Recently President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr spoke on the issue of Russia and the course of actions that may be taken should they take military action before a said date. In the briefing President Biden warned of not only sanctions but “the moral outrage that the rest of the world will visit upon them.” Biden went on to state that many issues divide America but “standing up to Russian aggression is not one of them. The American people are united.”
There’s an awful lot we could unpack from this statement, but I would just like to focus a moment on our country, as President Biden portrays it, what it’s united on, and its apparent moral standing based on his two statements from above.
Do you really think that Russia cares about the “moral outrage” that will be visited upon them by a country so morally bankrupt that it kills an average 600K babies every year (number reported), never mind an undevout sitting President who supports that endeavor because he doesn’t want to “push his morals on others” and make sure everyone has the right to ensure their health how they see fit? Really? He’s got no problem issuing mandates in support of pushing his or his parties’ “morals” on our nation when it comes to that matter of health. The sanctity of God given life has become nothing more than a mere talking point thrown around every two to four years by political opponents (I don’t care what your political affiliation is).
“There are many issues that divide our nation and our world, but standing up to Russian aggression is not one of them.” Give me a break! We can’t even stand up to the aggression that burns down block after block, seizes control of cities, places the lives of innocent people in constant fear, cripples municipalities, stalls commerce, and upends the normal everyday lives of law abiding citizens—all while condemning this nation and its founding beliefs, destroying instead of building up, cursing instead of blessing, lauding injustice while they shout down diplomacy, and sacrificing unity within diversity on the heretical altar of some social justice gospel narrative.
The modern transgender movement has systematically dismantled the reality of two sexes. The church that once held transgender theologies as contradictory to foundational Christian doctrine now celebrates the ordination of “transgender” and “transsexual” individuals into the clergy as one of God’s gifts. Not only have we raised and fostered a society that no longer knows who it is, what it is, or whose they are, we’ve raised and fostered “Christians” that have no grip on reality when it comes to their true identity. No problem, here’s a somewhat comprehensive list that you can choose from: Agender, Aliagender, Androgyne, Aporagender, Bigender, Binarism, Body dysphoria, Boi, Butch, Cisgender, Cishet, Cisnormativity, Cissexism, Demiboy, Demigender, demigirl, demienby, demitrans, Dyadic, Feminine-of-center, Feminine-presenting, Femme, Female-to-male (FTM),Gender apathetic, Gender binary, Gender dysphoria, Gender expansive, Gender expression, Gender identity ,Gender-neutral, Gender nonconforming, Gender variant, Genderfluid, genderf*ck, Genderqueer, Gendervoid, Graygender, Intergender, Intersex, Masculine-of-center, Masculine-presenting, Masculine, Maverique, Male-to-female (MTF), bigender, trigender, pangender, polygender, Neutrois, Nonbinary, Novigender, Omnigender, Pangender, Polygender, Social dysphoria, Soft butch, Stone butch, Third gender, Transfeminine, Transgender or trans, Transmasculine, Transitioning, Transsexual, Trigender, and Two-spirit.
According to Ligonier, a poll among “Evangelicals” in the US finds: 13% strongly believe and 21% somewhat say science disproves the Bible, 15% say gender is a choice, 38% say Jesus was not God, 33% say God accepts all religions, 62% mock the Holy Spirit as “the force”, 66% say people are by nature—good, and 75% say God created Jesus first (not that they are coeternal). A combined 51% of Evangelicals and other population believe the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn’t apply today, 44% undermine the Christian assurance of salvation by questioning the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God, only 75% believe God counts a person as righteous not because of one’s works but only because of one’s faith in Jesus Christ. Only 50% disagree Churches must provide entertaining worship services if they want to be effective, only 83% believe the Bible has the authority to tell us what we must do, 80% still believe Abortion (the intentionally murder of a human being) is a sin, and 58% say religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.
