The Fallacy of Carnal Christianity
Notes
Transcript
This spiritual logic was given memorable illustration by Chuck Swindoll in his book Improving Your Serve.
“Let’s pretend that you work for me. In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly. I’m the owner and I’m interested in expanding overseas. To pull this off, I make all the arrangements to take my family in the move to Europe for six to eight months, and I leave you in charge of the busy stateside organization. I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you direction and instructions.
I leave and you stay. Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations. Finally, I return. Soon after my arrival I drive down to the office. I am stunned! Grass and weeds have grown up high. A few windows along the street are broken. I walk into the receptionist’s room and she is doing her nails, chewing gum, and listening to her favorite disco station. I look around and notice the waste baskets are overflowing, the carpet hasn’t been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned. I ask about your whereabouts and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, ‘I think he’s down here.’
Disturbed, I move in that direction and bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager. I ask you to step into my office (which has been temporarily turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas).
‘What in the world is going on, man?’
‘What do ya’ mean…?’
‘Well, look at this place! Didn’t you get any of my letters?’
‘Letters? Oh, yeah---sure, got every one of them. As a matter of fact… we have had letter study every Friday night since you left. We have even divided all the personnel into small groups and discussed many of the things you wrote. Some of those things were really interesting. You’ll be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two! Great stuff in those letters!’
‘Okay, okay---you got my letters, you studied them and meditated on them, discussed and even memorized them. BUT WHAT DID YOU DO ABOUT THEM?’
‘Do? Uh---we didn’t do anything about them.’”
Such behavior is professionally absurd. It is, in fact, professional suicide! But how much less absurd are we when we hear God’s Word without the slightest inclination to obey it? At the very least we are self-deceived. This is why James follows his call to be hearers with the command of verse 22:
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
I knew what I wanted to preach on today, but I struggled with coming up with a title. We will be looking at the parable of the soils this morning with emphasis on the 3rd soil. You see I’m taking Hermeneutics this semester and we were aloud to pick our own Scripture that we will be working on all semester. This parable kept coming up in different conversations with different people and I have a heart for leading people to the Lord, so I figured this would give me some insight on that very thing. So as I wrestled with giving Pastor Mark a title, he made a suggestion and I ran with it.
The Fallacy of Carnal Christianity
The Fallacy of Carnal Christianity
Pretty fancy title for an uneducated man like myself. Thank you Pastor Mark.
The misconception that Christians can be worldly.
I am of the belief that there really isn’t a grey area. Your in or your out.
Jesus said:
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Could you imagine going before the King of Kings, knowing without a shadow of a doubt you are headed to heaven only to be told you didn’t make it in?
Guess what? It’s never to late.
I’m getting off track. We’re headed somewhere. Bare with me.
That’s right, the parable of the soils.
A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
The purpose of the parables explains why so many people are unresponsive to the gospel as it is taught in the parable of the soils. The parable of the soils illustrate God’s lavish offer of salvation and the mixed reception that came to the offerer.
Also, according to Warren Wiersbe, “This parable helped the disciples to understand why Jesus was not impressed by the large crowds that followed Him. He knew that most of them would never produce fruit from changed lives, because the Word He was teaching them was like seed falling into poor soil.”
William Barclay said, “If we read this parable, hearing not a tone of bitter exasperation, but a tone of regretful love, it will sound quite different. It will tell us not of a God who deliberately blinded men and hid the truth, but of men who were so dully uncomprehending that it seemed no use even for God to try to penetrate the iron curtain of their lazy incomprehension.”
The parable of the sower revolves around proclaiming the saving gospel, broadcasting the word about the King and His kingdom. But the main teaching has to do with the heart soils on which the truth of that word falls as it is preached. Jesus mentions four different soils onto which the seeds fall as it is sown, representing four kinds of hearts that hear the gospel.
The soils themselves are basically the same; dirt that, given the right conditions, could support the growth of crops. Although every human heart is naturally sinful and hostile toward God, every human heart is also capable of being redeemed. There is no such thing as a naturally unredeemable heart. If a person is not saved it is because he does not desire to be saved. Every person could receive the seed of the gospel and participate in its life if he believed. The differences in the soils, and in the hearts to which they correspond, are not in their composition but their condition.
