We live in a day of moral chaos
in society and spiritual apostasy within the church.
As a nation, we have legislated God out
of our country by legalizing sin.
As a church, we have lived in spiritual
declension for so long that we cannot discern
good from evil.
When the churches in America replaced the God
-centered gospel of the Bible with another gospel
that is man-centered, we created a breeding
ground for spurious conversions.
The churches gradually watered down the gospel to
make it more palatable to sinful man.
All the rights and claims of the Lord
Jesus Christ of the gospel were removed and
replaced with an anemic Jesus who had no
rights or claims on anyone.
In a bad dash to grow our churches,
we handed out an impotent Jesus who stands
helplessly at the door of the sinner's heart,
hoping you will let him in.
But that's not the Jesus found in the
Bible, who sits in authority at the right
hand of God and has all power in
his hands.
As denominations made a grab for power, they
sold out the God of the Bible and
began to traffic in the souls of men
in an attempt to grow their church campuses
through brick and mortar, but with the blood
of souls on their hands.
We stopped preaching against sin and stopped preaching
on hell and stopped preaching man's duty of
repentance and his utter necessity of regeneration.
And subsequently, we mirrored the methodology of a
famous evangelist who broadened the way of salvation
in ways Jesus never did.
Jesus said it was a narrow way and
a straight gate and one had to strive
to enter in.
Jesus said there was a cross in the
daily life of all followers of his.
Jesus said if one did not forsake mother,
father, children, or even one's own life, he
could not be a follower of his.
The cost of discipleship involves a life of
self-denial as one follows the Lord Jesus
along a narrow way.
As a church, we have lied to people
by telling them all they had to do
to go to heaven was to accept Jesus
as their personal savior, even if that's not
even found in our bibles.
We handed folks a easy-believe gospel and
herded them like cattle into our churches to
financially support our denominational programs and pay the
bills on our lavish church campuses.
We have baptized pagans and told them they
were now Christians.
Through all of this, the church lost her
voice of authority in the land and her
witness to the world.
We have ordained men to ministry whom Jesus
does not know.
We have hired pastors who are either entertainers
or babysitters for the grown babies in our
congregations.
The sad consequence of all of this is
that very few are saved today, or young
people leave the churches in droves as soon
as they become adults because they themselves are
sick of the hypocrisy and the missing reality
of God in the so-called people of
God.
When you feed a man a false gospel,
then baptize that man and make him a
member of the church, you have simply made
a unconverted man, an unconverted church member who
will never know the reality of God in
his life and will never have power over
the sin in his life because he is
yet dead in his sins.
The self still sits on the throne of
the heart and rules there even if he
is the chairman of the deacons.
When a sinner is saved, self is dethroned
and another enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ
who has all rights and claims on all
followers of his.
Either Jesus Christ is Lord of your daily
living or he is a stranger to you
and you are a stranger to him.
The Lordship of Christ is the missing doctrine
in our preaching today and by its omission
we have damned the souls of men.
Jesus is either your Lord in every aspect
of your life or he is merely your
servant and if he's not your Lord friend
then you are none of his.
Where the rubber meets the road it's either
Lordship or hell.
He is either your glad sovereign or he
was never your savior.
We need to quit lying to folks and
stop feeding them a false gospel just so
we can have a big church and a
six-figure income.
We need to be honest with folks and
be true to the souls of men by
warning them of their danger of dying in
their sins and informing them of their duty
of repentance, their utter necessity of regeneration as
they surrender all they are to all Christ
is.
He is Lord.
He is a living Lord.
He must be your complete master if you
want to be saved from the fires of
a burning hell.
It's either his Lordship or hell.