Neither Paul nor any other legitimate church leader in 2000 years has ever found it necessary (or even helpful) to use streetwise sex education—not as an evangelistic strategy, and certainly not as a means to sanctification for people already overwhelmed with sex-talk from a corrupt culture. Adopting the world’s obsession with sex and filthy talk cannot possibly have a sanctifying effect, because the strategy itself is unholy.
The notion that degenerate subcultures and sexually-addicted people cannot be reached without “learning to speak their language” is an absolute fallacy. Grace Church is seven miles from Hollywood, in the heart of Southern California, in a carnal, pleasure-mad culture well-known worldwide for everything but healthy spiritual values. No city in America is more “unchurched” than our valley, which houses more than three million people. The people of Grace church are reaching friends and neighbors in every imaginable subculture—from ex-cons to ex-Catholics to people in the entertainment industry. We baptize new believers virtually every Sunday night. It is neither necessary nor helpful to inject explicit sexual references into the conversation in order to reach people from such a culture. God draws them to Christ through the gospel.
– John MacArthur
Most people will agree that they are sinners. However, few will readily admit that they are helpless sinners. There is a big difference.
Take notice, that it stands as a blot in the reputation of the Corinthians, that they were altogether for a gospel that should cost them nothing. Corinth was the most convenient, and so the most frequented, port of trade in all Greece. The inhabitants are said to have been very wealthy, proud, and voluptuous. They had abundance to spend upon themselves, but could find nothing for Paul, while he resided among them, and preached the gospel to them. . . . It is a sad word, but too frequently experienced, that a faithful minister of Christ may labor, and yet live in want, in a wealthy city.
The man who is thoroughly devoted to the Lord does not need to wear some badge in his coat lapel, nor to proclaim that he is “living a life of victory.” It is still true that actions speak louder than words.
You must equip your children to function in a culture that has abandoned the knowledge of God. If you teach them to use their abilities, aptitudes, talents, and intelligence to make their lives better, without reference to God, you turn them away from God. If your objectives are anything other than “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” you teach your children to function in the culture on its terms.
In the ordinance of singing, we must not make noise, but music; and the heart must make melody to the Lord. Augustine complained of some in his time, that “they minded more the tune than the truth; more the manner than the matter; more the governing of the voice than the uplifting of the mind;” and this was a great offense to him. Singing of Psalms should be joyous breathing of an elevated soul; and here the cleanness of the heart is more important than the clearness of the voice. In this service we must study more to act the Christian than the musician. Many in their singing of Psalms are like organs, whose pipes are filled only with wind.
There is very little understanding or desire for biblical truth and theology even among Christians. The Bible is not being expounded in many pulpits today. Christian radio saturates the airwaves with talk shows and psychology experts. Christian magazines aimed at the laymen are full of testimonies but devoid of solid spiritual food, and so few believers study the Word for themselves. As a result, we are a spiritually starved people who are no longer able to discern truth from error.
The church of Christ can as little bear continual prosperity, as long adversity: a calm is sometimes as dangerous as a storm. Many are the temptations and snares of a prosperous condition: it breeds hypocrites; errors and heresies spring up like weeds in rank ground; professors are apt to grow remiss and careless, wanton and secure; to be too fond of the present and to hanker after more temporal happiness than God judges good for them.
“I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.” Time, March 18, 1985 – Robert Schuller
“Evangelism must start with the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the demands of the law, and the eternal consequences of evil.” Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, pg. 225
I have often thought that the best Christians are found in the worst of times.
Catholics who believe in Purgatory need to be asked: “Who is in charge of releasing souls from the purging fire?” It cannot be God because of His promise to believers. “Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more” (Heb. 10:17). After conversion, God no longer counts sins against His children (2 Cor. 5:19).
Grace will bring a man to Heaven without working miracles, but working miracles will never bring a man to Heaven without grace.
If man is merely the result of a cosmic accident, there is no inherent dignity or value in human life. In fact, it was this type of evolutionary thinking that led to the atrocities of the Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany. If there are races of people who represent a higher level of evolution than others, then it is incumbent on the more evolved race to dominate and/or exterminate the less evolved. While most secular humanists would abhor such thinking, my question to them would be, on what grounds?
I cannot see how any man deserves to be called “holy,” who willfully allows himself in sins, and is not humbled and ashamed because of them.
Answering a student’s question, “Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?” thus, it is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.
Christ Alone Wyoming 