If you are willing and able please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word.
4 And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to Him from every city, He spoke by a parable:
5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it.
6 Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture.
7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it.
8 But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
9 Then His disciples asked Him, saying, “What does this parable mean?”
10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.’
11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.
14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.
15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.
Pray. Thank you. You may be seated.
The crowd Jesus was speaking too would have been very familiar with the concept of sower, seeds, and soils. He was speaking to an agriculture community. The sower which come commentaries say is Jesus applies to any and all evangelical Christians that share the Gospel.
The sower would have had a seed pouch full of seeds. As he went into the field, he would scattered them by gently throwing them as he walked. This was called broadcasting.
Just to be clear the sower isn’t responsible for the fertility of the soil.
Side-note: If we are the sower and the seeds are the Gospel, shouldn’t we be broadcasting the gospel everywhere we go?
They didn’t have the fancy tractors that Brother James has. That is why some of the seeds would end up on the path.
The wayside or the beaten path.
The wayside or the beaten path.
We won’t spend too much time on this soil.
This heart soil was in between the rows where they walked too and from. Not ground that is good for planting seed.
Those with this heart condition are what the Bible calls stiff necks or hard hearted.
They might have a tendency to meet us with conflict or argumentative spirit.
I would venture to say that what Jesus says about not casting your pearls before swain applies with the people in this condition.
Rocky Soil
Rocky Soil
This soil can be deceiving. What looks good on the top has rock underneath and therefore the seed will spring up and die quickly, because it cannot take root and be nourished.
I’ve seen people come forward and “receive Christ” and seem to be all in for a moment and then disappear.
This is the grey area I spoke of earlier.
The question is begs were they ever really saved.
Only God knows.
Thorny Soil
Thorny Soil
This is the soil that I want to spend a little time in this morning.
14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.
Jesus says that the cares of this world will choke out the Word of God in your heart.
Friends if there are worldly pleasures that occupy more of your time than your relationship with Jesus Christ, your in a world of mess.
There are plenty of pastors, elders, deacons, in the church that will tell you that if you say a prayer your good.
Salvation is free, but it will cost you everything.
Paul gives us plenty of examples of worldly habits that seem to imply that if they are a pattern in your life, you are not saved.
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
Sidebar: Notice the company that drunkards are listed with.
I’ve had conversations with several pastor friends and we are are convinced that there will be deacons, elders, pastors, Sunday school teachers, etc. that will one day go before Jesus convinced that they checked off all the boxes.
It has been said that Billy Graham said that 85% of people sitting in church on Sunday mornings are headed to hell.
Hey, I went to church 3 times a week for 30 years. I was a deacon. I was on the finance committee. I was on the long range planning committee that built the new sanctuary. I ever served as youth director. I did all these things for You Jesus.
Only to hear Jesus say depart from Me, you workers of inequity. I never knew you.
You see if we’re not careful we can spend our entire life doing good things for God, but never having a relationship with Him.
And to be in relationship with God is what we were made for.
Good Ground
Good Ground
This is the only soil that produces fruit.
Some say this is the only soil that produces true salvation.
One Pastor told me that if there is no change there is no salvation.
Charles Spurgeon said he lost 85% of his vocabulary when he got saved.
The good soil is the soil that guarantees true salvation.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
This has been true in my life. On July 21st, 2019, I walked into this church addicted to everything this world had to offer. I even thought I was saved. I received Jesus Christ that day and left sold out for Jesus. July 21st, 2019 was the day of salvation for me.
What is God saying to you this morning?
Maybe you’ve been going, going, going, for Jesus, but never actually had a relationship with Him.
Today can be the day of salvation for you.
God made us to be in relationship with Him.
That’s how it was in the garden, until sin entered the world and separated us from God.
God loved us so much that He sent His only Son to die for all of our sins. Past, present, and future. He took the weight of the world’s sins to the cross and died as the ultimate sacrifice for you and for me.
He was buried and on the 3rd day rose to conquer sin and death so that we could have eternal life with Him in heaven.
If we repent of our sins and surrender our life to Him, we can receive this precious gift.
Would you please bow your heads?
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