I first was introduced to Rob Bell as a senior in high school. His NOOMA videos were creative and intriguing. I had never seen a teaching style like his before and like countless others I was hooked. I knew at this time that I was going to be a part of church and teaching would be a large part of my ministry. I made a decision: I want to teach like Rob Bell.
There has been a lot said the past couple days about Rob Bell’s latest book. There are a few things I would like to contribute to the conversation. You know if I felt compelled enough to blog, I must REALLY want to say something.
1. Rob Bell is great at engaging in spiritual discussion
No doubt, this was what attracted me to him. He approached life, spiritual matters, and the Bible in a way that was different than anything I had seen before. My freshmen year of college I led a NOOMA study with some of my pledge brothers in my fraternity. We had some really great discussion spring forth from some of his videos.
2. Rob Bell fails at bringing his message to the cross
That being said, Rob Bell is a heretic. His messages are intriguing because they begin to explore difficult ideas and concepts. The error of never bringing the discussion ultimately to the gospel is inexcusable. Rob Bell’s teaser video for his latest book proves him to be a Universalist. The evangelical world should not look to Rob Bell for theological guidance. He should resign as a pastor and he should not pose as an evangelical Christian any longer.
3. No man is a hero or a villain
We can learn something from this situation. Our tendency as fallen man is to elevate some to status of “hero” that can do no wrong and place others in a category of “villain.” In this situation, you will see some Christians hopelessly defend Rob Bell. Others will throw stones at him. The polarizing views in many ways show how there are some who are faithful to the man because he is their hero and others will seek to crucify him because he is their villain. No man’s ministry, theology or life is worth exalting or condemning. However, we as Christians must identify those that are teaching contrary to what Scriptures teach.
Rob Bell at one point was a hero in my life. I wanted to mimic my teaching ministry after him. I remember watching some of his NOOMA videos and thinking in the back of my mind “something is off here…” I am very grateful that we live in an age where there is so much bible teaching available for free online. While Christians must guard themselves from living off of others teaching, it saved me from becoming like Rob Bell. Another pastor pointed out flaws in Rob Bell’s “Velvet Elvis” that I did not see in my reading. This was the first time that I saw a Christian pastor identifying another Christian pastor as having poor theology. I am grateful this pastor had the courage to identify Rob Bell’s errors because I assumed there were none.
How should we as Christians respond to Rob Bell? Identify him for what he is: a heretic. However, do not miss the opportunity to learn from the man. Bell does a great job at engaging the spiritual discussion. The bigger lesson to learn: Truth wins.
This was the message I gave at FBC Purcell on July 25, 2010
The message I believe I’ve been given to bring you this morning is not one that I believe will be readily received by all in attendance today with broken hearts or joyful spirits, but nonetheless I must be faithful to the Scripture.We are in a critical moment in the life of our church, and a moment of this magnitude must be awarded its’ due attention.I believe, with great sincerity, that our church must be called to a time of spiritual repentance.I would put myself personally at the forefront.
However, this is not a message aimed at any specific man, this is not a message even truly aimed at our church exclusively, but I believe that the church in America has strayed from being Gospel-centered to Performance-centered.The “flesh” drives us, as it would say in Romans, and not the Spirit.I am guilty of this by seeing the Youth Ministry growing in numbers and decisions and mistaking this for my value or my being an asset to the church body.The decisions and life change is of no effort of my own but the Holy Spirit’s interceding on behalf of these young people.Likewise, in the church today, we see church as successful if the church is growing in numbers and in facilities.While both are good things, neither are ultimately markers of being in “God’s will.”
This church has a long and storied history.Truly thousands and thousands if not millions of lives have been changed directly or indirectly by the ministry of this church congregation over the 100+ years of its’ existence.But may we be honest and may I be clear, that does not make us today a place of genuine worship to God nor does having the highest attendance in history make us more mission-minded than ever before.We must not mistaken membership for movement.
We are all guilty in this room of falling short of God’s glory.The message of Christianity is that Jesus Christ stands in the gap for us to bring us back to the Father.We are saved through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.However, when we gather and talk about being a good person because God wants us to be good people, the result is nothing more than therapy class.What I want to plead with you today is to join with me in repenting that we might be men and women exclusively devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.And I would beg you, please don’t get mad or tune me out due to your presuppositions, but deal faithfully with the Scripture we will discuss and arrive at the conclusion that the Holy Spirit bring you to personally.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.Everything he created was good.He then said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it.”The first two chapters of the Bible in your lap is paradise, and then the serpent comes and deceives Eve into believing that she could have righteousness on her own apart from God.She succumbed to this lie by eating the fruit of the tree and instantly knew both good and evil.Today, we have the same deception from the Enemy in our lives daily, that we can have righteousness of our own apart from God.
