A Closer Look at Luke 9.23
For the past year or so I have been constantly drawn back to and challenged by the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 9.23:
And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. (Luk 9:23 NAS)
Hard to Believe or Not?
I am currently enjoying the great and wonderful privilege of leading the men of Sovereign Grace Bible Chapel, the church I serve as Pastor-Teacher, in a study of John MacArthur’s outstanding book Hard to Believe. This book is a Biblically based challenge to the modern-day heresy of easy believism. It is certainly one of MacArthur’s finest books and one I highly recommend. The whole premise of the book and our study is that many people have shied away from sharing the Biblical Gospel because it is so hard and offensive and have replaced it with a so-called gospel that easy and inoffensive. What gospel do you believe and present? Continue reading
Repentance Revisited
In the past I have written several articles on the matter of repentance and the Gospel. My contention is that the clear teaching of Scripture is that a gospel of no repentance is no gospel. In other words, if we are going to give someone an accurate and faithful presentation of the Biblical Gospel, we must let the person with whom we are sharing know that their response to the Gospel must include repentance. If they do not repent of their sins, they will not be saved. Continue reading
Whatever Happened to Repentance?
One of the great joys that I have as the Pastor-Teacher of a local church is the joy of going out every Saturday morning to do door-to-door evangelism in our community. It is a thrill to be used by the Lord in taking His Gospel to unbelievers. One the interesting scenarios that we have encountered as we have gone out has to do with those occasions when the person who answers the door professes to be a Christian. Since we are fully aware that there are a great many who make false professions of faith [see Matthew 7.21-23], we always probe a bit further with these people in order to determine, to the best that we are able, if their profession is true or not. We will ask them on what they base their assertion that they are a Christian. We will ask them to share their testimony. We will ask them on what basis God is going to let them into heaven. What we have discovered is that very, very few say anything about repentance. In fact, most of the people we have encountered in this way base their belief that they are Christian on either their inherent goodness ["I am a good person"] or their works. From our perspective, this is both good and bad. It is bad in the sense that many people who profess to be Christian are completely ignorant of the Biblical Gospel, and therefore, are deceived into thinking that they are saved when they are not. It is good in the sense that it affords us an opportunity to share the Biblical Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with them. Are they all then saved? No. Do they all even allow us to share the Gospel? No. But some do, and our hope is that God will be pleased to show that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. Continue reading
Turning Away from the Truth
In 2 Timothy 4 Paul writes these penetrating words:
[2 Timothy 4.1-4] I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.
Along with the strong charge to be faithful to preach the Word of God is the solemn declaration that the day will come when people within the walls of local churches will fully and completely reject the sound preaching and teaching of God’s Word and will instead surround themselves with so-called preachers who will tickle their sinful and self-centered ears. People will deliberately turn away from the truth and they will find teachers who will feed their appetite for lies. The situation that Paul speaks of here is alive and thriving in America. A very clear example of this is the recent action of the Presbyterian Church USA to now openly condone what God so thoroughly condemns. What that apostate denomination has done is to take the truth of God’s Word and throw on the rubbish heap and replace it with the lies of the devil. Their action is nothing but a turning away from the Truth; it is a full and complete rejection of God and His Word.
Now I fully realize that the example of the PCUSA is a rather extreme example and one that causes a great many professing Christians a high degree of consternation, but what of the myriad of examples of turning away from the Truth that are more subtle or sophistication and openly embraced. What I have in mind here are all of those so-called churches that have replaced the preaching of Gods’ Word with some sort of performance; that have shelved doctrine for drama; that have removed the confrontation of sin and replaced it with comedy. All of that and so much more comes under the umbrella of entertainment that hovers over so much of what passes for evangelicalism in America today. People do not want to go to church and be challenged by a sermon from the Bible, they want to be entertained by professional performers. And how do the churches respond to this desire? They give the people what they want because most churches are more concerned about attendance and finances than they are about Biblical faithfulness. This is one of the reasons why so many people have never even heard of expository preaching. And this is also why so many other people who heard of expository preaching want no part of it. They want to come to a church service and be placated and petted and entertained. They do not want to be challenged and confronted.
I would dare say that the majority of large and numerically growing evangelical churches are not bastions of Biblical truth, but dispensers of worldly entertainment and pop psychology. That is certainly the case in the town where I live. I do not know of a single large or numerically growing evangelical church in my community where the Word of God takes center stage and is being faithfully and unapologetically expounded week in and week out. I know of those where entertainment and worldliness rules the day, but not the Truth. I suspect that this is true across this nation. Is it any wonder that professing Christians are so ill-equipped to deal with the various issues of life? They have not been taught how to do so from the Word of God. They have been entertained by music and dramas and other performances, but they have not be taught God’s Word.