What I found crazy from this was that fact that 100% of the same Evangelicals polled strongly agreed with the following statements: #1. The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. #2. It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior. #3. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin. #4. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation. But… only 94% agreed that “God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake”, and “There is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”
Moral outrage…Do we look or operate as a county fit for moral outrage? What’s our standard? Where is it set? What is the reed you measure it by? What is yours? You, reading this—what is it?
I’m not some super pious dude. I’m not some grade “A” Christian. I make mistakes, I call myself to account daily, I repent constantly, I want to be held accountable because I want to be presented to Him as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. I want to be a proper servant with a body worthy of being a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, because that is true and proper worship (2 Timothy 2:15, Romans 12:1). I love God, my heart is set after His, I long to please Him, I want to be faithful and obedient to Him. I hunger and thirst for righteousness. I am poor in spirit and know only God can save. I want to make the love he has for me known to others, because He has that same love for them. That means speaking the truth always, giving rebuke when necessary and in season, and doing so with grace and humility. I couldn’t speak to you if I were perfect—then I would have no need for a Savior. I tell you now— if it wasn’t for the righteousness of Jesus Christ; if it wasn’t for the Spirit softening my heart to hear God’s truth; if it wasn’t for the sin atoning blood of the Savior Christ Jesus that I can plead while standing justified before an Almighty, Holy, and Just God— I’d suffer eternal damnation, eternal separation, and eternal torment, forever upon forever.
If we confess to be Christians. If we profess to be followers of God, that Christ Jesus is the Savior of the world—then we know there is an absolute moral standard. That standard is God, and He’s put everything you need to know about it in His Word. And until we wake up, until we understand it, until we repent personally and as a church to do something about it, then the headline today, tomorrow and for the rest of our lives should read “IT’S ALL OUR FAULT.”
It is hypocritical of us to call Jesus our Savior, tell the world they need one, and then continue to live in sin, invite sin in, and allow it to continue in the lives of those we would call brothers and sisters in Christ just because we want to be “inclusive.” Do you really believe that Jesus rescues from the guilt of sin but not its power? News flash, God did not send His Son into the world to save you from the guilt of sin and leave you a wretched chunk of flesh still under its control. God didn’t send Him into the world to make everyone feel good about their current sinful conditions or ways of life. God sent His Son into the world to save the world through Him. Jesus came to save sinners, not keep us slaves to sin. If we could be slaves to sin and stand before God justified on works alone, then we wouldn’t have needed God to send His Son into the world to save us in the first place.
Where’s the church, the body of Christ? Not the building— most buildings have become amusement parks. Playgrounds. Places of entertainment. There are a lot of biblical churches out there, but there are many that fall short of speaking the full truth of the Word of God for fear someone will be offended by God’s Holy Truth. First those churches supported sin, then celebrated it, and now participate in it and condemn anyone that speaks against the sin within their walls of being loveless, careless, and hateful. We’ve gone so far to include everyone, that we’ve excluded the very One we would hope to bring them to. The enemy didn’t have to sow the tares in your wheat, you’ve done it yourselves. And of course, you feel, you must leave them now or you’ll damage the whole crop (Matthew 13:24-30). How far we must have fallen when we forget God is mighty to save. How far away are we from His Word when we forget that God has changed every single professing born again Christian from one creature to a completely new creation (Ephesians 2:1-10). You can’t save them, you can’t’ change them— because you’ve given them a lot of church, and a little bit of an image of Jesus. No wonder they’re still tares! You think the same resurrection power that brought others who were dead in their trespasses to life can’t work simply because they were the evil sown into your congregation? My God’s not weak sir, your pulpit is. Your back should be bent from laying hold of the horns of the altar and crying out to God with all of your heart for mercy based on the author and finisher of our faith—Jesus Christ. Had you not spoon fed them a buttered up softened image of false hope, then they would not still be tares—they be saved, changed! You stuck a mirror in front of them and said, “this is what Christ looks like”, and who wouldn’t like that? Don’t give me myself, give me Christ! We don’t need mirrors, we need to be mirrors, image forth Christ—put Him on and make no provision to gratify the flesh and its desires (Romans 13:14). Don’t give them self-assurance, give them blessed assurance! And how do we do that except by love, for love does no wrong to a neighbor (Romans 13:10). And I’d hurt you if I failed to speak God’s truth out of fear for your feelings and not your soul. “The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive” (Proverbs 27:6).