Some people run as far from God as possible in order to find their own righteousness.Even people who live the most prodigal of lives find themselves to be righteous in comparison to other people who live more prodigal lives.Church people are guilty of all the same sin though.We have righteousness apart from God that is set on our performance.We find ourselves looking down on “lesser” Christians who are not fulfilling God’s law as “successfully” as us.We are offended when people tell us to repent of sin, because we feel as though we have arrived spiritually.Whether we voice or even consciously think these things, either way we are just as lost as the prodigal.I would even submit perhaps we are more wicked in that we claim to know the truth and yet we do not walk in the grace that was extended to us in Christ.I find in my most honest moments I much more desire to be known as a man who loves God than I desire to know God.We spend more time trying to convince ourselves we’re somebody, than admitting we’re nobody, and miss loving Christ.
The Gospel is not “Do more and try harder.”When we read our Bibles for moralistic correction in our lives we rob the Christian life of its’ power.How did Paul construct all of his letters (except for 2 Corinthians)?He started with the Gospel of Jesus, then moved to the implications of the Gospel.He would explain that we are made perfect in Christ and in light of this fact, we are transformed so that we may have a marriage that mirrors Christ and the church.We cannot proclaim to others or to ourselves that we must live moral lives.
Morality and holiness are not the same.
The focus is everything.When the goal becomes behavioral modification, we end up either in self-righteousness because we have carried out the new behavior we desired, or despair because we didn’t live up to the standard of living we set for ourselves, but never is the result worship.We must repent of this self-focused narcissism and turn our eyes upon Jesus.When compared to Christ, we are all in despair, for we all fall short.If we would stop comparing ourselves to others and stop trying to boost our self-esteem by telling ourselves (or worse, having Sunday School teachers tell us) that we are good enough, smart enough, and dog-gone-it, people like us, and be honest enough to say “I’m a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst a people of unclean lips,” then the Holy Spirit could really begin to transform our lives.
One of our problems is, we go to God to get the things of God rather than worshipping God for what he has already given us: namely eternal life for those that believe!We become all about our performance and see God as a Cosmic Vending Machine in the sky.“Lord, I’ve been coming to church a lot, and I’ve given a lot of money, I was hoping you could help me out in this situation.”As if God owes us for our “loyalty” to Him.We have been disloyal.We have lived our entire lives in betrayal of God.What small glistening good has come from us is really Christ in us.
The Christian life is not about making you feel good about yourself.It is not about increasing your self-esteem.A new life in Christ means you recognize that you don’t have any worth of your own a part from God.How crazy is it that the God of the Universe would still love us enough to send us only son to die in our place that he might have a relationship with us that we messed up in the first place? That is where we find our worth!The Christian life is not about what we do, but what Christ has done.
2 Corinthians 5:21 "For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
The Gospel has mistakenly become Christianity 101 and we move on past the Gospel following conversion.In order for someone to be saved they must understand God created everything perfect, we messed up, Christ died for our sin, and rose from death that all who call on his name will be saved.After understanding and believing this truth, the new believer who has just been transformed by grace is encouraged to begin changing everything in their life because that’s what good Christians do.The embrace of grace is quickly removed with a burden of morality.Wondering what happened to Christ’s love, the new believer will go one of two ways previously mentioned, either they will fall back into their old pattern of living (for they found no new freedom in Christ, only a different captivity in church morality) or they will abide by the moral code set upon them, live up to the expectation, and become self-righteous in the process.If they go the way of the prodigal, the church looks down their nose and says “they should know better,” but if they go the way of the older brother they are the ones who look down their nose at others and think, “they didn’t live up to the challenge as well as I did.”Truly, it much more resembles the American culture, “I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps,” than it resembles the Gospel.
Some of you here today will push back on this point and say, “I am neither of the prodigal or the self-righteous church-goer.” Or perhaps you are thinking of someone who is one or the other.The truth is this; we all have both of these personalities in us at the same time.If you are here today and you want to grow deeper in your relationship with Christ, it doesn’t come through trying harder or doing more.It maybe doesn’t even come through getting in a “better” Sunday School class.Maturity in Christ comes the same way that conversion comes: understanding your sinful nature and recognizing your need for God to bridge the gap.If you are not currently repenting of sin in your life, Satan is mastering you.You need to repent.If you do not see yourself as a sinner in need of God’s grace to save you, then you are not a Christian.You need to accept Christ today.