If entertainment driven churches were to suddenly put an end to the entertainment and start giving people a steady diet of Biblical Truth, they would soon be empty. Mark Dever notes in The Deliberate Church that whatever it is that a churches uses to win people, that is what they are going to have to use to keep them. If a church wins people with entertainment, they are not going to keep them with the Word. People won to a church with entertainment will simply move on to the next church with great entertainment. The end result of all of this is a massive amount of unregenerate church goers whose only concern is to have their ears tickled and to leave the church service on an emotional high.
Why did Paul tell Timothy to be faithful to preach the Word rather than to work hard to build up some sort of entertainment driven ministry? The answer is because the Gospel is not found in entertainment or performances; the Gospel is found in the Word of God. What is it that unbelievers need to hear? They need to hear the Gospel. They do not need to be entertained to death; they need to be confronted with Gospel of God’s Word. May we come to realize this before it is too late.
Going with the Gospel
On the first Lord’s Day in June I plan to begin preaching through the wonderful letter of Paul to the Ephesians. I absolutely love the book of Ephesians. It is such a powerful and comprehensive epistle. It is full of encouragement and edification. It is challenging and it is fully relevant to the lives of believers in the 21st Century. As one who holds to the doctrines of grace [or the five points of Calvinism], I am always excited that Ephesians begins with a grand and glorious treatment of God’s sovereignty in the matter of salvation. In the first chapter of that letter, Paul writes of God’s election, predestination, and adoption of all who would ever be saved. He makes it clear that this work of God took place before creation and that it redounds to the glory and honor of God Himself. I always find great encouragement in those Biblical truths.
As a Calvinist, I am very much aware that one of the charges that is frequently made against Calvinists is that we are not evangelistic. There is a notion that somehow holding to sound doctrine in the area of soteriology eliminates the need for evangelism or cancels out God’s call to evangelize. Sadly, this charge proves to be all too true in far too many cases. I have been preaching a series of sermons to the wonderful congregation of Sovereign Grace Bible Chapel where I serve as Pastor-Teacher on the matter of evangelism and our call to take the gospel to those who are unsaved. A recent visitor to our church who has a Dutch Reformed background made it abundantly clear to me that he was no fan of such a message. In fact, he was far more concerned over the fact that I used the term "gee" in my sermon than he was with the challenge to be evangelistic. Let me be clear, I should not have used the term "gee," but the gentleman’s response reminded me of what Jesus said about straining out a gnat in order to swallow a camel. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is all too common among those who are reformed or Calvinistic. Little if any thought is given to evangelism, but we readily embrace the role of word police.
If we who are Calvinistic really believe what Paul wrote in Ephesians 1, we should have great encouragement in the matter of evangelism. We are told in verse 4 that God chose us [believers] in Christ before the foundation of the world. What could possibly be more reassuring than to know that as we go out into the world with the gospel, there will be those whom God has chosen who will hear our proclamation of the gospel and be saved. To be sure, there will be those who hear and reject, but there will also be those who hear and who repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than kill evangelism, the belief in the sovereignty of God in the matter of salvation should empower it. If you do not believe that God has chosen certain individuals for salvation and that He will most certainly save them, then how can you have any confidence that anyone will be saved? Election and predestination and adoption encourage and empower evangelism; they do not kill it.
I know that many Calvinists would say "Amen" to these thoughts, but what do our actions say about our attitude toward evangelism. I am ashamed to write this, but it has been my experience that many who embrace the doctrines of grace and who believe that we are to share the gospel with unbelievers make it a practice to only share with those unbelievers who happen to attend their church services. For them, the call to evangelize has been reinterpreted from going into the world with the gospel, to simply telling people that they will hear the gospel if they come to church. "Go ye" has become ‘Ya’ll come." If we are to be faithful to the Word of God, however, we must realize that the command of Christ in Matthew 28.18-20, Mark 16.15-16, Acts 1.8 is to take the gospel into the world; it is a call to "go" with the gospel. This means going door to door into our communities with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must take the gospel to unbelievers and not simply tell them to come and get it.
