The Redefinition of Love (Amy Grant vs Franklin Graham)

Thank you for listening to this message from the ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts. Morse Corner is a non-denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message. So we need to be aware of how the devil works because there's all these misconceptions about who the Pharisees were.

And I've seen it. I've seen it many, many times. If somebody loves God and they care about obeying God and they want to see certain standards upheld, they will usually get slapped with this label. Well, this guy, he's just being a Pharisee.

So it's the complete opposite. This is how the devil works. The devil turns everything on its head. Are you living in the same country that I'm living in? Well, then you've noticed this, that the devil, what does he do?

He calls evil good and good evil. You know, he takes the truth. The devil does. He twists the truth, presents it with a half truth and a clever argument. And before you know it, up is down and down is up.

How the Devil Reverses Good and Evil

Here's the thing. Getting into some of the application. I really believe that Satan has a foothold within the evangelical church in the United States where obedience is sometimes called legalism. You know, you're just being a Pharisee and disobedience and rebellion is labeled.

You're free in Christ. But these people who use so-called liberty as a license to sin, they're not free. The devil has just deceived them into accepting their chains of bondage. OK, so this is the idea that some people have about the Ten Commandments, that they are too restrictive, that the commandments of God, the law of God, it's too confining.

Is that the case? You realize God gave the commandments. There's several reasons for it. One of the reasons why God gave the commandments is for your good. It's for the good of his people. If you obey the commandments, it is restrictive.

It will restrict you from making a mess out of your life. But people have this idea. Again, Jesus came just to free us up. So the commandments, you know, throw it all away. That's all over with. Jesus came and Jesus only has one rule.

And what's that one rule that Jesus has? Begins with an L and begins with an L and ends with a O .V .E. Love. So Jesus only has one rule. Here's an example, case in point. It was reported a couple weeks ago that the famous, probably the most famous Christian contemporary artist, a woman named Amy Grant.

You all know Amy Grant. It was reported a few weeks ago that Amy Grant is planning on hosting a gay wedding at her home. Her and her husband, Vince Gill, were praising it in the media about how wonderful it was.

But evangelist Franklin Graham, probably the most well-known evangelist in the world, he openly admonished Amy Grant, pointing out how the whole thing was just unbiblical. And you know what the common response was on social media, not that you really expect anything less, but the common response is, Amy Grant is wonderful.

Matter of fact, she received an award at the White House just a few days earlier because it had been made known that she had gone in this direction. But the response on social media was, Amy Grant is wonderful.

Look at her. But Franklin Graham, he's just acting like what? A Pharisee. And you believe this guy. Well, how did Amy Grant defend this? Well, Amy Grant said that Jesus came to only give us one commandment.

Jesus only gave us one rule, and that's the rule of love. Is that true? But this idea that all you need is love, you know that's really more in line with John Lennon than it is with Jesus. And of course, then they redefine love.

And that's how you end up with the most famous Christian singer being celebrated for hosting a gay wedding, while the most famous Christian evangelist gets attacked as a Pharisee for being biblical. All right, let's turn to Matthew chapter 22 for a moment.

The Two Great Commandments in Matthew 22

So everything is completely upside down, and that's the way it was with the ministry of Jesus. The Pharisees were lawless, and yet they were the men of God. Jesus was the man of God, and he was accused of being demonic.

He was accused of being a false teacher and everything else. So the devil, what does he do? He takes everything and just turns it, turns it around. So this is how crazy things are getting. All right, Matthew chapter 22.

Where do people get this idea that Jesus only came with one law, with only one rule? Well, they get it from Matthew 22 verses 34 through 40. This is Jesus giving the two great commandments of the law, love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

You realize what Jesus is doing? He's quoting the Old Testament law. He's quoting the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Matthew 22, starting in verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he, Jesus, had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.

That's from the book of Deuteronomy. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's from Leviticus. And notice verse 40. He says on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Jesus isn't getting rid of the commandments. Jesus is summarizing the commandments. The first half of the Ten Commandments deal with man's relationship with God. So it's shortened to love the Lord, thy God.

The second half deal with, you know, thou shall not kill, commit adultery, steal. The second half of the commandments deal with man's relationship with his fellow man. Love your neighbor as yourself. All Jesus is doing is summarizing the Old Testament law.

He's not doing away with it. He's summarizing it. And he summarizes it with the word love, because if you truly love God, what are you going to do? Yeah, you're going to obey God, keep his commandments.

If you truly love your neighbor, are you going to kill them or commit adultery with their spouse or steal from them? No, you're going to treat them well. So if you have love for God and love for one another, in that sense, you don't need the law.

