The Threat of Moralism (Part 1)

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Well, we're in the series called Threats to the Gospel, Gospel Threats.

And today's topic, I think this might be part four, I'm not exactly sure, this is moralism.

Moralism hits closely to home because it feels good.

It seems good. Actually, we'd like to live next to moral neighbors.

What's the alternative? Immoral neighbors, licentious neighbors. We like morality when it comes to civil areas of our life, but it impedes the gospel for lots of reasons.

So let's talk about the problems of moralism and the solutions of moralism. We just had Byron Yawn on the radio show with his book,

Suburbianity, and you ought to get that book. He talks a lot about this same topic. The threat to the gospel today on No Compromise Radio, moralism.

Listen to what Al Mohler said, one of the most seductive false gospels is moralism.

The basic structure of moralism comes down to this, the belief that the gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.

And by the way, this is par for the course in modern evangelicalism.

10 steps, seven easy ways. It's about relationships. It's about finances.

It's about the Saddleback -Willow Creek model. I almost said Pillow Creek.

Just this is, we need help getting through the week, things to do, things to achieve.

Mohler goes on to say this false gospel is particularly attractive to those who believe themselves to be evangelicals, motivated by a biblical impulse.

Far too many believers and their churches succumb to the logic of moralism and reduce the gospel to a message of moral improvement.

In other words, we communicate to lost persons that the message that what God desires for them and demands of them is to get their lives straight.

And isn't it so true that if you were to ask unbelievers what is the message of Christianity, if you were to ask your pagan friends, when you have been to church, my pagan friend, you don't have to say that, of course, but when you've gone to a church service, what's the message?

When you drive by, especially churches that like to put the titles of their sermons on the billboards, we put our titles on the billboards as well, but I try to make them more biblical titles and they're not moralistic titles.

We have a sign out front that says Bethlehem Bible Church, et cetera. And by the way, the funniest thing that ever happened, we have these letters and so I think the sermon title this week is

No, No, No, and it is from Romans chapter eight. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

No separation from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And so using the negative,

I just entitled it No, No, No, not because Margaret Thatcher said it, but hey, that's not bad, No, No, No.

And so then it's got the Sunday p .m. sermon. Well, one time, it was probably six or seven years ago, somebody took all those letters down and then using every letter that was on that church sign billboard area, they said something like, and they posted on there,

Britney Spears rocks. Now, see, I thought it was clever because they didn't throw down a few letters.

They used every letter. There must be some computer program that can take a bunch of letters and then rearrange it.

And it wasn't dirty, it wasn't obscene, and so I appreciated that. And so of course we took that down.

But you drive by churches and you see their signs and they're typically moralistic, moralistic.

Unbelievers think that's our message, to do good and to be good. After all, in no compromise land, we say it's nice to be nice and it's good to be good.

If you're a moralist, that's the message. Moeller said the moralistic impulse in the church reduces the

Bible to a code book for human behavior and substitutes moral instruction for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Far too many evangelical pulpits are given over to moralistic messages rather than the preaching of the gospel.

And I do think this may be at the top of the list for threats to gospel ministry.

If it's not at the top of the list, it's pretty close. You know, Jerry Bridges, if you don't read

Jerry Bridges, you should, Pursuit of Holiness. He is just an excellent writer and he uses excellent sources, both the

Bible, of course, and John Owen and some Puritans. Listen to what Jerry Bridges said in his book called

The Gospel for Real Life. And Jerry Bridges is not a typical no compromise style man.

He's mature and he's older and he isn't prone to make statements that are provocative like we would hear on the radio station.

So when Jerry says something that's kind of stick in your eye you better take notice.

Jerry Bridges, I believe that human morality rather than flagrant sin is the greatest obstacle to the gospel today.

The more religious a person is, the more difficult it is for that person to realize his or her need for the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Page 121. See, if you think you're good, then you don't think you need a savior.

Religious people think they have what they need. Self -righteous people think they have what

God requires. Moral people are easily deceived, self -deceived, with this illusion that God just wants people to be good.

It creates a safety harness. It creates a place where you think, you know what,

I'm okay. Very, very slippery ice.

Listen to what John MacArthur says, morality in and of itself is a damning thing. Self -righteousness is a damning thing.

You'd be better off to be immoral and face the reality of your needs so that you would come to a savior than to live under the illusion that because you have a moral code on the outside, all is well on the inside between you and God.

John goes on to say something that, this is very no -go -like. I asked

John to be a no -compromise several times. So far, no. Oh, does it matter that I was a deacon there, that I was a member there, that I was a seminary student there, that the elders there laid their hands on me to send me to gospel ministry in New England?

Does any of that matter? I just don't know. We need, start writing, John. John, you need to be a no -compromise radio.

By the way, I've begun to ask other people to be guests on NOCO 90.

So if you go to the YouTube and you type in no -compromise 90, you'll go to our site. So far, 15, 16 videos.

And so Todd Friel has told me that he'll do a guest spot. Carl Truman has told me he'd do a guest 90 seconds.

