The Danger of Religion

I used to belong to a mega church that boasted it had 30,000 members. The trouble was you couldn't find them with a search party of bloodhounds. They made it awful easy for you to walk the aisle to join that church.

And it was a big church with about 10,000 members that came on a regular basis. I don't know why Baptists are so impressed and fascinated with numbers, but they are. Anyhow, I was at that church for a number of years, and during that time I came to know hundreds if not thousands of individuals.

Many of these church members fell into apostasy. Some were staff ministers. I taught a Sunday school class that had over 100 people there every week.

That's bigger than many congregations in Great Britain. I'd be surprised to learn if any of them were really born-again individuals. I know at the time I wasn't, and I doubt they were either.

Oh, they were a religious bunch and would tell you how much you needed Jesus. And they cleaned up pretty good for church each Sunday, but during the week most of them lived like the devil. The devil is a very religious being, and he can turn himself into an angel of light.

That's what my Bible says. Well, these folks at this mega-church had a mega-dose of religion. Just enough to be dangerous.

Because if you are unconverted and religious, then you are a danger to the gospel and the Christ of the gospel. The title of my message today, friends, is The Danger of Religion. You don't have to go back to foreign history to see the danger of religion.

The bloody crusades where Christians were lumped together with Muslims as enemies of the papacy. All I can say about that sad epoch is you didn't want the Pope mad at you back then. That is, if you didn't want to be burned to death.

Then we had Bloody Mary who didn't like Christians either, and she killed them as well in the name of religion. But we don't have to worry about losing our heads here in America for our faith just yet. The danger of religion to us is not a physical one, but a spiritual one.

The scribes and the Pharisees were religious men who hated Christ as much as the devil did, and ended up crucifying the Lord of Glory in the name of religion. Most folks today have just enough religion to be dangerous. If you're a God-called preacher and you start preaching the unvarnished gospel of the Son of God to them, and you preach hard against sin and warn sinners about going to hell, and you inform them of their duty of repentance and utter necessity of regeneration to be saved, then you have a fight on your hands from the officers of that church who've never heard the true gospel before.

You start telling nice church folks today that if they want Christ as a Savior, then they must have him as their Lord, and unless they repent, they'll bust hell wide open when they die. They'll call you a heretic. But the real danger of religion is seen in the lives of individuals who are baptized, but yet unconverted, because they give you the impression that you too can be a Christian and still be full of the world, still hug your sins, and still sit on the throne of your life and rule there, even if you are the chairman of the deacons.

But a danger of religion today is telling folks they can have Jesus through a decision and church membership, that they can make themselves a Christian anytime they want to because they have the power to do so when they're good and ready, because a poor, pitiful, impotent Jesus stands at the door of their heart waiting to be let in. Won't you let him in, friend? In reality, the Lord Jesus is a holy sovereign who sits on a throne next to the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross, and if you want him, then you must come to him there, where he is, throw down your shotgun of rebellion, and submit to that sovereign. If you don't, you bust hell wide open like all the other baptized church folk who stand with the crowd from my Bible and holler, we will not have this man reign over us.

The big danger of religion is having a religion but no relationship with Christ Jesus. You don't know him, and even worse, he doesn't know you. From the Bible speaks of this unsaved religious crowd today, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me, ye that work iniquity.