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Well, I had my sermon ready for tonight, the second attribute out of the 26 -week series, but just with the events in the last few days,
I thought I would change that, and I publicly admitted that I would change that this morning, and so you can imagine what
I did this afternoon. I sat in front of the computer and worked on the sermon, because I changed it at such a last minute.
The Lord didn't lead me or speak to me or anything like that. I just thought to myself, as a shepherd, it would be good to address these things, because we can learn a lot about sanctification, and this is a time where people are really talking about it and thinking about it.
So the sermon title tonight, in light of current events, is called, How to Fall into Disqualifying Sin.
What to do to have your life in such shambles that you would shame
Christ. Now, of course, I'm going the opposite. I don't want that to happen. So I'm going to do it the opposite way.
I'm going to tell you how to do it, so you're thinking to yourself, I don't want to do that. Understand?
It's just a rhetorical device, a preaching device. Here's how you fall into sin. I really don't want you to, but we're just going to spin it that way.
I could retitle it called, The Anatomy of a Christian Fall. Falling before the whole world, as it were.
And the thing about it is, we can learn as lay people and as leaders tonight.
It's not just for leaders, but it's for everyone. And what I've learned about people that have really gotten into a lot of trouble, it's a series of steps.
Let's use another example. The Squalus, the submarine that sank over here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
It wasn't just one thing that went wrong that contributed to that thing sinking, and then the men being rescued.
When you think of Apollo 13, it wasn't one thing that went wrong for all the disaster that almost happened.
Other submarine wrecks, I study submarines a lot. It's usually four or five things all going wrong at once, and then disaster.
So I want to try to help you with preventative maintenance issues so that it never happens to you.
As I said this morning, it has been taught to me many times, you don't just fall out of a tree, you have to climb up it first.
You just don't wake up one day and say, well, I think I'll go find a male prostitute as a pastor.
That just doesn't happen, and so you work towards that, and I don't want any of us to work towards that.
Even today, in a statement by Ted Haggard, the pastor in Colorado, he said, quote, the fact is
I am guilty of sexual immorality, and I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar.
That's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life.
Associated Press today. And we want to make sure that we don't fall into sin like this particular man who was in 2005 one of Time Magazine's top 25 most evangelical
Christians. And so I hope to influence you by his fall in a way that you say,
I don't want to do that. I don't want to have happen to me. And you say, well,
I don't have 14 ,000 people at our church. You still represent the same Christ that he represents, and so I don't want you to bring any shame to Christ.
What has just happened, Anitra? Did you touch anything? All right.
She knew I liked it loud. Weak point. Turn up the volume.
Can you believe it? On Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, how many people know about that, there is a page for religious scandals.
And you can just see all the people in there. Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal has their own page, and then there is a
Christian televangelist scandal page. Jimmy Swagger, adultery, prostitution in the motel, et cetera, et cetera.
Jim Baker is on there receiving the bonuses from PTL, paid Jessica Hahn $265 ,000 to keep that scandal out of the news.
Oral Roberts raising the $8 million or else God is going to kill me type of thing. Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn.
The list gets longer. There are some great people that have great theology, and there are some people that have horrible theology.
And I want to make sure we just learn so we're careful not to fall into something that is this heinous.
How to go down the slippery slope of sin. Number one, believe the lie that happiness is more important than holiness.
I'm going to give you several tonight. The first thing that you ought not to do, but again, I'm screw tape lettering this, teaching it from the opposite.
If you want to guard yourself, then you won't do what I'm telling you to do. If you'd like to go down the slippery slope of immorality or any other kind of big blowout, then believe the lie that happiness is more important than holiness.
Vance Havner said, God does not save us to make us happy, but to make us holy. That is what
God is after. The Puritan Richard Sibbes said the same thing. Those that look to be happy must first look to be holy.
The number one goal for life is not to make you happy. Furthermore, John James said, holiness is happiness.
And the more you have of the former, the more you will undoubtedly enjoy the latter. You see,
God is holy, and he calls us to be holy as well. It is not Leviticus and 1
Peter 1 where God says, I am holy, therefore be happy. It is,
I am holy, and my name is holy, Isaiah 57 says, and we are to be holy like God.
And I think this all starts when people think lightly of God's holiness. A .W.
Pink nailed it when he said, the God which the vast majority of professing Christians love is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man who himself has no relish for folly, but leniently winks at the indiscretions of youth.
Men often refuse to believe in the God of the Bible and gnash their teeth when his hatred of sin is faithfully pressed upon their attention.
No sinful man was more likely to devise a holy God than to create the lake of fire in which he will be tormented forever and ever.
