Untitled Sermon (35)

Over the course of this study specifically in this chapter we have focused on current cultural Trends. To be honest these things that I am talking about are the whole reason why I got into ministry. I knew that if change was going to take place it would have to take place from within.

I knew that if the culture was ever going to shift at what have to be from the people of God. Politicians will not and cannot save us, politicians will not and cannot to save our land. Only God and his people can be active in reversing the issues that we see.

And the reason why I make such a statement is because sin is the driving factor behind what we see. This means we are at spiritual warfare add you cannot battle with policy. To go forward in the fight of spiritual warfare, we have to have a proper understanding of the very written revelation of God.

Because in this written revelation we find how to have the proper understanding of God himself.But it doesn't stop at a proper understanding we have to be able to execute proper application in order for Impact to take place.

I have argued from this pulpit that we are seeing a philosophical change and I don't know what to label this New philosophy that is dominating our culture but the name I would like to give it, the name that I see it taken upon itself, is the post Christian culture.

The church in general is on the decline. We have more self professing believers fleeing from the people of God then ever before . We are beginning to see this selfish attitude and the self righteous nature begin to rein in the hearts and minds of God's people.

This could be because The gospel is being buried. The people of God are burying the gospel, they are putting the gospel in darkness. That is what we have been talking about over the course of the study is all of this ways of creating Self Help and using the scriptures in order to create this Self Help is The very action that Berries the gospel.

And the result of it is chaos, The laws of God no longer are cared for. We are seeing absolute chaos and we are seeing a culture who does not know how to respond to this chaos. We are seeing a culture that is desiring something, and they do not know what that something is, and so they react in very sinful ways.

Those who were to be shepherding the flock are failing the flock by not proclaiming the word of God but proclaiming a self centered message Based on the word of God.

This is not the 1st time that the gospel has been buried. From its roots the gospel was hostile to the unbelieving world. It took 300 years for christians to be culturally accepted. And even then if you were still to the core of the scriptures you still faced persecution.

But 300 years before Christianity was culturally Accepted. The amount of persecution that took place within those 300 years, historians agree, that There is no way to determine how many were persecuted but they claim that the numbers are higher than any other modern day persecution we have ever seen, including the holocaust.

And then there was a Beacon of hope, there was light for the church. Rome being the power at be that allowed Christianity to be practice out in the open. They were finally allowed to own property and have buildings of worship.

Things were going fairly well, at least compared to the 1st 300 years that the christians experienced. But then wolves have crept in, and Jesus warned us about such wolves.

Men who had power on their minds, men who were Anti-Christ in nature were taking over. And the did take over. And one of the 1st things they did was they distorted the gospel until it was buried. They were using The Bible as a weapon to get people to do what they wanted them to do, including fighting wars.

The men in charge were the ones who were put in other men in charge. This is actually where the word nepotism came from. Nepotism is were you favor your family or your friends specifically for a job. Nepotism comes from the word net poss which is Latin for nephew.

Pope's would make sure it was all their nephews that had positions of bishops and cardinals. And so the word nepotism came out of that because everyone was noticing that if somebody was going to get this position it was going to be the nephew.

So they controlled who was in charge and made sure that these men were running it the way that they wanted. Greedy vile lustful men were in charge of the Catholic Church. And the amount of controversy, cover UPS, and sexual immorality that took place at the highest seat of the Catholic Church was during these times.

Not only was the gospel in the darkness, but the churches leaders or ran by many Anti-Christ. Some historians even go as far as claiming That you can trace the roots of something that we call today the mafia back to the medieval papacy.

The Pope and his family during the middle ages. And for several 100 years it was like this . And the time that we are referring to now was called the dark ages, coincidence? I don't think so. And throughout the dark ages you had some strong but very minor voices proclaiming that something is not right.

And each one of those voices were put to death. Think about that the 1 who is claiming to be the vicar of Christ was the 1 who was promoting the death of people proclaiming God's word. This is real history and this is the history of our people the christians.

Before Martin Luther the resume in named John Huss and Before John Huss there was a man named John Wiclif. Both of these men are the original reformers. They proceeded at the reformation but they were 2 individuals, with the following, That was teaching That it was fundamental that the church get back to its roots.