I do not want to give anyone the wrong impression about my own obedience to the Great Commission. For the overwhelming majority of my pastoral ministry I have been blatantly disobedient to the Lord in this regard. I have not gone door to door with the gospel; I have made little if any effort to "go" with the gospel. At the same time, however, let me also say that I am in the process of repenting of this great evil. I have made a commitment to go out and engage in door to door evangelism each Saturday and by God’s grace I have been able to do so for the past month. It has been a great blessing to have my wonderful wife going out evangelizing with me. This is only a start, but at least it is a start. In that time God has allowed me eight opportunities to share the gospel with unbelievers. While I have not yet seen anyone with whom I have shared repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I know that I am now being obedient and the seeds of the gospel are being sown and God will save those whom He has chosen from the foundation of the world.
I write all of this as an encouragement to those who hold to the doctrines of grace. We are called by God to go into the world of unbelievers with the gospel and we have the assurance that there will be those who will hear and who will repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let that Biblical truth spur us on to even greater obedience to "go with the gospel."
The Missing Element
Yesterday [May 16, 2010] I had the wonderful privilege of preaching from Galatians 1.6-9 to the body of Sovereign Grace Bible Chapel where I serve as Pastor. As I preached from that passage I shared that there are many so-called gospels that are false, but only one true gospel and that is the Biblical gospel. Any so-called gospel that deviates from the Biblical gospel in any way is a false gospel. If anything is added to the Biblical gospel, the result is a false gospel. If anything is removed from the Biblical gospel, the result is a false gospel. It does not matter how subtle the change may be; any change results in a false gospel. The Galatian churches were being thrown into a state of confusion because of the preaching of a false gospel by the Judiazers. The church today is being thrown into a state of confusion because of the preaching of many false gospels. The preponderance of false gospels is one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, why so many local churches are in such a sad and sorry state.
At the risk of overgeneralizing the situation, I find that the church today really is in a very sad state of affairs. Consider the following questions.
It certainly seems to be the case that most local churches are characterized more by weakness and worldliness than by the power of the Holy Spirit and holiness. Why is this so?
Why is there such a dearth of commitment in so many local churches today?
Why are there so many professing Christians who have little, if any, enthusiasm for God and the things of God?
Why are there so many people who make the claim to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ who are so miserable and unhappy?
Why are some completely uninterested in church membership?
Why is there so much church hopping and church shopping?
Why is there so little zeal for evangelism and the study of God’s Word and living holy lives?
In short, why is there so much deadness to the things of God?
The reason for all of this is because there are so many spiritual corpses in local churches. Spiritual corpses are those who are nothing more than names on church rolls and semi-warm bodies in church pews.
Why are they spiritual corpses? The reason they are spiritual corpses is because they are still dead in their trespasses and sins [Ephesians 2.1].
Why are they still dead in their trespasses and sins? The reason they are still dead in their trespasses and sins is because they have believed a false gospel; they have not believed the one and only gospel that saves. These people have heard and believed a gospel, but they gospel they both heard and believed is not the true Biblical gospel, the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation [Romans 1.16], but they believed a false gospel which may give them a false sense of security, but most certainly has not saved them from the wrath to come.
The situation described above is most apparent in the evangelical world when the gospel that is being presented is the false gospel of easy believism. When people are told that all they have to do to be saved is to "ask Jesus into their heart" or "accept Jesus as their personal Savior" or repeat the words to a so-called "sinner’s prayer," they are being told a lie. That lie is the lie of easy believism and that lie is leading untold numbers straight to hell.
Easy believism is a deadly poison that has infected a great many so-called evangelical churches. This pernicious plight is fairly easy to detect by what it removes from the Biblical gospel. Easy believism takes a necessary component of the Biblical gospel and throws it on the theological rubbish heap. What is that element? What is the missing element of easy believism? That element is repentance.
There is a fairly large evangelical church in my community. The church is well-known all around town. A search of their website will not turn up even a single reference to repentance. This sort of thing is not at all uncommon. There are many, many instances in which the matter of repentance has been removed, obscured, or minimized. But the truth of the matter, from a Biblical perspective, is that if you remove the necessity of repentance from the gospel or downplay it in some way, you do not have a gospel that saves. At the same time, a person may pray to "receive Christ" a thousand times, but if there is no repentance, there is no salvation. It is this truth that makes this matter so serious.
Consider the following passages of Scripture:
Matthew 3.2.
Matthew 4.17.
Luke 13.3, 5.
Acts 2.38.
Acts 11.17-18.
Acts 17.30-31.
Read each of these passages and what you will discover is that repentance is absolutely necessary in order for a person to be saved. Where there is no repentance, there is no salvation.
