Barbed Wire Gospel in Degenerate Age

The churches, in their effort to grow their membership through seeker-sensitive messages, change the gospel from a God-centered gospel to a man-centered gospel. The churches also pander to man by changing their music from the old hymns about the blood to a man-centered musical performance that elevates the performers and not God. Pastors stopped wearing a suit and tie and began dressing in blue jeans and a casual shirt, and they had to look this way to fit their casual message of a casual Christianity.

The churches obtained the desire of their efforts as their congregations grew numerically in a mad race to see who could become the biggest churches. The cost for all of this was great as God and his gospel were traded off for man's recognition and accomplishment. Christianity became debased like the society it wanted to reach until the church lost all her influence and authority and became just another institution pandering to man for material profits.

That's where we are today, friends, with our country club churches that hold clam bakes on Sundays, and as the tide goes out, every shrimp has his hole. But where is the power of God in a meeting? Where is the voice of authority in the land? Where is the spiritual transformation among us? Until we change our message, we won't change lives. What we need today, more than bigger church campuses, is preachers who are willing to preach a barbed-wire gospel that cuts into the hearts and conscience of men and women and boys and girls.

A barbed-wire gospel for our degenerate age. And that's the title of my message today, friends. A barbed-wire gospel for a degenerate age.

Let me ask you a question, friend. Did you ever imagine, in your wildest imagination, a society like the one we live in today, where wrong is right and evil is called good, where perversion is promoted? A society that's gone plum mad and out of control. Everyone in it is filled with anger and hate.

I was standing in line at the gas station yesterday, and I asked the man in front of me if he was standing in line because it didn't look like he was. And he gave me a hateful look and said, Yeah, do you have a problem with it? And he raised up his shoulders like he was ready to punch me. I'm an old, worn-out man.

And I answered him by saying, I was only asking so I could stand behind you. But every time I go out in public, I sense a boiling rage inside of people that's bubbling over, ready to explode. This nation is a powder keg, ready to explode in riots and bloodshed.

The hearts of men are desperately wicked, and they don't know it because we don't tell them so. The word of God in Hosea 6-5 declares, I hewed them by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth.

But sadly, the Church today doesn't hew down anybody with its anemic message of a loving God and an easy heaven. We are not slaying anyone with the gospel today, but merely coddling sinful man with a half-baked message of conformity. The Church has quit calling men sinners and quit calling sinners to repentance.

We have a society without any spiritual leadership that is spinning out of control. That's why a person goes and picks up a gun and goes out and down people because of pent-up rage. A gospel with barbed wire will not be tolerated today, but an easy-believe gospel will be accepted by sinful man.

But if we want any hope of seeing revival in the land which we so desperately need, we must get back to preaching the God of the blood-stained Savior from sin, who is a risen sovereign Lord of absolute authority. We must preach the utter strictness of God's law that slays sinners and shuts them up to God for salvation. We must warn man to flee from the wrath to come and inform them of their duty of repentance and utter necessity of regeneration to avoid being sent to a burning hell.

We must preach a barbed-wire gospel that cuts deep and exposes all false refuges to point man to Christ for forgiveness of sin. And we must preach an utter committal to Christ as Lord. Maybe God, in His mercy, will raise up a band of young preacher boys who will preach for His glory and warn man about judgment and hell and proclaim a blood-stained Savior on a bloody cross that saves man from hell, if they will turn to Him in repentance and faith.

But until our pulpits get back to a God-centered gospel preached by men who don't fear man, we will just continue to play church on Sunday and sit in our soggy shrimp holes while the tide of eternity goes out, sweeping lost souls into a Christless hell of smoke and fire and damnation.