They challenged the teaching of the Eucharist, the Lord's supper. And they challenged ecclesiology of the Catholic Church. Ecclesiology is the doctrine of the church or the doctrine about the church.Both of these men were put to death for challenging Rome.

They were labeled as heretics and anyone who followed them after would Receive the same label. And by the days of Luther it was deemed a badd to even think about these men. But when we think about the timeline of the reformers and the gospel coming out of the darkness It is really reformed thought that change the world and not the Renaissance.

Some historians believe that it was the Renaissance that inspired Luther however these 2 men proceed the Renaissance. It is my belief that the reformation, if we begin at John Wiclif, was the very historical event that brought the world out of darkness.

And it was the very event that inspired the world to wanna get back to its roots. Which is a century with the reformation is. When we think about the word reform we think change but that was not the motivation of the reformers. Not to change something or to improve something.

But because the Catholic Church has deformed the church so much it was time that somebody re formed it, And reform it back to its original form. So 200 years after John Wiclif, we have Martin Luther over in Germany and all Ulrich zwingly in Switzerland.

While the 2 men did not agree on everything fully, the one specific issue that they were in agreement On was the doctrine of faith. You see while today many protestants criticized the Catholic Church for their worship of saints, and Mary, and their adoration for the Pope. Those were not the biggest issues during the time of the reformation.

Actually during the time of the reformation, The worship of saints and Mary were not official Catholic doctrine. Not at this . It was practiced but not by everyone and it was not the official stance of the church.

The issue was salvation and the doctrine Of justification by faith. And after Zwingli and Luther There was John Calvin. And after John Calvin there was John Knox who led the reformation in Scotland. And after John Knox there was the English puritans.

And eventually those English puritans took their teachings that came from the reformation and the inspirations that came from the reformation and came to this land that we now call America. Back then they called it the new world.

The idea was to make a land that was inspired by the reformers. Now there were many other active people during this time then just the few that I named. And there was many controversial situations throughout period between Luther and the early foundations of America, there was much controversial subjects.

And some of those controversial subject surrounded Luther and some of them surrounded Calvin and some of them surrounded the puritans. We are not talking about perfect people. And the reformation is actually not about the people. We are talking about a perfect God accomplishing his will amongst imperfect people.

We have not experienced the dark ages before . We know nothing of this kind of hardship. But all the signs are there And we are repeating the same mistakes. Are we have grown so arrogant though we have convinced ourselves that we are a sophisticated societee in there is no way we can fall back into barbarianism.

I Will argue that we already have. And as I stated earlier I do not think any of these movements are coincidental. I do not find the world entering the dark ages the same time as the Gospels being buried coincidental.

I do not find the idea of bringing the gospel out of that darkness by way of the reformation and the entire world benefited from that as coincidental. And the same issues that we seen during the dark ages are making a comeback.

Have you guys noticed all the disease outbreak taken place. I mean it's easy to blame the non vaccinators But essentially the same thing as repeating. The time prior to the dark ages the church was on the rise and it was the best time for the church in history.

Through corruption Yet with good intentions, The gospel message was replaced with a self righteousness. And it was shortly after that that we began to see Disease and great famine take place. There was a hits on the economic system.

People were not able to buy sell or trade. And the economic system was also corrupted as the Catholic Church got a bulk of everyone's cut. Keep in mind we are talking about at time where the church was acting as the state government.

And you may be wondering why I said with good intentions they replaced the gospel, how is that good. Because they honestly thought it was. The in tent was not to be as wicked and evil as they possibly can. These men honestly thought they were doing something good.

And that is true of every false teacher. That is true of every politician whether you agree with him or disagree with them. They think they are doing something good. So with good intentions people can destroy the world.

And I have said the saying before and I will say it again, it is an old saying, the road to h*** is paved with good intentions. And now we sit here 500 years past the reformation, repeating the same mistakes. Not a new thing, and not a new thing in America.

This kind of attitude takes hundreds of years before you see the effect Of it and the last 100 years it has been in full effect. The preachers of yesterday, though they may have good been good preachers who told the truth, open the door for the preaching we see today.

They did this by not being exegetical but by being topical. They did this by Accepting a new Herman newdick instead of sticking with the classical covenant theology. Both those things will be discussed at a later time .

