Not New Things (Issues Facing the Church) - Part 2

Whoever did the PowerPoint, and whoever's running the computer, and whoever turned it on. If you have your Bibles and you want to follow along, I have various verses that are in your notes tonight. And a couple of them I think are important enough to put in your pocket and take with you. They're more proof texts than anything, which is not the best, my favorite way to preach, but I want to keep them handy.

The title of the sermon is intentionally meant to, I don't know, spark a thought, which is Anthropocentric Ecclesiology. Those are big words, but they're not. It just means man-centered church is what it means. But the reason I picked the big words is because anthropocentric is a conceptual idea that you discuss in theology, and ecclesiology is the doctrine of the church.

Later, in another message, I don't know if it's the next one or the one after that, I'll actually be discussing specific cultural things that affect the church. Even though I am sort of discussing that now and how the cultural ideas are kind of seeping into the church, I'm going to be speaking specifically to cultural ideas like social media and racism and things like that in the days to come. So I'm I'm purposefully vague about those things right now at this early stage because what I wanted to do was, when I was putting together all the information for the series, it was all kind of disparate. That's a good word, huh? Disparate means it was all over the place. It was in various decentralized places, so to kind of put it in some sort of logical order, some sort of cohesive order was, I don't know if I was smart enough to do it. I'm not actually sure I succeeded at it, but here we are with with what I have before you.

I mentioned last time, and it's important to remember what I said last time for today, I mentioned last time that the Bible and the doctrine of sola scriptura, the thought that the Bible is authoritative, is quietly being attacked. It's quietly being undermined, the doctrine that the Bible is sufficient. And when I'm saying that, everything I'm saying to you actually, everything I'm telling you, so we are conservative Baptists, In fact, we, whether you like it or not, qualify for the title fundamentalist. We're not the typical fundamentalist Baptist, but we are fundamentalist in that we hold to the Five Fundamentals. It's a core thing of things that we believed, and incidentally, it was Machen that sort of coined those Five Fundamentals, and he was not a Baptist. I think that's important. So that people think that it's only Baptists that use that kind of language.

But here's the thing, the things that we are known for as Baptists and conservative Baptists, and even more our association, the Association of Regular Baptists, We are known for fighting against liberalism and false doctrine outside of the church. But nothing I'm talking about in this entire series is about outside the church. It's about inside the church. And when I say the church, I mean the conservative church. So none of the things I'm talking about are what are happening. Like, we'll talk about the church growth movement. We'll talk about the seeker-sensitive movement. We'll talk about the emergent movement. These are things that don't get talked about much anymore, but those are the kind of things that typically we conservatives are talking about, what's happening out there. None of this in this series is that. Everything I'm talking about in this series is happening in here. It's happening with our people.

So specifically, like denominations in the past that have been solid, for example, the thing I'll be talking about when we handle the subject of same-sex attraction, that has made big inroads to the PCA, which historically has not been the worst Presbyterian denomination. So these things are getting in. These are not things that are far out there. Maybe some of you know the name Mark Dever. I'm not wholesale throwing him under the bus. Nine Marks Ministry is a solid ministry, but there's some conversational sympathies in there. Watch out for that word, conversation. That's a tricky word. You'll hear that in these discussions.

So everything I'm telling you in this series is not about what's going on in the world out there. It's not about what's going on with unbelievers. It's about what's going on with churches because of the nature of the world we live in today with the internet being handy and these thoughts. It was already going that way with TV and the radio, but now it's like at a fever pitch where people have access to any kind of teaching any time they want. And so what I said last time fits, and I'm telling you this for us, for conservatives, is that the Bible and the emphasis that the Bible is authoritative is taking a back seat It's either being manipulated, it's either being dismissed, or it's being abused. And the tricky side of that is that we can think because we're on the right team, conservative, theological, even Calvinistic, Reformed if you want to use the big R word, whatever we use, we can think that because we're on a historically accurate right team that we're okay. But what ends up happening is like with every tradition, our tradition replaces the thing that tradition stands for. Right? So tradition stands for sola scriptura. It comes out of the Reformation. All the great reformers, Zwingli and Calvin and all those guys that stood for it. And then they built those traditions that are built on their thoughts are now the tradition, just like the Roman Catholic Church and any other church, the Southern Baptist Convention. I can name them. I don't mind naming them. Now the convention, the thing becomes the authority, not the Bible that it used to lift up. So this is happening to us.

That when I say there are no new things, that trend where the Bible and the authority of the Word of God takes a back seat is about 4,000 years old. It's exactly what happened in the life of Israel. You know that, right? You remember when Josiah came to the throne? Where was the Bible? In some dusty corner of the temple, right? So every time there's a cycle where people go into error and they go into disobedience, it always happens the same. God says a thing, people respond to that thing and change. They become his people that he loves and he's in a covenant relationship with. Then they get high and mighty and a little big for their britches and not satisfied with him, so they find other things. Then they replace His thing with their thing. Then they fall into absolute heresy and deny the Lord. And either they cry out to Him like we see in the days of Judges, or there's a revival because some people stand up for the truth. And then there's a call back to repentance to where the group hopefully repents and becomes solid again. This is a cycle. That's why I say it's not new what's happening right now. It's always happening.

