Once, Brad and I heard a preacher give an entire sermon on the sinful nature of drinking and smoking weed. I'm dead serious. Brad and I were amazed. This guy talked for what seemed like forever on two subjects, one of which isn't even in the Bible! What if there was something in that congregation whose last
day was that night and desperately needed to hear the Gospel? What if someone
in the congregation had been committing terrible sins and thought they were
beyond God’s saving grace needed to hear the story of Jesus’ precious
sin-atoning blood being spilled for the world? What if? And this guy is
screaming at a room full of people about how they should not drink alcohol or
smoke pot because they are tools of the devil. It makes me so sad that this is
happening not just in that church, but in thousands of churches, in every
state. The me-centered gospel, the
works-based gospel, the anti-gospel. People are coming into a church building
to hear the good news of Jesus Christ that was commissioned by Jesus himself
and they are hearing things like “Don’t drink” or “Don’t cuss” or “Don’t have sex
before marriage” or “Be good” or “Do this” “Do that” “Be be be” “Do do do” “You
you you” “I I I” instead of “Jesus died on the cross so if you drink, whether
it is right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. Your sins have been forgiven. You have
been made holy.” or “Jesus still loves you even if you’ve slept with forty
people. Remember the naked woman that the Sanhedrin dragged in front of Jesus?
He forgave her sins and told her to go and sin no more! He freed her from a
life of slavery to sin!” or “Glory to God!” or “Praise the Lord because He is
good! You will never be good, but He is and He has made you righteous!” or
“Stop trying to be perfect because Jesus has already made you perfect in Him!”
When
we realize that the Gospel does not proclaim what we should do and it does
proclaim what he has done, we are free in Christ to choose to become obedient
to God because we love Him. That is so much better than being told I have to do
good to get good things from God. Or that the Gospel is all about me and who I
am instead of who Jesus is and what he has done. So many struggling with countless sin are sitting in Church pews and seats listening to pastors preach a
gospel that is not supported by Scripture and it is hurting them. Until the
Church, as a whole, starts to preach the Gospel as it was intended, we will
suffer consequences.
I grew
up in the Church which is to be expected since I lived in Mississippi my whole
life. There are many faults about that but I do know one thing, I don’t
remember a time when I did not know who Jesus was. I grew up being told about
Jesus and I can say that my parents taught me family values and respectful
behavior, although that did not keep them from being called on a regular basis
while I was in grade school (sorry Mom). Like many southern Baptist churches, I
was taught “the prayer” to become saved at a young age and I was baptized at an early age and the rest is
history. From then on I lived my life as a normal Christian girl, going to
school, not really talking about my faith much because, well, everyone else was
a Christian too. It was Mississippi for crying out loud. Pretty much everyone I
went to school with went to church with me as well so it wasn’t as if I could
share my faith with them. The closest I got to talking about it was sharing
someone’s transgressions in Sunday School without their permission. In middle
school I re-dedicated my life to Christ like every other eighth grader when
they played the emotional heart-wrenching music during the D-Now last session
and then during my senior year I decided I did not want to go to church anymore
(although I was still a Christian). This really hurt my parents and we had a
lot of really awful fights. I was a terrible brat (there I said it) and looking
back on it I think a lot of it was spiritual warfare. I was giving into sinful temptations and doing things and hanging out
with people I should not have been doing and hanging out with and it was a very
dark time in my life. It was also at a transitional period when we had gotten a
new youth pastor at our church and I was still upset about that. Go figure, you
know how teenagers are. Anyway, I did not want to go to church, and I used every
“Jesus didn’t go to church!” story in the book to get out of it with my parents
that I could find. I was a real genius.
Fortunately, I went to college for a Biblical Studies degree(this was God's doing not mine) and eventually came to terms with the fact that I was going to flunk out of college if I didn't start reading my Bible. *GASP* A Christian not reading her Bible? Say it ain't so. Anyway, I began to read and read and read some more and there were times I would fly through chapters and verses and entire books because I was so hungry for what that book held. There were stories I'd never heard before! Stories that weren't told in Sunday School, people's sins that weren't discussed. My view of David, Paul, Moses, and countless others did a 360 because I realized how sinful they really were and just how gracious God was to each of them. My spirit was beyond malnourished, but Jesus was healing the most broken parts of who I was (and still is).
Jesus
declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and
he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35) We need only to turn
to his Voice displayed in the words of Scripture to find our nutrition, but
many times we seek that nutrition blindly from what others tell us. We must be
diligent in carefully listening to what our pastors are telling us at the pulpit
and comparing it to what the Bible tells us. Even those men we admire as
authors, if they do not align with Scripture we should throw down their books
and pick up the life giving Word of God. We should challenge and encourage our
pastors with balances. Fact-check and read your own Bible to ensure what they
are telling you aligns with the context. I would even encourage you to research
historical context of that time period—this can do a world of good in your
exegesis of the text. If we are taking in what nutrition we are getting from
our pastors even if it is not good, we are becoming malnourished. We are
starving and eventually we will become bombarded with events and moments in
life that we cannot handle on our own. (Side note: you really cannot handle anything
in life on your own) When you become malnourished, you become sickly and
infection sets in, you need medication and possibly hospitalization.
Eventually, death occurs. But Jesus has come to feed the sick and malnourished.
His bread can heal the infected and raise dead. There is no need for
hospitalization and medication. Once again, you are strong and healthy and you
can live like you have never lived before. You can bring glory to your Creator EVEN IF you sin every day. You are forgiven and you have been given grace for those sins. Now, isn’t that the Gospel your soul
has been longing to hear?
