Trite expressions and counterfeit Gospels…

Being a bit curmudgeonly at times, I allow some things to really get under my skin, one of which is trite expressions of faith and errant ‘Gospels’. Here is one example of an errant Gospel of which I have previously written:

Listened to a podcast a few weeks ago wherein a megachurch pastor named Robert Morris, guest speaker at the local multi-site gigachurch, make an absolute mess of the topic of tithing. The ‘sermon’ delivered was, quite frankly, a train wreak of epic proportions. He ends his confusion of Law and Gospel with a somewhat inverted invitation to salvation. Given that he just put Christians under the bondage and curse of the Law (the apostle Paul would have told Morris to emasculate himself) with his take on tithing, he then asks the non-Christians in the audience to give to God an even more epic and extravagant gift than the tithe to God, their hearts.

Now, we have some profound problems here. First, who does the giving in the true transaction of the Gospel, the Christ or the unregenerate? Second,  biblically, how is the unregenerate heart described? Well, I can tell you extravagant is not one of the adjectives. Deceitful is perhaps a better description. Below is an excerpt from the aforementioned NewSpring podcast.

February 28, Part Two

I know I am probably beating this subject to death and will be a bit repetitive with this post, but I am absolutely infuriated by the often errant implications and the scripture twisting that are fellow travelers with this doctrine. It is not an issue of money for me. It is not an issue of obedience for me. It is not an issue of stewardship. It is, ultimately, an issue of Law and Gospel, or more specifically, a confusion of the two. I am, again, talking about tithing.

Here is, verbatim, part of a sermon on money, on tithing, I recently watched. The sermon by Perry Noble is found here and the quoted section starts at approximately one hour and two minutes into the sermon.

In exodus 13, God says the firstborn is mine, and then the passover took place, and the people that did not put the blood over the door frame and said I’m not going to consecrate my son to you, what happened to the son in that house? He got killed. Your either gonna give your 10 percent to God or He’s gonna take it. The Bible says God will not be mocked. For some of you, there’s a reason your car keeps breaking down. There’s a reason you cant keep your kid out of the doctors office. There’s a reason you cant keep a job. You’re trying to mock god.

Such is, unfortunately, not a unique approach to the subject. I have heard similar sentiments from other pastors, and I spoke on it just recently here. My first and overarching thought on the above quote is thus: The pastor portrays a grievous and confused understanding of Law and Gospel.

Let me say it one more time just so that I am not misunderstood: He Does Not Really Understand Grace. And it’s not just him. Again, I have heard the same sentiment from other stages and pulpits, and I would say the same thing about others who infer that God acts like a mobster running a protecting racket on His own children. What we find in this sermon is essentially a quid pro quo Gospel. Christ did this, so you gotta do that.

What I see from the aforementioned sermon are verses ripped out of context and used as proof-text to prop up an errant pretext. But, as this pastor graciously and humbly mentions at one hour into the video, you must be stupid and Biblically illiterate if you disagree with him on this subject. Be that as it may…

Going off a bit tangentially, I think the overarching issues is one of methodology. Some preachers are topical teachers, speaking often to the felt needs of the audience. Others are expositional teachers. Topical preachers tend to hover over the Scripture and pick verses, often out of context, to communicate some point, often a favorite subject of the pastor.  They, by their methodology, become lord over the text. Expositional preaching, where the pastor goes through a book of the Bible verse by verse, is bound to the Word and it forces the preacher to open the word, in context, to the congregation. The text is lord over the pastor.

I want to be clear that I am not so much anti-tithe, but more anti-how the tithe is often taught. I know of Christians who give their ten percent as a holy act of worship. Personally, I do not think the percentage is as important as the condition of one’s hearts.

Speaking of how the tithe is taught, here is a video that might be of  interest:

Christian, you do not have to tithe to ‘earn’ God’s favor. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. You are not blessed because of your obedience to the Law, you are justified by grace alone, by faith alone, by Christ alone.

This is not healthy truth:

Radical Grace is Life!

Addendum:

Just uploaded the section of the sermon to which I refer to YouTube. So much error and mishandling of scripture. I honestly fear for Perry. Here is the video:

I Timothy 1:7 – “They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

 

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:10-14 ESV)

What type of legalist are you?

