In the Absence of His Glory We Hold Pep Rally's for Jesus — E.A. Johnston

Entertainment-Driven Worship and the Absence of Conviction

I recently visited a big wealthy church that lacked nothing materially. The church had just completed a multi-million dollar remodel, and it had modernized its lobby and added a coffee bar with lounge chairs and flat screen TVs all over the church.

The sanctuary had the best sound equipment and TV cameras that money could buy. The worship band played a rock concert that worked up the crowd with flashing lights, smoke machines, and loud driving pounding music that brought the audience to their feet in exhilaration.

Everybody there seemed to be having a good time. Then the pastor came out and picked up where the band left off by being an exuberant fellow who got his Bible teaching message across through much body language, hand gestures, excitement, and audience participation.

He seemed at times to be leading a pep rally for Jesus. You felt like you were at a sporting event or concert venue where enthusiasm was in the air. The audience would shout along with the pastor and clap their hands and laugh, and when it was all over, everybody left in an upbeat mood because their emotions had been fed that morning.

And as I watched them exit the building, they seemed quite satisfied by the performance they had just been a part of, because that's what it was, a performance. And on the way home, I kept asking myself, why have so many churches in this country adopted the same methodology that I had just witnessed in church that day, where the church sanctuary is turned into a nightclub or a concert venue that is focused on making the audience feel good and leaving them content and happy?

It seems to be the norm today to follow this man-centered methodology where the church service rotates around the happiness of man. But the problem is, the people leave the sanctuary the same way they came in, unchanged.

They were never confronted with eternity. They were never convicted of sin, because God is a million miles away from the typical church in this country today. Yes, we have big buildings, fancy entertainment, flashing lights with hand clapping and dancing, and as we sit and watch a big personality up on stage, he attempts to rally our enthusiasm for Jesus.

But where is the power? Where is the Holy Spirit? Where is the God consciousness in our sanctuaries today? We are like the backslidden people of Israel who experienced the withdrawn presence of the Almighty because of their grievous sins, and Ichabod is written on the door of our churches today, friends, because the glory has departed, but nobody seems to notice or even care.

Solomon’s Prayer as the Sermon’s Biblical Foundation

I came to the conclusion that in the absence of His glory, we hold pep rallies for Jesus, and that's the title of my message today, friends. My text is found in the book of 2 Chronicles in chapter 6. You can turn in your Bibles there now.

We'll be looking at King Solomon and his prayer to the Almighty and how the God of the Bible responds to his solemn prayer, and we will examine today how the church in this country has ceased from being a house of prayer and has become a house of entertainment, and I believe some of the reasons for all of this are as follows.

Number one, in the church today, the focus is on man and his happiness rather than God and His glory. Number two, in the church today, there is like Bible teaching which occupies and informs, but doctrinal preaching is absent, which transforms.

Number three, controversial topics like man's ruin, man's duty of repentance, man's punishment in hell for sin, man's necessity of regeneration to enter heaven are all carefully avoided and replaced with soothing messages that satisfy and inform.

Number four, in the absence of God's presence, we manufacture fleshly excitement through entertainment to try to draw a crowd because our emphasis today in our churches is church growth. The goal is to grow the biggest church you can in your respective community because if you can do that, then you are a successful pastor.

So we end up having pep rallies for Jesus in an effort to create enthusiasm and excitement just like you would experience at a high school pep rally. Let us read our text from God's Word beginning in 2 Chronicles in verse 12.

Here now is the Word of God. May the Spirit of God be pleased to attend the reading of His holy Word. And he stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel and spread forth his hands.

For Solomon had made a brazen scaffold of five cubits long and five cubits broad and three cubits high and had set it in the midst of the court. And upon it he stood and kneeled down upon his knees before all the congregation of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven.

I want to pause here to make mention of the fact that Solomon is a man of prayer and he humbles himself as he is addressing the God of creation. George Whitefield would often kneel before he preached to address the ancient of days and ask for his blessing upon the preached Word.

The Exalted God and the Humility of Prayer

Men of former times feared the Almighty and kept a holy reverence for a holy God. But today most pastors have shrunken God down to their size and address him on human terms like they'd speak to their deacons or the golf buddies.

Let us now return to our passage in verse 14. And said, Oh, Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like thee in the heaven nor in the earth, which keep this covenant and show mercy unto the servants that walk before thee with all their hearts.

Let me pause there, friends. What King Solomon just said is so true and it's a pattern for prayer. We are to maintain an exalted view of God, humble ourselves before him and walk before him with all our hearts.

He's referring to Proverbs 315, which states, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding in all thy ways. Acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord and depart from evil.

Listen, friends, if the churches would line up with that verse in practical living, what difference we could make in our generation. Then Solomon goes on and prays a long prayer for the rest of chapter six while he's exalting God and beseeching him.

Revival as the Manifestation of God’s Presence

I want to pick up in chapter seven and verse one where we see God's response to Solomon's prayer. Now, when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices and the glory of the Lord filled the house and the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house.