So before the Dark Ages, there was a dismissal of Scripture. Incidentally, that's why there were the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages were a result of people becoming ignorant of important things like scripture. Then there was the Renaissance, it came back. Then there was the Reformation, it came back. Then there was an Enlightenment, and it went away again. Right? These are just the cycle of things, and we're in one right now. The authority of the Bible right now is, in my opinion, under attack. And it leads to the things that we'll talk about tonight.

So last time we talked about the authority and scripture alone being the authority sort of going, being quietly tucked away. And then proud humans feel free to decide for themselves the importance of Scripture, even the interpretations of Scripture. I said when you write your own Bible, you only need one expositor, and that's you. You don't need to listen to anybody else when you have your own Bible, right? And then tonight we're going to see the effect of that, of setting the Bible's authority aside. I'm going to try to say it. I said we're going to see it, assuming I can accomplish what I hope to accomplish in this message. We're going to see that the effect of setting those things aside has a major impact on the church. And that major impact is that the church becomes man-centered instead of God-centered. And again, I can't repeat enough, I don't mean the liberal church. I don't mean the modern church. I don't mean a megachurch. I don't mean Joel Osteen's church. I mean conservative churches have now become sort of little mini versions of what those churches have become. We have to watch out for it.

So is the church a means to man's end? Is the church for man or is man for the church? Is the church intended for our meaning and purpose and fulfillment? Is that why God planted the church? Is that why he builds the church? Or did he build the church so that he would be the central focus of that church? He would be the main character. He would be the thing that is the central attention getter at the church. And that's what we'll talk about tonight.

If you've never heard the word syncretism, you should know the word syncretism. And syncretism means that the blending together of God's things with the world's things in order to accomplish whatever goal. It doesn't matter what the goal is. The goal could be growth. The goal could be fame. The goal could be anything. But syncretism is taking the world's things and God's things. The prime example in church history was Constantine trying really hard. Once he decided he was going to be friendly with Christians, what did he do? He started blending Christianity with all of the pagan things around him. That Christianity of Constantine was as syncretistic as it gets. So syncretism is joining the two things together so that you can try to amplify both.

And I think we saw in our series on Islam downstairs too, that that's also what the prophet Muhammad hoped to accomplish when he started Islam. He had hoped to make one religion that he was the head over, including Christianity. He was favorable to Christianity and Judaism in the beginning, right? We all believe the same thing, right? That's the way it always starts. We all believe the same thing, you know. And they tried to be syncretistic and join the two together. It didn't work because the true Christians stood for the faith.

Sometimes we might not see it happening. Sometimes these things are happening. Here's why they might not be recognized when they happen. This has nothing to do with our ignorance or anything, laziness. This is not the preacher yelling at you as though you're stupid and don't see things happening. Here's the reason it doesn't happen is because the old, you know the old story of the frog dropped in a pot of boiling water will jump out, right? Because we're in our culture, because we live in our culture, because we are involved in our culture, because we see the things in our culture, because the things in front of our eyes and going in our ears are happening all around us at all times, we might not know that we're the frog being boiled. So I'm actually giving us a pass on this. I'm not saying shame on us and we need to change this. No, no, no, no, no. It's hard to live in a world and not have the world touch you, to get the stink on you. You're in it. And it's really hard sometimes when you're in it to see what's happening around you. Most people involved in history don't recognize they're involved in history. They don't recognize that significant things are happening in their time, right? They don't realize that. And we are at a very significant time in church history right now in 2026.

So let's pray and we will start the conversation on anthropocentric ecclesiology, man-centered church history. Church. Father, these are things, you know, that are very much on my heart, but I also want to make sure that they are your heart. My opinions are as valuable as anyone else's, which is to say not valuable. Yours are very valuable. But I do think, Father, that when you explore these things and you see what your word says is supposed to be happening with your church, the thing that your Son said he would build, I think it's really clear that if we're attentive and careful, we will see there are trends and things we need to be careful to avoid in order to maintain faithfulness. We do want to be faithful, Father. I know everyone in this room wants to be faithful. They want to serve you. They want to honor Christ. They want to stand on the side of truth. And I would just ask that our discussion tonight would help with that. In Jesus' name, amen.

So you can see in your notes, from pinnacle to primary, and I will refer to my notes more in this series than I probably normally do. The word pinnacle here is referring to man, that man is the pinnacle of God's creation. So out of the gate, when I talk that the overarching theme of the evening is man-centeredness and the way that is now creeping into the church so that God is becoming, in many cases, even in the conservative church, a secondary character, right? That God is essentially in the bleachers cheering us on doing what we're doing rather than him being the thing being cheered for, right? So this is a trend. And I want to start off by saying every one of the things I'll say tonight actually almost sound true. They're almost okay. Like they're all— if they were left alone and properly thought of, there wouldn't be a problem. So these are not false doctrines that are just overtly wolves creeping into the church and eating sheep. These are true doctrines that get just ever so nudged in the wrong direction, and then eventually once they get nudged enough, you lose the true doctrine. That's what happens is the truth gets compromised.

So the first thing is, is that man is the pinnacle of creation. But what happens, and it's such a subtle shift, and I'm going to explain it now, he goes from being the pinnacle of God's creation, the focal point of God's creation. I can say this to you with no apology. Man is the most important thing in God's creation. Did you know that? He's more important than monkeys. He's more important than the planet. He's more important than anything. So when I say that to you, the pinnacle of creation, like Genesis says, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. Incidentally, that says females are not inferior, right? They're equally in the image of God and that beautiful thing that God created called the image.