I have not had much time for writing recently, so I have primarily been posting the content of others to share with you. Following is an interesting quote from an article at  Reformation Theology:

Prof. Doriani writes:

“Class-one legalists are auto-soterists; they declare what one must do in order to obtain God’s favor or salvation. The rich young ruler was a class-one legalist.

Class-two legalists declare what good deeds or spiritual disciplines one must perform to retain God’s favor and salvation.

Class-three legalists love the law so much they create new laws, laws not found in Scripture, and require submission to them. The Pharisees, who build fences around the law, were class-three legalists.

Class-four legalists avoid these gross errors, but they so accentuate obedience to the law of God that other ideas shrivel up. They reason, ‘God has redeemed us at the cost of his Son’s life. Now he demands our service in return. He has given us his Spirit and a new nature and has stated his will. With these resources, we obey his law in gratitude for our redemption. This is our duty to God.’ In an important way this is true, but class-four legalists dwell on the law of God until they forget the love of God. Worshiping, delighting in, communing with, and conforming to God are forgotten.

Class-four legalists can preach sermons in which every sentence is true, while the whole is oppressive. It is oppressive to proclaim Christ as the Lawgiver to whom we owe a vast debt, as if we must somehow repay him- – repay God! — for his gifts to us.

On the sometimes ill-defined evangelical metaphor of a relationship and the subtle error of decisional regeneration

Yesterday, I listened to a sermon from a preacher of a church in Georgia, a church that could be defined as ‘seeker-sensitive,’ and the central theme of the message was stated as thus: Jesus Christ came to earth to do away with religion and to talk about and engage us in a relationship. I have heard this man, Gary Lamb,  speak at a church I once attended.

In keeping with the anti-religion theme of the sermon, a major portion of the sermon concerned itself with expounding against the error of legalism and our inability to please God by our adherence to ‘religious’ rules. In general principle, I could not agree more. The call against legalism was contrasted with the call to have a relationship with Jesus. The pastor stated that Jesus wants us to be His friend rather than a slave. I agree, but as an aside, I think of the apostle Paul describing himself as a bond servant to the Messiah. Semantics and definitions…..

Given the pastor’s admirable distaste of legalistic religion, it is interesting that he constantly reinforced the idea that this relationship with Jesus requires an initiating action on our part. The pastor’s flock was told that all we have to decide to enter in to a relationship with Him; it’s a free invitation. Jesus is just standing there waiting patiently for us to do something. He misquoted John 3:16 as “For God so loved the world that who ever believes, who ever decides, who ever makes the action, makes the decision for Him will have eternal life.” This is a verbatim quote from the sermon.

Romans 10:13 was misquoted as “Who ever calls, whoever makes a decision, on the Lord will be saved.”

Revelation 3:20 was misquoted as, and I paraphrase fairly closely, “that Jesus stands at the door of our heart and we must make a decision to open the door. Jesus is not going to kick in the door.” One, this is a verse that is so often and with good intention taken out of context and used evangelically. However, Christ is talking to the tepid church of Laodicea, not to the unregenerate as an invitation to a saving ‘relationship.’ Two, he intentionally misquoted scripture again.

However, in all the talk about entering into some rather ill-defined ‘relationship’ with Jesus, I do not recall hearing a word about despair over sin, about repentance. That is an absolutely breath-taking omission in presenting the Gospel. Perhaps such was inferred, was understood on the part of the pastor, but the biblical call to repent and believe was not verbally presented as the invitation to a relationship with Christ. To give credit where credit is perhaps due, he did mention towards the beginning of his sermon, thought, that he was quite a hellion before he became a Christian. I am not sure if I am to infer a call to repentance from that.

Among the pastor’s numerous personal anecdotes the he used to punctuate the sermon’s main points, there was a long rant about a legalistic ‘King James Only’ type church the pastor once attended. There was another church he spoke against in the course of the sermon, one that he planted and pastored (if I recall correctly), and after calling it by name, inferred it would be welcomed in hell. Following a bit later was a diatribe against sprinkling verses dunking.

