The Danger and Defilement of Apostates (Hebrews 12:15) | Worship Service

And good morning and welcome to Kootenai Church. We're glad you're here today. Would you please stand as we open our service this morning and sing, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.

Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah. Pilgrim through, give to thine...

Lots of people said. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, good morning.

I have a couple of announcements. Actually, a few today, more than normal. First, there is a music practice today after the service for those who are part of the music team. And that'll be probably 15, 20 minutes after the service is done.

Next weekend is our equipping conference with Kosti Hinn. And we will need then two things from you. Number one, to stack up all of the chairs that are here. Some of the young men, if you're able to put the chairs into stacks of seven or eight chairs per stack, that would be very helpful.

And number two, to remember that this is a segregated church, so the light-colored chairs with the light-colored chairs, the dark-colored chairs with the dark-colored chairs. And next Sunday, after our conference is over and after our speaker is done that evening, we have one of our missionary couples, our missionary families, Chris and Debbie Kleinstra.

They're gonna be here. They'll be here Sunday morning as well, but they're gonna be here for a fellowship that evening at 6 p .m. to give us a ministry update, to meet you if you haven't met them yet, and to fellowship with us with some snacks and cookies and coffee and stuff like that.

So please join us, if you would, next Sunday evening at 6 p .m. And then also on June 21st, we have a newcomer night, and that's gonna be at 6 p .m. as well. There'll be pizza available for that. We will feed you dinner.

The elders will be here and deacons will be here and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions. It's a bit of a Q &A. You get to know the leadership of the church. You get to know a little bit about the church, introduce yourself, we'll introduce ourselves.

So if you have not been to one of those or to a membership class, then we would welcome you to come on June 21st at 6 p .m. that evening and join us for a newcomer's night. If you have any questions about the church, you're new to the church, then this event is for you, but you will need to sign up on the sheet that is on the table in the foyer so that we know that you're coming and we can adequately plan for you.

Ephesians 4:17-32 and the New Life in Christ

Now turn, if you will, please, to the book of Ephesians, to chapter four, the book of Ephesians to chapter four, and we're gonna begin reading at verse 17 and read through the end of the chapter. Ephesians chapter four, beginning at verse 17.

So I say, so this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way. If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as the truth is in Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which, in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

He who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Will you stand with me as we pray? All right, let's bow our heads. Fathers, by your great mercy that we are able to gather here together to worship you, it is a great benefit to our souls to gather together on this, the Lord's day, and to sing praise, to meditate upon your word, to hear your word preached, to fellowship with one another, to serve one another.

We thank you for these graces that you have blessed us with in Christ Jesus. And we thank you that also by your grace, you have redeemed us from our former manner of life. That these things which once characterized us, our wrath, our anger, our malice, our slander, our bitterness, resentment, our vile language, our lust and impurity, a darkened mind, that these things no longer are true of we who are in Christ Jesus, because you have called us out of that darkness and into the kingdom of light, the kingdom of your dear Son.

And so we praise you that you have opened our eyes to the darkness in which we lived and that you made the light precious to us, that you drew us to the light and gave us the gift of repentance and faith to believe and to embrace Christ.

And we thank you that by your grace, we are called by your name and welcomed into your family. We thank you that you have forgiven us of our sin and cleansed us from our iniquity and that you have given us the righteousness of your Son and undeserved righteousness imputed entirely to us on the basis of faith.

Thank you for these great blessings. Thank you for the work of salvation, the work of the triune God, Father, for choosing us in eternity past, Lord Jesus, for dying on a cross in our place and in our stead, and Holy Spirit for drawing us to the Son and regenerating our hearts and opening our eyes and sealing us and indwelling us.

This is a great gift of grace that you have been given, that we have been given by your hand and we thank you for it. We love you and pray that the worship of our hearts and the meditation of our minds may be pleasing to you this day and that you would energize our hearts to serve you, to love you, and to adore you as you are a God worthy of all such adoration and praise.