And so I asked Phil Johnson as well, and now I'm asking publicly for John MacArthur to do a

NOCO 90. Now that will send the ratings through the roof, won't it? John said, immoral people didn't blaspheme and cry for Christ's death.

Immoral people didn't plot his execution. The harlots, thieves, and murderers didn't do it.

The religious people did. That's the curse of morality. Moral, religious, self -righteous people, confident they are holy in themselves, are utterly deceived into believing that Satan has nothing to do with them and they have no vigilance or protection and they can be swarmed by demonic hosts.

Reformation versus Relationship, grace to you article. Well, moralistic preaching, what is it?

How do we define moralism? Dictionary defines moralism as a moral maxim or attitude.

That doesn't really help us. MacArthur defined it as a system of belief that misrepresents the divine message that man, moral or immoral, is damned and must be saved and can be saved only by believing the gospel.

See, it's misrepresented. Mark Minnick said, moralism is the teaching of standards and Bible ethics.

See, that's why it's such a deadly thing. Apart from deliberately preaching those in the context of one's relationship to Jesus.

When we want behavior to change without giving them the reason for the change,

Christ Jesus, the empowerment for the change, the spirit of God, Christ's spirit, the

Holy Spirit, that is moralism. And moralism is very, very easy to spot, although initially it sounds too good because you've heard too many messages just like it.

There's a great article called Preaching Christ Alone. Michael Horton writes that. He says this, whenever the story of David and Goliath is used to motivate you to think about the

Goliaths in your life and the seven stones of victory used to defeat them, you have been the victim of moralistic preaching.

See, that's exactly right. And Horton goes on to say, when you hear sermons about the self -centeredness of Lot, the arrogance of Nebuchadnezzar, I like to say it a little differently,

Nebuchadnezzar, the stubbornness of Jonah, the courage of Abraham, something about Daniel or Gideon.

Horton says in all of these examples, there's a common thread, no Christ. In this approach,

David and Jonathan teach us about friendship. Hannah's prayer for a child teaches us about persistent prayer.

Jacob's struggle with God at Peniel illustrates our spiritual struggle. Joshua teaches us how to be good leaders and so on.

You know, how many sermons have you heard on leadership from Nehemiah? It is just uncanny how you can get such good leadership stuff out of the book of Nehemiah.

Joshua teaches us how to be leaders and so on. Similarly then, the New Testament figures, including Jesus, are there chiefly to illustrate life lessons.

And why stop there? Why don't we use our life? If you're a

Sunday school teacher and you wanna use that approach, what's the difference? Let's say your name is Cindy Lou Who, and you say, you know what,

Cindy Lou Who, she's on time, she's honest, she likes to go to church, she works hard, she does nonprofit work, you should be like her.

Well, we'd immediately say, that's wrong, we're not to do that, we can't preach ourselves like that.

Well, friends, it's just as wrong to preach David's life like that. But see, we get it from the top down.

The number two bestselling book of all time, second to the Bible alone, replacing Pilgrim's Progress years ago,

The Purpose Driven Life. You want moralism? You don't have to go very far, because those books are everywhere and they're even trying to resell them now.

I noticed that's a very popular thing, they try to repackage it. Might even say, and that's Rick Warren's fault, because it's probably the publisher,

I can't remember who published that book. Day nine, remember there's 40 days, day nine.

You basically, you need to figure out how to get God to smile, and Noah is the illustration of that.

Because Noah, of course, what'd Noah do? He made God smile, making

God smile. Here's what Rick Warren writes in his book, Purpose Driven Life, God said, this brings me, excuse me,

God said, this guy brings me pleasure, he makes me smile. I'll start over with his family, because Noah brought pleasure to God, you and I are alive today.

From this, from his life rather, we learn the five acts of worship that make God smile.

You are alive today because of the generous, gracious, sovereign, distinguishing mercy of Noah.

Or as we say here in New England, Noah. I didn't know that. I didn't know Noah was the savior.

I didn't know Noah was the rescuer. Oh, what are the five key things that we need to learn from Noah's life to make us smile?

One, Warren says, love God supremely. Two, trust God completely.

Three, obey God wholeheartedly. Four, praise and thank God continually. And five,

I should have guessed this one, use your abilities. That is moralism.

That's exactly what we need to run from. Now you say, shouldn't we trust

God? Shouldn't we love God? Shouldn't we thank God? Shouldn't we praise God? Shouldn't we use our abilities or lose our abilities?

Lose our abilities to moralize? Of course we should, but we've got to get the gospel in here.

We've got to talk about who Jesus is. You can pick these stories about Noah and say, how does

Noah make God smile? I wish Rick would have went on, not just to focus on chapter six or seven or eight even, but what about chapter nine?

I'll give you five things that we could learn from the message. Maybe six things we could learn from Noah's message.

After you get out of the ark, plant a vineyard, one. Two, get drunk.

Three, lay uncovered in the tent. Four, curse Canaan. Five, bless Shem and Japheth.