We need a good dose again of God's holiness because we live in a society that maybe doesn't go this far, but by their actions they shout it out.
Heinrich Hepp said, things are admirably arranged. God likes forgiving sins, and I like committing them.
What a travesty. Newsweek writer Kenneth Woodward asked this question, whatever happened to sin?
He said, disguised in the secular language of psychotherapy, the search for the sacred has turned sharply inward.
The goal over the last 40 years has been variously described as peace of mind, higher consciousness, or in its most banal incarnation, self -esteem.
And we as a church can buttress ourselves against this kind of thinking when we see anew and afresh that God is holy, that God does not look upon evil.
His eyes are too pure for that, Habakkuk 1 says. God is allergic to sin. And sin, when they are together, it is like a nuclear explosion.
One sin, God then banishes Adam and Eve from the garden.
For one sin, all the posterity of Canaan fell under a curse. For one sin,
Elisha's servant was smitten with leprosy. Did you know, in heaven, the four living creatures around the throne never stop singing or saying,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. R .C.
Sproul said, the Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy or even holy, holy.
He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love, mercy, mercy, mercy, wrath, wrath, wrath, or justice, justice, justice.
It does say that He is holy, holy, holy, and the whole earth is full of His glory.
One of the best things you could do is to read R .C. Sproul's book, The Holiness of God. And that will wipe out all of the modern talk that as long as no one gets hurt, it's okay.
As long as it's two consenting adults, it's okay. That is the worldly thinking and it's not right.
I hope you are happy, but I hope you find your happiness after you find your holiness.
And sadly, Patty Sandy, Amy Grant, God certainly wants me happy, so away with this husband and off with the new husband.
And when we really see God's holiness, we will pray with Wilberforce, Oh God, deliver me from myself.
If you'd like to start down the slippery slope of sin, shaming sin, then number one, believe the lie that happiness is more important than holiness.
Number two, live your life based on your feelings. Just whatever feels good, do it.
Now again, I have to say, I don't want you to do these things, but I'm just using them as a rhetorical device so that you don't do it and you hear how stupid it is.
Martin Lloyd -Jones, who died in 1981, I wish I could have heard him preach, but I have his words right here.
Oh, the havoc that is wrought and the tragedy and the misery and the wretchedness that are to be found in the world simply because people do not know how to handle their own feelings.
Our feelings come and they go. Our feelings are unstable, unreliable. Sometimes our feelings are what
C .J. Mahaney calls lies that feel like the truth. Martin Luther said feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving.
My warrant is the word of God, not else is worth believing. Feelings lie.
We live in a feeling -oriented society. How do you talk? How do you feel about this? Do you say that?
Oh, this is the way I'm feeling. Or do you say, what do you think about that? What do you believe about that? Did you know this, true or false, a lack of feelings does not mean something is not true.
In other words, how many people here are married? How many people here feel really married right now?
Well, some do, some don't. Good. How many people are Christians here?
Many. Do you feel forgiven this exact moment? Some do. Hopefully after this morning's sermon.
George B. McClellan was commissioned by a Major General of the Army, wrote his wife, quote, I don't feel any different than I did yesterday.
Indeed, I have not yet put on my new uniform. I am sure that I am in command of the Union Army, however, because President Lincoln's order to that effect now lies before me.
He didn't feel that way, but he was. And God has made our feelings to follow our actions, not the other way around.
Proverbs 29 .18 says, Happy is he who keeps the law. Let me show you an illustration.
If you turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 4, this is a Bible teaching church after all, so it would be good to open our Bibles. Genesis chapter 4.
And let me show you how feelings, when you follow them, often produce unhappiness.
Genesis chapter 4, verse 4, going back a long, long time ago, billions of years.
No. And Abel in Genesis 4 .4,
on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions, and the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering.
But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard. So Cain became very angry, and his countenance fell.
Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? God knew the answer, but he wanted
Cain to say it. Then he says, If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.
When you have a problem in your life, and you biblically respond, you feel good.
When you have a problem in your life, and you respond unbiblically, there are bad feelings. Do it right, and there's a lifting up of the face.
Did you know this? This could be shocking news. That many times God expects you as a
Christian to do something, even though you don't feel like it. It's shocking to me.
It's like the guy who came in and said in counseling, I don't love my wife anymore. What would you tell somebody who said,
I don't love my wife anymore, and they're Christians, and they're married? What would your response be? Pardon me?
Love her even more? Okay. What did you say? Repent?
Oh, too bad. I kind of like that. I usually say repent, but I could use too bad. Well, Ephesians 5 .25,
would then chasten that man, as it says, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
What that person is saying, I don't feel love for my wife anymore, the romantic love, the kind of love when we were dating, the love when we were on our honeymoon, and I want you to fix that.