Because if you love your neighbor, you're not going to kill them anyways, if you have love. So the law, we're not under the law if we love one another. But the point is Jesus is not undoing the commandments.

So that idea, Jesus came to free everybody up and now there's only one rule and that's love. I mean, that's just a distortion of what happened. So the Ten Commandments are not restrictive. Here's the thing.

If you properly understand the commandments and understand what I was just talking about, about love, the commandments and doing the right thing, obeying God actually will free you. Let me give this illustration.

Because people talk about the commandments being restrictive. And that's why people get called Pharisees, because they say, hey, you should obey. You shouldn't do that. You should do this. You should obey God.

Well, you're just a Pharisee. Here's the illustration. When is a train most free? When is a train most free? Well, it's only free when it's confined, you know, confined, quote unquote, to the track. That's when the train is free.

The train runs smoothly and effectively because that's the way it was designed, to run within the confines of the track.

Right?

Makes sense? Pretty simple. When the train is given the, quote, freedom to go where it wants, to go off the track, which it wasn't designed, and we're designed for God. We're designed to obey God. So when the train goes off the track, is it free?

No, it's stuck in the ditch. It can't go anywhere. That's what happens when we disobey God. We get stuck in the ditch, but the devil has convinced people that, no, that's true freedom. And people do what they want.

They sin against God and they make a complete mess out of their life. So the person who preaches the commandments and preaches the law of God and that people should obey, that person actually loves the people.

That person actually loves the congregation. I don't want you to make a mess out of things by disobeying God because he knows that's what happens. The law is not restrictive, but the devil is so subtle.

You know, if you get into a conversation with the devil, he's going to outsmart you. It's never going to go the other way. You cannot outsmart the devil. So when the devil offered Eve freedom, what did he say?

You, if you eat this forbidden fruit, of course he didn't call it forbidden. He said, you shall be like who?

God.

You see, and implied in that is that God has all these rules. God is just trying to prevent you from having all this fun. Eve, just be free and eat the fruit and you will be like God. But it was a trick.

It was a trick. And the devil has sown so much confusion into our churches, where again, this whole idea of being a Pharisee, where faithfulness is pharisaical and disobedience is called liberty. I've met these people.

They're free in Christ and they're doing whatever they want and they're calling that freedom. Yeah, freedom. It's not the freedom that God offers. But this free in Christ movement, and this is a movement free in Christ, Christian liberty.

And I believe in Christian liberty.

Don't get me wrong.

But the devil has distorted this. But this free in Christ movement has been on the rise since the cultural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. And don't get me wrong. Again, I believe in Christian liberty.

True believers are indeed free in Christ. But the devil, you know what the devil does. He just redefines terms. So in the more extreme cases of inverted doctrine, believing God and obeying God is pharisaical while being worldly is seen as a virtue.

So what they've done is basically this free in Christ movement, not everybody involved in it, but some people, what they've done, they just redefined licentiousness and now they're calling it Christian liberty.

You're free in Christ to do this. You're free in Christ to do that. And what they're saying, if you really look at it, you're free in Christ to sin. And then when someone comes along and they're kind of bothered by this and that's not what God's word teaches, that's wrong.

We need to obey God. That guy's the bad guy. That guy's the legalist. He's the Pharisee. Okay, so we know who the Pharisees were, right? There's this social, political, religious movement in the time of Christ.

The Pharisees were legalists. So I want to define that term legalism. Basically, again, this is just bottom line. This has become a way of insulting people. Again, sort of like with the political world, if you say something that they don't like, you get smeared as a racist.

But now in the Christian world, you get smeared as a Pharisee or a legalist. Legal in the Bible, think about this. In the Bible, what does the law refer to? What is the law? The law of Moses. Okay, so when we're talking about the law, legalism, legal referring to law, that's the law of Moses.

So a legalist is somebody who believes that salvation comes through the law of Moses. The Pharisees didn't believe in Jesus, did they? They thought that they were saved because, why? They kept the law.

You know, that we're Jews, we keep the law. So that's what legalism is. And there are people today who teach legalism, that you're saved by keeping the law. You know, if you just do this and don't do that and don't do that, that makes you a good person.

You're saved because of what you do. That is a form of legalism. The Apostle Paul in Galatians, he calls legalism a different gospel. So the point is, when you throw these terms around in a cavalier way, when you call your fellow brother and sister in Christ a Pharisee or a legalist, I mean, it's like you're calling them the enemy of God.

You're saying they're not saved. You're saying they have a different gospel. And I don't think we should be doing it. And yet it's become very common.