Search for Vital Christianity — E.A. Johnston

The Vital Christianity of Earlier Generations

As a Christian biographer, I have spent many years studying the lives of men and women whom God has used in former times to bring Him glory, to be a blessing to their generation. And as I study their lives, I see how wonderfully God used them, and I notice a brand of Christianity that's different from our brand today.

Their brand of Christianity was vital, true religion, because they were dead to the world and so sold out for God that their lives made a difference in their generation. And when I go around today and visit church after church in search of true religion, I come up empty.

Churchianity and Spiritual Complacency

I search for vital Christianity, but I have trouble finding it. We're all so dead today and asleep that we do not even realize that what passes for religion in your day and mine is a poorer brand, a weaker brand than what many believers had in former times.

In many of our churches today, we have nothing more than churchianity, a pre-planned program of church. It's a set ritual every week with some entertainment on the front end, some mild teaching in between, and finished off with more entertainment.

And what passes for church today in America is sickening, for it's neither hot nor cold. It's just lukewarm. And when the Sunday service is over, we all go out to lunch and we feel satisfied that we met our religious obligation and did church so we can then go home and plop ourselves in front of the television for more mindless entertainment.

That pretty much sums up church in America today, friends, and our brand of modern Christianity. Meanwhile, people perish all around us and drop into hell. How I hunger for vital Christianity and true religion in our day, and I'm not alone in this.

There's countless believers all over this nation who are sick and tired of the status quo, which means business as usual in church today. Some of these believers contact me and ask me if there's a church in their town that's got some vital Christianity in it because they're having trouble finding one.

These hungry believers want good preaching and can't find it. All they get is teaching today, that teaching informs, but preaching transforms. We go into our churches one way today and we come out the same way, unchanged.

We're not confronted with eternity because the God of eternity is absent from among us today. There's no God consciousness in our churches today. We are spiritually bankrupt church in a morally bankrupt society and nobody seems to care.

If only someone here and there would feel some conviction of sin and be bowed down under the awful presence of God and cry out, oh, what must I do to be saved? That's what I long to see in our churches today.

Searching for New Testament Christianity

My message today, friends, is search for vital Christianity, and our text is going to be in Hebrews chapter 11, how I long to see God in action and God at work and a real demonstration of vital Christianity played out in my generation and this God forsaken country of ours.

But I search and I search and I keep coming up empty. I cannot find this brand of New Testament Christianity out there today. If I want to see it, I've got to leave this country and go somewhere where Christians are being persecuted for their faith, where there's a martyr spirit among them because they've counted the cost of following a crucified Savior and they expect to suffer for their faith in Christ.

Their brand of Christianity differs from ours in the West because we've been anesthetized by our television shows and the world and the flesh, and we're tied to our idols to the point that we're so dead in the sleep that nothing will stir us and we simply could care less if our neighbor drops into hell as long as it doesn't disrupt our favorite TV reality show.

So we go to church again next week and sit through it all over again, hear a few more stale jokes from a man who has no comedic ability and no prophetic voice, and we sit there like zombies until the thing called church is over so we can go home and say we fulfilled our religious obligation for the week until next Sunday.

At least that's what I'm hearing from people all over this country as they search for vital Christianity, but they're having a difficult time trying to find it. Maybe it's because the world was invited into the church and maybe just because pastors are afraid to preach on hell or they're afraid to preach on repentance or they're afraid to preach on sin because they're afraid they might upset somebody.

Maybe it's because we've compromised the gospel and we like a more comfortable brand of religion in our day, but people are on the search for truth and vital religion. I hear this from the west coast to the east coast and from the heartland to the south.

It's all the same. Either it's an entertainment church with loud music and funny stories or it's dead formalism like a mortuary, but all in all it's a vain search for vital Christianity, friends. There's believers in this country who have a hunger for true religion and they cannot be filled.

They're getting desperate to hear some good preaching and be stirred. They walk away unstirred and unchallenged. They want to be challenged to live more for Christ, but instead they're discouraged by what passes for Christianity, but they still keep on searching for the real thing.

It has to be out there somewhere, they think. Listen, friends, what will it take for a change to take place in this nation of ours? Will a nuclear bomb have to go off in this country and wipe out 100 ,000 people in a sudden flash to get our attention?