A weak pulpit may keep the numbers coming in, but it’ll also keep them falling away—what a terrible thing we do when we don’t speak the truth of repentance, “For if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:26-27). What good are you if you know the Word of God but don’t know the God of the Word? It’s your duty, your calling, to know God and to make Him known to those you minster to. To equip the congregation who in turn goes out of the walls of that building and shows the body of Christ to the world. You have to be full of grace, compassionate, loving, and patient—but you must also be sincere in all truth. These are the eternal souls of people that are in trouble of perishing forever. “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). They need the truth! Don’t preach a gospel that will fill up your church and not Heaven. Your mandate is “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). Don’t you know today is the day of salvation? Not a year from now, not a month from now; not a week, tomorrow, the next hour, not even this minute—it’s right now within this second. You’re not promised another step; nor is the fallen soul in need of grace promised one more breath. Come to them with all love, hope, and sincerity, but come to them with the truth—it’s their eternity at stake! And if you’re a teacher, how much more are you accountable for the wisdom you’ve been given? Because you know that you will receive a stricter judgment (James 3:1).
“Well, if Jesus was here today, He would do this or that.” If Jesus was here today, He would be crucified again (should He want to give up His life) and a majority of the “church” would be in the crowd screaming for His life to be taken. “Jesus accepts me for who I am.” No. He does not. He recognizes you for who you are and understands who you are, but that doesn’t mean when you accept Him as Savior you get to continue living for self. It doesn’t work. It’s not a lot of church and a little Jesus. It’s not a little Jesus and a lot of me, it’s not even a little me and a lot of Jesus. You can’t have it that way. You take all of Jesus or take none at all. “Every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction, and no city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matthew 12:25). The same goes for the individual that wishes to follow Christ. “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
You may have a little faith, you may have nothing but a smoking flax of faith left, but you can’t have a little Jesus. We have His promise He won’t break the bruised reed or quinch the smoking flax, but it is all of Jesus you need, and not a little, that will blow on that smoking faith of yours and make it flame again (Isaiah 42:3, Matthew 12:20).
I can hear you screaming right now, “but compassion, grace.” Yes, you are very right, absolutely. Where would I be without the compassionate waiting of God on my part? Without His grace to meet me where I was at, as I was? Dead, that’s where I’d be—dead. Dead in my sins, at war with God. A shell of a man lost in endless waves of noise, confusion, earthly lust, with a depraved heart after my own flesh.
Yes, “come as you are”, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t stay that way. Be born again, become a new creation. Hear His voice within all that noise, have peace in the chaos, a mind that’s set above, and a new heart after His own heart. Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” and “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:3, 5-6).
How I wish years ago that someone would have come to me and told me to repent. Made it clear to me that I should take stock everyday of my sin, address it, confess it, pick up my cross and follow Him. I may have possibly turned much faster to a repentant life than I did— but one thing is for sure, I am more than confident that February 6th 2018 was Gods final knock on my door, and had it not been for that knock, I may have forever been lost as a backslider with a one way ticket to hell—no, not even as a brand plucked out of the fire (Zechariah 3:2).
I know without a doubt there are ignorant people within any church organization that have hurt others, but this, I would argue, is most likely not the case a majority of the time when others say that the church has hurt them. In fact, I would posit that many heard a message, the Holy Spirit convicted them of their sin and instead of receiving the Word and repenting toward God and the grace He offers to change their lives—They stiffened their necks, hardened their hearts, and wrote off the church as bigoted, insensitive, and without compassion.