And what God is saying, those feelings are going to follow, so just begin to love like Christ does, with agape love, even though you don't feel like it.
That doesn't get us off the hook. Well, I don't feel like I have to obey. Can you imagine with my kids? Who's here? Luke. Hey, Luke, pick up your room.
I don't feel like it, Dad. Well, isn't that special? Let's just have a feelings party.
I know you don't feel like it, but Dad gave you a directive to do.
I love the story about newspaper columnist and minister George Crane, and the wife came into the office hating her husband.
She said, I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even before I divorce him, and I want to hurt him as much as he has hurt me.
So, Dr. Crane had an ingenious plan. Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Tell him how much he means to you.
Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be kind, considerate, and generous as possible.
Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. Make him believe you love him. After you've convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb.
Tell him that you're getting a divorce. That will really hurt him. Crane said with revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed,
Beautiful. Will he ever be surprised? And she did it with enthusiasm, acting as if for two months, showing love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, and sharing,
Crane said. Crane was asked later, Did she ever return? No.
When she didn't return, Crane called though, Are you ready now to go through with the divorce? Divorce, she exclaimed.
Never. I discovered I really do love him. See, actions change the feelings.
If you want to have a disaster in your life, then you just do what the world does, and that is, If I feel like it, I will.
If not, I won't. Slippery slope number three. If you really want to shame
Christ, number one, believe the lie that happiness is more important than holiness. Number two, live your life based on your feelings.
And number three, ignore all emphasis on doctrine. Forget all doctrine.
Who needs doctrine? Turn to 2 Timothy chapter four for a moment, if you would. And I want you to know that doctrine is important.
I want you to know that Jesus preached doctrine. I want you to know that Paul preached doctrine. I want you to know that Jesus, through his
Holy Spirit, told New Testament preachers to preach doctrine. Of course, doctrine isn't enough, but we've got to have doctrine.
William Plummer said, Weak doctrines are no match for powerful temptations. You say, what's doctrine?
It's just a statement of divine fact. Here's the truth about God. And when we preach, we are to preach doctrine.
This whole thing, you know, well, we don't want any doctrine at the church. Doctrine divides. Newsflash, doctrine does divide.
It divides truth from error. You say, well, it creates controversy.
Well, if you don't want to create controversy, then you just better do what Machen said in 1929, throw away the
New Testament. It's got controversy written all over it. We need doctrine. And Paul even is telling
Timothy to preach doctrine. You know the passage very well. Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.
Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience, and the word means doctrine.
We are to preach with doctrine. Acts 2 .42, they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship.
They were astonished at Jesus' doctrine in Mark 1 .22. We need to preach doctrine.
Now, relating back to Haggard for a minute, Phil Reichen replaced James Boyce at 10th Presbyterian in Philadelphia, and he went to one of the services at New Life, and here's what
Philip Reichen said about the New Life church that Haggard used to pastor. Quote, I visited
New Life Church when it was in its popular ascendancy about a decade ago. The strongest impression
I had on that particular Sunday was a palpable absence of the gospel, lots of feel -good worship, and moralistic exhortation to lead a good life, but little in the way of biblical message of repentance for sin and grace in Christ.
We're going to see more of this as time goes on, because these megachurches are built around these kind of sermons.
Here are 10 ways to have a good family life. Here are 15 practical tips to have good finances.
Here are 30 ways to do X, Y, and Z. And in Christianity, here's how
God sets it up, both with indicatives and imperatives. That is to say, an indicative is a statement of fact.
Jesus died for you. And the imperative, then live a holy life.
And if you always focus on be good, do good, live a good life, be happy, make sure your kids are happy, make sure your family's right, here's how you can be financially secure, and you forget about these indicatives.
We are in Christ. We have been bought with a price. Jesus is coming back soon.
Things that should make us change our behavior when you divorce practical exhortation from the indicatives of what
God has done, you are creating a bunch of little Pharisees that have no way to obey the gospel because they don't have the
Spirit of God working through these kind of things. Ephesians chapter 1, 2, and 3, you are in Christ, therefore obey, 4, 5, and 6.
Romans 16 chapters, the first 11 chapters, here was what God has done. Matter of fact, I don't think there's an imperative in all of Romans 1 through 11 except one found in chapter 6.
Not telling you to do anything, it's telling you to think properly, then because you've thought properly, then obey.
Colossians 1 and 2, here's who Christ is. Colossians 3 and 4, verse 5 it says, therefore, in chapter 3.
And so we have to be very, very careful, and whether it's Willow Creek or Saddleback or any other place, moralism, to -do list, apart from the gospel, is an error that is going to result in bad lifestyle.
