Still a Hyundai — E.A. Johnston

The Hyundai Analogy and Outward Appearance

Years ago, I bought a Hyundai automobile. It was cheaply priced and cheaply made. It was your basic economy car. I kept it for a few years and then got rid of it. Recently, a friend was thinking about buying a Hyundai but she didn't want the basic version.

She wanted the fancier and more expensive Genesis model, which has more bells and whistles to look more like a luxury car. But I talked her out of it because no matter how much fake wood paneling you put on the interior and how much more chrome you stick on the outside, it's still a Hyundai.

Why pay for a luxury car when it's just a dressed up economy car? Just because you paid more for it, in the end, it's still a Hyundai. And that's the title of my message today, friends. Still a Hyundai.

Religious Membership Without Spiritual Transformation

And I want to apply this principle to joining a church. Most folks join a church for various reasons. They may need business contacts because they're in sales and they need customers, or they may be lonely and they're looking for love or seeking companionship.

They may be social creatures who must stay within social circles. Some may actually join the church looking for salvation. I know I was a lost church member for years. I was baptized and I was religious.

And I said, I love Jesus, even though I didn't even know him. I merely reformed some of my worser habits, like drinking. And I drank non-alcoholic beer instead of the real thing. I quit cussing in public.

I cleaned myself up good enough so as to fit in with the rest of the church folk on Sunday. But no matter how you clean yourself and dress yourself up on the outside, you're still a Hyundai. I was an unsaved sinner who merely made an intellectual assent to Jesus.

And I did my level best to live like a Christian, but I couldn't quit sinning because I enjoyed sinning and I didn't even recognize what sin was. And although I didn't sin as much as I used to, I still sinned enough to satisfy myself whenever I wanted to.

Regeneration and the Power to Live the Christian Life

You see, friend, I was a unregenerate individual, even though I had joined a church and made a public profession of faith. And I soon discovered, like everyone else eventually does, that it's impossible to live the Christian life as an unregenerate person.

Because being converted means you have experienced change. The Holy Spirit has brought regeneration upon the heart and has implanted in you a new disposition for holiness, which is the life of God in the soul of man.

Years later, when God really saved me, I was given a power from above to enable me to live above the world in sin. But before that time, when I was still a Hyundai, so to speak, I was just a baptized person who had joined a church.

I didn't know what true salvation was and I didn't know what sin was. I couldn't recognize sin in my life because those sinful habits were ingrained in me as a lost person. And sin to a lost person is not something repugnant to be avoided, but something pleasurable to be enjoyed.

False Professions and the Necessity of Repentance

That's why we have so many people today who say with their lips that they are followers of Jesus, but say with their lives they are still following the devil. But they swallowed the only believed gospel and it tasted like Kool-Aid on the way down.

And now they can prove to you and themselves that they are now a Christian. So they reform themselves and do their best to clean themselves up, to look more attractive on the outside. But in reality, they're still a Hyundai.

They've never been born again. They've never exercised repentance toward God. For true repentance toward God means the love of sin must die. That if you want Christ, then you must turn from your sin and renounce it and repudiate it and forsake it, all of it.

I repeat, you cannot and will not be able to hold out from your sin. In your own determination and self-effort and power, it can't be done, friend. Sooner or later, you're gonna be like Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall that one day falls off with a resounding crash.

And all the king's horsemen and all the king's men can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. That's why we have so many tarnished testimonies out there of people in the church. They began well, but they couldn't hold out because they never had left the kingdom of darkness to begin with.

They merely made an attempt to suppress it. But that old nature with no restraints on it and no enabling power over it just took over one more time and had its full of sin and pleasure in that hogwall of filth and shame.

Grace, Regeneration, and the Danger of Empty Religion

If you've never been born from above and washed in the blood, then you're still a Hyundai, even if you are the chairman of the deacons. Only a work of grace upon the heart in the supernatural act of regeneration by God's spirit will get the job done.

Anything less is merely an empty religious profession. I know what I'm talking about. I served in the church and I was sinning all the time and didn't see anything wrong with it because I was still dead in sin.

And that's why you, friend, still have a sin problem. Your problem is you have no power from above to enable you to turn away from all sin. So you may hold out for a few weeks and be all right, and you may even make it for a couple of months.