So here's the subtle thing. Here's the tricky thing is that when we hear that, we even use it to argue against abortion. We use it to argue for dignity, against euthanasia, right? This idea of assisted suicide. These are the things that we say, and murder. We have it in our laws that man is a special creation. He's not just an evolved primate. He's special. And we say that enough, we say it enough that a subtle shift will happen to where we start saying there is intrinsic value in man. And that is almost true except for what comes after it. Because intrinsic value means he is imaging God and he gets to image God and that makes him special. But here's the trick. That is supposed to be for God. As subtle as that is, as simple as what I just said is, that gets missed to where now when you say he's in the image of God, he's special, he's different, he's valuable, he's important to God, he's unique, he's not like any other thing in the world, what does man's brain and ego do with that when he's fallen? Yeah, I must be great, right? I must be really special. I'm not like the animals. And what does that man, the person with that thinking, or woman with that thinking, what are they thinking? If I am indeed the pinnacle of God's creation, and now I slowly quiet down the main idea, which is that that is supposed to be to reflect God and His glory, now all I have is the stamp of approval of God that I'm super duper important. And then I walk into a church. Am I most concerned with what that church does for the name of the Lord, or I'm most concerned with what that church does for this important image bearer.

See, if I talk all like that, you can all see it. Like, if I act it out like that, it's simple. It's obvious to see. But we're doing it when people come through the door. Oh, thanks for visiting our church. We're going to be making a video, another introductory video for our church, for our website. I have half a mind— I know you thought that already— but I have half a mind to say on that video, to say, the first thing I want to tell you about Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, if you're thinking about visiting our church, is that you're not the main character. Like, I almost want to say that up front. Like, the first thing I say, "Welcome to our website. You're not most important." Now, that's not a good sales pitch, but it is something I think about. Because we do. We make ourselves, as the pinnacle of creation, primary very easily. It's a subtle shift. You know that you tell your daughter enough that she's beautiful, she might think all other daughters are ugly, right? You have to be careful with the human ego involved.

That takes us to our next point, which is that when we're We are created in God's image, and when we become most important, guess what happens? The old saying is true. We return the favor. Through Isaiah, you can— that passage is for you to take home with you. I'm not going to read all the verses, just the last part of it. But please read Isaiah 3 through— oh, it only shows 3 in your notes, but 3 through 5. Because Isaiah tells the people, I talked to you. I told you. I gave you the words from my mouth. I gave you prophecy. I gave you instruction. I told you what to think. And then he says in verse 5 of chapter 43, 'Even from the beginning I have declared it to you, before it came to pass I proclaimed to you.' And then why? Why is God emphasizing to the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah over and over again, 'I told you, I told you, I told you, I told you'? Why? Why does he do that? And the Lord says it. He says through Isaiah, 'Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you, lest you should say, my idol has done them, and my carved image, and my molded image have commanded them.'

Why does God have to repeat over and over and over again that he is God? Because we will replace him if he doesn't. That's why. Because we're prone to idolatry. And so this is what happens. If I become the pinnacle, if I become the pinnacle and he becomes quiet, and I'm the pinnacle and he becomes quiet, and I'm the pinnacle and he becomes quieter, and I walk in and I essentially say, I get to decide what God is like and what he's about. And I'll just take this chunk of gold and I'll mold it into a little calf. And I'm not going to call it Molech. I'm not going to call it Baal. I wouldn't call it one of the false gods. You know what I'm going to call it? Yahweh. So now my idol is not a replacement god of a different kind. I can convince myself it is the same God that I worship in the Bible, and I'll bow down to it.

So if I'm the king, then what I think should be happening is what's most important to me. So then I say, I believe modern psychiatry is equal with Christian biblical thought and biblical counsel. They're equal. They're doing the same thing. I think that our culture has valuable artistic things, and we should include those artistic things in our life. We're missing out on those things. After all, we Christians are supposed to be the most creative. I believe that politicians should reflect the will of God, and therefore I'm gonna make politics my main thing. So these are things that we think because we're the pinnacle and we're most important and we're the image of God, we make a thing and we make God do the thing that we think is the thing. And what we inadvertently do is are making a new God. We're making God have our priorities, not us having his. And I'm suggesting that that could be idolatry. And I actually think it often is idolatry. We've invented a God to give this special creation what it should have. After all, he told me I'm different than everything else. He told me I'm special. So of course he wants what I want.

Now, that gets us to this point of consumerism and not producing. So now, follow me on the logic here. I've been told that I'm a special creation of God. I'm the pinnacle of his creation. And now I say, because as the pinnacle, I clearly, my opinion counts and it's valuable and important and I'm smart. I mean, I'm in the pinnacle. I'm in the image of God. And so now I invent the way God thinks according to my image. I say, if I'm a pinnacle, then he has to think the way the pinnacle thinks, because it's the only smart thing for God to do is to think like I think. And so then what happens is now I'm going to go shopping. I'm going to go look for the church that gives me what I want. Okay?

And you see this in the end times. Paul says to the Philippians that in the end, these people, the enemies who walk out not after Christ and not after the cross, whose end is destruction and whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. Now, that is obviously unbelievers being spoken of there. That's not Christian. Paul is saying that's the the way unbelievers think. But I want us as Christians to pay attention to that, because one clear evidence that you are acting like an unbeliever is that you're guided by your appetite, by what you want, by what you think will satisfy you, not what God thinks will satisfy you. That is indicative of unbelief.

