This is No Joke

A man walks into a progressive church. 

He's been struggling with sin. He knows inside of him there's this moral code of conduct he should be keeping, but he can't obey it no matter how hard he tries. He's familiar with the Ten Commandments and with a Jesus whom others told him died on a cross for everyone's sins. He remembers hearing about him years ago as a kid at a neighborhood church's Vacation Bible School in the town where he grew up. A boyhood friend had invited him to go.  

Now the man is at the end of his rope and looking for that Jesus. 

The progressive preacher at the church gets up and preaches a fifteen minute message devoid of anything supernatural. He tells the congregation to follow their hearts because the truth is inside of them. The Bible is a myth, he tells them, but they are invited to live by the parts of it they like and disregard the outdated material or anything offensive. He tells them they must create their own truth and identity. "They don't need to change," the preaches says, "God accepts them just as they are."

The man knows he's not acceptable or worthy to stand before a holy God, and he doesn't trust his own heart. The man is further confused by the pastor's words. 

After the service when the man tries to explain the guilt and shame he is experiencing from his sin, the pastor responds that the "sin" the man has been engaging in is, in fact, not a sin at all. 

"The cosmic christ didn't die for sins because you're not a sinner," the pastor informs him. He died to show you love and forgiveness and to be a good example. We don't need all that "bloody sacrificial stuff" to be saved from any wrath of God. In the end God just forgives everyone. That's his job," the pastor asserts. 

The pastor suggests that the man volunteer to deliver food boxes to seniors for the church's food pantry or to help in their substance abuse support group or diversity program. Maybe those things would make him feel better about himself. The pastor said this to the man to encourage him. 

Except the man was anything but encouraged. The man knows deep inside the things he struggles with and the temptations he gives into are wrong; he's tried doing good works already to clean himself up to no avail. He knows he needs something outside of himself. 

The progressive church has nothing to offer to help the man. 

So the next Sunday the man decides he will visit the big box church near his home. 

He's seen the pastor on influential news media outlets and popular talk shows, surely, he thinks, this pastor can help him. When the pastor takes to the stage in the huge, packed-out auditorium, he doesn't mention the words "sin" or "repentance," because he has said that's not his style. 

The Pastor smiles a big, friendly grin and says, "Cheer up, friends, I believe that 99.9% of people are not bad people. Deep down you all have a good heart. You're not sinning; you're just making bad choices." 

Just like he had said on CNN and Oprah. 

Then he goes on to tell the crowd that he will be sharing several points from his new book on how they can all live a successful life and be healthy and wealthy. Those things seemed unfulfilling and shallow to the man; he knew they couldn't satisfy the hunger inside of him or repair his sinful, broken heart. 

To keep up appearances, the pastor cherry picked and then twisted a Bible verse to fit with his cotton-candy theology. Then he added quickly, as if an afterthought at the end of his message, for the people to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior if they hadn't already. 

The poor man leaves not only still discouraged, but now even more confused. He doesn't understand why the 99.9% of people born good would even need Jesus. 

The following Sunday, still feeling distraught and hopeless, the man attempts yet another local church on a wing and a prayer of finding the true Jesus. The preacher at this church gets up and actually preaches out of the Bible, an entire chapter, for forty minutes. In fact, this preacher calls a spade a spade and then some. He preaches the hell out of sin and the law. 

He hollers and admonishes the congregation that they need to stop playing church. He shouts at them that their problem is they don't take their faith serious enough. They need to read their Bibles more. Pray more. Stop smoking that weed and drinking that booze. Stop sleeping with their boyfriend and girlfriend. Stop voting for Democrats. 

They need to try harder the preacher reprimanded them.  

But the poor man knows he has already gone that route, and in spite of doing the best he can in obedience to the what he knows he should be doing, he still falls short. He understands it's God's law, but the weight of trying to earn God's favor is smashing him to death. It's heavy. He can't fulfill its crushing demands. 

The man leaves yet another church still empty. The loving, wise, and deeply unshakeable Jesus the man remembers from his childhood, the One holding children in his arms while rebuking religious leaders and forgiving sinners seemed to be a distance memory fading more and more with each passing week. 

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;'" ( Matthew 9:37 ) 

The man pulls into his driveway after the service. 

He sees his neighbor working to remove a tire from his car as his kids play around him in the front yard. Something inside of the man beckons him to walk over and see if the neighbor needs any help. The truth is that he is just lonely and desiring to connect to something greater than himself, something his sin or material possessions or any amount of good works or anything else this broken world has to offer just can't seem to satisfy. He's empty, in pain and out of options. 

The neighbor smiles as the man approaches. He has waved at the neighbor before and exchanged greetings and small talk when the man first moved in several months ago. The neighbor had invited him to a cookout, but the man had made up an excuse not to go. Now he felt sorry for lying. 

"Apparently I punctured a tire on our way home from, church," the neighbor tells him. 

"Really? I was just coming from church myself," the man admits. 

The neighbor looks straight at the man's face as it he could perceive his very thoughts. "Are you sure it wasn't a funeral?" the neighbor says smiling wide, but his creased brow revealed a look of concern. 

"Is it that obvious?" the man says, now smiling a bit himself. 

"Are there any churches in this town that talk about the real Jesus?" the man asked him.  I think I need him.