My hope and prayer is that every local church and every genuine Christian would have the same sort of zeal for evangelism that is seen in Paul [see Romans 9.1-5]. I pray that we would see that we are literally surrounded on every side by unbelievers. I pray that we would understand that the only hope for those unbelievers is the gospel and I pray that we would be faithful to share the gospel with them. I also pray that the gospel that we share is the true and Biblical gospel: "repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
I urge you, do not minimize repentance; do not let the call to repentance remain the missing element in so many gospel proclamations. In short, do not embrace a false gospel.
For those who are reading this post who object to the necessity of repentance for salvation, let me encourage you to get and read the wonderful book, Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel by Richard Owen Roberts. You can read my review of that book at this link [or just scroll down to the previous post].
Book Review: Repentance – The First Word of the Gospel
A necessary component of the gospel that is sadly missing in many definitions, descriptions, and presentations of the gospel is repentance. Simply put, if repentance is not a part of the gospel proclamation, there is no gospel proclamation. At the same time, if repentance is not a part of the response to the gospel, there is no salvation. This vital point has been by many for a number of years now and the tragic result has been that church after church has added to its membership men, women, and children who are yet unregenerate. The spiritual weakness of so many churches shows this to be true. There are many who are members of churches and faithful members at that, who have never been converted because they have never come to the place of true, genuine Biblical repentance.
The book, Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel by Richard Owen Roberts is a very timely and necessary book that was written to address the problem spoken of above. This book is a challenge to the modern notion that a person can be saved without genuine repentance. Roberts puts forth the Biblical case that such a thing is impossible. If a person is to be saved, he or she must repent. There is other way.
Drawing on the revealed will of God as recorded in His Word, Roberts proves beyond question that repentance is necessary for salvation. Readers are challenged time and time again to examine themselves to see if they have genuinely repented. Churches are challenged to make sure that they are faithful to proclaim the necessity of repentance. The author also makes it clear that repentance is not a one-time event, but the ongoing pattern of the life of the believer. Christians continue to sin and they need to continue to repent.
[EDIT]: In my haste to post this review, I neglected to mention one of the strongest of its many strong points and that is the way in the author goes to great lengths to give his readers a Biblical definition of repentance. This book is not about how a particular man or theological persuasion defines repentance. Rather, it is about what God says in His Word about the matter. In order words, when it comes to the matter of repentance, what the author is very careful to do is to continually confront his readers with what God says. Any argument then, must be with God and not the author. The book is thoroughly Biblical, every page is bathed in God’s Word. This is what makes the book so powerful.
This is the best book on repentance I have ever come across. It should be a must read for everyone who professes to belong to Christ. The Biblical message that the book highlights needs to be sounded loudly and clearly for all to hear.
I urge you to get this book and be prepared to be challenged.
Rating: [Rating:5/5] [an absolute must read].
Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel may be purchased here.
Commendation and Blessing
Several weeks ago my family and I spent a few days in the Orlando area. Orlando is only slightly more than two hours from our home in SW Florida, so it makes for a convenient get-away. We spent the better part of two days at Sea World; we make our first family visit to a Cold Stone Creamery; we celebrated my birthday and had a good time together as a family. The highlight of our time in Orlando, however, had nothing to do with tourist attractions, but rather, was the time that we spent with the Pastor and the wonderful folks of Cornerstone Baptist Church. Cornerstone is an incredible church. They are thoroughly Calvinistic in their doctrine, yet they are the most evangelistic church I have ever encountered, proving that Calvinism does not kill evangelism. As the Pastor of a relatively small church, I have reached out to other Pastors in the past for encouragement and fellowship but my efforts proved unfruitful as I simply did not encounter any Pastor who took a genuine interest in us and our struggles. My experience with Cornerstone and their Pastor, Dr. David Downs was refreshingly otherwise. From the first time we spoke on the telephone, Dr. Downs demonstrated a genuine concern for our church and a willingness to do what he could to encourage and help us. Our face to face meeting was no different. Here is a man of God with a growing congregation and many, many responsibilities, yet he took the better part of a day to talk with me and encourage me and offer suggestions on how I can help the church I pastor to move in the right direction. It was a time of great blessing and I thank God for the time spent with Dr. Downs. My family and I also had the privilege of worshiping at Cornerstone on the Lord’s Day and that too was a great blessing. Cornerstone is a church that is very serious about the things of God. Their worship was lively and heart-felt. The Word of God was boldly and faithfully proclaimed. All in all, it was a great blessing to worship with that congregation. I highly encourage anyone who visits the Orlando area to make plans to worship on the Lord’s Day at Cornerstone. I have no doubt that you will be blessed as my family and I were blessed.