And so when Christians begin saying things like, I want to go to a place where I get a lot out of the sermon, or I didn't get much out of the sermon today, or I don't really enjoy the music at that church, or I don't feel fed— who are they talking about when they say that? It's so obvious, but it isn't. It's so obvious, but it isn't. People go to church to get. And I'm talking about our churches. Our churches. I want to go to— do you have the right view of Calvinism? Are you a 6-point Calvinist? Do you have the right view of eschatology? Your eschatology is not exactly right. So I don't know. I need to go exactly where I get everything, where I can get exactly what I want. So we become consumers rather than producers. We're most concerned with what we consume and get and what the church is giving to us, not what we contribute to it. Unless, of course, that's contributing opinions. Everybody thinks they're serving by giving their opinions. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about us making us the center of the church.

So this is what happens. If I'm the pinnacle of creation, I'm special, my opinion counts. I'm in the image of God, after all. So clearly God thinks what I think, right? Because I'm smart. He gave me this wonderful mind that everybody should listen to and opinions which are probably right and don't need to have input from elsewhere. And now I walk into a church and I'm going to say, because I have the right opinion, tell me if you agree with me. Tell me you're going to give me what I want. Which leads us to the second major point, which is now I'm looking for community.

It's providential what you guys were doing when I got here, Zach. You can see in your notes, the question is communion or community. What I could have done was ask, what's the difference in those two? What's the difference in communion and community? Well, I already let the cat out of the bag and it was completely accidental on my part. Was providential on God's part. But I did not intend this morning to let the cat out of the bag when I talked about fellowship the way I did, because it's going to inform what I'm about to say tonight. I didn't prepare those messages to line up. They were prepared weeks apart from each other, and I didn't even think until this week in review that they were going to say the same thing. I didn't even know it was going to happen until I started reviewing this week.

Communion, the idea of communion, is a biblical idea. There's no question about it. In fact, the verse I have for it is one of the next verses after I preached this morning. Again, I didn't do that on purpose. I was just looking for the idea of fellowship. Where's the idea of fellowship that many people think and that might be thought of improperly? John says, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sins." So now you know, because I said it this morning, that fellowship doesn't mean funship. It doesn't mean companionship. It doesn't mean affection. It doesn't mean friendship. That's the way we use the word. But what it means, the word fellowship is the Greek word koinonia. It is where we get the idea of communion. It means you have a common union. And in this case, you have a common union with the Christians and the blood of Christ that cleanses us and brings our unity.

We saw this morning that you have fellowship with the Father and with the Son. And what does that mean? And I fast-forwarded to the end of the book and showed that it means loyalty to Him, not mere companionship, not friendship where we're walking through the park together holding hands. The idea is that I have to be close to Him to be safe, right? So that is communion. Communion means you have a common union. You are unified with someone else. You have a unity with them. And in this case, biblical communion means unity with them in truth and holiness. I'll talk more about the holiness in a bit. But for now, All you got to do to shift and just start getting a little bit off track, just a little bit outside the lines, just a little bit, is change the word communion to the modern cultural idea of community. They sound almost the same, right? It's like the words are almost identical. Those have to be synonyms, right? Yeah, except for it isn't God's idea of community that people are talking about when they say that. They're getting their word out of the earth's dictionary, not God's dictionary.

So community, the idea of belonging, is definitely something that's supposed to come with communion. You're supposed to belong to a group of people. You're supposed to be connected. You're supposed to have a union with people. But what is the commonality that you're supposed to be unified over? Feelings, belonging, happiness, comfort, companionship. That is what the world says community is. So people recently have left our church saying they were looking for community. Recently. Now I say that to you because I wondered at the time what they thought they meant by it. I tried to get to that answer and I didn't get it. But I thought, I thought, like, what do you mean by community? What is it that you're going to have somewhere else that you don't have here? And now I recognize at the core of that is that the idea first is my satisfaction to have people around me for me and my comfort and my interactions and my relationships, right, on earth. They weren't saying and didn't say, for sure did not say, that my goal is to go find the place that is closest to Christ so that I can be closest to Christ with the people who are closest to Christ, like John said this morning. By the way, I think those people would want that, assuming they understood it correctly. I'm not saying that they understood it and denied it. I think they wanted good things when they said that.

Now you got some fancy words in your notes. I'll give you 50 cents if you throw these words out with your friends tomorrow. I think I could afford that. I think I could afford to pay all of you 50 cents, the number of people in here. I might have to sell something, but misozenos. Now I've heard for 100 years Pastor Heinrich talk about phileozenos. I knew that word before I ever took Greek because he never missed an opportunity to preach the word for hospitality in the Bible. Phileozenos, we know, which the Bible talks about hospitality. If you ever see that word hospitality or be hospitable, that word is the translation of the Greek word phileozenos, and it means love of strangers. Do you know what xenophobia is? Fear of strangers, right? Phileozenos means you love strangers. Well, then what do you think misozenos is? Love of like-minded people.