Will our cities have to burn to the ground and be laid waste in utter destruction before the church in America gets serious with God? What will it take to wake us out of our slumber? In 1740, when God moved through New England, it was called the Great Awakening.

Revival as a Call to Wake the Church

Revival has often been referred to as an awakening. At Gethsemane, Jesus faced the crisis point of his earthly ministry and his disciples slept right through it. Today, the church is in a crisis point and we're sleeping right through it, friends.

What will wake us up? 9 -11 was a wake-up call to this nation, but I fear we all went back to sleep. Do you remember after 9 -11 how full the churches were, how people wanted answers and they were looking up to God for direction and to the church for guidance?

But things slackened off and so did we. Soon we were back slumbering on our pillows of comfort and conformity. When we as a church get going back to all nights of prayer where the people that died begin to cry out in desperation to God for him to come heal our land, that's where we need to be again today, friends, because our land needs healing.

We need revival. I'd like to read us today a passage of scripture that speaks of true religion and vital spiritual vitality. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews chapter 11 and we will peer into the lives of those who lived on the false stretch for God in true religion in the third day.

Prayer for Spiritual Renewal

And as I read it, listen to the word of God as it describes what kind of individuals passed for followers of God back then, men and women of faith. But before I read it to us, let me pray. Great God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, you who hold the planets in your hands and the hearts of kings in your hands, we thank thee for your written word as we prepare our hearts to hear it.

But oh, great king, please send us your Holy Spirit. Now I pray to attend the reading of that word for without your Holy Spirit, nothing at all worthwhile will transpire here today. We don't want to leave as we came in unchanged.

We hunger for vital Christianity. We desire change, transform us by your grace and by your Holy Spirit to know what vital Christianity really is in this day of your judgments upon us through your withheld presence from among us because of our rotten sins.

Turn our hearts, I pray to behold your majesty so we can worship thee in spirit and truth today and reveal to us, great God, the utter wickedness of our own hearts and show us our deadness to things of eternal worth.

Reveal to us our great failure to reach our generation with the gospel of the glory of thy dear son, Jesus. Forgive us for our great failure to witness to the loss this week. Forgive us for our great departure from thee as a nation and forgive your church for her spiritual pride and worldly ways.

Give us the grace to remove our idols from among us and to depart from evil. May your Holy Spirit now saturate your word as my frail voice ascends up to you today, great King. Transform us, Lord Jesus, to be more and more in your likeness, we pray.

Amen. And here now is the word of God. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen for by it, the elders obtained a good report through faith. We understand the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Faith That Pleases God

By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found because God had translated him for before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God.

But without faith, it is impossible to please him for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.

By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should have to receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whether he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Through faith, also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang fair, even of one, of him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand, which is by the seashore innumerable.

Pilgrims Seeking a Heavenly Country

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country, and truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

But now they desire a better country that is heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure.

By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones.

Moses Choosing God Over Egypt

By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasure of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.

By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who was invisible. Through faith, he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.

By faith, they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land, which the Egyptians, assaying to do, were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. By faith, the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she had received the spies with peace.

Faithful Witnesses Through Suffering

And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephie, and of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword.

The weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection, and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and caves of the earth.

Vital Religion Begins With Faith and Ends at the Cross

And all these, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better things for us, that they, without us, should not be made perfect. Listen, friends, from our passage today, we see what true and vital religion is, it begins with faith, and it ends at a cross.

I was stirred this week as I re-read the book, Fair Sunshine, by Jack Purvis, on the martyrs known as the Scottish Covenanters. I'd like to quote a paragraph from that remarkable book as we end this message today, friends.

Listen to his description of true religion found in Scotland in the 17th century. No suffering could be too great to endure in such a cause. The scaffold could not daunt them. Instruments of torture could not make them quail.

The sufferings and discomforts of cave, or moor, or prison cell could not move them to act and speak against conscience. Oh, friends, pray that our nation will turn back to the God of the Bible, and that our churches will flourish with vital Christianity once again.

Only a heaven-sent revival can do such a thing, and breathe new life into us, and revive the work that once was a brand of Christianity, and that will draw the lost to Christ, and turn the world upside down.

Oh, great God, wake us up before it's too late.