We Have Been Taught Not to Discern - Part 6 — Andrew Strom

The False Gospel of Self-Fulfillment

We're not getting anyone converted. We don't know what conversion is. We don't know how to send people to the cross. Our preaching doesn't do it anymore. Our preaching sends them to selfish land, where they try and get all that they can out of God, where God is there to fulfill their happiness and their whole desire in going to church is to get something for themselves.

It's not to glorify God. It's not to find out, you know, it's not to really draw close to God. Most people, if they could draw a little bit close to God, would be utterly frightened and run away, because God is not that big fairy tale guy in the sky.

Salvation from God's Wrath

He's not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy at all. We have to be saved from his wrath. We were talking about that earlier. We have to be saved from his wrath by Jesus shielding us. Otherwise, we're toast. That's what God is like.

God's Unchanging Judgment

God is far from friendly. Did you know that? Did you know that God deliberately hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he could destroy him? Did you know that? God actually did that. We say, oh yeah, but God's changed.

He's a New Testament God now. I say, God never changed. He says, I am the Lord, I change not. It's the Bible says Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, hasn't changed a bit. He's still in the wiping out business.

Still in the wiping out business. Still in the sending plagues business. He's just, he's called time out. And he said, okay, we're gonna try a different thing. We'll try and see if the people will accept a shield that will shield them from my wrath.

And see if I send my son to take a terrible punishment on their back, will they accept this shield? Will they accept it? And he finds most people don't want it, including in the church. Most people don't even hear about it.

Most people don't know what they're being saved from. Where do we ever hear a sermon in church today of what we're being saved from? The wrath of God. Most people never wanna hear about a God like that.

They say, no, surely that can't be God. No, I don't believe in a God like that. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you don't believe in a God like that. Because you don't believe in a God like that, you can't draw close to him and grow to love him.

You can't. You can't develop a love relationship with God because you never feared him. People say, why do I need to fear God to get love? That's the first thing. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The Real Jesus Versus Advertising Jesus

Yeah, but this can't be Christianity. What are you preaching here? Isn't God a God of love? Well, heck, go watch him wiping out nations and tell me, I don't know. Go watch Paul the Apostle smiting the Pro, you know, Elimas with blindness.

Tell me. Go watch Peter saying to Ananias and Sapphira, you know, saying to the wife, she doesn't even know her husband's dead, just been killed by God. She doesn't even know. He says, the same, the same power is about to wipe you out.

The same for the same reason. What kind of God is this? They say, we don't want a God like that. Yes, that's the exact point. We want advertising Jesus. We want advertising Jesus. We want Santa Claus God who only promises blessings, who only gives and gives.

We want Santa Claus God and advertising Jesus. That's who we want. We don't want the actual real things. They would frighten us if we could see them. If we could see Jesus in action, actually preaching to the scribes and Pharisees, we'd be shocked and horrified at the things he would say.

Preaching Salvation, Discipleship, and Truth

He'd preach them today, no sweat. People would want to throw him off the cliff today. Not a problem. I've got no doubt about it. Here's the thing that we all face. It's a very serious thing. Are we going to invite this God down into the nation of America today?

Are we going to stand up and speak today, words that just come out of Jesus's mouth about such things as salvation and discipleship? And money? We're going to just, can we find within ourselves these five little loaves and go start preaching them, giving them to the people?

Because God will multiply them. He really will. He's suffering from the lack of people who will open their mouth. Did you know that? And there's not enough prayer. And a lot of people, if they're praying for God to come down, let's come to a close here.

A lot of people, if they're praying to God to come down, for God to come down, they don't know what they're asking for. And God so desires the people who know him. Do you know that God is such a loving God if you can be founded in the fear of the Lord?

Isaiah's Vision of God's Glory

The love of God, the glory of God. Isaiah saw the glory of God. High and lifted up, he saw his throne room. He was so incredibly fearful as a being, and yet he felt so drawn to him. This is God. I desire to know this God.

I want to preach this God. I don't want to preach a fairy tale. I don't want to represent a Christianity that really doesn't exist. I want the real God. Yes, he's very angry at sin, but yes, he's so merciful, he's seen his own son to die.

Embrace this God. Can we preach the real gospel? Are we willing to stand up and speak truth? Can we get the five little loaves and lay them before the people and say, you know what? I am but a child, but my God is great.

Recovering the Apostolic Gospel

That's all he's calling for. Do you know, tomorrow night, what I'm wanting to preach, because we have two nights here, I want to preach the gospel tomorrow night like you may never have heard before, the gospel that I believe the apostles preached.

I want to show you what it was. I want to tell you, do you know what happens between awakenings? We lose the gospel, and we've lost the gospel, too. I get people telling me this all the time. Here's what happens to me all around the place.

I'll preach the gospel and old ladies who were around in the 70s and Pentecostal and the brethren, if I'm in England, you know, the brethren or whatever, they come up to me and say, you know what? I'm going to preach like the apostles.

I've never gone, apart from the guy, you know, the guys that are starting to rise up now, Paul Washer and so on. You can never hear the gospel. You can go across the whole of America from church to church to church and never hear the gospel preached.

And we all think we know what it is, and that's the shocking thing. If you ask Christians, you ask church people, they say, yeah, we know what the gospel is. I want to say to you, we don't ever hear it preached, never.

God's Wrath and the Necessity of the Cross

Tonight, some of what I'm touching on tonight is all gospel stuff. It's just, it's the character of God. Do we ever hear God characterized in this way? No, we never hear that. Our God is not a wrathful God in any way today, the modern God, no, never.

I want to say to you, if he's not a wrathful God, Jesus didn't have to die. None of it makes any sense. If he's not a wrathful God, none of it makes any sense. All of it, we just throw it all out. We're left with like two scraps of scripture.

That big. Throw the book away. We don't really know God. Those are the facts. We don't know what the gospel is. I wonder how many people really want to know. That's another key question. We need to pray.

Prayer to Know the True God and Gospel

Do you know what I'm going to pray tonight? I'd like, please stand with me. Only put up your hands and agree with this prayer if you really, really want to draw closer to the real God today. Because I know that there's quite a few people that don't.

They don't want the fear of the Lord and they don't even want to get to the love of a God like that. They just don't want any part of this. What I want to pray for us all tonight is that we would know the true God.

We would know what he's really like and why we need to be saved from the wrath of the Lord. Also just that we would know a new moving in our hearts by the spirit that we would start to speak truth. So if you agree with those two things, then please consider carefully before you raise your hands to God because I believe we're going to pray this prayer before God tonight.

I'm going to pray for those two things. For all of us who are raising our hands to him, that we really know him as he truly is. That we'd know the true gospel and we'd begin to speak the truth in a more powerful way than we had done.