We still need Jesus.
Day after day I hear about people who profess to be Christians who are now “falling away” from what they are now calling the “concept” of Christianity. Many are now questioning “the faith”. Even worse, many are now questioning “their own faith”. I feel like Jude when he wrote these words:
Jude 3 NKJV
“…I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend
earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the
saints.”
I had never heard a whole sermon preached in my life until I was 26 years of age. I had only been on the inside of a church building once or twice in my life until then. I’m no church boy. I believe that I am in possession of true biblical salvation. Jesus saved me, not man made religion. I was home alone when Jesus saved me.
By the way, he wasn’t white nor black. I never saw him.
Since that day, I’ve had all kinds of questions about the faith. When I say, “the faith”, I’m talking about all that Christianity is. I also have questioned what it was that I believed. After matriculating now for some 34 years in my studies and search for truth, all of the questions that I had, has led me to Jesus, not away from Jesus. The answers that I received kept me in the faith. They did not make me “fall away”.
It’s one thing to question places of worship and to question some of the religious practices that go on when people gather in the name of the Lord. I think it’s necessary because some stuff is just whack! Sorry. I also teach and believe that it’s more than okay to question the trappings of the “Institutional Church”. I have spent most of my preaching days trying to expose main line denominational traditions that bind people and keep people from a personal relationship with Jesus. It’s okay, I find nothing wrong with this type of questioning. But, what’s not okay is for people to start questioning the core of their “own” faith and their own belief in finish work of Jesus on the cross.
Listen to the scriptures:
Gal 3:1
“…Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross.”
I find this to be true today. It’s like some evil spell has been cast on people who “once believed”. I teach that Jesus doesn’t want “mindless” followers. We should love him with our minds. We should know what we believe. We just can’t allow deceivers to cause us to start doubting what we believed that put us in a right relationship with our creator. The Hebrew writer warned us about folk who may have experienced God’s power and then start feeling a desire to fall away. He says that this denies the power of Christ’s cross to keep those that He saves.
Read it:
Heb 6:4-6 NKJV
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
No need to put on your denominational, or ultra theological glasses to explain what you just read. No need to try and straighten me out with your opinion, or view, of what the text really means. Folk smarter than us have been baffled by this text. What I hear is based on general commentary. I base my understanding of this text on the overall character of God. I received from this text that Jesus’s death on the cross has happened once for all. Some get enlightened, taste of it, participate in it, hear and receive the word of God and get excited about the powers of the age to come and then for some reason, they run the risk of falling away from it all.
There is a prophesied “falling away” before the Lord returns. 2Thess 2:1-3. As I observe what could be the beginning of this prophesied falling away is that maybe, just maybe, the people that are falling away may not have even been saved? The easy way to view this dilemma is to quote John’s assessment.
1 John 2:19
19 These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.
I know the many arguments. For the sake of this post and thought, can we at least admit that maybe we have filled our local churches with people who have been enlightened but have not been born again?
In the parable of the sower that is found in Matthew 13 three out of the four people who received the word did not endure until the end. It says that they all “gladly” received the word or that they “received it with great joy”. It says some didn’t understand it fully. It says that others fell away because of the persecution it brought. Some just fell away because they missed the world and what it had to offer. The fact remains that three out of the four who heard the word did not endure until the end. Here is what it says about the one who does endure.
Matt 13:23 NKJV
23 But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”
Those who endure until the ends, it says that they hear the word and understand it. My God, how many people do we have working in our ministries and serving us without question and they don’t even understand the word. I’m telling you when they get offended, rejected, overlooked, they are gone. Simply, because they didn’t understand what this thing was all about.
I’m grieved today and you ought to be to, at the number of people who are allowing stuff, things and people, “especially the false Facebook prophets” to cause them to doubt “their own faith” and fall away from “the faith”. The power is in the cross. Jesus paid it all.
1 Cor 1:18
18 The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.
Opinions, questions and new age religions are everywhere.
Social Media false teachers and loud, disrespectful and unlearned Christian hating hoodlums are flooding YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and our timelines with posts that are straight from the pits of hell.
Will somebody stand with me and let folk know that it doesn’t matter what a persons roots are, the color of their skin is, what their economic status is or who’s in the White House. We still gonna need Jesus. My culture can’t save me. My local church can’t save me. My works can’t save me.
The Hebrew writer is saying that if we diminish the role in which the cross played in our salvation or live in such a way that we now act like we don’t have what we did receive when we believed, sorry, there is nothing else that’s going to happen. Jesus did it once, he’s not doing it again.
It does not matter what some are saying. It does not matter who’s falling away. We are still gonna need Jesus. He is the ONLY one that can save you. Period!!!
I know this is long but, trust me, it’s needed. Keep trusting Jesus. I conclude with the word of God.
1 Cor 15:1-4
15 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
We still need Jesus!!!!
—Vaughn McLaughlin