Here's the trick. Here's the nudge. We know we're supposed to love people. The Bible makes that clear. The Bible tells us, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so, some have unwittingly entertained angels," right? There's commandments in the Bible to love strangers. And people tend to, if you didn't know this, they tend to like to hang around people that look like them and sound like them and eat like them. And sing like them, right? They care about the same things. And you might think, well, isn't that natural? Isn't that community? That you get around people that think like you and have the same priorities you do? Maybe. Here's the subtle tricky part. In the new heavens, in the time when Jesus is being worshiped in Revelation 5, that passage I always talk about, in the future is what I'm really saying. "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals." Jesus is worthy. "For you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of," every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Not long ago, I got a flyer in my mailbox that says about a church out there in Riverbank. It literally said on the front page of the flyer, it said, "Not your grandma's church." That was the advertisement. Now, what's the implication? Can I ask the grandmas in the room? What's the implication? When— that it's bad, right? Like you don't want to go to your grandma's church, which now that I have a wife that's a grandma, that's really offensive to me. I mean, it was offensive before, but now it's a next level offensiveness. I'll tell you why it's offensive in a minute. I think you'll follow me. But what are they saying? They're saying that a church that has grandmas in it isn't like what we are. So if you want to be like what we are and have community with people like you, come to our church. Got it? And if any grandma tries to come through the doors, we'll stop them. What is that prioritizing? What's the emphasis there? Who is the main focus there? You all see it. You all see this, that it seems simple.

And I'm really thankful, not only that our church has a diverse group of people, but I'm also grateful for my mentor who thought like that. I already told you all the story about the woman that we knocked on her door and left some cookies when we were leaving, and pastor yelled out in the street. And I was so scared because I'm like, what is he getting me into here? He's yelling to her at her door. He's yelling over the car. She's way up at her front door and he says, "Hey, what ethnicity are you?" And I was like, "Oh no, we're in trouble here," you know? And she said she was Samoan. And he said, "Oh good, you have to come to our church then." And she looked kind of cross and he said, "Because I want our church to look like heaven and I don't think we have any Samoans in our church right now." That's the exact right way to think. It's the exact— and Tongans fit too. Okay.

But the point being is that advertisement that I got in the mail was saying, "Come here to get community." And what community meant at that church was no grandmas, no old-fashioned, probably no hymnals, right? Because hymnals are old-fashioned and archaic. This is the idea. So come here and you will find people that are like you. And I'm going to emphasize it again. Are we supposed to be open to the world and to anybody that comes through the doors? Yes. Are we supposed to be ready to accept people who aren't like us? Yes. When they say, "Not your grandma's church," I want to know how they can live Titus chapter 2 that tells the older ladies to be examples for the younger ladies. How do you live that if you don't have any grandmas at your church? And for the younger ladies who might think, "Well, I want to go to a younger church with only young moms," you need to talk about to some of the moms that have been down the road a little bit that maybe not only are moms themselves, but have some grandbabies too. You need to hear from them. You're going to miss out on their wisdom if you're not in a church with that kind of people.

And frankly, let's go all the way with it. When I get to the subject of racism and things like that, we need people of different backgrounds and ethnicities that look different and have different life experience. How are we going to be good to any missionaries if we never meet anybody like the people we want to be a missionary to? So now I'm preaching to say we need to be different than that, but the point of this right now I'm trying to tell you is this is a move in our world to make little cookie-cutter churches that are made of groups of people that all look alike and all have the same priorities, all listen to the same kind of music, all have the same, I don't know, things they look at on social media, all care about the same things.

And those personalities can be all kinds. They could be a political church that's politically based. It could be an ethnic church that's racially based. It could be a homosexual-friendly church that's homosexually, that's their main thing. Whatever the thing is, a church can take on a personality so that everybody in it is the same. Right? They're just— people are looking for a mirror to find a version of themselves. Why? Why would somebody want to go to a church where they can only find people that look like them, sound like them, care about what they care about, and think like them? You think you're going to get challenged in a church like that? You think you're going to be confronted or rebuked in a church like that? No. Too bad. I feel bad because I love the grandmas. By the way, I can tell you, I really love the grandmas. I really do. I didn't have a grandma. I had a grandmother in Missouri who I only met a few times and was not close to her. And I had a grandmother in Sacramento who I met quite a few times and she was not a good lady, very terrible to me. And so to now, after all these years, get to see all the grandmas and then get to see my wife be a great mom and grandma, it's a— yeah, I should probably go talk to that church around the corner and tell them they offended me.

Now, this last one is very tricky. If the other ones are subtle so far, the idea that we are the pinnacle of creation, therefore we're very important and we have value. Not that that value reflects to God, but I have value, right? That's the idea, is we leave God out of our value. That's the problem. What that turns into is we essentially say, because I'm valuable, because I was created in the image of God, I have the opinion of God and what he cares about and the things that are most important that I now mold into my own calf And this is my version of Yahweh that I serve and my version of Jesus that I serve. This is the thing I think God is like and cares most about. And now I'm looking for a church that will give me all of that. Consumer. I'm going to go around shopping and find the church that gives me what I want.

Then what does that turn into? Now I'm looking for community. What does that mean? I'm suggesting to you that it doesn't mean the biblical idea of communion, the idea of being in fellowship first with God according to his truth. I think it first means I'm going to go find people that are like me that can give me what I think I need. And now that gets us to the point of acceptance, but without change. Now, this is not new. This is one of those things that has permeated the church for, well, forever. It's always been that way. In fact, 1 Corinthians 5, sexual immorality in the church. How did the church treat it? They were proud of it, right? Look at us, we're super liberal. We don't condemn people that have this lifestyle, right? So this is something that's been around for thousands of years, not hundreds. But it's not new.