May you be the sole focus of our hearts and our minds through the course of this worship service and our time here together, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Psalm 90 and the Song of Moses

Be as I see, I worship in your holy name And praise you for truth and grace together shine Be worthy, I pray to you The word of Moses, the man of God from Psalm 90.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place from generation to generation. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn man back into dust and say, return, O sons of men.

For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by or as a watch in the night. You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep. In the morning, they are like grass, which sprouts anew.

In the morning, it blossoms and sprouts anew. Toward evening, it withers away and dries up. We're gonna sing a new song this morning called From Everlasting out of Psalm 90.

O God, before the mountains were brought forth O 'er days of spring and summer filled the everlasting We dwell beneath the stars in ancient sky A thousand years are nothing in your sight From everlasting days are held We rest within the West

Hebrews 12:15-17 and the Warning Against Apostasy

And you'll need your Bibles open to Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. And when you've found your place, let's pray before we begin. Our gracious Father, we come now to your word and we have sung to you the sentiments, the joys, the loves of our hearts.

And we have spoken to you things that are true of you, that you are an everlasting God, full of grace and mercy and loving kindness, that you have set your love and favor upon your people, your church, the bride of Christ.

We thank you for that. And now we pray that you would speak to us through your word things that are true, that our hearts and our minds and the ears of our heart may be opened and that our hearts and minds would be illuminated by your word, that you, by the power of your spirit, would shine the light of truth upon our hearts.

Search us for you know us. We pray that you would reveal to us the things in our lives and in our hearts that need to be conformed to the truth and made right and made righteous. Pray that you would give us grace and strengthen us today through your word and the preaching of it.

In the name of Christ our Lord, we pray, amen. Well, you have probably been exposed to some degree to this new modern fad and fashion, and it is certainly an online one, of various media outlets, or sorry, I should say, people going on to various media outlets and telling their deconversion stories.

Have you seen these or heard of these deconversion stories where a deconvert deconstructs the faith that he once supposedly held and tells the story of how he came out of Christianity and abandoned the Christian faith?

And when you listen to the stories, they all have a certain pattern to them. There are certain things that are true of almost virtually every last one of these deconversion stories. They follow a rather cookie cutter kind of a pattern.

Let me give you four features of every deconversion story. First, the deconvert establishes his or her evangelical bona fides. And by that, I mean that they seek to convince you that they were once a genuine believer, the real deal, inside Christianity, that they had the inside track, they were really part of the church.

In fact, they grew up in the most evangelical of evangelical churches, and of all the Bible-believing churches on the face of the planet, theirs was the most Bible-centered, Bible-preaching, Bible-focused, Bible-Bible Bible church that ever did grace the face of the planet.

And that's where they grew up. And not only that, but they were raised in a Christian family, and they had devotions every night, and they prayed before every meal, and prayed before bedtime, and prayed in the morning.

And they were homeschooled kids, or maybe even private school kids. And they grew up in Sunday school, never missed Sunday school, unless they were sick, or on vacation, or dead. But other than those three things, they were there every single Sunday.

An adventure club, or a Juana, children's clubs, Sunday night services, every midweek service you can imagine, they were constantly there, always there, part of the church, inner, on the inside track.

But then they will say that they had a few questions, just some intellectual curiosities that nobody was able to really answer, some general questions about the faith that everybody kind of brushed away and blew off.

And really, all they ever got were pat answers to their genuine, unbiased intellectual curiosity. This leads us to the second step, or the second mark of a deconversion story. Number two, they need to establish their intellectual superiority.

Establish their evangelical bona fides, and then establish their intellectual superiority. You see, they will say that all they ever had was a genuine desire to seek out the truth. They really were just asking the hard questions that nobody else was willing to ask.

And they were looking for answers that had long plagued them. And so every pastor that they talked to, youth pastor that they visited with, every Sunday school teacher, they would ask these questions, every visiting apologist or evangelist, they would ask these tough questions, and all they ever got was pat answers.

Because see, they need to convince you that their abandonment of Christianity was not the result of a craven desire to be accepted by the world, or a craven desire to fulfill the lust of their flesh, but instead that they really were just trying to ask the questions that nobody else was asking because they were on an intellectual journey.