This was big back in Spurgeon's day and Spurgeon quoted Dr. Chalmers in this and he said, quote,
Dr. Chalmers tells us in his earthly ministry he used to preach morality and nothing but morality till he said he had hardly a sober or an honest man left in the parish.
The preaching of morality seemed to lead to immorality. Because there's only so long you can do good and be good before the lid goes.
We need doctrine. We need to be told today. How many things did I actually tell you to do this morning?
There wasn't anything to do in Ephesians 1, 7 and 8, was there? I said praise Him and remember, but those are exhortations from the pulpit.
They weren't in the text. We just need to be reminded of how great God is and what He's done. Then we respond in a way that would please
Him. Number four. Here's a big one. I hope I don't step on any toes on this one.
Remember, I'm saying everything opposite. I hope I step on some toes. If you would like to fall down the slippery slope and grease the skids, blame
Satan for everything. Take no personal responsibility. Blame Satan for everything. That's exactly the way
Ted Haggard did it for a long time. I could read you some of his books. He'd say things like, Upon entering the worship area, we noted
Islamic religious symbols distorted by their makers into Satanic symbols. Sherry Will, a homemaker and intercessor, and I started breaking curses, anointing altars with oil, driving demons out of the cave and asking
God's glory to fill the place in Jesus' name. Midnight oil prayer walks and all kinds of other things.
We have to be careful to take personal ownership even if Satan is involved.
And we don't even know if Satan is involved. I have a question for you. Job. The book of Job, we learned that Satan is attacking
Job. Right? God allowed him to. Did Job ever know that Satan was the attacker?
He had to go to heaven to find out. We need to own up to the fact that we make ourselves sin.
We are the ones. And why don't you turn to James chapter 1 and I'll just highlight this a little bit. Certainly, Satan tempts.
But we could never blame God for allowing Satan to tempt us. And we could never blame Satan because we are to blame.
Especially in our society today with the blame game and Twinkie defenses and my Italian temper and everything else.
The real blame is us. If you look at James 1 v. 13, don't blame God. He would never tempt that evil way.
And v. 14 and 15 basically says the real blame is you. But each one is tempted, v. 14, when
Satan with his powerful pitchfork and horns drags you away and entices you like a caveman does his wife.
That's what it says in my new international perversion here, doesn't it? No slam on the
NIV. I didn't mean that at all. If you want me to slam the NIV, okay, I will. Are you
NIV positive? Okay. I wasn't after anything except it says right there, by his own what?
Evil desire. He is dragged and enticed. We made us do it.
The temptation source is internal, not external. And this used to manifest itself in my own personal life all the time when here's what
I would do. I would act really stupid and sinful towards Kim or the kids and then I would have this excuse. I have a headache.
I don't feel good. Well, whether I feel good or not,
I still am responsible. What am I going to do? Blame my headache? Here's Mike and here's his headache kind of floating out there.
I'll just blame my headache. It's kind of this amoeba -like, amorphous kind of thing out there. It's just my headache.
Of course, if you don't feel good, it is harder, but you still cannot say, well, you know what?
I have PMS and therefore that's why I'm acting really selfish and sinful and short -tempered right now and bitter.
I understand that there are organic issues, but still at the end of the day, we have to take ownership for our actions.
You know the passage. I mean, it is farcical. Is that a word? It's like a farce.
Do not be angry, my Lord, Aaron answered. Do you know how prone these people are to evil? They said to me, make us gods.
Who will go before us? For this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. So I told them, whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.
Then they gave me the gold. I threw it in the fire and out came this calf blaming somebody else for our sins.
I am frankly amazed that people blame Satan for so many things. I grew up in the 60s watching black and white
TV with my father and watching Flip Wilson. The devil made me buy that dress.
How many people can witness to that? I know, many of you can. We can't blame anyone for our sins.
It's like J. Verne McGee when he's talking about psychologists and they say, what's your background?
Did your mother love you? Did anything unusual happen when you were in the womb? What explains all your problems?
Well, my mother was caught in a rainstorm while she was carrying me, the psychologist would say. And J.
Verne McGee said, well, that's the reason you're a drip. And I thought, that's exactly right. Each one, the text says, stresses a universal experience of being tempted, one commentator said, by his own desire or lust.
Emphatically, in the Greek, Mark 7 .23, Jesus said it this way, all these evils come from the inside and make man unclean.
You know, Satan's not omnipresent. There's only one Satan. And I think it is quite, people have the audacity to say,
I am somehow getting attacked by Satan. And I live in the middle of Massachusetts and I can't even go to church except once a month.