Now, here's the trick. It's in your notes. The trick is that God does accept broken people. He absolutely accepts and receives people who are in big trouble and in sin, all kinds of them. People who are in abject, disgusting debauchery, at the far— the most pervert, gross, evil things, God will save anyone. Nobody is too far from God's grace. God can save anyone. You think of the worst person in the world, and God can save that person. If Paul says he's the chief of sinners, I can't wait to have a competition with him and say, "Let's compete, because I think I have you beat for the chief of sinners title." But God can save anyone, and that's a beautiful truth of the Gospel, that God is willing and able to save all kinds of people. Isaiah prophesied of it when he said, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking flask he will not quench. He will bring forth justice for truth." truth. Jesus says, "Come all to me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This is a promise of Scripture that God— there are no sinners too far from the grace of God.

But what's the trick? The trick is that God accepts people, that he welcomes them, but there is no expectation of change. Now listen, none of the churches say there is no expectation of change. They all say God accepts everyone where they're at. They all talk about the acceptance side of it, but they do not talk about the lack of change side of it, that conversion brings about a change. And they use words, you see them, I have a couple of them in your notes. I already used the word community, that's a buzzword lately. But now here's a couple of more buzzwords out there that are out there in the Christian community. Authentic. Authentic. We need to be an authentic people because people have seen for years the hypocrisy and the two-faced nature of Christians who say one thing and do another. I just heard that last week, actually. Why is it that all Christians that I've ever known seem like hypocrites? And then I told that person, well, you can come to our church because there's always room for one more. I stole that from Zig Ziglar. The church is full of hypocrites. If anybody ever says that to you, the church is full of hypocrites, say it. Good. There's always room for one more. Yeah, we all know what we are, right? Like, we are. Nobody here is fooling themselves. We all looked at the gospel and said, "Yeah, I'm a bad person. Please save me."

So watch out for words like broken. I could throw so many other words in here. I don't want to go too far because I don't want you to think I'm against any sort of specific out there. But if I were to say like mentally ill, if I were to say addicted, if I were to say in recovery, These are kind of buzz kind of language to where when someone walks through the door with whatever their problems were outside the church and they come through the door, we are being— it's impressed upon us where there's almost a compulsion to say because God accepts broken people, now we got to be authentic and genuine. And when they come through the door, we got to show real acceptance. We got to open our arms to them and we got to welcome them into the flock. But that little Sticky little subject of holiness just never gets brought up. The idea that God is saving us from something. He's not just saving us to something.

Paul says, therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Purge out the leaven. That is not language that gets taught at the same time Acceptance, authentic, broken, compassionate, forgiveness. That's the language I keep hearing. You know where I really have been hearing it is in this work I've done in the same-sex attraction thing. It's over and over. The very first thing everybody says in that discussion is that we want to be compassionate. We want to be ready. We want to be ready to open our arms. We need to talk about forgiveness. We need to help people who are in these situations. And I don't hear a lot of people saying, hey, real quick, God hates that. That's a thing God hates, that He calls abominable. And you say, "Well, you wouldn't just say that to the first person." Well, did you ever hear John the Baptist when the people came to be baptized? "Listen, I want to be careful here and compassionate to you gentlemen. I understand you're trying to be baptized. I'm not exactly sure of your motives. You know, it seems to me that you might have some ulterior motives when you're coming to have me baptize you right now. Maybe, I don't know if it has anything to do with the people coming after me and listening to me because I'm talking about the Messiah." But listen, I want to be careful with you. Is that the way John the Baptist reacted to the people who came to get baptized? "Get away from me, you dirtbags, and come back when you show fruits of repentance."

Now, does that mean that we need to say the very first thing is, "God hates you and you're going to hell and repent"? No. Those churches that do that and that think they're more biblical because that's all they ever do is condemn, that is not the right way. We need to be compassionate. Remember, God accepts the broken. But when people are broken, we need to think about the fact that God is going to put them back together again. We need to be thinking about the idea that what God is not saving people to leave them in their brokenness. He's saving them to change that brokenness.

So this is like a tweaked version of a tweaked version of Christianity. So yes, God accepts the broken. And now you got to tweak that a little bit to say, we need to be authentic enough to help those broken people so that what we think of as phileo xenos, is not just loving strangers and people who aren't like us, but loving the marginalized and the outcasts of the world and making sure they feel welcome when they come through the door. And then we leave out the goal of holiness and Christlikeness. Why were we predestined, you Calvinists? To be conformed to the image of Christ. And if you leave out the conforming part and only talk about the grace of salvation part, you're not telling the whole story. Our problem isn't that we're broken. Our problem is that we're sinful. And we need to talk about it. We need to be more candid about it. And we need to be careful to try to shift the whole language of our church because it's old-fashioned and we don't want to alienate people and say that's our goal. Our goal is to not alienate people. Well, then you need to stop preaching the gospel at all. The gospel is offensive. And maybe us taking away the offensiveness of it is why we don't see more fruit. Because we're afraid to say the truth.

I just talked to you about the conversation I had with our friend, and I said all the stuff I said. It's worse than you think. Man, this is looking pretty bad that I might not be in good shape with God. Yeah, you're not. It's worse than you think. That doesn't sound like a very friendly thing to say to someone, except when you say it's worse than you think, but Jesus is stronger than you think, right? When you give the answer to that sinfulness. So this is something that is very much happening in the church, this idea that We are looking for what we are. We go find what we are. We found this loving, accepting place, and this place accepts all kinds of people. It definitely accepts the broken. It accepts the downtrodden. And we're using— we're going to be an authentic church. We're going to be genuine. We're going to love, be people who live as loved. That was a catchphrase of a church in town. And we're going to make sure everybody has this sense that they're welcome here, that if somebody comes through the door, they're welcome here.

