The Scandal of Grace: When Christianity Becomes Consumerism

Lord, we give you glory tonight. I thank you for bringing us here,

Lord, to study your word. And God, I pray that, Lord, tonight,

even if your spirit moves, Lord, that you would teach us new things.

You remind us of things, Lord, that you've said in your word.

And God, that we would grow in you in every way. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Well, I think I shared with y'all a while back that I feel like there's so many

people today that either don't hear the full gospel, or by that I mean the biblical gospel,

or they misunderstand the gospel, right?

And sometimes when you live in the Bible belt, I think especially,

you know, I've shared with y'all before, everybody's a Christian, right, if you ask them.

And, you know, what is a Christian? You know, what does that mean,

you know, with probing and those type of things?

But I believe even today across our land, as we think about what biblical Christianity

is, and what the Bible says about being a Christian,

it really is scandalous to think that the grace of God, when you preach the

grace of God, the way the Bible presents it, it is scandalous.

And you will be offended one day by the grace of God.

You really will, whether you think you will or not, because you're always going

to run against it. If you preach it as God says in his word,

you're going to run against that wall where you're going to be offended and then also.

The holiness of God, right? The holiness of God and a God who comes and challenges

his people first, right?

Judgment, remember, begins with the house of God.

And so we serve an awesome God. So for the next little while here,

I don't know exactly how long, we're going to take a deeper dive into the gospel and the grace of God.

And, you know, I thought about some of these commercials we've seen in the past,

and this is probably going to remind you of one, but it's not going to be this commercial.

But you've heard that tastes great, less filling, right?

And I think today in our culture, the first role of successful merchandising,

is to give consumers what they want.

If they want bigger burgers, make their burgers bigger.

Designer bottled water. You heard of it, brother James.

I mean, in six fruit flavors, done minivans with 10 cup holders, right?

Give them 20 if they need it. You've got to keep the customer satisfied.

You've got to modify your product and your message to meet their needs if you

want to build a market and get ahead of the competition.

And today, sad to say, this same consumer mindset, I believe,

has invaded Christianity.

The church service is too long. We'll shorten it.

One pastor that I read guarantees that his sermons will be over in seven minutes.

Too formal, wear your sweatsuit, okay?

Too boring, wait till you hear our band, right?

And if the message is too confrontational or too judgmental,

so to speak, or too exclusive or scary or unbelievable or hard to understand

or too much of anything else to your taste,

churches everywhere are eager to adjust that message to make you more comfortable.

And this new version i say new it's not really new anymore it's been around

a little bit now but if christianity makes you a partner on the team so to speak,

a design consultant on church life and it does away with the old-fashioned authority

guilt trips accountability and moral absolutes.

There was one article about a suburban church that sent out a mailer promising

an informal, relaxed, casual atmosphere.

Now, I can get that to a point. I think we have some of that here, right?

Great music from our band. And that those who come, believe it or not,

you know what they said? We'll even have fun.

Well, I have fun, praise the Lord. I don't know about y'all,

but I have fun. I really do.

But that's all great if, you know, it's great in the point that we should have

fun, we should enjoy praising the Lord and those type things,

but the point is not to tickle people's ears or tickle people's fancies, right?

So even though it's fine to have coffee, I'm not against it,

we're not a coffee house,

but anyone who claims to be calling people to the gospel of Jesus Christ with

those things alone as his priorities or her priorities is calling them to a lie.

It's Christianity for consumers, Christianity light, if you will,

the redirection, the watering down, the misinterpretation of the biblical gospel,

in a blatant attempt to just make it more palatable, popular.

I think of the song, I know some of y'all are probably saying,

yeah, he just got a song in his mind, the Skillet song that debuted in 24, unpopular, right?

And it tastes great going down. It settles light.

It seems to calm your feelings or solve your feelings and scratch your itch.

It's custom tailored to your preferences, but that lightness is never going

to fill you up, so to speak, with the true saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

Because you know why it's designed by man and not god and it's hollow and worthless.

And in fact, it's worse than worthless, because people who hear the message

of Christianity, if they hear that message of Christianity light,

I should say, think they're hearing the gospel, think they're being rescued

from eternal judgment, right?

When in fact, they're being tragically misled. And you're going to see what

I'm talking about in a minute. I know some of you may be scratching your head

and saying, yeah, I relate to some of that, Brother Judd. I understand some of it.

