An old proverb says, “A ship in the sea is alright. The sea in a ship is all wrong.” In the same way, “the church in the world is alright. The world in the church is all wrong.”

Broadly speaking, the last several decades have not been good for the church in America. In the final years of the twentieth century, Dr. James Montgomery Boice wrote about the on-going crisis:

“What is wrong with evangelicals? The answer is that we have become worldly. We have abandoned the truths of the Bible and the historic theology of the church, which expresses those truths and are trying to do the work of God by means of the world’s theology, wisdom, methods and agenda instead. This does not mean that evangelicals have denied the Bible or have officially turned their backs on classic Christian doctrine necessarily. It is more the case that the Bible just does not have meaningful bearing on what we think and do – when we do understand it, and most of the time we do not.

The polls tell us that the gospel most contemporary evangelicals believe in is essentially God helping us to help ourselves. It has a lot to do with self-esteem, good mental attitudes and worldly success. There is not much preaching about sin, hell, judgment or the wrath of God, not to mention the great salvation doctrines such as reconciliation, redemption, propitiation, justification, the atonement, grace and even faith.

Lacking a sound, biblical and well understood theology, evangelicals have fallen prey to the pragmatism and consumerism of our times. Instead of calling God’s people to worship and serve God, and teaching them how to do it, we treat parishioners as buyers and think of marketing the gospel. A therapeutic worldview has replaced classical Christian categories such as sin and repentance, and many leaders have identified the gospel with such modern idols as a political philosophy, psychological views of man and sociology. To the extent that the doctrines of the Bible no longer guide preaching, teaching, publishing, evangelism, worship and the daily life of the people of God, evangelicalism has declined to become a movement that is shaped only by popular whim and sentimentality. To stand in awe of God once again, evangelicals must recognize these idols as idols and confess how much we have been taken captive by them…. Paramount among the truths evangelicals need to recover are the great Reformation doctrines summarized by the well-known solas (Latin for “only”): sola Scriptura, solus Christus, sola gratia, sola fide and soli Deo Gloria.”

– Here We Stand – A Call from Confessing Evangelicals, 1998

“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament . . . .” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer (Nashville, 2010), page 137.

“One new discovery of the glory of Christ’s face and the fountain of his sweet grace and love will do more towards scattering clouds of darkness and doubting in one minute than examining old experiences by the best mark that can be given a whole year.” – Jonathan Edwards, quoted in George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), page 226.

“Every religious system in the universe is predicated by the notion that we can be good enough to meet God, except Christianity.” – Stephen Nichols

“Christianity is based on the truth that sinners need a Savior, not merely a coach or a therapist.” – Dr. Al Mohler

“The solemn fact is that none of us can tell the difference between the beginning of backsliding and the beginning of apostasy. Both look the same.” – Sinclair Ferguson

“Calvin had no weapon but the Bible… Calvin preached from the Bible every day, and under the power of that preaching the city began to be transformed. As the people of Geneva acquired knowledge of God’s Word and were changed by it, the city became, as John Knox called it later, a New Jerusalem from which the gospel spread to the rest of Europe, England, and the New World.” – James Montgomery Boice

“Oh, you are not dealing with trifles when you are dealing with the love of God to you. It is not a spare corner of the heart of God that He gives to you, as you may give a little love to the criminals in the jails, but the great, inconceivably vast heart of God belongs as much to every Christian as if there were not another being in the world for God to love! Even as Jehovah loves His Only-begotten, so does He love each one of His children.” – C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:568

