Wrong Reasons People Come to Christ

There we have it. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Pastor Steve is back in the proverbial casa. My casa is su casa. Am I allowed to talk yet? Yes, now you are.

Okay. No sounds before that. What's new, Steve? Well, I was trying not to breathe or anything. I didn't want to mess up that lousy music, whatever it is.

Oh, it's not lousy. Oh, you know what I could give you? You want lousy? You're going to, you know, you want to have a new way to introduce the show?

Yeah, that's better.

That's just for you, Steve. That's wonderful. You're hooking a feeling because that's just the way life goes.

Blue Swede or whatever the name of the group was. Yeah, I think Blue Suede, maybe. Blue, yeah, whatever. I think Blue Suede.

Blue Suede, Blue Suede. I've heard both ways. Well, it's like that Denver Nuggets player. His name looks like Braun, B-R-A-U-N, and it's pronounced Brown. And his family makes razors. That'd be good.

Steve, I saw a few things in a book that I have in front of me before we get into our topic today. Christian pickup lines. How does that work? That strong, exhaustive concordance looks pretty heavy. Could I carry it for you to your next class?

See, the younger people would have no idea what we're talking about. No, they would not. That thing was so huge.

I mean, you remember the exhaustive, the N-A-S, exhaustive concordance? Oh, that was even bigger.

Yeah, it was huge. I don't see it myself, but people tell me I look like Michael W. Smith.

Yeah, these are marginally dated. I know. I don't see it myself, but people tell me I look like Keith Green.

Who? Between your lack of sleep and my lack of sleep.

I don't see it myself, but people tell me I look like George Beverly Shea. Cutting-edge pickup lines.

Just a couple more. Did I tell you my great-uncle was a personal friend of Billy Graham?

I don't see it myself, but people say I look like Billy Sunday. Come on, this is just like...

You kind of look a lot like Jan Hus. Oh, yeah, thanks. Has anyone ever told you your eyes are like doves and your neck is like the Tower of David?

What have we become? What have I become? My dearest, my sweetest friend. Oh, who sings that again? Johnny Cash.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, good. That's actually an excellent song. That would be a good no-co song. All right, today on No Compromise Radio, after the little bit of humor... George Beverly Shea. So, my grandmother-in-law, you know, you knew Evie Nichols.

When her husband died, she said, I'm never going to get remarried, and she didn't. But we'd always tell her that it would be a wonderful setup if she would ever marry George Beverly Shea. We would crank great-as-I-faithfulness in the house and say, you guys would be a perfect couple and she'd get bothered.

Wrong Reasons People Come to Christ

All right, today, Steve, here's what I want to talk about, what I'd like to talk about. Wrong reasons why people want to come to Christ. Okay, just generally speaking, let's just bury the lead. Let's just talk about what we're going to say so you can follow my lead.

People sometimes want to come to Christ because it's going to fix something in their life, or they're going to get something in their life. And we want to talk today about the most important reason to come to Christ is, of course, the honor of the triune God, but forgiveness of sins.

Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. So, let's talk about maybe some wrong reasons to come to Christ. How about if you say to yourself, well, you know what? I'm not a believer, but I'd like to come to Christ because then this girl will date me.

Right? You're just trying to make yourself a Christian in order to get something on earth, like a girl.

So, you want her to missionary date. Yeah, that's right.

Well, Steve, sometimes missionary dating has worked. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And therefore, you know, in the one in a thousand case where it has worked, then we should normalize it, encourage it.

By the way, on a side note, when you are dating someone, if you're out there and you're dating and maybe you're a little younger and you're thinking, I think the person's a Christian, but I'm not too sure.

And some of the things they say maybe betray their profession. That's a good time to get other people involved in your relationship, don't you think?

Yeah. Well, I mean, here's one I like. Well, he seems to be interested. Okay. So, in other words, not a Christian and he seems to be interested in you.

Why is everything so funny to me today? How about if somebody said, well, you know, I'd like to come to Christ because financially I'm upside down and I heard there's a very generous God. I watched some TV shows about prosperity preaching, and I think I'll come to Christ because then I can have my bills paid.

How about that? Yeah.

My God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Okay. Is that a literal thousand? That's a literal thousand. I guarantee it. How about it? It's maximized at 1 ,000.

How about people say, I'd like to come to Christ because my marriage is disastrous and therefore Jesus can heal my marriage. Is there any truth in that?

It's entirely possible. I mean, if both of you are Christians, then, you know, he could. But on the other hand, there are Christians who have bad marriages, right? And there are non-Christians who have good marriages.

So, I wouldn't think that that's a very good motivation overall.