If this Gospel is how we are saved from our sin, and this is how we grow in our relationship with Jesus… then why do our churches practice something entirely different?
You may have noticed by now, the title of this sermon is “Christless Christianity” The Practice of the Church Today.This is obviously in no way an endorsement of leaving Christ out of the church, but rather a call for Jesus to be back at the center of our church.Revelation 3:19-20 This passage is actually referring to a church that Jesus is pleading with to let Him in.May we not be guilty of being a church that Jesus wanted to be included in more of and was not.And may we not be guilty of assuming that we are not one of these churches simply because we think we are better people than we are.
The title “Christless Christianity” is actually a book by a man named Michael Horton.He writes in his book, “My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for “relevant” quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God’s judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all that we can be.”
Many churches, evangelical, protestant churches, are teaching a gospel that is much closer to, what Christian Smith calls, Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism.
Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism
1.God created the world.
2.God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other
3.The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself
4.God does not need to be involved except when needed
5.Good people go to heaven when they die
To break it down even more let’s dissect the term:
Moralistic – God loves good people.
Therapeutic – Life revolves around my personal preferences
Deism – belief in God, but no life change by Him
The scary thing is that most people in churches today believe this to be true.The scarier thing is even more churches communicate something similar to this without realizing they are not teaching the Gospel.The Enemy is constantly trying to convince us that we are worthy of God’s love.This destroys the message of grace and prevents believer from worshiping Christ.
Ephesians 2:1-10
v. 1-3
Depraved, Worshipful Regeneration
Depraved – We are all by nature children of wrath
v.4-7
Worshipful – Our life revolves around God
v.8-10
Regeneration – my belief in Christ transforms my life
There is an increasing gap between what we claim we believe and what we functionally communicate.When we tell people that the Bible says to be a good husband or father and that God wants you to be a good husband or father and part of being a good Christian is being a good husband or father we undercut the power of the Gospel by telling them they better get their act together.This is religion.The Gospel says you can never be a good husband or father because there is only one who is good, God alone. He is the good husband, to us his unfaithful bride.He is the good father who loves the son perfectly.And it is he inside of us that can give us the power to love our wives as Christ loves the church.It is He who can give us the wisdom of a good father because He is one.It is Christ in us and by now power of our own.
The Gospel is not about making bad people good, it is about making dead people alive.What a tragedy it would be to all get to heaven and Jesus look at us and say, “You were focused so intently on being a ‘good’ person that you completely missed a life with me that I was hoping for you.”We say we believe in the Gospel, but we are communicating morality.
We cannot call for moral behavior on the basis that the Bible commands it and not tell that the Bible offers us hope in Jesus alone to overcome our sin.The law was put in place to make us aware of our sin, and Christ came to die for our sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.To this day nothing that you or I have done is worthy of God.Our very best is filthy rags.We look at the lost world and shake our heads at the way they live their lives, but it’s because no one is offering them true hope in the Gospel.
America has walked away from the church because the church has walked away from the Gospel.
However, there is hope for us.The opportunity for change is now.We must come in a spirit of repentance.Both in our individual lives as well as a church body.May we not be the Pharisees that look down our noses at those that repent as was the case in the days of Jesus/John the Baptist, but instead may we fall on our faces at the altar and beg Christ to fill this place.May we be more concerned about the Holy Spirit’s presence here than in the attendance count.May we not use prayer as a transition between one part of the worship service to another, but cry out to God that we might know him more.May we not fight over the worship style, but beg God to fall on this church.May we not ask for shorter sermons, but for harder truth.May we not give financially out of guilt or self-righteousness, or even to see new buildings, but give that the Kingdom might expand through what God has blessed us with.May we not make the mistake of assuming that we are a good church that Christ is pleased with, but assuming that we are a wicked people in need of Christ’s mercy in our lives personally, and in our church corporately.Here lies a great future.The hope of being united with Christ in His resurrection.
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I have a very attractive wife.I often get the look that says, “How did you get her?” when I introduce Lauren as my wife.
However, I didn’t develop feelings for her when she became beautiful.Lauren and I have known each other since we were in Kid’s Choir together, and I began pursuing her during our awkward Junior High years.As we grew in our friendship, I realized that she was exactly the type of person I wanted to marry.Lauren has a very sweet, soft temperament, she stands firm on her convictions, and she cares deeply for those closest to her.While I think Lauren is the most attractive girl I have ever seen, her beauty is not what primarily attracts me to her, but neither is it the wonderful attributes I just mentioned.