Let me tell you my brothers and sisters in Christ, we are in a sad state. Me included—remember, I’m not letting myself off the hook on this one. I am as much to blame for not being a good steward of the gifts I have been given, not being the full example of Christ I could be to others, not opening my mouth for fear of the judgement of man (laughable)—but true. I’ve been a backslider, brought back by the grace of God. And even now, I haven’t gone to worship service in a physical church building for two years. We’ve held church at home, we’ve watched church online and television. I listen non-stop to sermons on the radio, read them, I’m in the Word, and I reach out more each day to deliver the Gospel truth— but that doesn’t make up for my forsaking of assembly. I need a church family, my family needs a church family, and this world needs to see the biblical body of Christ move out of the building and image forth God’s glory.
During 2020 I prayed often and spoke often about needing revival. I had a dream toward the end of 2020. I did not know what it meant; I just knew it wasn’t like any other dream I had ever had. I continued the last few years being in the Word, building mine and my family’s relationship with God, studying and learning how to be in His will and purpose, praying for His direction to be led to a church family, and was moved to start a non-profit dedicated to sharing the Gospel to a lost and dying world.
While reading yesterday and thinking on these things I came across a passage and immediately the Spirit gripped my heart moving me to tears—it was my dream. “Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Have pity on your people, Lord, and do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:17). If ever there was a time for repentance, it’s now. Why on earth would God bless this nation with revival if the body of Christ doesn’t examine itself, repent, and fight for the souls of the lost through intercessory prayer? They [the lost] don’t have to get themselves right before they come to the Lord, all they need to do is come; but we that claim to be representatives of the one true God better be right with the Lord. We better be ready to give an answer to those who will come. They won’t come prepared. That’s not how revival works. It’s a mighty move of God and the Holy Spirit that calls dead things to life, that makes those dead in their transgressions to move toward the Lord—and if we can’t show them that there’s an exclusive difference between those who fear God, and the world, then what good are we on our knees begging God to set this nation on fire for the Lord?
I believe God is calling us, not to “mind the gap”, but to fill it— to move the body of Christ between the portico and the altar, to weep for all mind kind, to pray and fast— It’s time to weep between the portico and the altar until the Spirit of the Lord is poured out and the ground shakes (Acts 4:31)—Then may God bring revival, and let us pray we will be ready to share the Gospel with all who come.
Do you need to repent? Are you convicted? Let me tell you, there is nowhere you need to go except to the Lord in prayer. We have His Word that He will save, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). I don’t care what anyone says about you, what you say about you, or if the devil whispers in your ear “there’s no way He would save a sinner like you, there’s none like you”—the devil is a liar! “Let God be true, even though everyone is a liar” (Romans 3:4), for He says “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:37-38). We are told “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25), and we know this is true, not only because His Word is truth (John 17:17), but because He is truth as Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Untie your burden, confess your sins, and repent. Turn to God in belief, trust and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, and He will give you new life. Look up to Him. Can you see Him? You see Him hanging there for you? No one made Him. It was God’s will; it was His choice. He was faithful and obedient unto the point of death because of His love for you. Because of God’s love and hope that all would come to believe and repent, “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Look up to Him, the risen Savior, who intercedes between God and man, for all that believe in Him. Christ died for sinners “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God” (John 3:14-21). There, there is your truth—lay hold of that gift of grace, that unearned unmerited favor freely given. Take that truth, walk in that truth—accept the truth of Christ, the forgiveness of God.
I must end as always with a verse I will say a million times over if ever I can, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). This is your reminder that you and I are the ends of the earth, there is but one God, and we must turn to Him to be saved for “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). You may find it a hard truth, but it is the truth—That name is Jesus and He Himself said “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live” (John 11:25). He also said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
Call out to Him! He said “At an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!” Now is that acceptable time! If you’re calling to Him, He will listen, you have His promise, He will help you. Today, is the day of salvation.