And so their deconversion is really just the result of being rational and logical and scientific about the Christian faith. They were just pressing in, trying to find out if the things that they had been raised to believe were actually true.

And of course, there are always these questions that the best pastors and the best seminary professors are never able to answer. And those are the ones that they harp on. Now, there are libraries full of books that are written on these subjects, but that's not good enough for them.

But they really have discovered the chink in the armor of Christianity, that weakness of the faith that they think causes the whole house of cards to come crumbling down. So establish their evangelical bona fides, establish the fact that they are intellectually superior to you because you see, Christian, if you were really rationally and logically consistent, and if you had the brilliant intellect of the deconvert, then you would leave Christianity too.

But the problem is that you are so caught up in your dogmatism and your traditions and the blindness of your blind allegiance to Christianity that you just keep plugging along in this dark environment.

Third feature of the deconversion story is they position themselves as the brave victim who is simply seeking to fight for the truth. You see, their questions are always met with, allegedly, hostility and dogmatism and even persecution as they are crushed and ostracized and punished for just simply having the courage to ask the questions, to speak out and ask the questions that nobody else is willing to ask.

And now this brave victim of Orthodox tyranny is out there fighting against the establishment and trying to liberate others. They're really on a mission, and this leads us to the fourth aspect of a deconversion story.

They are aggressively seeking to pursue others of their newfound truth. And so they become evangelists for deconversion. In an irony of ironies, they become more zealous about convincing other people to deconvert from Christianity than almost any Christian is zealous to convert people to Christianity.

And so they are on a mission. The unconvert zealously posts their story on social media or blogs. They write articles and go on YouTube channels. In fact, YouTube is filled with videos of deconverts who are telling their deconversion story and how they left the Christian faith.

It is not sufficient for them to move on from Christianity to the next fad that they want to pick up. But instead, on their way out the door, they want to convince as many people as possible to join them in their departure from the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

And we've seen a number of these in recent years. In fact, I could give you an ever-growing list of deconvert celebrities, as it were. It seems that about every time I start to preach on a warning passage in the book of Hebrews that talks about apostasy, there's some new high-profile apostate who makes the headlines.

This, I think, has happened with every warning passage that we have tackled in Hebrews. The last one was Joshua Harris in Hebrews 6. And almost every time we come to one of these warning passages, another evangelical celebrity bites the dust and deconverts from Christianity and starts making the media tour and gobbling up camera time and microphone time in order to tell their story.

This is very common. Here are some of the people who have made the list of heroes of the once-faith who have departed. Bart Ehrman, Rob Bell, Peter Enns, Barnabas Piper, son of John Piper, Joshua Harris, Bart Campolo, son of Tony Campolo, and Jen Hatmaker.

They have all walked this road. They have all walked away from the faith. They have all once allegedly held to our orthodoxy and then have deconverted, and now they're out there telling their deconversion story.

In an online article titled Jen Hatmaker and the Power of Deconversion Stories, Michael Kruger, and it's worth your effort to go find this article and read it, Jen Hatmaker and the Power of Deconversion Stories, Kruger says this, quote, "'Of course, there have always been deconversion stories throughout church history, if one would only take the time to dig them up and listen to them.

Christianity has never had a shortage of people who were once in the fold and then left. In recent years, however, these deconversion stories seem to have taken on a higher profile. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the technology that makes them more available, whether through podcasts, blogs, or other forms of media, but it's also due to the fact that many of those who deconvert have realized a newfound calling to share their testimony with as many people as possible.

Rather than just quietly leaving the old beliefs and moving on to new ones, something that would never have been more common in prior generations, sorry, something that would have been more common in prior generations, a new guard seems to have made it their life's ambition to evangelize the found.

That's a great line. Their new ambition is to evangelize the found. Kruger says, indeed, many of these deconversion stories are told with the kind of conviction, passion, and evangelistic zeal that would make a modern televangelist blush.

In their minds, they're missionaries to the lost in every sense of the world. They just have to help these Christians realize they are mistaken and lead them to the truth. Now, I started by saying that this is a new and modern phenomenon.