What if it was her beauty that primarily attracted me to her?If ultimately I am attracted to Lauren mainly for her physical beauty, our marriage will collapse when we age.If my attraction is mainly for the things she does, our marriage will collapse when she doesn’t hold up “her end.”Even if my attraction to her is based on her relationship with Jesus then our relationship will collapse when she goes through a storm and needs to lean on me.Whatever attracts me to her is ultimately the thing in our relationship that I worship and forces me to become an idolater.Furthermore, I would argue that if my attraction is primarily based on any one of those things then truly it is not Lauren that I love but things of her.The only hope for our marriage is that my attraction to Lauren is based on my love for Christ.God has brought Lauren into my life not for my happiness but for my holiness.God is using my relationship with Lauren to draw me to Himself.
God has brought Lauren into my life not for my happiness but for my holiness.
What is it that draws us to Jesus?If the main thing that attracts us to Jesus is the physical beauty of the church, when the building is “old news,” our relationship with Jesus will collapse.If it is the things that Jesus does for us, then when Jesus doesn’t hold up “his end,” our relationship with him will collapse.If the relationships we have with Christians are the primary attraction we have to Jesus, our relationship with Jesus will collapse when those friendships struggle.I would argue if our attraction is based on any one of those things then truly it is not Jesus that we worship, but the things of Jesus.The only hope for us is to worship Jesus and not the church.Likewise, the only hope for us to have an attractive church is to have a church based on the love of Christ primarily.
The thing that draws people to church will ultimately be the thing they worship.
If it be the physical beauty, that will be their god.If it be the gifts from Christ, that will be their god.If it be the relationships, that will be their god.However, if we as church members are transformed by the Gospel that will draw others to our fellowship.We must have the prize be to worship Christ, proclaim the Gospel, and ourselves be transformed by the mercies of God.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2
I frequently drive from Purcell to Oklahoma City. Along this drive are many billboards. One caught my eye this morning that was a giant red chili pepper. I wondered if the restaurant Chili's had put in a new billboard. As a drew closer the billboard read: "Spicy Church!"
This is the message that is intended to draw people to this congregation? I am all for creative advertisement and marketing, but is this truly what the church has become?
Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. There are a few things I see churches holding up that are dangerous:
1. Experience - The billboard I saw fit this category. Attend our church because we are "Spicy" and it will be a different experience. It puts a new and different experience as the goal and not Christ. Many charismatic and new age churches have this as their M.O. It is unbiblical and dangerous. Be wary of any church that claims that they have a Christian doctrine or practice that others do not. There is nothing new under the sun.
2. Morals - Old school fundamental churches have a tendency to fall into this category. This type of church is driven by making people moralistic. This is extremely dangerous because at the center of the church is not proclaiming Christ as dying to save us from our sin but proclaiming Christ is pleased with good people and not with bad people. People live as morally as they can stand, but their hearts are far from God. Their is guilt when they sin, and pride when they uphold their morals.
3. Rewards - Health & Wealth/Prosperity Theology fits in these churches. The church is generally a very "Feel Good" place. People come looking to hear an inspiring, hope-filled message that God wants their circumstances to change. The problem here is that God changing my situation is truly what is being worshipped rather than God. Most people in the Bible that God calls to himself have their life ruined at cost for following Him (Paul, 12 Disciples, Prophets, etc.)
The reason it is dangerous is because the people belonging to these churches naturally worship the thing that drew them into church in the first place. If anything other than the cross of Jesus Christ drew them to church, the result is worship of an idol.
The reason it is dangerous is because the people belonging to these churches naturally worship the thing that drew them into church in the first place.
A Christian church should not hold up the idea of a church that is "Spicy" but the cross to draw people unto themselves. When you hold up anything other than the cross, that ideal is worshipped. Leading
a life that is centered on Christ will give you a unique experience but only if the pursuit is Christ. Upon receiving the Holy Spirit a person will have new desires to live a moral life, but that desire will come from beginning a new life and will break shame and pride because you recognize you have sin to be shameful of and that Christ died defeating sin leading to humility. Truly there is reward in a relationship with God, but is found in knowing Him. What about in your heart? Do you worship Christ and proclaim to others his work on the cross as the centerpiece of your life? What's the picture on the billboard of your life? May for all of us, it be the cross! May we hold up the cross this Easter season in our lives and in our churches.