"Man, don't go anywhere," the neighbor says as he dashes through his front door returning almost immediately with a Bible in his hand. 

The neighbor sits down on the front steps and starts flipping through the thin pages. He stops and holds the Bible out, firm in both hands. "This is the gold standard, by the way, the neighbor says, "There has to be an authority greater than what we can come up with ourselves, and this is it. If you start cutting parts out you don't like, you've just become the authority, and you're back to where you started. 

The man nodded in affirmation. 

"The emptiness and conviction you're feeling," the neighbor begins to tell the man, is a very good thing. Jesus, the real Jesus you're looking for, tells us in John 6:44 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them." So you're being drawn, man. That's why you're searching and hungry. 

"Sometimes God is referred to as "the hound of heaven," the neighbor said, smiling again. 

This is why the writer of Hebrews warns us by quoting Psalm 95, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."  

The neighbor explained to him that God had created the world perfect and beautiful, and when our first parents, Adam and Eve, disobeyed the only commandment God gave them to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for in that day they would surely die, all hell broke loose, so to speak.  ( Genesis 1-3 ) 

"Romans 5:12 tells us on that day "sin came to all men through the one man Adam, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all men sinned."

In Romans 3:10 the Apostle Paul quotes the Psalms also, "as it were written: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."   

The man felt the weight upon his heart grow even more crushing. God's law had awakened in him conviction. "How can I be accepted then?" the man cried out. "Isn't there anything to help me? I've heard Jesus died for the sins of the world!" 

"You're experiencing the human condition," the neighbor told him. And this knowledge has humbled you; a person has no hope of finding the real Jesus if they are prideful and think they are born good, doing just fine on their own. 

Those folks don't need or want him, like the Pharisees and hypocrites. Jesus said in Matthew 5:20 unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. He didn't come for the righteous, but the sinner." 

And yes, there is help. That's why it's called the 'Good News'" 

"Did you ever wonder why Jesus came as a baby? You've heard the greatest and most well-known Bible verse, John 3:16. 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life?'

"Yes," the man said as he continued to listen.

"We're separated from God we sinned against a holy God. We have no idea how holy God is! ( Isaiah 6 ) The commandments in the Bible are God's law - his standard. They must be kept perfectly for us to be holy and be with him. Because of the fall after creation, not only can we not keep God's law, but we must be punished for not keeping it." 

"This is because God is just. If he allowed sin, evil and wickedness, to go unpunished, he would not be just. He would not be good. Who wants to serve a God like that anyway? That's the Christian hope, that one day God will right every wrong. We can believe one day there will be perfect justice executed by our Holy God." 

"And when you attempt to keep the law of God to achieve your salvation, you will always fail. The law teaches us that we are sinners, but it doesn't contain the power to save us. It's our signpost. It points us in the right direction. That's why you have been experiencing so much turmoil. If you know you need something outside of yourself to save you, hearing, "just try harder," only frustrates you more." 

The only thing that has the power to save us is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

So, back to Baby Jesus. That's why Jesus came as an infant, to live the perfect life we should have lived and that God requires. He experienced what it was like to be inside of human flesh, the temptations, the daily grind, the ridicule and rejection." 

"When we put our trust in Christ Jesus, his perfect life is imputed to us. In Christ, we are now accepted before God. Jesus is God, and his shed blood for our sins is the only thing that could save us." 

The man dropped his head into his hands. 

"Dear God," he sobbed, "I have sinned against you; forgive me. I'm so sorry. I repent of my unrighteousness and my sins. I need you, Jesus. I can't do this on my own. Jesus, I believe you lived and died for me, and I believe you resurrected from the dead. Now I want to live for you. Help me, Jesus. Oh, Jesus, thank you, thank you, Jesus." 

In that moment the man finally met the real Jesus; he knew the truth. And the truth set him free. 

He was searching for Jesus because Jesus was searching for him. 

He had once been lost, but now was found. 

All of a sudden the law was beautiful to him. He was now under grace, and wanted nothing more than to please God for all he had done for him in Christ and to never sin again. And even though he understood he would still struggle with sin and trouble until he died, he had a new desire and power to obey the commandments of God, and forgiveness when he didn't because he had been filled with the Holy Spirit at conversion as Jesus promised. He was sealed. 

He also felt a new power inside of him to forgive others since so much had been forgiven him. 

He knew it was the unpopular, hard path of life, narrow and less traveled, but there was no where else he would ever want to be. If he was mocked or suffered persecution for Christ's sake, he would praise God that he was counted worthy to suffer for the one who suffered the greatest pain of all for him. 

The neighbor invited the man to come to church with him and his family the next Sunday so the man could joyfully partake in the sacrament of baptism. 

He says that it's a small church, but healthy and thriving with people of all ages and backgrounds. He said they aren't perfect, but they love people and love sound doctrine. Their pastor is going through the Book of Romans currently in Sunday morning worship service, and he thought the man would greatly benefit from the study as a new believer. 

The neighbor said the church also had smaller Bible studies and life groups and community and global outreach ministries. He invited the man to join him at the next men's prayer breakfast.  

"All of the above," the man responded with exceeding joy,"And when is your next family cookout? the man asked." 

The neighbor smiled at him. 

"Soon, Brother, very soon." 

"'therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'" ( Matthew 9:38 )