It's actually not a new and modern phenomenon. The word deconversion is a new and modern phenomenon. But to quote Mrs. Potts, this is a tale as old as time and a song as old as rhyme. This goes back 2 ,000 years or more.

It's the language that has changed. Deconversion sounds so much better than apostasy. An unconvert or a deconvert sounds so much better than apostate. Because I say apostate, and in your mind, you're conjuring up images of Judas and betrayal and treachery and unfaithfulness to an established, accepted truth that cannot be shaken.

That's what apostasy means, a walking away from what is truth and being unfaithful and even treacherous to those who are part of that orthodoxy. Deconversion sounds so flowery and optimistic and almost enticing, doesn't it?

Nobody is lured away by language like apostate and treachery and betrayal. Nobody's lured away by that, but they can be lured away by deconversion stories because that just sounds intellectually honest, doesn't it?

So we live in an era where new words are coined and old words are redefined, all in an attempt to serve the narrative, and this is no different. Deconvert, unconvert, deconversion, this is just the new language that describes apostasy.

And this is what Hebrews 12 is warning about. You may have been wondering, are we ever gonna get to the text? We are. Hebrews 12, we're gonna look at verse 15 today, but we're gonna read to you verses 16 through 17, and I'm gonna give you an outline for these three verses.

Verse 15, see to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled, that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau who sold his own birthright for a single meal, for you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

Now we're familiar with the warning passages in the book of Hebrews, and we are on the threshold of the fifth of the five warning passages in Hebrews. For those of you who may not have been with us for the previous four, those previous four warning passages all have a similar theme.

They are warning against the danger of apostasy and against the damage that apostates do within the body of Christ. They're not describing people who actually have become believers in Christ and have had their lives transformed who have then somehow lost their salvation and fallen away or walked away.

That's not what they're describing. They are describing almost Christians, people who are very close, look a lot like believers, but are not actually believers in truth, who end up leaving the faith and demonstrating once and for all that though they were with us for a period of time, they were not really of us.

That's what the warning passages describe. The fifth warning passage starts in verse 18 and goes through verse 29, according to some. According to others, it starts in verse 15 and goes through verse 29, the end of the chapter.

And I could honestly be convinced either way. This warning passage, like the previous one, is regarding the danger of apostasy for that is what it is describing. And verse 15 is describing both the apostate, the one who falls short of the grace of God and the danger of it.

It is a root of bitterness that springing up defiles many. So the author is encouraging us here to watch out that among ourselves, there be none of us who fall short of the grace of God and become a bitter root that springs up and defiles others, or that there be none of us who like Esau, a profane man who traded away an eternal inheritance to satiate a temporary desire or a temporary lust.

So we have in verses 15 through 17, three things that we are told to be watchful of. We are to look out and see to it, first, that no one comes short of the grace of God. This is just verses 15 and 16, that no one comes short of the grace of God.

That is the essence of apostasy. The essence of apostasy, that you come short of the grace of God. Second, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble and by it, many are defiled. That is the effect of apostasy, the defiling of others.

And third, there is an example of apostasy that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau who sold his own birthright for a single meal. Esau is a quintessential Old Testament example of an apostate.

So we are to watch out for the essence of apostasy, which is falling short of the grace of God, the effect of apostasy, which is bitterness that defiles many, and that there be nobody like Esau, the example of apostasy.

And we're gonna look today at the essence of apostasy and the danger or the effect of apostasy. Let's start in verse 15. See to it, the author says. Now this is the fourth in a list of five commands. The fifth command is down in verse 18 or 17, that you know that he sought for it, was repentant.

Know that even afterwards, he desired to inherit the blessing and he was rejected. This is the fourth command. It's actually a participle that functions as a command or as an imperative in verse 15. We are to see to it.

We are to be watchful, on guard, alert to these dangers, these three things. The previous commands, remember, were to strengthen the weakness and straighten the ways and then to pursue peace and to pursue righteousness.

Those are the previous things that we are commanded to do. We are to see something or see to something. And the verb that is translated see to this or see to it is the verb episcopeo. That may sound familiar to some of you and you'll understand why here in just a moment.