And then the question is, is the guys whispering like, "Hey, but when do you tell them about the condemnation and being children of wrath? And when do you tell them that there's a judgment coming? When do you tell them that part?" Because I can tell you, it doesn't look like they're being told that part. It looks like they come through the door expecting not to be told that part because the church wants to hide that part. And then lastly, on your notes, the church just becomes another shop. Another thing where we look for how many stars the church gets. What kind of Yelp review it gets, you know. We have a bad one, by the way. And it cracks me up. It cracks me up. And we owe that to our departed friend, John Ferraro. He didn't give the review. Somebody gave it because he knocked on their door when they had a no soliciting sign. Yeah. And it was great because I heard him talking to them. He said, I'm not selling anything. I'm here to share the gospel with you. And so that person left an ugly review of our church. This is a bad church. They ignored our no soliciting sign. Yeah. Someone else also that did not have a good experience at our church, by the way, they had bad experiences at lots of churches, but they left a really bad review on Amazon about us. We don't have anything on Amazon. It was a book about a doctrine, and because we hold to that doctrine, They blasted this church that holds to that doctrine. Yeah, we had nothing to do with the author. I've never— no one's even recommended the book. It was a J.I. Packer book. We don't even read J.I. Packer. Yeah, I'm sorry to laugh, but those are fun ones. Yeah.

So the church becomes a thing that people are shopping for, right? It becomes another thing that people, as consumers, are shopping for. Now I'm going to ask you, how has shopping changed in these last few years? It's very different, isn't it? Nobody talks about going to the mall. Nobody talks about— I was just telling the Sunday school class this morning, to get stuff, they're building a fulfillment center for Amazon in Modesto. So now we'll get overnight shipping now, for sure. So we become consumers who consume. And listen, that's not new. Remember Paul at Athens? For all the Athenians and foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. The newest thing is the best thing, right? Is it right? Well, if people are used to in your culture— I'll talk about decentralization of the church later, that that's another thing that has happened over the centuries, that where people have gotten disconnected from church and sort of done self-church or individual church. And now, internet church, right? I'll talk about that later.

But for now, I do want you to know that the same way that people pursue and peruse the internet now for everything else in their life— I'm going to go watch this video on how to, I don't know, how to make a steam engine. And then I'm going to go over here and learn how to bake bread. And then I'm going to go over here and I'm going to go shop. I'm going to start scrolling Amazon. I need to get the stuff for the car, but I also need some seasoning salt. And this is the way we live in our world, where everything is at our fingertips. And that's how we scroll. That's how we see the world as consumers. But what we might not realize is that culture out there and in here, us, I do it too, by the way. I do everything I just told you that I do. All of that definitely turns into our Christian life too.

So what do I do? Well, out there, I'll go to this store for meat. I'll go to that store for veggies. I'll order these things online. I'll get my hardware here, my auto parts there. We do exactly that with our Christianity. I'll get my sermons here, I'll get my music there, I'll get my Bible studies here, I'll get my devotionals here, and I'll just shop all around so that now I'm actually not doing anything at the local church. So not only am I not getting the resources that the other people I worship with and serve with are getting, so none of us are on the same page, we're not talking to each other about things, we're not conversing over our Christian life because I got this from YouTube and I got that from Spotify. You got the consumer mindset of the person, but then you also have the church, which is trying to keep up with all of that. We're trying to like package stuff quick. How do I compete with YouTube?

So this is a thing that's happening where the church is full of consumers because our culture is a consuming culture. And that person who comes through the door that thinks they're the pinnacle of creation, that thinks they need to find what they want, they need to find people that look like them and sound like them. They know that they need to find a church that accepts the broken, but the acceptance is an acceptance that doesn't have any change. So that's healthy, right? Like, that's healthy to go to a church that will never challenge you to be holy. And this is the state we find ourselves in where if you get up here and say God hates sin, that we're born children of wrath, that He's going to judge the world in righteousness, that's not a very welcoming message. In fact, it might be considered in some circles hate speech. And instead of it being seen for what it is, us trying to stand for the truth, It's us being judgmental, lack of openness, unwelcoming, unkind, unforgiving. That's what you are, Jonnie you're unforgiving, right? You preachers.

Do you ever notice that there's no book of 1 Corinthians in the Bible? Have you ever thought about that? For real though, I mean it. That there's no general letter to Christians in the Bible? I want you to think about it if you would. Do you think that was an accident? Did that one slip the Holy Spirit's mind? Oh, we left out the book that just is for every Christian. Why is it written to a group at Ephesus? Why are there two of these written to the people in Thessalonica? Why did they— we put in Galatians there. I mean, that covered multiple churches, but we should have had one that covered all the churches. There's a reason for that. There's a reason for that. And that is because the design of the local church is to be a local church. It was designed that way. It started that way, and it was intended to always be that way, that a local church would be a group of people gathered together with some sort of constitution. It doesn't have to be our constitution. Some sort of membership. It doesn't have to be the way we do membership, but some sort of accountability to a local group of people that you're accountable to. People that if something bad happens, you can take to the church for discipline, or people that if something horrible happens, you can weep with those who weep, right? These things that God designed only work in a local church paradigm. That's the only way they work.