Steve, what if someone on the flip side is married to a Muslim and they understand now because of the Bible and they heard a satellite TV radio show, rather, that they're sinful and that Jesus is the eternal son and he became flesh and he died for sinners like them.

They believe in the resurrection and they are considering, well, you know, these are true. But what if I do come to Christ? What if I do believe? What if I am a Christian? My husband is going to disown me.

My husband in certain countries will kill me. Shame killing and all that. It's quite a different approach than I need to come to Jesus to fix my marriage. Oh, it'll fix your marriage.

All right. Yeah, I think there are a lot of motivations for coming to Christ, a lot of bad ones.

The Need for Forgiveness and Reconciliation to God

So, how about this? Let's talk about the main issue here because the Lord will take care of all the other sub-issues after that. In other words, the most important thing in the universe from the human perspective and, of course, from the divine perspective is to honor the Lord by believing in the Son.

But it's forgiveness, right? Could there be a the people that are listening, do they have a bigger need in all the world than to be forgiven?

Because they don't have a bigger problem than eternity. And eternity in the presence of God apart from faith in Christ is not going to be pleasant.

Steve, why do you think unbelievers is it ignorance? Is it they're just too busy? Why do you think they never even consider these things? I don't think unbelievers consider death very often, eternity, sin, the holiness of God.

Why is that?

Well, in part, it's because we have a culture that says when you die, only good things happen to you, right? I mean our culture says there is no hell. Hell is this world, this life, the difficulties that we suffer now.

And it also says that when you die, you instantly get wings. I mean a lady that I knew died the other day. She was a professing Christian. And right away, one of her children got on social media and said that she gained her wings, right?

So, like, well, if she really believed what she said she believed, then she wasn't thinking she got her wings. And I don't know why you do, you know? So, there's just a lot of bad our culture, our society has taught us that there is no hell, that there might be a heaven.

And if there is one, everybody goes there.

I hate to crack you on nationwide radio, but there's hell for maybe Hitler and Stalin.

Yeah, really, really bad people. Yeah. Jerry Springer.

I don't know, man. Even Jerry Springer. And I'm not putting him in the same category.

I'm just saying he He'll probably be hosting some show in heaven. God decided he needed a talk show host.

See, I think in the old days, even if it was a person like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or people in Europe in the 1400s, 1600s, they might not have been believers born again, but they knew the Bible and they knew about sin.

They had other cures for sins in their mind, but for sin in their mind. But they at least knew about God's holiness. They at least were biblically informed. Part of the problem now is people just don't know the Bible.

Right. And I think along with that, you know, I mean they've basically decided the God of the Old Testament was me and the God of the New Testament is Jesus. And Jesus hangs out with bad people and so therefore, you know, what difference does it make if you're good or bad or anything else?

You know, we're all going to the same place.

I think there's that book in the Bible that talks about you are saved by grace through death and not of yourself.

I mean that's what you know, most people it's the book of second culture. I mean they you know, that's just where everybody presumes that they're going. Second culture, that's a good one. And you said it right.

It's because there's a lot of biblical ignorance. Certainly, you know, nobody wants to go and read about Ananias and Sapphira, right?

I was talking to somebody the other day on a plane maybe or someplace at the airport. And I said, why would Jesus come and die if we could just get to heaven on our own? And it reminded me of Galatians 2, verse 16.

It says in verse 16,. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, something they do, but through faith in Jesus Christ, so that we believed in Jesus Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, but because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

Then he goes on to say in verse 21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. If you can get to heaven by being good, obeying the law, why would Jesus even come?

What, to show us that he loved us by being a martyr? I mean, what?

Or that, you know, hey, just like Jesus can be saved. I mean, this is essentially Mormonism. You know, just like Jesus ascended, so can we. Or, you know, I guess it's also liberalism, right? Jesus is the example, and we just have to live up to that example.

What's that old list? Lewis Johnson rejoined her to all this. Jesus is just an example, and he's only that. How are you living up to his example? And if the answer isn't perfectly, you're going to need him as more than an example.

You need him as a substitute. And, of course, both Steve and I believe Jesus is an example. But he's something more than an example. 1 Peter 2, he's an example of suffering, right? What did Jesus do? He didn't revile.

He didn't say things back. He just accepted his suffering, and so Peter says he's an example. So, we believe he's an example, but not only.

Sure. I mean, it's like I have a I don't. But if I had a beautiful portrait hanging in my house, like the Last Supper or something like that, and then I go, well, I'm going to do my own painting, and I'm going to be just like whatever artist.