I have no ministry of serving others. I never evangelize. And Satan's after me and he's the one always trying to track me down and everything
I do wrongly, it's because of Satan. Friends, you think too highly of yourself. If you think Satan's after you, he's already got you.
Why does he need to do something else? It is your own problem and certainly Satan tempts. But I think
Satan is involved in places like the Mormon leadership and right over there in that city in Lancaster with Seventh -day
Adventism where of course there are Christians who are Adventist but they are promoting the doctrine of demons that says it comes to food, you can't eat anything.
Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, that's a doctrine of demons. Why don't you turn to Proverbs 19, verse 3.
Now maybe Ted Haggard was so influential, Satan was helped after him, I don't know. But look at Proverbs 19, verse 3.
This is amazing. When you think about personal ownership. Please don't pass the buck.
Please don't blame anything. Please don't blame your spouse or your kids or anything else. Just take your own responsibility.
God forgives. God is merciful. We all have our bents and propensities.
In Proverbs 19, verse 3, a man's what? Own folly ruins his life.
It's his own. Proverbs 19, verse 3. It's nobody else's. It's his own. Drags us away to sin.
Baited and enticed. We have to be careful. There is a mathematical formula that I have in my notes. Temptation equals desire plus opportunity.
Sin equals desire plus opportunity plus action. We have seen it in Colorado.
James 1 .15 says, Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to what?
Death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Why would
James write in verse 16, Don't be deceived, my dear brothers? Because it's easy to be deceived.
It's easy to think somebody else made you do it. Number five.
We've got to get going. If you'd like to slide down the greased wheel of shaming
Christ, Number five. Be an evangelist for your pet doctrine and not for Jesus Christ.
Be an evangelist for your pet doctrine or doctrines and not for Jesus Christ. And remember, what
I'm trying to do is, Steve, what do you call those things again that the policemen put out on the road that pop the tires of the bad guys?
Tire strips. What are they called? Spike strips. If they're not called that, it sounds good.
I'm trying to lay down some spike strips so you just don't tumble headlong. Be an evangelist for your pet doctrine and not for Jesus Christ.
We don't want to do that. If I say the letters JC, who do you think of? John Calvin? JC Ryle?
JC Penney? Boy, I get into things I don't want to get into here. JC Watts, yes,
Oklahoma quarterback and ex -senator, I believe, for Oklahoma. Some people get saved, and then they realize there's some kind of religious system, and maybe it's all biblical, but they become fanatics about it, and they begin to proselytize others, not of Jesus Christ, but of the five points of Calvinism, of their eschatological system, the end -times view that they have, whatever it is.
And I could ask you this question. Do you talk to people more about Jesus Christ and forgiveness found in Him, or do you talk more about Calvinism or end -times theology or whatever else you're into?
Why don't we turn to Revelation 2, and let me show you a church that was great.
We saw it this morning, the church of Ephesus, who left, not lost, its first love.
And I don't want to have that happen. I know when I got saved, were you like me? I was running around to everyone telling them the five solas of the
Reformation, weren't you? No, I never even thought about it. I thought, I am a wretched, sinful man, and God has saved me, and I'm a king's son, and I get to go to heaven.
I would just stay up at night, just thinking. I'm just thinking about, I can't believe that if I just would have died before this, why did
I skydive twice? Why did I go whitewater rafting? Why did I go scuba diving? I mean,
I was scuba diving one time, and they said it was this illegal thing down in Mexico, and it has nothing to do with Mexico, it has everything to do with me, and I thought, why pay all this money to do it, when
I can just do it illegally? They said, and I was with my mother,
I'll blame my mother, she made me do it. Oh no, I'm not supposed to do that. And so we went, and the guide's name was
Paimo, and he said, we'll just practice a little bit. Are you a good swimmer? Yeah, I'm a good swimmer. So, put everything on, and is there a reserve tank?
No, not really, and it's just this kind of standard issue 1984 deal, and he said, you know, when you start feeling hard to breathe, just give me kind of that, and I'll send you back up to the boat.
Okay. Guy had his little spear gun, in Acapulco Bay, going around. I thought, you know, it's kind of hard to breathe, it's 25, 30 minutes later, but nobody else is doing this, and I'm not doing it either.
Down there swimming around, and there's my mom. And I thought, at worst, if I start to drown,
I'll just grab my mom's deal, and just, you know, buddy system kind of thing. Anyway, super long story short,
I ran out of oxygen. I didn't know how to turn it on, I didn't know how to do anything. I just quick swam over to Paimo, the guy, and I'm going.
So he grabbed my shoulders, turned me around, switched the reserve tank on, and then pointed up to the ship, and I gladly obliged.