And in fact, if we look at the false gospel of self-esteem, that's a lot today.

Now, let me clarify, and I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time here.

God's word deals with the topic of self-esteem. We're made in the image of God.

We're valued. We're treasured by the king of the universe. Okay?

So God's word addresses all that, and it is important. I know some people truly struggle with that.

But I think that today when we have this false gospel, and you'll see what I

mean in a minute, that is tailored towards this feel-goodism or my self-esteem,

because the true gospel, I just want to be straight with y'all.

You don't want me to be straight and tell you what the Bible says?

The true gospel is a call to self-denial.

It's not a call to self-fulfillment. And that puts it in opposition to the contemporary

evangelical gospel, where ministers view Jesus sometimes as this utilitarian genie.

You just rub the lamp and he jumps out, right? And says, you can have whatever you want.

You give him your list, in other words, and he delivers.

And defending the true gospel will put you and has put me in some pretty serious

opposition to people at times who don't want to take the Bible seriously.

You know, I always say that the people here and the places I go,

it is my desire that the people must have a heart to submit to the word of God.

If they don't, I don't want to be there, folks.

I don't. You got to have a heart to submit to his word because that's the message

they're going to get. That's the message you're going to get unadulterated,

straight up from the Bible.

Every time that I walk through the door, that's what I want to present to you.

The day I stopped doing that, I don't, I don't even need to be a pastor anywhere.

And if we're not willing, all of us, you included, to face the hard truth of

conviction over your sins,

the hard disturbing reality of self-denial, and the hard demands of following

Jesus Christ, guess what?

You're not going to hang around very long. It's not going to happen.

And some within the framework of evangelicalism will tell you that Jesus just wants you well.

And if you're not well, it's because you haven't turned in your spiritual lottery ticket.

If you're not rich, it's because you hadn't claimed it.

Jesus wants you free from debt. And if you send the televangelists enough money,

the act of faith alone is going to free you from the demon of debt.

You ever heard that one? You heard it? Yeah.

Your salvation through Christ is basically a guarantee of health,

wealth, prosperity, and happiness.

Y'all have heard that? I know it's all over. And.

You know, the psychology behind this, the man-centered evangelicals actually

tell us that Jesus gives you peace.

Jesus gives you joy. Jesus makes you a better salesman.

Jesus helps you hit more home runs if you're playing ball. Jesus really wants

to make you feel better about you.

He wants to actually elevate your self-image.

He wants to put an end to your negative thinking.

You probably hear some of this on TV, right? It's interesting how this trend,

though, has come into the church.

And I've been around, I don't look really young, but I've been around long enough,

to have seen it arrive, right?

And it's blossomed.

And you have all this. In fact, I think back, how many of you remember Robert

Shuler from years going by? Anybody?

A book that he wrote back in the day, it was called Self-Esteem, the New Reformation.

And I don't know if you've ever read that book or reviewed the book,

but Schuller's view was a turning point, literally, as the title says,

an attempt to promote a new Reformation.

It was an effort to replace the biblical gospel with a new gospel, and it worked.

In the book, actually, Robert Schuller attacked the Protestant Reformation.

He was calling for a new reformation, like I said.

He actually wrote, and I quote, It is precisely at this point that classical

theology has earned in its insistence that theology be God-centered and not

man-centered, unquote.

So according to Shuler, the first thing that we have to do is to put an end

to classical God-centered theology and replace it with man-centered theology.

And don't we see that all over our churches today?

To define man-centered theology, which is an oxymoron, really.

He wrote further, he said this, he said, this master plan of God is designed

around the deepest needs of human beings. You know what he listed?

Self-dignity, self-respect, self-worth, self-esteem.

Is that what the Bible says is the deepest need of man?

For Schuller, the pearl of great price is self-respect and self-esteem.

He went on to say that success is to be defined as the gift of self-esteem that

God gives us as a reward for our sacrificial serving and building self-esteem in others.

Win or lose, if we follow God's plan as faithfully as he can,

he says we will feel good about ourselves.

That is success.

Now, if you follow that line of thinking, folks, you can feel good about yourself all you want to.

But one day, if you die in your sins, where are you going to be?

You can feel good about yourself, but you'll be burning in hell for all eternity.

And so in this new reformation of self-esteem, and you see why I said that,

the first thing required is to pull God down from his supremely elevated place

so that you can then lift yourself up,

replacing God-exalting theology with man-exalting, self-esteem, psychology.