Well, guess what? I'm not going to be. I don't have that skill set. And so we can say, well, Jesus is my example. Okay, and? You know, I mean, Jesus can high jump 10 feet. Okay, so what?

I have to high jump 10 feet? I can't. Right? I mean So, Steve, back in the day, we'd say, well, my Bible says. My Jesus is a God of love. You know, my this, that, and the other, kind of like my truth.

But now people probably instead say, well, the Chosen's Jesus does this.

Well, I mean, when subjectivity enters into I mean, in other words, when truth becomes my truth instead of objective truth, instead of what is true. You know, I could say, well, my gravity is blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, it doesn't really matter what my gravity is, right? Gravity is the same for everybody. It doesn't care. And in the same way, God's holiness, God's justice, and God's law aren't subject to what I like or what I don't like.

By polls or countries or what's popular or what's in. Or even my feelings. Oh, ooga-chaka, ooga-chaka. I went to the lung doctor the other day, and I had the pulmonary function test, and they test flow, volume, and diffusion rate.

And I did the test, and then I waited an hour for the test results to get to the doctor. And then I met with the doctor. So he's going over those and said, in light of, you know, your past with COVID and about with death, et cetera, I'm happy for the flow rate.

I'm happy for the volume. It looks like your diffusion rate's never going to come back to normal, but it seems like you're living a fine life, and so we're thankful for that. And I looked at him, and I said, I don't want that to be true.

But I said, I don't live in a postmodern age. And when it comes to stock market and test results, because I had four of these tests, and the last three tests had the exact same result for my diffusion rate.

The other ones got better. I said, it is what it is. Whether I like it, whether I don't like it, truth is truth. And he kind of looked at me like, oh, yeah, these numbers don't lie. This is not postmodern.

But that's a good way to get rid of hell if you think my God would never judge somebody. I'm thinking, what kind of judge doesn't judge sin?

We live in a world where everything is subjective. You know, if I want to invent a new gender, I just invent it, and everybody's supposed to go along with it. Right? We live in the scriptures have been supplanted for most people by the emperor's new clothes.

Whatever I say is true, and everybody who doesn't agree with me is a bigot. Right. And so, you know, and that goes straight across the board. Whatever I say, my truth is true. And your truth can be true, and everybody's, you know, and they all can contradict each other, and it doesn't matter.

Really? We live in an irrational, upside down, insane world, and I'm being nice.

The Exclusivity of Christ and the Folly of Subjective Truth

Well, Steve, I'm thinking about the exclusivity of Christ and his claims and the one way of salvation. We are soon going to be probably not even to be able to be on the podcast because iTunes won't carry us anymore.

Spotify won't carry us anymore because we're going to come across as the most hateful people. And it's interesting, just like in Isaiah 5, good is called evil and evil is called good, where we're trying to love people and tell them the truth.

And that's labeled as hate speech. It's like a demonic thing. Satan is real. I have a cough button here, but you just have to. I don't know what you want. What kind of signal can you give me if you have to?

I'll just reach across and hit it.

What else do I have? What do I have here for cough buttons? I have this.

That's the button. Do you have a cough syrup button?

Remember watching that show when you were a kid? No. You're not supposed to lie on international radio. I can lie if I want to. So back to the topic, wrong reasons people want to come to Christ. The number one need that every person has since they're lost, sinful, foolish, depraved, dead, blind.

How many other words can we think of when it comes to depravity? I don't know. Keep going. In Adam, fallen, deceived, alienated, separated. I'm doing pretty well without having a note. Yeah, I think you are.

What else? Contorted, perverted. Aliens. I feel like I'm on the pyramid game or something. The number one need is forgiveness. And of course, Ephesians 1 .7 says, in this great praise to the triune God, that in Him, Jesus, and Him alone, we have redemption.

What's that mean? The forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins. Not just one sin, two sins. I mean, how many times do we sin a day?

You know, on an average day, probably, latest calculation is 3 .25.

I thought it was going to be 3 .14 or something like that. I mean, just imagine how many times we sin, and we need to be forgiven. And Steve, if you ever offend your wife or I offend Kim, we say something untoward them.

Untowards them? Untowardly toward them? Just untoward. I don't know why I just thought of moral turpitude, but that was back to our old, estranged, deceived, moral turpitude, superfluity of naughtiness.

James 1, when we ask for forgiveness from a person that we've sinned against, and they grant it, and I know we're not going on feelings, but feelings, you know, they're real. The feeling and the knowledge and the thought that this person just forgave me, that's a wonderful feeling, especially in light of what we've just done.

And then they forgive us. But we've offended God of the universe. And unlike angels, there's a rescue plan for us. He could have just said, like, to the angels that fell, you're damned and doomed. But now we have this rescue plan, this deliverance.