Just stupid things like that. Just, I could have died. How many times I could have died in the car wreck?
Speeding around, drunk at 16, who knows what. And God saved me. I didn't care about theological systems.
I cared about truth, yes. But I think sometimes people get saved, and especially for you kind of rabid,
Calvinistic, Reformed, Five Points of Calvinism, Tulip, all these other things. The only reason you believe those things is because God has graciously allowed you to believe them.
So then why would you say, God opened my mind to believe them, but for other people to believe them,
I can't wait for God to open their mind. I have to jam it down their throat to make them believe it.
So I say, preach Christ Jesus. Certainly study theology. But I'm not here to make a bunch of Five Point Calvinists.
Take a look at this church at Ephesus. I find it very fascinating. Revelation 2, verses 1 and following, you know there's several letters, seven literal letters to seven literal churches with seven literal messages to churches that we can all learn from.
And it says, to the church, to the angel of the church at Ephesus, write. And so, this representative of the church is going to get this message, and it's going to be all about Christ.
By the way, Ephesus was called the Vanity Fair of Asia. They had the largest
Greek temple there, the Temple of Diana. 100 external columns, 56 feet high.
It's built on marsh. Interesting place, ungodly place.
It was a seaport. When you think of seaports, what do you think of? Immorality. Those that would want to run from the law would try to run into the
Temple of Diana, so you had lots of criminals there. It was vile, it was wicked. Yet, the church at Ephesus had remained faithful for 40 years when this letter was written.
It was said that when sailors from the Aegean Sea looked at Ephesus from a distance and saw the
Temple of Diana still standing, they felt secure. One of Ephesus' own citizens said this.
He said, quote, The morals of the temple were worse than that of animals, for even promiscuous dogs do not mutilate each other.
The inhabitants of Ephesus are only fit to be drowned. And you've got a church that loves the
Lord, but something's happening. And so, somebody wants to address them, and that somebody is the one who holds the stars,
Christ's authority and control, possession. He owns everything. And He says something to them.
Verse 2, I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men. He really knows full knowledge.
And you put to test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false. They worked hard, they had lots of deeds, they evangelized most likely, served, they took care of the poor and needy, blood, sweat and tears and toil, as Churchill would say, these guys did, serving one another.
They smoked out false apostles with spiritual discernment. Kind of sounds like our church,
I think. Verse 3, And you have perseverance and have endured for my namesake, not your own namesake.
You have not grown weary. They have the right motives. They never thought about giving up.
Paul planted this church. He taught there for a long time. Timothy's a pastor. It's like having these three pastors, except better.
Lloyd -Jones, Boyce, and then MacArthur. They've been taught well. But he's got something against them.
Verse 4, But I have this against you, that you have not lost, but left your first love.
Literally, your first love you have left. With maturity, supposedly, quote unquote, they have grown cool.
Oh yes, they still have their providences at 5 o 'clock on Sunday night, but it doesn't mean the same.
And as the silt, the real silt of that seaport would come into the harbor, the spiritual silt of worldliness and wrong priorities has come into the church, they have forsaken their first love.
It is mechanical. It is routine. It is going through the motions. And God loves his people too much to allow that to happen.
By definition, 1 Corinthians 16 says, to be a Christian is to love Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Wilson, the reformed writer said, Mere orthodoxy is not enough for the searcher of all hearts.
And the Ephesus church is different than Thessalonica, because in 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul says about them, in verse 3, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, labor of love, steadfastness of hope.
One old writer said, Take husband and wife. A wife may care, take care of the home, fulfill all duties, so as to leave nothing undone, for which her husband could find fault.
But if her love for him has diminished, will all her service satisfy him? We know the answer.
The routine, formalities, they've left it. Jesus isn't first anymore, and so what's the solution?
There's three imperatives, right there in your text, verse 5. Number one, remember. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen.
Reflect, recall. Memory is a powerful force, as we learned about this morning. Number two, repent.
Remember, therefore, the deeds from where you've fallen. Number two, and repent. Change your mind. Remember the great guilt that you had, and the great grace that God gave you, so you'll have good gratitude.
Change your mind. Think differently. If you change your mind, you'll change your actions.
And then thirdly, do the deed you did at first. When you first were saved, and you first loved me, do those deeds. Well, I think we want to be careful when we take a look at this, and skipping lots of my information, we don't want to be an evangelist for anybody but Christ Jesus, and when we're not, let's remember that He was the one that first loved us, and we loved
Him. All right, we just have a few more, just going to go super fast. Number six, think of your ministry as your ministry, not
Christ's. If you want to fall, then think of your ministry as your ministry, not Christ's. I couldn't help but see the huge poster in New Life Church that has what on it?