And to pull that off, though, requires altering and misinterpreting the Bible, doesn't it?

And what did we study just as we wrapped up Revelation about adding to or taking

away, not only from the words of the prophecy of that book, but also the entire scripture?

What's going to happen if you add to it?

God's going to add the plagues, right? What happens if you take something away?

Your blessings are going to be taken away, right?

And so when we think about this, this misinterpreting the Bible and gospel for

the grand purpose of making people feel better about themselves so that they

can fulfill their dreams and realize their visions.

In other words, man-centered theology is exactly that. It's all about me.

It's not about God. And I'll tell you, anytime it becomes all about us,

you're not in church anymore.

Maybe the most self-amazing statement in this book, the most amazing statement

in self-esteem, the new reformation is this one. He says, once a person believes,

listen to this, now don't miss it. This is a little background, so listen.

He says, once a person believes he is an unworthy sinner, it is doubtful if

he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.

Let me quote it. This is from Robert Shuler's book, Self-Esteem, the New Reformation.

Once a person believes he is an unworthy sinner, it is doubtful if he can really

honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.

Now, let me ask you, is that what the Bible teaches? It's the opposite. The exact opposite.

In fact, if we don't acknowledge that we are an unworthy sinner.

We can never be saved. Our pride will keep us from it, right? We don't need Jesus.

So if you want to be saved according to this new gospel, you can't believe yourself

to be an unworthy sinner.

Now, I just have to ask again, how twisted is that? How contrary to the truth is that?

But it is just the sort of man-centered, self-esteem gospel that eventually

became the seeker-friendly movement, I know you've heard of that,

which has hijacked so many churches.

It is kind of a quasi-Christian narcissism or self-love that is characteristic

of false teachers, by the way.

According to 2 Timothy 3, it reminds us of this, in 2 Timothy 3,

1 and 2, it says, "'Dangerous times will come, "'for men will be lovers of themselves.'".

Christianity in the hands of some seeker-sensitive church leaders has become

a get-what-you-want-rather-than-give-up-everything movement. You see what I'm saying?

These leaders have prostituted the divine intention of the gospel.

They've replaced the glory of God with the satisfaction of man.

They've traded the concept of abandoning our lives to the honor of Christ for Christ honoring us.

And such, you know, our submission to his will is replaced by his submission to our will.

Since people usually reject the real gospel, you hear me? People usually reject the real gospel.

Modern evangelicals have simply changed the message.

Wow. Simply changed the message. What do y'all think so far?

Somebody give me some feedback here.

Do you see this type of thing in our world today?

The distortion you know like i've told you all this before satan doesn't give

a rip if you come to church,

he doesn't care that's why these churches you know it doesn't matter where they

are how many they have 20 30 40 50 000 it doesn't matter he doesn't really care as far as numbers,

what does he get upset about.

When a church is obeying God, when the word is being preached,

when the gospel, the unadulterated gospel is being preached, he can't stand it.

And, you know, many centuries ago, a saint, I think, got it right with his prayer.

Is it okay if I share it with you?

I thought it was important. It spoke to me. He said, Lord, high and holy,

meek and lowly, let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,

that to be low is to be high, that to be broken heart, that the broken heart

is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

and that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is

to possess everything, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,

that to give is to receive.

Let me find thy light in my darkness, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my

sin, thy riches in my poverty, thy glory in my valley, thy life in my death.

That jumps out at me. Thy life in my death?

Thy life in my death? That's the true gospel right there.

Jesus said it unmistakably and inescapably. If anyone desires to come after

me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

For whoever desires to save his life will what? Lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16, 24 and 25.

It's not about exalting me. It's about slaying me.

It's the death of self. You win by losing.

You live by dying. And y'all folks, that is the heart.

That's the heart message of the gospel. That's the essence of discipleship.

Man, that passage mentions nothing about improving our self-esteem, does it?

Being rich and successful, feeling good about yourself, or having your felt

needs met, which is what so many churches are preaching today in order to sugarcoat the truth.

So who's right? I'm going to close with this tonight. Who's right?

Is the message of Christianity self-fulfillment or is it self-denial?

It can't be both.

We're going to pick up there next time, Lord willing. We're going to dive deeper

into the real biblical gospel.

We're going to see what God's word says. Not going to pull any punches, right? Amen.