Time to Wake Up (Compilation) — Compilations

The Neglect of Repentance and the Church's Lost Foundations

You will rarely find a message now on repentance.

Look at what has become of the world, Church of Christ, through you,.

Losing what you should have been.

But God waits for His people. God waits for His people. When will they take the stepping stones God has placed in His Word?

A church that has forgotten its foundations, a church that's turned away from its beginnings and begins to become a harlot church.

The Watered-Down Gospel and the Call to Take Up the Cross

Just tell me how blessed I am. Just tell me I'm going to be powerful and popular and going to have no trouble in my life. Just tell me these things.

Watered down. Half-truths. This gospel says, just believe and get saved. There's nothing of repentance, nothing of Godly sorrow, nothing of turning from your sins, nothing about taking up your cross and following the Lord, but people who say a little prayer said, you're fine, you're good.

People believe that any standard, even if the New Testament is legalism and bondage and law, any standard is law. I'm under grace. I can do anything.

Oh, that's from the devil. Now, we've revised that and said, if you can get people for one hour on Sunday morning in a building, that's the church. That's not the church. We can use every device we want to get people for one hour and keep it early and keep it moving and keep it going.

But that's not the church Jesus built. And I'm embarrassed to be part of the church of Jesus today because I believe it's an embarrassment to a holy God. Most of our joy is clapping our hands and having a good time and then afterward we're talking all the drivel of the world.

Don't talk to us about holiness or separation from the world. We don't want to hear that, folks. Most people today don't want to hear anything they call gloom and doom. If it's not smooth, it's gloom and doom.

The Reality of Hell and the Danger of Spiritual Deception

Well, friend, let me tell you lovingly, go to hell and live with all the scum of the earth. You like to drink, go with the drinkers. You like to lust, go with the prostitutes.

To have been covered in something deceptive, to find in the last moments of your life that the feet coming down the hallway are not taking you to heaven. You can get through the deception your whole life.

You can even sing in the choir.

And I think we'd better watch this business of, you know, God loves you, God loves you, and all the bumper stickers, sloppy evangelism. Will you remind people of the goodness and the severity of God? Will you remind them that there's a day when mercy is cut off forever?

Will you remind them that people pray in hell but nobody ever answers?

But in spite of what God has spoken, they create a garment of fig leaves and they cover themselves and say, all is well, all is well. And they seek out a church that won't challenge their sin, that won't expose this hypocrisy for what it is.

I'd rather you get mad at me and go to heaven.

Confronting Sin Through the Holy Spirit's Surgery

This so-called love gospel today only reaches the flesh. It can't get to the heart. It can't dig into sin so that there can be a cleansing. And if I'm a surgeon of the Holy Ghost, I'm not going to put a bandage on you when you've got cancer sticking out of a bone or on your flesh.

We're going to say, hey, we've got to get in there. It has to be dealt with. I don't care if you like me, but I'm a good surgeon, and I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to get your cancer out.

This is the reason why some who are listening even now and will be listening to tapes in the future, you just can't lighten up and enjoy these theologically shallow experiences like so many around you are today.

Everyone around you is saying, oh, lighten up, lighten up. God's love, God's good, God's kind, God is nice. Come to church in your Bermuda shorts. Stick your feet on the altar rail. Have a coffee and cookies with us.

We'll hear three-point messages on nothing about God. But there's a stirring in you. There's a stirring in the true bride in this generation.

Now I'm going to tell you something. A diluted gospel is no gospel at all.

Commercialized Christianity and the Judgment Seat of Christ

Businessmen, they were crass businessmen coming into something that God said, my house shall be called a house of prayer. You made it a den of thieves. You're getting over on the people out with you.

And if you don't believe this is happening in our generation, I challenge you to go to a Christian bookstore this week and find the bestsellers. Ask them which are the bestsellers, and look at them. Look at the covers of the images of men, not the images of God.

Five steps to be like me. Five steps to better yourself. Five steps to the new you. Five steps to a wonderful destiny with their glossy faces on the cover. Not so subtly telling the church of Jesus Christ, if you use the principles of God, you will look like me.

In the 14th chapter of Romans, and he says,. So he writes home even to believers at the judgment seat. We must all, there's no exception, we must stand at the judgment seat of Christ. You can't send your lawyer, you can't send a representative.

Because one day, it doesn't matter if your friends approve of you, it doesn't matter how many albums you sell, one day the Bible says, I'm going to stand in front of the one whose eyes are like fire, and I can't get over on him.

Recovering Purity, Righteousness, and the Church's Calling

All of you that sing in that choir, it's not just if you're on your note, it's why you're on your note. Can you see all the saints of all the ages, and Leonard Ravenel is standing there before Christ, whose eyes are full of holiness, where the place is breeding holiness, where there's all the majesty of an awesome God?

And he reads the record of my poor life before all the saints of all the ages?

Answer God, all you theologians reasoning out my theology. Just answer God. Are you pure in heart? And you became enamored with your own beauty, and your whole theological focus now, is how you can be smarter, better, better looking, more prosperous.

You lost the call of God, church.

You've made it a place just to make a buck.

Church of Christ with God, when will you grieve more? Hunger, thirst of the righteousness.

And I'm going to tell you something, a diluted gospel is no gospel at all.

When the church is in the state we are, the standard is not preached, or lived, or presented. We need to seek God back for the standard of this book. Not men's standard, but Christ's. I'm not presenting to you some holiness of a holiness movement.

I'm teaching to you Christ's word, that the only holiness is not heresy. I want to challenge you with everything in me. Put away lifeless religion. Put away empty pursuits of God. Put away all of the deception of the carnal nature.

Holy, be ye holy, for I am holy.

That's God's words, not mine. Would to God that Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal pastors begin to stand up and see what's happening to the church that was once called the church of Jesus Christ.

Backsliding, turning apostate, turning against the truths of their founding fathers.

The New Testament Church, Suffering, and Spiritual Maturity

When I see the church in the New Testament, they didn't have stately buildings, they didn't have paid evangelists, they didn't have a lot of money, they didn't have organization, they couldn't get on TV and beg.

But I'll tell you what they did, they turned the world upside down. But are you big enough to say, Lord, in this crucial hour in human history, let me fill up the sufferings of Christ.

But if the Holy Spirit is truly, truly upon you in this generation, you will not be satisfied. You will not be found among those who sit in supposed houses of God with your feet on the altar rail and a cup of coffee in your hand listening to a PowerPoint sermon about a Christ they don't know.

You will not be satisfied. Because if you're going to get mature in God, all the dwarfs around you will criticize and sneer at you and say you're trying to be holier than the rest of us, eh? For God has not merely given us Jesus Christ, he's given us all things.

Entertainment, Malachi's Remnant, and the Coming Judgment

And because there isn't enough joy in the house of God, we need entertainment. Because entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. We're living in a time, as the prophet Malachi said,.

When those who feared the Lord are going to get together one more time and think on his name and a book of remembrance will be written for them and they will return and they will know the difference.

Between those who serve God and those who don't serve him. Folks, we've got to deal with sin. We've got to deal with things in our life. You know, they're divorcing and all these things. We have to do something about it.

We have to face a holy God one day.

There's a great trial coming, folks, for everyone. Praise God. He's going to deliver the true believer.

I want you to change your message. I'm telling you now, the judgment is at the door. The handwriting is on the wall.

The whole world is shaking. And you're amusing this people. Even if you have to bury your theology, sir, just bury it tonight and get right with God.

You've got to come under the justice of God. You've got to come under the justice of God.