A Prayer for Boldness
With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak [Ephesians 6.18-20].
Paul wrote these words while in prison. He did not write these words as a free man, but as one who was ‘an ambassador in chains’. What Paul wrote and requested of the believers in Ephesus is simply incredible. After giving them an exhortation on the matter of prayer in general, he asks them to pray for him and to pray for him in a particular fashion. He did not ask them to pray for his release from prison. He did not ask them to pray that God would give him an easy and carefree life. He did not ask them to pray for his physical health or material wealth. He asked them to pray for him that God would give him utterance and open his mouth to proclaim the gospel with boldness. I cannot read these words without being absolutely overwhelmed with a deep sense of both amazement and conviction. If anyone was ever a faithful and bold witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was Paul. If anyone was ever obedient in the opening of his mouth to declare the gospel of Christ, it was Paul. Yet here he is asking the Ephesian Christians to pray for him and to pray that God would open his mouth and that he would be bold to proclaim the gospel. If Paul felt it necessary to ask for others to pray for him in that way, how much more necessary is it that we ask others to pray in a similar fashion for us and that we pray for others in this way? I would say that we stand in infinitely greater need of boldness in witnessing than did Paul. If that is the case, and I most certainly do believe that it is the case, do we pray this way for ourselves? Do we ask others to pray for us in this way? Do we pray this for other believers? Do these words of Paul express the desire of our hearts?
The state of the world is no different today than it was 2,000 years ago when Paul was alive. Believers are surrounded on every side by fallen men and women in a fallen world. Though the names and faces have changed, the spiritual condition has not. Nor has the answer. What was it that unsaved people in the first century needed to hear and believe? What was the message that Paul faithfully and tirelessly brought to those unbelievers whom he encountered? The message from Paul was always the same; it was the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s message to unbelievers in the first century was "Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." If you read any of Paul’s epistles you will find this to be true. Lost people today need to hear the same thing that Paul proclaimed two millennia ago: the good news that salvation is found in Jesus Christ. What believers need is the open mouths and boldness that Paul writes of in Ephesians 6. We do not need to pray for cleverness or creativity or ingenuity; we need to pray that God will open our mouths and give us the boldness to proclaim the gospel.
Again, I find these words to be very convicting, because it is not often that I pray that God will open my mouth and give me the boldness to share the gospel with unbelievers. I strongly suspect that this the case with many other believers as well. We know that we are surrounded by unbelievers; we know that the only hope for unbelievers is that they repent and believe in Christ; we know the only way they are going to realize this is if someone comes along the preach the gospel to them; we know that we have been called to be the ones by whom the gospel is preached to those unbelievers. In spite of knowing all of this, there is a tendency on the part of most Christians to be hesitant, resistant, or downright obstinate when it comes to sharing the gospel. We try to cover our sin of disobedience with all manner of flimsy excuses: we do not have the necessary training; we do not know any unbelievers; evangelism is best left to the trained professionals; I am just too shy to talk to other people about Jesus, and so forth. These excuses are shameful and sinful. The fact of the matter is that if we are not involved in evangelism, we are in sin. Hence, there is a great need for each of us to pray that utterance may be given to us in the opening of our mouths to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.
I urge you to pray that for yourself. I urge you to ask others to pray that on your behalf. I urge you to pray that for others. What a difference an army of open mouthed bold witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ would make in this lost, dark, and hell-bound world!
One Heretic Calls Out Another Heretic
This simply defies all logic! Heretical preacher-evangelist Benny Hinn calls out heretical preacher-cheerleader Joel Osteen for Osteen’s failure to tell Larry King that Jesus Christ is the one and only way of salvation. This is the same Benny Hinn who once proclaimed that there are nine members of the Trinity. In this 10 minute sermon [if that is what you call it] excerpt posted on YouTube, Hinn rails against Osteen to great applause from his audience. Over and over again, he tells the crowd that Jesus is the only way of salvation, which, of course if true, and each time the crowd goes wild with applause. It made me wonder if those who gave such applause are as enthusiastic about telling unbelievers that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation as they are about applauding Benny Hinn.
Welcome to my blog. I am Mark Fuss and I serve as Pastor-Teacher of Sovereign Grace Bible Chapel in Englewood, FL. I have been married to my wonderful wife, Kristy, since 1986 and we have three beautiful daughters and one precious granddaughter.
