Daniel Jepsen

A man recently asked me why I did not preach more about sins and their consequences. Why, for example, did I not talk more about what he called “obvious” sins, and about how they would bring pain and punishment.

Now, perhaps this is an area where I need to be challenged. It is possible that I am reacting to the absurd preaching I heard in my youth, that centered on long hair on men, pants on women, and other evils such as movies, rock music, and mixed bathing (they meant swimming with both genders).

But then again, I am not so sure that my list of “obvious” sins would look the same as my questioner’s.  As I have grown, it seems to me that sins of the mind and heart (pride, resentment, lack of love) are much more deadly than the sins of the flesh.  But there is a deeper reason that, though I will talk of sin, I will not make it the focus of my preaching. And that reason has nothing to do with the reason of some churches today (that talking of sin is unpopular and does not help reaching out to the lost).

I don’t focus on law (hereby defined as an focus on getting people to sin less, with emphasis on pain and punishment for disobedience) for the following reason: It can never make a person godly. Never. Not in a million years, not if I was the best preacher on the planet.

The reason, I think, is not hard to see. Think of the reasons a person motivated by law (or any other external force) has for any moral reform they might perform:

• The avoidance of punishment or discipline
• The avoidance of the natural consequences of sin
• A desire to enjoy life without guilt
• A desire for a good reputation
• A desire to live up to a certain view of themselves
• A desire for their life to “work” better.

Now, except for the third item, none of these are BAD reasons. In fact, they are wise, in one sense of the term anyway. We can’t go against the grain of the universe without getting splinters.  But in the end, they still leave this person helplessly locked up in self.  They do not change the person’s heart; they confirm and deepen the heart’s pride and self-focus.

The better way is marked out by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:4 and 12:1, where he points out that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance, and that we should seek to honor God because of His mercy.  It is when my heart, ravished and overwhelmed with God’s kindness and love for me, desires to follow God in order to please Him that I grow more into what God wants me to be. And that, if it comes at all, comes only by preaching the grace of God over the pain of sin.

The Lutheran theologian Walther gets it just right:

An enforcer of laws, like a jailer, is not concerned about the condition of the heart of the person with whom he must deal, but only about enforcing that person’s obedience. He stands before his victim with a scourge and tells him that the scourge will come down on his back if he does not obey. The jailer is not concerned about godly motives among his prisoners. The prisoners, on the other hand, while they are fast in stocks and in their cells and are forced to obey, are revolving plans in their minds how to avoid being caught at their next theft. That is what a preacher of the law does to the members of a Christian congregation: he puts them in stocks and fetters them.

Let no minister think that he cannot induce the unwilling to do God’s will by preaching the Gospel to them and that he must rather preach the Law and proclaim the threatenings of God to them. If that is all he can do, he will only lead his people to perdition.

I’m not much of a protester.  Too easy going and all that.  I did walk out of a movie once, but it was so long ago I forget why.

I have certainly never walked out of a church service in anger. Until this month.  Two weeks ago I walked out during the middle of the pastor’s “sermon”. Here is why.

The church in question is Living Word Bible Church, in Mesa, Arizona.  I was staying with my elderly mother for a week, and she lives a couple miles from the church.  She goes to a different church, but that morning (long story) I did not go with her.  I really did desire to go to church, however, especially since it was the second Sunday of advent. But since I had no car with me, this meant a good Sunday morning walk.  I picked out two likely candidates on my phone’s web browser, then headed off to one of them. I soon realized I would not get there in time, so I detoured and walked to Living Word Bible Church instead.  I knew little about it, but I figured since they had both “word” and “bible” in their name that they would at least try to be a teaching church (unfortunately, by this logic Grapenuts would have both grape and nuts).

I made my way in from a side street, and the first thing I noticed was that the congregation was very racially diverse.  Score one for them.  I was quite disconcerted, however, at the name of the bookstore which dominated one corner of the massive foyer: “Winner’s Bookstore”.  Major red flag.  The most common heresy of the modern American church is the idea that God’s design in salvation is to make us successful in earthly categories like success and wealth.  Ever an optimist, I hoped this was an aberration, and made my way into the sanctuary.

The service began with the pastor of the church, one C. Thomas Anderson, announcing that this was going to be a special miracle service.  Okaaaayyyy.  To me, the idea of “planning” miracles is as ludicrous as “planning” revivals.  But I had walked two miles to be in church and worship, and was not going to leave.  Or so I thought.

The band then belted out three songs.  Though all three had words on the screens, I don’t think the first two were really intended to be congregationally sung. They were too fast and the timing too odd to work as corporate worship songs. In any case, neither was about God at all. The first asked the question, “Are you ready?” and answered it with the repeated refrain, “I’m as ready as can be”.  The second was about me living a miraculous, blessed life.  Both songs basically functioned like the music of pep rally, and indeed the whole service brought back to mind the forced enthusiasm of my high school assemblies before the big game.  The third song was actually quite good (or maybe my expectations were so low that any song actually about Jesus would strike a cord).  I hadn’t heard it before, but it was about Jesus meeting my needs.  Yes, even though it was a Jesus song, it was exalting him primarily for how he helps me in this life (which I don’t find a bad thing as long as it is balanced by more objective worship songs).

The pastor comes back on stage.  He begins talking about how the church needs to get out of debt.  I notice before the service they showed a video about planning for a new building “three times the size of our present one, with ten thousand seats”, so apparently the goal is to get out of debt so we can get back in debt. This especially struck me as odd, since the service (one of three that morning) was less than 40 percent full.

Pastor Anderson then launches into several minutes describing the greatness of the church and its strategic place (somehow Mesa is the epicenter of the country).  At this point I am a little distressed.  More than twenty minutes into the service, and I have heard almost nothing about Jesus or even God, but a good deal about the church and the pastor.

The Pastor transitions to talking about how much greater the church could be if it was out of debt. I look again at the pledge sheets handed out before the service.  He tells us that they will create a permanent landscape on one of the walls. If you give a certain amount, you will get a place on the landscape. 250 bucks will buy you a bronze tulip with your name, while $250,000 will place you on a silver eagle in the sky, and for only a million dollars you get a piece of the rainbow.  Pastor Anderson takes pains to point out how your children and grandchildren (and, of course, everyone else) will always be able to see how much you gave. I couldn’t help wondering about the words of Jesus regarding giving: “don’t let your right hand know what you are doing, so that your giving may be in secret” (Matthew 6:3-4).

This transitions into Pastor Anderson holding his wife and himself up as examples.  Three times, we are told, they agreed to give God “everything”.  And of course God rewarded them for this.  “God gave us a mansion. If you have ever been to my house, you know it is a mansion. And God gave it to us at cost”.  This was spoken so arrogantly that I began to feel queasy.  He goes on, “And you should see all my cars!”

And here, I could take it no longer.  It was well past the half-way part of the service, and it was apparent there would be no bible teaching.  The cross of Christ had not been mentioned one time, nor had Jesus himself been mentioned except almost in passing.  I will claim no great gift of discernment, but I was pretty sure any “miracles” generated in this man-glorifying pep rally were not going to be from the Holy Spirit.

I walked out.  I wept for a minute outside, then began the walk home.