Lack of reverence, lack of Jesus

We hear a lot these days from those wondering why the church is so ineffective, why our culture is falling apart, and why even “our own people”, those we believe to be fellow Christians, are very often falling into sin, especially the youth. Many answers have been given, many attempts to keep and bring people into line have been tried, but somehow things appear to be getting worse.

Listening to Ravi Zacharias’ message “A Fish Out of Water” (part one, two)while doing laundry and ironing yesterday morning, my attention was caught by Ravi saying,

Immorality is always preceded by impiety. People are immoral because they are first impious, and not the other way around. Immorality in our streets is because there is irreverence in our hearts before God.

Impiety breeds immorality. Flippancy toward God provides fertile ground for sinful living and caving in to our sinful nature.

If one properly fears and reverences God, and comes before and lives before Him with the proper respect and piety due Him, the morality aspect of life is a little easier to rein in. This isn’t to say one will suddenly become an angel, because our new creation spirits are still trapped in dead, dying, corrupted earthly bodies. But considering our Father and His stunning abundance of grace and mercy, considering His Son, Jesus, who paid the price for our evil and bought us with His blood, makes it easier, or at least more incumbent upon us, to turn from sin and the ways of the flesh: for His sake, as a sign of love and respect for Him. Moreover, if we humble ourselves and come to the holy, perfect God with grief over the sins we do commit and confess them to Him, He forgives us.

Chances are you’re nodding in agreement with these basic Christian truths and understandings.

But what is going on in your church? It seems to me that there is a lot of irreverence and lack of fearing God in our churches these days. I’m not just talking about horrifying stuff like this or this, this…or this, of course, though that’s a big part of it. It’s the us-focused music, the moralizing sermons that differ from Oprah or the latest self-help tome only because we’ve thrown in a Bible verse or two, the games and entertainment and false advertising geared toward entertaining us and feeding the goats while the sheep stumble about famished and sick. I wonder if God really finds all of this entertaining and pleasing, when souls are dropping into hell every moment and we’re wasting time singing Ben Folds Five songs Sunday morning.

There is no sense of fear or reverence in church today. It’s all warm and fuzzy and happy and soft, in total opposition to the actual Word of God. We’ve forgotten that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that reverence toward Him is our duty, not just something we do when feeling particularly penitent or weepy because that message comparing all-meat pizza to His grace was so touching. When pastors are showing up at the pulpit dressed like Superman for the whole sermon (this has happened so many times you’ll have no problem finding stories & videos to prove it), where is the reverence? Where is the piety and respect and honour due to God? It’s not there.

One generation has eagerly chucked this requirement, this due reverence to the Creator, in favour of easy “messages”, “sermons” that stroke our egos or at the very least don’t unsettle us, for entertaining the masses and becoming “seeker friendly”, which is nowhere in the Bible. Church is for the body of Christ, it is for the sheep and NOT for the goats. We need to get over this mentality fast, because goats are coming in for the fun stuff, sheep are reverting into goats, and still other sheep eventually give up and leave, hungry, sick, wounded, and unattended to by the fold which God expected to care for them as they cared for it. As a result, upcoming generations have no concept of piousness, of reverence. Some read the writings of the Puritans and Edwards and Spurgeon and the Bible (of course) and realize something is missing.

Others walk headlong into sin, into a Godless life, some losing the salvation they once had. Without any recognition of the need to rightly honour God, and that there is a right and wrong way to honour Him, they become immoral. Or, rather, give into their immoral flesh, having abandoned the guidepost of Christ and God.

There is no reverence for God and His statutes, no piety and healthy fear in our churches. It’s gone. It is not there, and then we wonder why our teenagers are sleeping around and getting knocked up, why divorce rates are so high in the church, why so many church members and pastors are addicted to pornography, why we have feminists saying ridiculous things about women being the same as men when it’s clearly contrary to the Bible…? Hello?

Not only that, but I think a lot of this gussying-up of the Gospel says one thing very clearly: too many churches in this country are ashamed of the Gospel. They’re embarrassed by that old rugged cross, smeared with blood and hair and death. They wince when the Resurrection comes up, afraid of what others will think when they say yes, they believe God came to earth in the flesh, lived a perfectly sinless life, died as a cursed man on a tree, and then actually came back to life. They’re ashamed to admit that we are all evil sinners, every one of us, deserving of hell, with no excuse. THAT is lame even to the church. The world will laugh at them, they know it, so they shove Jesus and the cross and the way to salvation to the back of the stage and try to hide Him, hide His scars, with “fun” “entertaining” “seeker-friendly” detritus.

America’s churches are totally ashamed of the Gospel, or they wouldn’t feel like they have to obscure its simplicity and glaring Truth with glitter and lights and skits and rock bands and dancing (good, bad, or ugly). Now, none of those things are inherently wrong, but they’ve clearly taken the place of and are used to soften the blow of and obfuscate the Truth…Truth which is only hinted at, never broadly and clearly explained, lest we offend a sinning sheep or become boring and un-fun to the goats (and the sheep). The Bible doesn’t talk about using these things…it talks about itself, about the Word, and the Word being made flesh…Jesus Christ. The Word was not made into a skit or play or movie clip montage.

What did Peter do? Paul? Stephen? Timothy? John? Jesus? They didn’t put on shows! They preached, they preached the Word, the Truth, and they never prettified it or “made it relevant” or any of that! Did they use examples that made the high things of God understandable to men? Yes. Was their teaching all example and tiny nugget of Truth? Absolutely not. It was the other way around.

American’s churches have said by our actions that though Jesus is the Word, the Word made flesh, the Word made a sacrificial lamb of propitiation, He is not good enough for us anymore.

Oh yes. It’s true. All the uglier because it’s true.

The sin and immorality and decay in the church isn’t because we aren’t cool enough or because we’re too “lame”. And because the church actually is lame, having abandoned and shut away its Source of life and strength, the culture and society at large has also decayed more and more. Our strength and life come not from numbers, awards, small groups, seekers…it comes from God.

The church has lost its saltiness, and the world is crumbling around us in every way thanks to a lack of moral grounding, because the church has forsaken Jesus Christ and the grand, terrible truth of His love and the Father for…for what? Cool bands? Light shows? The praise of and looking “cool” to the world and believers judging the church and its “products” by worldly standards?

America’s churches have looked upon our holy God, from the place of authority that is the church which He has entrusted to us, and flatly said that we are ashamed of what He has done for us. This is heartbreaking and wrenching and terrible!

There will be no softening of the Truth on Judgement Day, America.

Please stop. Please stop the silliness, the tawdriness, the frippery and foolishness. Please preach the unadulterated Word of God.

Note: In a comment last night, Casey mentioned this post of his that is along similar lines and very much worth the reading.