That verb means to give careful attention to something, to give oversight to something, to oversee, to look upon or to guard, to be careful, to watch over something with an attitude of carefulness. It means to exercise careful oversight.

Now if that word sounds familiar, it is because the noun form of that word is episkopos, which is translated in the old King James as bishop. It is translated in more modern translations as overseer. In fact, that noun form of episkopos is one of the three words that's used in the New Testament of an elder, the office of elder or pastor.

The other two being presbyteros, which is translated elder, and poimen, which is translated as shepherd. Those three words, poimen, presbyteros, and episkopos are used of the same office, the same function or work in the church, the same group of men in a local body, those who exercise oversight.

So the verb form means to give careful attention to something, and somebody who gave careful attention to something, namely the body of Christ and the spiritual well-being of a flock, was one who was referred to as an overseer or as the King James translates it, bishop, and bishop is not at all helpful, but the term overseer certainly is, for it describes the work of overseeing a congregation or a flock of people.

Let me give you the four times that it's used in the New Testament and these verses will all be familiar to you just so you can have some idea of how the word is used so you have some idea of what the word means.

In Acts 20, 28, Paul called to him the elders of the church, the overseers of the church of Ephesus when he landed in Miletus, and he commanded them saying, "'Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock "'among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers "'to shepherd the church of God,' "'which he purchased with his own blood.'".

Now that's an example of a verse where overseer and shepherd are used in the same passage to describe the one group of people and previous in that passage, it says that Paul called to him the presbyteroi, the elders of the church, and he calls them overseers and commands them to shepherd.

So all three of those ideas, that's the same office. So just to give you a quick overview of ecclesiology, we don't have super ultra bishops and then like mega bishops and then extra big bishops and then bishops and then pastors and then elders.

We don't have some sort of a infrastructure like that in this church or nor do we recognize it in any other church because there's just the office of overseer, pastor or elder. Second, Philippians 1 .1, Paul addressed that epistle to the church, the saints who were in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons.

It was just overseers and deacons, or we might say elders and deacons. 1 Timothy 3 .2, "'An overseer then must be above reproach, "'the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, "'respectable, hospitable, able to teach,' et cetera.".

And then in Titus 1 .7, the same list of qualifications or another list of qualifications, I should say, "'An overseer must be above reproach as God's steward, "'not self-willed,' et cetera.". So that's how the word is used.

The noun form is used to refer to a pastor. The verb form is used to refer to not only what a pastor does, but also listen, and this is key to what everybody else in the congregation does. We are all overseers of others.

That's part of what it means to operate and function in a body of Christ. So this does describe the work of an elder in carefully watching over a flock of people. It's also used one other time in the New Testament, in 1 Peter 2 .25, to describe Jesus, where he is called the overseer of your souls, but it is translated in 1 Peter as guardian.

1 Peter says, you are continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian, or shepherd and overseer of your souls. So let me give you two takeaways from this. First, though the activity is the same as an elder, it is not limited to elders, and this is key.

Though it is the same activity as an elder, it is not limited to elder, meaning that it is part of the responsibility of every believer to watch out, to look to, to oversee in some sense, at least to some degree, the spiritual wellbeing and care of other people who are in their lives and within their fellowship.

Protection and care for others and concern for the spiritual wellbeing of others is part and parcel of what all of us are called to do. So none of us can ever say, that departure from the faith is none of my business, that person's spiritual wellbeing is none of my business.

Though elders may be specifically and specially called to this, and even gifted to do it, it doesn't mean that it is exclusively their role to oversee the spiritual welfare of others. Every one of us should have in our minds and in our hearts at least a concern for and an intention to watch out for the wellbeing, spiritually speaking, of other people.

Just as evangelism is not exclusively the work of those who are gifted with evangelism, and serving others is not exclusively the work of deacons, so it is the looking out for and looking to others is not exclusively the work of an elder.

But in order to do this, you must know them and be involved in their lives, you must be accountable to others and others must be accountable to you. This is what it means to function as a body of Christ.

This is not something that can be done through live streaming. This is not something that can be done through a Zoom call, or a Facebook group, or any other digital medium. This is something that can only be done in the context of body life, as people get together and they live out the convictions of the Christian faith and the truth of the word of God with and alongside of one another, in each other's lives.