And then six, die. Now, Noah did all those things. They aren't lessons for us.

Friends, we need to understand that Jesus Christ must be proclaimed for it to be a

Christian message. Brian Chappell said in his great book, Christ -Centered

Preaching, B -messages, B -E, B -messages that contain only moral instruction imply that we are able to change our fallen condition in our own strength.

Such sermons communicate, although usually unintentionally, that we make the path to grace and our works earn and or secure our acceptance with God.

However well intended, these sermons present a faith indistinguishable from that of morally conscientious

Muslims, Unitarians, Buddhists, or Hindus.

Now, this is a little bit earlier than most of us remember, but since I am close to Boston, the

Garden, I actually bought my first Boston Bruins T -shirt the other day. It was on sale.

And it's black and it's got the B there. And so here's my new strategy. This is the no -co strategy.

When I'm in California, and I like to visit California, when I'm in California, I wear my

Boston stuff, the Bruins shirt. I don't think I could ever really wear a Celtics deal, but you never know.

Depends. And then when I'm in the Boston area, I wear my

New York Giants stuff or my Lakers stuff. Billy Sunday preached lots of sermons, if you can call them that, but they were moralistic.

And his most famous moralistic sermon that was ever given was called Boston Booze. And it's classic because sin, ah, one mention, grace, maybe a little, maybe talk about God a little bit, but no

Jesus and lots of booze is bad. Booze is the problem.

Billy Sunday said the saloon is the sum of all villainies. It's a worse, it's worse than war or pestilence.

It's the crime of crimes. It is the parent of crimes and the mother of sins. Forget unbelief, you know, forget that sin.

It's the appalling source of misery and crime in the land and the principal cause of crime.

Insert bend your knees and swing like you would a boxing fighter right now on cue.

It is the source of three fourths of the taxes to support that crime and to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, lowdown, damnable business on the top of this old earth.

There is nothing to be compared to it, booze. This is the kind of message we hear all the time from character studies to just do good, be good, here are five easy steps.

Now I'm gonna have to talk about this more because we're running out of time. It's not wrong to tell

Christians there are imperatives to do, but they are in light of and because of and empowered by triumphant indicatives to use

J. Gresham Machen's words. Here's who we are in Christ.

This is what Jesus has accomplished. Here's the spirit dwelling in you. And therefore, because of your great salvation,

Ephesians 4 .1, walk in a manner worthy of your calling. I'm not afraid to tell a

Christian, don't complain. I'm not afraid to tell a Christian, love one another.

I'm not afraid to tell a Christian, here's the great commission that you have to evangelize. Those things aren't wrong to tell

Christians, but you tell Christians about them in a Christian -like manner, in a

Christianly manner, in a, I know that's not a word, but that's okay, it's no compromise. It's not evil to make up adverbs.

Booze is a source of all evil. Maybe booze did that. Now, I don't drink anymore, but maybe it was all the booze

I used to drink. I don't think I ever drank any booze in Boston, though. That's the problem.

We need to preach Jesus Christ. Didn't Paul say it? I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even him crucified.

First Corinthians chapter two, verse two. Second Corinthians chapter four, verse five.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, or Daniel, or Noah, or anyone else, myself, not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

Moralism tells people to do good and to be good, and it even, see, here's the threat, it even tells them to do things that are in the

Bible. Love your wife. Is that in the Bible? Yes, as Christ loved the church.

Let's not forget the gospel indicatives. If we want to use the Lutheran paradigm, okay,

I'm fine with that. I prefer triumphant indicatives and then gospel -driven imperatives or indicatives imperatives, but if you want to use gospel law, law gospel, okay, but let's not confuse the two.

That's why when a local church in the area said, I listened to like the associate pastor preach the other day, large

Southern Baptist church, here's what we're about at our church. We're about loving God, loving our neighbor, and making disciples.

Well, do you know what? I can't do that. I'm bad at that. I fail at that. That's just the law. What we're about here is the law, as we say in Boston.

I can't. Give me some good news. The good news is not love God because I didn't,

I haven't, and I don't when I should, and I don't love him like I ought to.

Give me some good news. You know, here's the thing. When you preach Jesus Christ in messages where there are gospel -driven imperatives, then you can say things like this.

Let's say it's love your wife. Well, do you know, for the times that I haven't loved my wife,

Jesus Christ, he's paid for those. Let me tell you about your sin bearer. For the times where you say, you know what?

I should have loved my wife, but didn't. Jesus Christ has always loved the way he should, and he's loved his bride.

And isn't it neat that you get credit for Christ loving his bride? Let me tell you about the power that you can get from Jesus Christ.

Life and death confirmed by the resurrection that the spirit of God applies to you.

That's what we do. We preach about Jesus Christ. Michael Horton said, it must be said that not even the commands of God himself can give us life or the power to grow as Christians.

Well, my name's Mike Abenroth. This is A Gospel Threat, the Threat of Moralism, and this happens to be, I think, part four, but it's gonna be part 4A, because we need to talk about this threat a little bit more, so we'll do that next time.

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