You see the huge poster when you walk down the halls? I mean, when you walk into the church, you see the four elders mug shots there.
We just want you to know who the elders are. But if you ever see a five foot by five foot poster of me walking down the church hall that doesn't have a target on it, then you need to say something to me.
If you ever see me call myself something Mike Abendroth Ministries, and I have some kind of M -A -I -M,
Mike Abendroth International Ministries, then you need to tell me, remember that sermon you preached? Why do people do that?
Spurgeon used to say to seminary students, quote, remember that God has come unto us not to exalt us, but to exalt himself.
It is not about me. It is not about you. It is not about our ministries. It's about Christ being exalted in the local church.
I see it all the time. People have their names all over everywhere. I have a propensity to want to be in front.
I don't like that. I don't want that. I don't want to be known. I want to be known, but I don't want to be known.
Do you know what I mean? It is required of a steward to be found what, according to the
Bible? To be faithful.
This is not Mike's church. It's not the elder's church. This is Christ's church.
And don't you dare let us have some kind of Mike's ministry around here. Or Steve's or Pastor Mark's or anybody else.
We are about service. We should be concerned about not how big our ministry is, but how well we do it for God.
When nobody else is looking, do we in fact not call ourselves
Christians and follow this model from 1 John 3 .16? We know, loved by this, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Your job here is to lay your life down for other people in ministry. That is the plumb line.
After all, He laid down His life for us. He was the good shepherd. We ought to lay our lives down for other people.
When you see people start to promote themselves, then I think you need to be careful. We don't want to promote ourselves either.
Verse 4 of Philippians 2 is the contrast to that. Each of you should not look out for your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Number 7. Be quick to obey and to confess. That's put in the positive. Negatively, it would be don't obey and don't confess.
Psalm 119 says hurry to obey. One of the best things you could do is hurry to obey when it comes to confession.
When you know you sinned, be quick to tie up those loose ends. Don't let them drag out.
Keep short accounts with God. Don't let them just keep getting longer and longer and longer. Number 8.
You want to slide down this slope? Forget all spiritual disciplines. This could be a whole sermon in and of itself.
The Word, prayer, local church. I am so surprised, and we even have some people here at church, that they think somehow they can just come to church every three weeks, every four weeks, every five weeks and think everything's fine.
I don't care about how many numbers we have at church. I think it's quite amazing that I preach and the place was full today.
And what do we talk about? How to be happy versus holy. No, we just are preaching the Word and people come.
But I find it very interesting that people somehow trick themselves to think, you know, Sunday's my day and Sunday, four days, four times out of the month on Sundays it's for me and I've got vacation and I'm going to be out of town and I do all these other things.
I'm just trying to tell you and be your friend and be your pastor. You cannot survive your Christian life being alone without other
Christians. You cannot do it. There's no way. Remember pirates, they used to look for certain ships and those ships were the ones that sailed alone.
It is a recipe for disaster and maybe you could help me Sunday night, faithful. What I do on Mondays is
I think to myself who haven't I seen at church for a few weeks? I'm not trying to be legalistic about it or somehow, you know,
I'm going to call you if you miss a Sunday. But so far, no one has ever gotten mad at me when
I have not seen them for three weeks and then called them and said I just wanted to check on you to make sure everything's fine. How are you doing?
They've all said, oh, thanks that you care. Now, do you think that job is only my job or do you think you could help me with that job?
Certainly, we are the under shepherds here and we should be watching the souls of the sheep. But if you haven't seen your friend for a few weeks, why don't you just pick up the phone, call the number and say, hey,
I haven't seen you for the last few weeks. How are you doing? Well, been out of town, been busy, but it is important to be around other
Christians for accountability so we remember that we're not all that.
Just like a husband and wife. The husband has certain strengths that cover the weaknesses of the wife.
The wife has strengths that cover the weaknesses of the husband. We too, none of us have arrived and we have to make sure that the local church is the center of our lives where we receive healthy feeding and worship
Christ. I'm not into trying to get numbers to send them back to the organization or anything like that, but I just know when people just say, well, forget church,
I know about their lives. And so we need to make sure with spiritual disciplines of accountability, worship service, everything else that we're there.
All right, I think I have two more. Number nine, think about the bride of Christ as a business. Think about the bride of Christ as a business.
Try to get people to follow you. Phil Johnson said this about the
Haggard disaster. The backstory here includes just about everything wrong with 21st century evangelicalism.
This was the top leader of the largest organization representing America's old guard evangelical core.
The movement, not everyone associated with it, of course, but the drift of the movement as a whole, long ago, sold out eternal values for a more pragmatic and temporal concern.