Second takeaway is this is a very Christ-like activity. Remember, this is what it is said that Jesus does. And I think it is my conviction that the great shepherd and guardian of our souls uses people, everybody within the body of Christ, as a means to the end of watching out for the souls of other people.

So when you do this and you are concerned for the spiritual wellbeing of others, that is a very Christ-like thing to do. Notice that we are to be seen to it, number one, that no one comes short of the grace of God.

And this is the essence of apostasy. This is the essence of it. This is a great description of what apostasy really is. The word come short of, or fall short of, the grace of God, depending on your translation, is a word that means to come behind or to come late.

It means to fail to attain or to be in need of, or to be destitute of, or to lack something. This is apostasy. This does not describe somebody who has received and embraced and is inside of the saving grace of God.

It is to describe somebody who has never attained to it, who lacks that saving grace, who is destitute of that saving grace. In fact, this word is translated as, in the New Testament, impoverished, run out, to lack, to suffer need, and to be destitute of.

And it is used actually in the previous chapter, chapter 11, verse 37, speaking of some of the saints of the faith. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword.

They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, that is falling short, not coming up. And there it's speaking of physical provision and physical sustenance. But here in Hebrews 12, it is describing a spiritual quality.

They have fallen short of the grace of God. They are destitute of grace. It describes somebody who has come near to grace. And listen carefully. They've come near to grace. They have heard about grace.

They have sung about grace. They have seen grace operate in the lives of others. They have received grace from other people. They have felt the effects of grace as it overflows in the lives of other people.

They've read about grace. They have heard about grace preached. They have heard grace proclaimed. And they have heard grace offered to them from the pulpit. But they fall short of ever entering into that grace.

That is the essence of apostasy. And one can be very near to grace and never actually receive it. This is describing someone among the people of God who outwardly look like the people of God, who outwardly act like the people of God, who even can speak and sing and teach and talk, behave like the people of God, but the grace of God has never penetrated their hearts.

So they have managed to keep redeeming and saving gospel grace that transforms the heart at arm's length and never allowed it to come any nearer than that. They're fine observing it. They're fine hearing about it.

They even like to sing about it. They even enjoy for a period of time being around it, but they've never been transformed by it. They've never entered into it. And so they, in the words of our author, have fallen short of the grace of God.

And this is salvation grace that is being described here. He's talking about salvation. Some people make a start into religious things and they show some interest in religious things because they come to the spectacle.

We have people all the time who visit this church, who visit churches all over the country, and they enjoy the spectacle. And some churches are interested in putting on a spectacle that they come to observe.

But they like to come into a place where the guy that stands behind the pulpit, he sounds as politically conservative as I am. He's against all the craziness and insanity.

Going on out in the world.

And he sounds really clear cut and black and white, and I'm a clear cut and black and white person. And the songs they sing are really peppy and upbeat. And I like the fact that they do that. And that they put new words to the old sounding hymns.

And that's really great. I enjoy that. And the fellowship is great. People visiting, we're handing out business cards and we're enjoying that. We can stay around for a little while. I offer something for my kids, and I even enjoy bringing my kids there and seeing the effect that being around those people have on my kids.

My kids seem more obedient and more compliant and more cheerful because there's kids there that are their age. And the parking is great. And at least in the summertime it's great when they have the lawn open.

And the rest of the time, we kind of put up with it because there are other things that we really enjoy there. And the coffee in the foyer, not the best, but at least they have coffee in the foyer. The other churches we've been to don't have that.

And people can come and be attracted and be part of a body for all of those reasons. Listen, none of which have anything to do with the gospel or the gospel of grace. None of them have anything to do with that.

So it's very easy for people to glom on in a superficial and external sense and enjoy the overflow of grace in the lives of other people, and even experience some of the supernatural and transforming phenomena of that grace in the lives of other people.

They get warm enough, close enough to be warmed by that fire, but their hearts are still hard and cold, and they fall short of the grace of God. See to it that there not be anyone among you who is like that.