“I can feelingly say, he has proved himself stronger than I and his goodness superior to all my unworthiness. He tells me (and enables me to believe it) that I am fair, and there is no spot in me. Though an enemy, he calls me his friend; though a traitor, a child; though a beggared prodigal, he clothes me with the best robe and has put a ring of endless love and mercy on my hand. And though I am sorely distressed by spiritual and internal foes, afflicted, tormented and bowed down almost to death with the sense of my own present barrenness, ingratitude and proneness to evil, he secretly shows me his bleeding wounds and softly and powerfully whispers to my soul, ‘I am thy great salvation.’ His free distinguishing grace is the bottom on which is fixed the rest of my poor weary tempted soul. On this I ground my hope, often times when unsupported by any other evidence, save only the Spirit of adoption received from him. When my dry and empty barren soul is parched with thirst, he kindly bids me come to him and drink my fill at the fountainhead. In a word, he empowers me to say with experiential evidence, ‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’ Amen and amen.” – Joseph Hart (1712-1768), quoted in Peter C. Rae, “Joseph Hart and His Hymns,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 6 (1988): 22-23.

“The church at Laodicea was in danger of judgment. What offended the Lord was not their intense sin but their moderate Christianity: “You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! You are lukewarm” (Revelation 3:15-16). They weren’t heretical or wacko. They were somewhere in the mushy middle. They neither promoted the gospel nor opposed it. They thought the Bible had some good ideas, but they didn’t relish it. They wanted their kids to grow up moral, but not missional. They found some space in their busy weekend schedule for going to church, but they didn’t redesign their whole lives around the cause of the gospel. Jesus would not put up with it: “I will spit you out of my mouth” (verse 16). There is a kind of Christianity that Jesus finds distasteful. But still, Jesus lovingly reached out to them: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (verse 20). He didn’t force himself on them. He offered himself with a humble knock on their door.

Notice the word “anyone.” He didn’t say “If the pastor hears” or “If the elders hear” but “If anyone hears my voice.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his book on revival, observes a striking pattern in Christian history. A new movement of blessing never begins by a majority vote. It begins when one person, or a small group of people, “begin to feel this burden, and they feel the burden so much that they are led to do something about it. . . . It may be anybody.” Don’t think you can’t do anything. Don’t wait for someone else. Jesus offers himself to anyone: “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door . . . .”” – Ray Ortlund

“All theology is also spirituality, in the sense that it has an influence, good or bad, positive or negative, on its recipients’ relationship or lack of relationship with God. If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both; if it does not encourage the commitment of faith, it reinforces the detachment of unbelief; if it fails to promote humility, it inevitably feeds pride.” – J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Wheaton, 1994), page 15.

“The Enlightenment brought to the discussion of life the proposition that the human being has matured to the point that he must become independent of any outside information about life. ‘He has come of age,’ Kant wrote. Independence from church and state eventually led to independence from God and creation as well. For now God no longer shed light on our understanding, but man could begin to see the world the way he wanted to. If reason is the only key to truth, anything may become reasonable to the one who does the explaining to himself.” – Udo Middelmann, Footnotes, December 1998, page 3.

“He will tend his flock like a shepherd.” Isaiah 40:11

“Jesus, the good shepherd, will not travel at such a rate as to overdrive the lambs. He has tender consideration for the poor and needy. Kings usually look to the interests of the great and the rich, but in the kingdom of our Great Shepherd he cares most for the poor… The weaklings and the sickly of the flock are the special objects of the Savior’s care… You think, dear heart, that you are forgotten, because of your nothingness and weakness and poverty. This is the very reason you are remembered.” – C. H. Spurgeon, Treasury of the Old Testament (London, n.d.), III:575-576.

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.” – Simone Weil, quoted in Barbara Brown Taylor, Speaking of Sin (Cambridge, 2001), page 67.

“It is a growing conviction of mine that no parish can fulfill its true function unless there is at the very center of its leadership life a small community of quietly fanatic, changed and truly converted Christians. The trouble with most parishes is that nobody, including the pastor, is really greatly changed… We do not want ordinary men. Ordinary men cannot win the brutally pagan life of a city like New York for Christ. We want quiet fanatics.” – John Heuss, Our Christian Vocation (Greenwich, 1955), pages 15-16.

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace to him, if he flinches at that one point.” – A follower of Martin Luther, 2 April 1526, quoted in Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family (New York, 1865), page 321.

