believe themselves to be right in the sight
of God and they make excuses for their
sinful behavior.
Such is the church in America today.
But how did we get here?
I can explain it the best way I
know how because I have observed it for
the last 40 years.
First, there is an unconverted ministry today.
Many stand in pulpits across this country and
they are blind leaders who are unregenerate individuals
with seminary degrees.
They know their Bibles, they know their theology,
but they do not know the God of
the Bible.
They have not the Spirit of God in
them nor the sanctified work of the Holy
Spirit upon them.
They are unconverted, ordained ministers, and they have
no spiritual power.
Thus, they are easily deceived by their father
the devil.
They worship a false spirit and preach a
false gospel.
And that is my second point, friends.
The gospel of our modern day is a
perverted gospel.
It is a perversion of the New Testament
original.
The gospel of our hour is so watered
down to make it more palatable to sinful
man that it has no saving power whatsoever.
It is a feel good message preached with
the intent to not offend anybody.
Sin is omitted.
The blood is omitted.
Repentance is omitted.
The cross and the life of the believer
is omitted.
When my daughter and I left that church,
she turned to me and said, Daddy, how
can anybody in that church get saved by
that message?
I answered and said, They cannot, honey.
But that is the mainstream gospel of your
day and mine.
And that, friends, leads me to my third
point of an unregenerate church body.
At this church, I listened to a church
member give her testimony while she was being
baptized.
She said that she was driven away from
church as a youth because of its strictness.
But when she found out about this church
and how accepting they were of everybody, she
knew it was the place for her.
So that is why she joined it.
And now she wanted to make it public
and tell people she was a Christian and
a member there.
And she was proud of it.
That was her testimony.
We have in our churches today a vast
majority of its members who lie in an
unconverted state.
They made a decision to become a Christian
based on some reason or they based it
on a text.
They believe John 3 16 to be true.
So they became a Christian and the church
let them in and baptize them.
But listen, friends, there was a time in
our country years ago when you cannot become
a member of a church unless you demonstrated
credible evidence of regeneration.
But the majority of church members today have
never been awakened to their lost condition, never
been convicted of sin, and have never been
regenerated by the spirit of God through the
new birth.
But that is okay with the American church
today because of her empire building mentality.
She will let you join quickly and make
it easy for you to join because she
needs your money to expand her already bulging
campus.
The pastor won't warn you of your danger
of dying in your sins and the necessity
of regeneration to be truly saved because he
more than likely has never been the subject
of regeneration himself.
So this is how we arrived here with
a deceived church in a degenerate land.
The blind lead the blind because of an
unconverted ministry of false prophets abound.
The perverted gospel is the main one you
will hear on Sunday morning and the churches
in the land.
It can't save a flea, much less a
hell bound sinner who loves his sins.
And we make it easy to be a
church member.
So we have a large percentage of our
church membership who are on regenerate, baptized, heathen,
and society who looks at the church in
America today and laughs along with her, for
she is indeed laughable.
When the ministers of a nation cease to
be like salt and act as a preservative
against sin, then evil will abound in the
land and corruption will spread and set in
like a great plague.
We got here when the church quit calling
sin sin, when the church quit calling men
to their duty of repentance, when the church
quit preaching on holiness and discipleship, when the
church let the world in, the world went
to hell.
Few are saved today and many are deceived.
This is the sad condition of this once
great nation called America.
Only a God sent revival will save this
nation from certain destruction.
Heaven help us.
Let me pray.
Great God, almighty, oh, ancient of days, your
very name is holy.
You dwell in a high and lofty place,
but we, oh Lord, are poor, blind and
naked.
We are poor spiritually.
We have no power.
We are blind to our wretched condition and
we are naked and exposed to your divine
judgments upon us.
We have forsaken thee, the God of the
Bible, and replaced thee with idols of our
own making.
A false spirit lies heavy upon us as
we sleep the sleep of death.
Awaken us, great king, to our grave danger.
Forgive us, great God.
Have mercy upon us, I pray, in your
wrath.
Remember mercy.
Send us, oh Lord, the grace of repentance
to forsake our wicked ways and to turn
back to thee with all our hearts.
Shower us with revival blessings and not your
outpoured wrath.
Have mercy, I pray, great God.