Pete Thompson spoke to us from Romans 3:9-20. STEALTH gospels are in fact SELF gospels; subtle distortions of the true gospel of Jesus Christ that encourage us to put ourselves at the centre of the universe.
Key Verse
“As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.” ”
Bible Readings: Romans 3:9-20
Outline:
intro: this little church went to market
1. the first casualty: sin
2. the second casualty: grace
3. the third casualty: God himself
conclusion: this little church stayed home
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Thanks Pete for delivering that message this morning. I appreciated your willingness to say the hard things that maybe we don’t want to hear. I wonder if one aspect of the gospel that evangelical churches have lost sight of is the alternative to heaven, hell. We love talking about heaven and seem to cringe, fearful of being labeled as fire and brimstone guy, whenever we hear somebody talking about hell. Is this an inconvenient truth that doesn’t fit with our marketing strategy? Any thoughts out there?
Hi Graeme
Not sure how many other bites you’ll get with your question – activity on the site has been pretty low lately – largely because we haven’t been posting much!
I think I agree with you – “evangelical churches” (of which we are one) have largely left talk of hell out of their preaching and I suspect this is for similar reasons to some of those I talked about on Sunday – namely that talking about hell (or sin) is very confronting. We’re afraid of coming across as judgmental and thereby undermining the gospel. Instead, we represent God as non-judgmental and thereby undermine the gospel!
We forget that Christ came once to offer forgiveness of sin and will return a second time to judge the living and the dead. And for those who didn’t receive his offer the first time around, hell – an eternal future totally removed from the goodness and love of God – will be the result.
Very sobering. And in God’s mercy & grace, the sort of message that can actually wake not-yet-believers from their slumber and cause them to truly seek salvation and find it in Jesus. And for us believers, surely its a good thing to be reminded of what God’s mercy has saved us FROM – like the lady in Luke 7, won’t it cause us to love Jesus even more?
Absolutely. I sometimes wish the reason for my conversion had something to do with realising the enormity of the gift of Jesus on the cross but the reality was that I just didn’t want to go to hell. However Jesus gives this as one of his arguments for putting your trust in him so I figure if it is good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.
Dear Pete, does this count as keeping in touch? Ha ha. Oh yeah, public forum. Hi everyone (Graeme)
What has been bugging me for quite some time now is a subtle change that Matthias Media made to it’s “2 Ways to Live” tract. Those of you unfamiliar with it will find it on their website. When I was originally flogged into memorising this in my first year of uni back in the dark ages (1991), we included the full text of Romans 3:10-12, including “together they have become worthless”, when we used it in our “cold turkey” evangelism on campus at UNSW.
Now, mystery of mysteries, about 5 years ago, they changed EVERY COPY of this tract in only ONE place, and that was the verse of “Box 2″, Romans 3:10-12, where they removed the words “together they have become worthless.” I noticed, but I’m betting few others did.
Then I heard a tantalising reference to this about the same time on a CD, where a member of the MM staff said “we had to take that bit out, because of the current problems with that phrase. We felt it was unhelpful, and introduced a block in the evangelistic process, which was easily resolved [by removing this verse]“. !!!! Huh?
Can you tell me, or even surmise, why? I imagine it is the word “worthless” that’s the sticking point, but then when we talk to the non-Christian about sin and total depravity (not those words either, folks), how do we communicate the idea if we have to censor scripture?
Don’t have a headache over this. Next stop on my bull rampage is MM itself. Wherever they hang out currently.
Hi Bev
Not sure if it counts as keeping in touch but still nice to hear from you!
You’re right – I hadn’t noticed the change in 2WTL!
I guess the reality is that whenever we present the gospel we make choices about what we include and exclude and about the particular words we use. Personally, I’m convinced that people will only respond wholheartedly to a wholehearted gospel. For me this would include showing people just how bad things are outside of Christ so that the hope we offer in Christ can be seen for how truly and amazingly gracious it is.
I really love the parable at the end of Luke 7 which I think illustrates this so well: “her MANY sins have been forgiven – for she loved MUCH. but he who has been forgiven little loves little”