And that's the biggest need that anyone has. I don't think anyone should want to come to Christ for any other reason besides, I need to be reconciled to the God of the universe.

Well, like I said earlier, what we really underestimate is what it means not to have forgiveness. The bar of perfection is a very serious bar. And when we fall short of that, it's not just like, oh, well, you know, nice try.

Good job. Pat on the head, you know, couple days in purgatory, see you in heaven.

That's not how it works. Steve, would you think it's fair to say or important to say that when you do come to Christ by faith alone in the risen Savior, that oftentimes God does restore marriages, does provide for your financial needs.

Right. I've been a young and I've been old and I haven't seen the children forsaken and begging for bread. Doesn't God often bless with tangible things? But that's not the main thing, right?

Right. Well, and it's not even, you know, nowhere will you find it in Scripture that along with redemption, do you also get, you know, fill in the blank, these problems solved. And, you know, I think redemption, if we just view it this way, if whatever our circumstances are, if they never improve at all, well, we've got 40, 50, 60 years.

Thankfully, I don't have 60 years left. But, you know, whatever time we have left on this planet, could we power through, you know, the difficulty, not having enough money, going through bankruptcy, being homeless, whatever it is.

Could we power through that if we understood that eternity in heaven is on the other side of it? Well, I think the answer is yes, because we know that eternity is a very long time. And this life is not.

We forget how, you know, as we get older, we understand how short this life is. But sometimes we lose sight of that because our circumstances seem so overwhelming and so just all-encompassing that we can't even imagine being relieved of them and not having to worry about our circumstances ever again.

As you were preaching there for a second, Steve, I thought to myself, one more reason why we as pastors and preachers talk about who the Lord Jesus is in sermons to Christians. Because Christians, we, you do, I do, other people do, we have our minds so focused on the problems at hand.

We need to be reminded that yes, in fact, Jesus is alive. He can be trusted. And even though our eyes betray us, we walk by faith and not by sight.

Yeah, I mean, let me put it another way. Let's say that I could resolve all of your temporal problems, make you wealthy, give you a great marriage, happy kids. Don't forget about my lungs. Yeah. Clear up your lungs, yada, yada, yada.

And then the moment that you died, you were going to go to eternity in hell. I mean, that'd be a tough sale, right? You know, Steve, the evangelist, well, I can't really do anything for your eternal problems, but I can make this life a little bit better for you, right?

I can solve this problem and that problem and, you know, but what happens after I die? Oh, hell, for sure. I mean, you wouldn't go back to that church.

I mean, you're talking about Joe Osteen, right? And the theology of glory where it's just everything's now versus the theology of suffering, then glory. Wasn't that our Lord's pattern? Yes.

Suffering, then glory. Yeah, but nobody wants to suffer. And, you know, there's no the problem is sometimes I listen to Christians and they say, oh, you're guaranteed to have a life of suffering. Well, no, you're not.

Nobody knows, right? I mean, we talk about persecution and this, that, and the other thing, and I'm like, okay, well, it hasn't happened yet. It's going to happen, but we don't know when. It could be 20 years from now.

It could be tomorrow. It could be 100 years from now. It could be a thousand. We don't know. But, you know, this whole I mean, I listen to some people and they're like, oh, you're going to be persecuted as soon as you get saved.

Is that true?

It's almost like, Steve, people want to have a formulaic cookie-cutter response to everything. How people come to Christ and then what happens after. You look at Peter, church history says he's martyred.

John, he has to go to an island. Some other people, they come to Christ, they're beheaded for their profession of faith in an Islamic country. Other people live a rich life for 35 years with grandchildren, wonderful marriage, a nice local church.

This is all the sovereignty of God, but we do know that if we can trust Him with our eternal souls, we can trust Him with temporal living, whether that's good or bad, because we know He's never going to leave us nor forsake us.

Isn't that enough for the Christian? It should be. So, today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about some wrong reasons why people come to Christ. The main reason, obviously, to glorify God by believing in the Son, but humanly speaking, you'll receive forgiveness of sins.

Could there be any greater need that people have? And the answer is no. There is none. Thanks for listening. You can email Steve with all the negative comments if you'd like. Just don't. Don't do it. Do you get any emails?

I'm calling out our listeners now to email thetuesdayguyatnocompromiseradio .com.

I get lots of them, but I have it all set to go to my spam folder.

Well, what if you have it forwarded to go to Spencer? It'll go backward. Instead of him sending them to you, you send them to him, and he has to answer.

That would be smart, but I only want nice emails.