Political power, contemporary fashions, public opinion, and a lopsided moral agenda.
We need to be careful not to think about the bride of Christ, the church, as a business and take care of it as a business.
I could ask you men this, do you consider your wife as a business? My bride's my business.
Well, in one sense, to love her and take care of her, but you don't think about her in marketing terms or market -driven terms or anything else, at least
I hope you don't. Let's see, the way I analyze my wife and relate to her through the four
Ps of marketing, product, place, I'm trying to remember the other two, product, place, price, promotion?
Is that right? What? Property? One Ps as good as another.
One man said this, many of today's pastors are entrepreneurs, not spiritual men at all. They are running organizations, living in front of an audience, talking about style and technology.
They are shallow, ambitious, and overworked. Their families are on the stage. They are supposed to fill a dozen major roles.
They are celebrities and motivational speakers. One man points out that God is merciful to show us this is not what a pastor is to be or what a church is to do.
Lord, deliver us from what we want and show us true shepherds and sheep of Christ. On a side note,
I hope you pray for the elders here at the church. I hope you pray for me, Steve, Dave, and Lewis, because I would hate to be an object lesson for you to not place your trust in a man, place your trust in the
Lord by me falling. I could fall. I'm no better than Ted Haggard. I think my theology is better.
I think I have better men around me. I don't think I have, I think I probably have a better wife who makes sure that I do not believe my self -created press clippings.
It is a great thing to have a holy wife, isn't it, man? It is wonderful. Some days, though,
I wonder, she actually believes that I should live everything I teach.
It's an amazing thing. Galatians 6 says we should be careful that we don't fall as well.
Lastly, don't put on any good behavior. That is to say, if you'll turn to Ephesians 4, last thing,
I won't do the 105 -minute sermon that, an hour and five -minute sermon we had last week, so just quickly. If you are struggling with any problem in life, you should not just say no to that problem, you should do positive things as well.
It's called replacement theology, positive behavior. Ephesians 4, verse 31, it's got the negative stuff.
Of course, we shouldn't be bitter or wrathful, full of anger, clamor, evil speaking. Get rid of it.
But then, what does he do? He shows the proper behavior right after that in verse 32. Instead of doing the negative, do the positive, and I love
Lloyd -Jones' illustration here. The way the dead leaves of a tree in winter are removed is...
How do you get old leaves off a tree? Shake the tree? Well, that would be good.
You can get a blower up there, cut them down.
Well, Lloyd -Jones would say this, the way the dead leaves of winter are removed from some trees is not that people go around plucking them off.
No. It is the new life. The shoot that comes and pushes off the dead in order to make room for itself.
In the same way, the Christian gets rid of such things. The new qualities develop and the others simply have no room.
They are pushed out and they are pushed off. Isn't that a good way to think about it? It's perfect.
And so verse 32 says, so be kind to one another. Instead of bitter, you become kind. Instead of wrathful, you become tender -hearted.
Instead of having anger, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
You want to get rid of a problem? Forget just focusing on saying no to the problem. Say yes to the opposite of that problem.
Struggle with lust and love your wife properly. And the list goes on. Well, I wanted to address this.
It was on my heart today. I think we should have time to pray for that pastor and pray for that church and thank the
Lord that we have not fallen to such disgrace. Let's just pray. Father, thank you for our time tonight.
And Lord, we are certainly not better than anyone. I think of Peter even following you face to face with Christ for all those times and then being called
Satan. Get thee behind me. So Lord, we would acknowledge that we're all sinful and have those propensities.
We would ask that you would protect us, that you would help us not begin to cut corners in sanctification so that we'll fall off the wagon.
And Lord, we would ask that you'd bring good people around us. Not to be legalistically accountable in some way, but just to encourage and to rebuke and exhort and come alongside of, function like the body of Christ.
Father, would you protect the elders here, myself included, from any kind of grievous sin? Lord, I'd pray for all of us,
Lewis, Dave, Steve and I, that it would be death by, death from your hand before we would somehow have theological or moral infidelity.
And Lord, I pray for New Life Church and maybe this is what it'll take to make that church a biblical church with biblical elders, with biblical preaching, with talk of repentance and Christ lifted up.
And so Father, I pray that you would just take away all the morality, all the how -to sermons, all those not serious about Christ, and just get rid of them all and start with the core who go back to the apostles' teaching, breaking of bread and fellowship.
Lord, I would pray that if this man is actually saved and his family is saved, that it might just be a sweet time of comfort even when there are no words to help.
I pray for the marriage. I pray that he would have repentant heart and seek restoration with his wife.
And I pray for his son who is a pastor. I pray that he'd learn from his father and be faithful all the days of his life.