Who do you go to if you and your friend are fighting and all you have is YouTube preachers? Who do you go to to settle the dispute? My friend offends me, so I'm going to go get on YouTube and do a comment. Hey, my friend over here, he's really saying some bad things about me and I'm offended. Can you get back with me? Like and subscribe, you know. So I'm saying this to you that it's quite possible we didn't see this pulling apart. I don't think they saw it right before. If you didn't know, this was something very indicative of Germany right before the Nazi regime. Right before it, there was a decentralization. You know what caused it, by the way? You know what caused the decentralization? Liberalism. Remember those names that Ellen knows? Wellhausen and Schleiermacher and all those guys? That all happened right before Nazism rose to power. Why? What was the effect? People now because Christianity was not seen as a foundational core reality and truth. It was being attacked at a core level to where now anybody's opinion, this teacher's opinion, that school's opinion on Christianity, we don't have to think of the Bible as authoritative. We don't have to think of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We don't have to think those things are not that important. Now we're all enlightened people.

So Christianity started to sort of have sort of like a tectonic shift. Where it wasn't centralized anymore. So that when Hitler finally came on the scene, it was essentially a non-religious country. It was a liberal country in religion. So nobody stood for ethics or values anymore. Look into that on your own, if you would. It's very much a part of what happened. Where Christianity was so amalgamous, it was such a thing that wasn't a core thing with people standing for truth. Well, guess what's happening in the United States right now? The same thing's happening right now in our country. Where Christianity is this vague thing, it's amorphous, has no form. The idea of local churches with pastors, with deacons, with groups of people gathering together in like-mindedness, studying the Word of God together. And I blame, by the way, all of this on the devil. I said this morning that I think the devil invented the internet, which I use every day. I love the internet. I use it all the time. So I'm a hypocrite. But follow me where I say if I could get everybody to think they're being super-duper Christian while never being involved in a local church. What would be a bigger victory than that? And by the way, they're not even using any real names. They're using screen names. They're never talking to somebody face-to-face. It's all online, right, through pixels. If I could just get people to think they are the highest level of Christian, never talking to another human about the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say that's an effective tool if you wanted to help Christians stay decentralized.

Did you know that 90% of people 90+ percent of people stay in their jobs less than 3 years now. 90%. That's a lot. There's no more, like, company men, guys that stick around companies. And the number isn't a whole lot different for church attendance and membership. People are life hopping and they're church hopping. So it's hard to get local. It's hard to be plugged in. And why is that important? If I'm right about that, it means that people are not being locked into a group where they're accountable. They're not looked after. They're not prayed for. They're not being discipled. So they're just buffet style trying to get their Christianity out there. And do you think that people will choose the things in their Christianity that challenge them the most or the things that make them the most happy? Are they going to pick a sermon that says how great they are? Are they going to pick the one that says they're the worst husband in the world? Yeah, I think we find people to say what we want them to say.

So I'll summarize and let you go. Or I guess I'll review and let you go. People have become their own masters, and I would add pastors. They become their own pastors too. They can essentially make the god of their church in their own image. If you can do that now because you're the pinnacle, and like I said last week, you are now the expositor, you're the one who gets to teach what the Bible means and says, then all you got to do now is open, put a shingle out, and open for business, and be what everybody wants, and then they'll come to your church. And say, "No grandmas allowed," and all the young people will come. And we have the exact music you want. We have the program for your children you want. We have the preaching that will— our pastor is like a comedian. He will make you laugh all day. Come and hear what you want to hear.

Now, all that we used to say about those churches, but it's happening everywhere now. It's happening everywhere. We're not immune from it. We're not immune from thinking we need to adjust to our culture and ask people to come and give a 5-star rating on Amazon for Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. We're this close to it. Not us. I don't mean us here in this room. I mean, these things are creeping into even conservative churches. These are things that are affecting churches. So right now, I heard a conservative person not long ago talking about the political mess out there with ICE and everything, talking about the danger of racism in the church. These things that they're saying, they're using the same language as the culture, trying to say that that's the only way we're going to reach the culture if we think like them. And mirror what they're thinking and make their priorities our priorities.

Well, it's true, you'll grow a church like that. You can absolutely grow a church like that. The question is, will it be a Christian church? Will it be a church of Christ or will it be a church of man? That's the question. Are we gonna hold fast to the Word? Are we gonna try to adapt to the culture? Try to keep the Word quiet so it's not offensive when they come through the door. Try to not make the gospel include anything about sin. Let's just talk about acceptance. Let's talk about love and forgiveness. Forgiveness from what? Don't talk about that. Get that in there. That's the quiet part. Don't talk about what we're forgiven for and why. Don't even talk about the fact that God is the center of the image-bearing thing, that God made you in His image for Him, not for you. You're not the end goal. You're not the main character. I'm going to still think about that thing on the website. Zach says no.

Let's pray. Father, we're thankful that You are the main character. We're thankful that Your word makes it clear that man's problem isn't that he is lonely or needs companionship. His problem is sin. And we thank you, Father, that you have the answer to that problem in Christ. And it is true, Father, we definitely don't want to be a people that lack compassion. We do want to show compassion and forgiveness. But Father, we want to make sure and preach the whole counsel of God and never leave out that you are the central figure, that your glory is most important, that holiness is something that we can't be without and expect to see you. So help us keep those important things where they need to be in our church. In Jesus' name, amen.

Can you stand, please?