I will stop there. When revival comes, God takes the field. When the divine presence fills the sanctuary, you know it, friend. All you can do when the manifest presence of God comes in revival is to be still as you are bowed under the awful presence of the almighty.

Listen, brother pastor, when God comes in revival, all your human props will be kicked out from beneath you. All our flashing lights and smoke machines and loud rock music and worldly entertainment will all fall to the wayside when the holy presence of God visits his people.

Repentance for a Lukewarm and Self-Reliant Church

That's the main missing factor in our church service today, friends. We are experiencing the withdrawn presence of God from among us because of our pride and our refusal to repent of our sins. We have a proud, self-reliant church today that is neither cold nor hot.

She is rich and increased with goods and has no need of nothing. But when God looks at the church of today, he sees the people who are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. And he has one word for them.

And that word is repent. But instead of repenting and humbling ourselves before him in humiliation and prayer, we just turn up the volume on our electric guitars during the worship time and shout a little louder when we stand behind the pulpit.

When the church ceased to be a house of prayer and became a house of entertainment, it was the saddest day in the land. And when preachers began to preach a different gospel than the one found in our Bibles because they wanted to please man and be accepted to man, then God's judgment fell upon the church through his withdrawn presence from among us.

We changed the message. We changed the way we have church. We changed the whole way a church used to operate because today the church operates on money and manpower, whereby in former times she operated on prayer and holy ghost power.

Prayer, Holiness, and the Preaching of Sin

When I study the sermons of popular evangelists of the last two centuries, they were all men of prayer. In fact, often their pulpit prayers were longer than some of our sermons today. I have copies of sermons by D .L. Moody and Sam Jones, and their pulpit prayers would put most of us to shame today.

God attended their preaching because they were men who had a close walk with God, and God used men like David Brainerd and George Whitefield because they were Christ intoxicated men who were dead to the world.

Eternity was stamped on their eyelids when they preached, and when they preached, they linked the devil with sin and pointed sinners to a bloodstained Jesus who hung on a bloody cross because of sin. They weren't afraid to call sin black and hell hot and preach up man's duty of repentance and the necessity of a work of grace upon the heart through a supernatural act of God called regeneration.

When men of that caliber spoke for God, God answered with his attending glory. Sinners were saved, hell was depopulated, Christ was exalted, and God was glorified. But today, most preachers tell jokes and funny stories to amuse their hearers and warm up their audience with an opening act of entertainment before they take the stage.

And everybody has a good time in church today because the service is focused on man and his enjoyment. God is merely the vehicle to bring happiness to man. That's the religion of our friends. And do you know how Jesus feels about it?

Christ’s Warning to the Lukewarm Church

This is how he feels about what we call church today. So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. In today's lingo, that means the average church. Makes him sick to his stomach.

Our church services make him want to vomit and I don't blame him. When I sit in most church services today, I feel sick to my stomach as well. Why have we diluted the gospel message to a pat, simple formula of salvation where we just follow a few simple steps?

Why did we omit the doctrine of repentance? Why don't we sing hymns on the blood anymore? It's because we don't preach on sin anymore. Friends, why should there be a need for repentance when you don't need to repent of any sin to be saved?

Why should we sing about the power in the blood when we don't need to get under the blood because we were never bad enough to begin with? We are all nice little people who have a few faults and some bad habits.

But that's all. After all, we haven't killed anybody. We can hug our sins and still go to heaven because God today is a sin tolerating God. That's what we hear from our pulpits. But where or where is the man of God anointed with the spirit of God who will preach the great doctrines of the word of God and preach uproom, redemption, repentance and regeneration?

The Need for Praying Men and Prophetic Preaching

Where or where are the praying men of God today? Where are the prophets of God for our desperate hour? Where is the man who's willing to stand in the gap for this nation and stay on his knees long enough, crying out to God to forgive the sins of this wicked land?

Where are the church members who spend all the free time on their knees crying out to God for the salvation of our teenagers? Our teenagers are sunk in sin. They are drugged up and used up and sunk in sexual sin.

Why aren't the carpets in our sanctuaries wet with the tears of the people of God who are on their faces before God, begging him for mercy to be saved and to save our loved ones and our lost neighbors?

Why are pastors today funny men who rely on their personalities and feel they have to entertain you rather than be holy men who walk in the authority of a holy God? Where is the man who has lingered before the burning bush long enough to stand with authority and cry out, thus saith the Lord?

I know some men like that, but few churches will let them in their pulpits because they would upset the apple cart and disrupt the status quo, which means business as usual. Because that's what a church is today, friends.

Replacing Prayer with Church Business and Human Resources

It is a business run by a CEO and a committee of businessmen. Money is the engine of the church today. But in former times, prayer was the engine of the church because God was welcome in the churches back then, but he's not welcome anymore.

We have escorted him to the back door of the church and kicked him out, and then we walked to the front door of the church and invited the world in to replace him. That's why we are in the mess we're in today, friends, and the only thing that will turn us around is a Holy Ghost revival sent from heaven.

That's what we need to pray for and believe God will have mercy and send it. If he does not, then we are sunk and left to our own resources, and you see where that has gotten us. Heaven help us all.