But the pull on you is too strong for you not to eventually to cave in like you would to a beautiful woman with no morals. Or you'll pound your fist on the table and cry out against some evils in society.

You'll denounce the homosexual and be disgusted by the transgender so long as nobody pesters your little idols or monkeys with your little pig pens. I believe only one out of 10 people in a church are truly saved.

I believe that because nine out of 10 of them still sin all they want to and have no problem with it. We live in a day of deep spiritual declension in the church and apostasy within our denominations.

Cultural Immorality and the Church’s Witness

And we have a morally bankrupt society that's spinning out of control. There's so much sex and nudity put in movies because that's what the majority of the populace wants to see. Hollywood is just giving folks what they want.

If everybody cried out against it, they'd stop putting that junk in there to begin with because all they care about is selling tickets and generating revenues. I'll never forget as long as I live walking down the hallway at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, back when Dr. Adrian Rogers was still the pastor.

And as I walked down the hall, there was a young couple in front of me who was married and they were talking loudly about how they had enjoyed going to see the movie, The Titanic. And I didn't know it and they didn't know it, but Adrian Rogers was walking right behind us.

And Adrian took two long leaps of those long legs of his and quickly got up alongside that couple in the hallway. And he said, hello. And they said, well, hello, Dr. Rogers. And he said, you don't mind if I come home with you tonight, do you?

And the young couple said nervously, why no, of course not Dr. Rogers. We'd be honored if you came home with us tonight. And Adrian Rogers said in a loud voice, good. Then you won't mind if I hide in your bedroom closet until you get ready for bed because I want to watch you both make love to one another.

Well, this couple was shocked as all the rest of us in that church hallway was until Dr. Rogers said, well, I didn't think you'd mind because you said you enjoyed watching another couple have sex because it said you enjoyed the movie, the Titanic, which has nudity and sex in it.

Well, everybody scattered out of that hallway like buckshot out of a shotgun. But Dr. Rogers had made his point. And the point was Jesus never preached a sin in religion. A Christian turns from sin and lives above the world and continually seeks grace from God to live unto him in a life of holiness and obedience.

Hosea’s Warning About Being Abandoned to Sin

To call oneself a Christian and to still live in sin is a very dangerous place to be friend for God can ultimately turn his back on you and withdraw his wooing spirit from you as seen to the Jews in the days of Hosea.

Ephraim is joined to his idols let him alone. I was playing golf with a man years ago who had a very filthy mouth. Every time he took a swing at his golf ball, he cussed man and curse God. Finally, I had had enough of his dirty mouth and I turned to him and said, friend, can I ask you a question?

He said, shoot. I said, how is your relationship with God? Well, he grinned a big grin and answered, fine, I have a great relationship with God. I leave him alone and he leaves me alone. And that's a sad case my friends when you get to the place where you were so hardened in your sins that God has left you alone to go to hell.

For like Ephraim joined to his idols who was in love with them and addicted to them and therefore left alone. A father no longer seeks to correct a rebellious son when he is determined to disinherit him.

The Need for Honest Repentance

You better get the wax out of your ears friend and hear me now. Those that are not, it breaks me up to say this, but listen to me. Those that are not disturbed by their sin will be destroyed for their sin.

You better get honest with yourself friend and get honest before God and quit calling yourself a Christian when you don't live like one. Sam Jones used to preach hard against sin and he pressed repentance on his hearers.

He would say, being a Christian means quitting your meanness. Maybe you've been deceived by the modern gospel. Maybe you've been deceived by false evangelism and way back yonder some minister told you that you were saved because you responded to his emotional appeal or you repeated a prayer he led you in.

But God never recognized it because God was a million miles away from you from that day to this day as you've merely lived on a false foundation of an empty religious profession and you've never been changed by his grace.

Being Born Again Through Christ

Jesus told Nicodemus, fairly, fairly I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God and that standard hasn't changed friend. You must be born again to get into God's holy kingdom for he will allow no rebels in there.

As long as you remain in your unconverted condition friend, you will live in sin because that's who you are because you may think you're a Cadillac but you're still a Hyundai.