What I am saying here is that The writing is on the wall of our current age. And today's sermon is more of an introduction to a topic we have already been talking about but it is a topic that we will be expanding on.

And while I am taking so much time, and be honest we can spend a lot more time on the historical aspect of it, it is important for you to have a historical understanding of where we have been as human beings and as the church.

Our current culture is fleeing from all things Christ related. They are fleeing his word, they are fleeing his church, they are fleeing his commands. And they are now gathering in a place where the gospel is not preached.

Everybody is up beaten path each other on the back and so happy to be together in a place where the gospel is not preached. The gospel has been buried And it is my fear that we are at the dawn of the new dark ages.

If it is to continue down this path I doubt that we will see the full affects within our lifetime but I do think we will see a lot before we leave this world. We are already seeing a lot. And what we are beginning to discuss which, church, we have to get serious about.

What we are beginning to discuss is the very thing that pulled the world and the gospel out of darkness. What we are about to discuss is the very thing that brought light to a dying people. If we can't not get a proper understanding of this subject then we can not take it to the ends of the Earth.

So let us begin and let's look at verse 9.

Romans 10:9 NASB95

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

We will not be able to cover everything within this verse today. So here is what I want us to get through today. Paul is on the subject of the righteousness by faith. This is not a righteousness by works nor should you understand this in any way to be a righteousness of your works.

Before you can understand what policy here you must understand that there is a difference between faith and works and you must see in this text that Paul is making a distinction. If you cannot see the distinction you were being blind to what Paul is saying here.

If you cannot see a distinction it is going to be really hard to Move forward. Clearly there is a distinction. And now Paul wants to communicate the righteousness by faith.

And the 1st thing that we see In verse 9 is that if you confess with your mouth. People have taken this verse and have abused it. They have claimed that all you have to do is professed just one time and you're Good.

Both of taking one verse and building an entire doctrine. You can not do That . That is how you fall into error. The proper way to go about this is to get an understanding of what the entire Bible has to say on the subject. Because no doubt that is the intentions of Paul.

That is clear based on this single verse itself people just tend to focus on one aspect of the verse. The context here is a heart issue.

And the entire letter is evident of that . So do the scriptures teach that it is a one time confession, all you have to do is utter these words and you will be fine. No, there has to be a change in heart. And this is exactly what Paul has in mind. And if that is not clear go back and read chapters 456 and 7.

It was there that Paul has been discussing faith and that it begins in the heart. Hes on the same subject now we are talking about faith as it relates to salvation. Not only has Paul covered this but we can go to a couple examples in the pages of scripture.

Psalm 116:10 NASB95

I believed when I said, “I am greatly afflicted.”

It literally means I believed therefore I spoke. Something was in the heart 1st and out of the heart came the speech. Let's look at what Jesus said to the pharisees

Matthew 12:34 NASB95

“You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.

Again the mouth speaks based on what is in the heart. What if someone is telling a lie, that lie itself is wickedness from the heart. We are not always going to know if somebody is telling the truth or not when it comes to a confession of faith.

That is something that only God knows. Our job is not to know every intention of the human heart. It is not our job because we are not to God. The God knows the intent of every person's heart. And he knows if somebody is lying or not.

So there has to be a radical change within the heart before this confession can be authentic. And there is no doubt Of that in Paul's writings.

What is the confession? Jesus as Lord.

Discuss lordship controversy

If we look at the 1st chapter of the gospel of John we see that Jesus is the source of all creation. That all things were made through him and that 1 thing exist apart from him. He is Lord of all creation. This includes creation that we see in Genesis one and this includes the new creation.

Jesus is Lord and part of that confession of faith is just that . What we are talking about here folks is a battle cry. This is the battle cry of the reformation and it will be our battle cry today. We are to fight, we are to wage war and we do this by wielding are sword of truth.

Bringing the gospel out of the darkness is not going to happen if we don't battle the powers at be. The church must speak up once again. We must speak truth in love, not being concerned with the way the world views us, but being concerned with the way God views us.

If we truly are in a post a Christian culture and if what I am saying is correct that we are at the dawn of a new darkness then there is only 1 hope 1 selvation 1 God we can turn to.