“Walking around St James’s Park I thought intensely of the difference between Tolstoy and St Augustine. Tolstoy tried to achieve virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; Augustine saw that, for Man, there is no virtue without a miracle.” – Malcolm Muggeridge, Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (London, 1981), page 434.

“Let us consider this settled: that no one who has made progress in the school of Christ who does not joyfully await the day of death and final resurrection. . . . Let us not hesitate to await the Lord’s coming, not only with longing, but also with groaning and sighs, as the happiest thing of all. He will come to us as Redeemer.” – John Calvin, Institutes, 3.9.5.

“If we are Christians and do not have upon us the calling to respond to the lostness of the lost and a compassion for those of our kind, our orthodoxy is ugly and it stinks. And it not only stinks in the presence of the hippie, it stinks in the presence of anybody who’s an honest man. And more than that, I’ll tell you something else, orthodoxy without compassion stinks with God.” – Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City (Chicago, 1969), page 123.

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things, he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately, forever.” – A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (London, 1967), page 20.

“Religion moves you to do what you do out of fear, and self-righteousness, but the gospel moves you to do what you do more and more out of grateful joy in who God is in himself. Times of revival are seasons in which many nominal and spiritually sleepy Christians, operating out of the semi-Pharisaism of religion, wake up to the wonder and ramifications of the gospel. Revivals are massive eruptions of new spiritual power in the church through a recovery of the gospel.” – Tim Keller

“I would encourage us to be slow to jettison the wisdom of our fathers. That is, just because we don’t know why they did things the way they did doesn’t mean they didn’t have good reason, reasons we ought to know and understand. A smug assurance that whatever reasons they must have had must be stuffy, stifling and sectarian is silly, self-righteous and, well, smug. It may just be that we have something to learn from them, and that their caution is grounded in biblical wisdom.” – R. C. Sproul, Jr

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” – C. S. Lewis

“Paul’s gospel not only contradicted the religion, philosophy and culture of the day, but it also declared war on them. Not a political war, not a military war, but a spiritual war of truth. It refused truce or treaty with the world and would settle for nothing less than culture’s absolute surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Even to every thought of our mind being held captive to Christ. We would do well to follow Paul’s example. We must be careful to shun every temptation to conform our gospel to the trends of the day or the desires of carnal men.” – Paul Washer

“The defeat of the ungodly and of the powers of evil is final, total, irretrievable. Glory be to God, however high the powers of darkness may carry it at this present, the time hastens on when God shall defend the right, and give to evil such a fall as shall for ever crush the hopes of hell; while those who trust in the Lord shall eternally praise him and rejoice in his holy name.” – C. H. Spurgeon

Do you believe that modern evangelicals have lost their grip on the biblical gospel?
“Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind’s redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God’s work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.” – J. I. Packer, “An Interview with Dr. J. I. Packer,” The Founders Journal, 16 (Spring 1994), The Founders Journal Website, http://www.founders.org/FJ16/interview.html (accessed February 8, 2010).

“Though infinitely better able to do without prayer than we are, yet [Christ] prayed much more than we do.” C. H. Spurgeon

“God imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent the pains of hell for, either: All the sins of all men. All the sins of some men, or Some sins of all men. In which case it may be said: If the last, some sins of all men, then have all men some sins to answer for, and so shall no man be saved. If the second, that is it which we affirm, that Christ in their stead and room suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the world. But if the first be true, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins? You answer, “Because of their unbelief.” I ask, “Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it is, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!” – John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Banner, Carlisle, 1959, p. 173-4

“They that know God will be humble; they that know themselves cannot be proud.” – John Flavel

John Piper: Let’s do this inductively. I ask. You answer.

John 3:17, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Why did God send his Son? _______________
John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

Does not obeying the Son (e. g., when he commands us to trust him) bring us under God’s wrath or leave us under his wrath? _______________
So what did God send his Son to save us from? _______________
Is this a felt need among the unbelievers you know? _______________
What are the implications for the content of preaching and evangelism? ____________