While listening to the sermon, I had to remind myself that the pastor is a human being who apparently feels he has been hurt by individuals in the church. Sometimes, and sadly, such happens. There was some real, though veiled, bitterness exhibited in his descriptions of previous churches he had be involved with, and I have to temper my thoughts and words in regards to this man and his church. I have some empathy for him.

Towards the end of the sermon, he presented the ever so ubiquitous and unbiblical refrain of the seeker-sensitive church, the all too common proclamation of how it is not his job as pastor to feed the flock, that it is the flocks fault when they complain about not getting fed at church. His spin on those who want to ‘go deeper’ was that they want the pastor to ‘confuse them’. He stated such cannot handle practical teaching because they would have to do something. These seeker-sensitive preachers and entertainment-driven churches seem to all be reading from the same script. At the risk of sounding judgmental while perhaps speaking from the burden of my personal baggage, arrogance and disdain for the real ‘seekers’ seems to have stepped in to fill the gaping void left by the absence of overt legalism.

In the last few minutes of the sermon, Jesus was presented as a marriage fixer, a relationship healer, but overall, I actually heard very little about Christ the Redeemer.

In all the pastors admirable concern about legalism, what I picked up from the sermon, with all its calls to decide, with all the calls to perform an action both in initiating this relationship with Christ and the call to self-feed, was an ironic invitation to a works-driven legalism-lite. What I picked up, too, was a not-so-subtle ‘thank God I am/we are not like those Pharisees attitude. For brevities sake, I will refrain from further exploring this theme of minor league legalism. I think it could be stated with a high degree of confidence that all who are in Christ are, to some degree, recovering Pharisees.

What I was left with after listening to this sermon was an odd mix of muted anger at and profound sadness for the pastor. I felt only deep sadness for the flock as they clapped in approval. In all honesty, two or three years ago, if I were in that audience, I would have probably nodded my head in agreement and put my hands together along with the rest of the flock. In closure, what grieves me so very, very deeply is that this is probably not an uncommon sermon in many churches. With good intentions from well-meaning pastors, the evangel is reduced to an invitation to an ill-defined relationship with buddy Jesus, a relationship that carries some vague promises to fix our marriages, to fix our money, to fix our psychology. He just wants you to get out there and do something to fill the church seats so other people can meet Him just as you did. And you know what, despite the error being expounded from the stage, I believe some may actually have a saving encounter with Christ in such services, but I also fear many others will be filled with false assurance.

There are some preachers who will tell you salvation is free, that it’s easy, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide, to act, to initiate. I do not think it was without cost for Jesus. I do not think it will be without cost to me, but I have counted them as best I can. I did not initiate this relationship, my Messiah did. I do not think it will be easy, but I will follow Him knowing that I will stumble along the way. Jesus does look after and love His flock with tender care, but He never promised a ‘wonderful plan for your life’ as many would define wonderful. I know, too, that no one can snatch me from His grip.

• Matt. 22:14 (ESV)
  For many are called, but few are chosen.

• John 15:16 (ESV)
  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

• John 6:44 (ESV)
  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

• John 6:37 (ESV)
  All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

• Romans 9:15-16 (ESV)
  For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

• Ephesians 1:4-5 (ESV)
  ..even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

• Acts 13:48 (ESV)
  And when the Gentiles heard this, the began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed

Blogging ‘lite’ – Law ‘lite’

I may be very sparse (for me) in the length, perhaps one-hundred words or so, of my posts in the foreseeable future. I think that I will sometimes post questions, mostly rhetorical in nature and with minimal (for me) contextual framing.  Here is an example:

I have heard many times that we are to give Jesus “our best”, often within the context on a sermon on tithing. I remember watching/listening to a sermon on the TV by a nationally known and influential preacher at the begining of the year.  The message was that, in 2008, we need to be more faithful in tithing, we need to be sure to witness to others on a regular basis, and we need to be more faithful in attending church, perhaps with the inferred promise that we will be blessed by our obedience in the new year, financially and otherwise.  This preachers intent was noble and the things he called us to do are, in an of themselves, praiseworthy, but may sometimes the preaching and exhorting to give Jesus “our best” be an unintended invitation to a performance-driven legalism lite?  On the other hand, at what point do we begin to tread the dangerous ground of antinomianism?