Escaping Powerless, Lifeless Religion

Good morning, everyone. Nice to see friends back in the back rows. God bless you guys.

I want to speak today on, well, I'll just give you the title of my message is Escaping Powerless, Lifeless Religion. Dead religion is a breeding ground for sexual sin, for any kind of carnality, any kind of worldly mindedness. Dead religion creates a foundation, a place where the desires of the flesh can flourish.

We want an atmosphere of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit in a vessel can sweep away all that carnality and all that love of sin. That's what you guys came here for, right? Three of you did. We'll work on the rest of you.

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I gave a message about the prodigal son and I told you I wanted to talk about the elder brother today. And I'm going to use the elder brother as kind of a representative of lifeless religion. So I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, Pastor Steve, we're the prodigal son, we're not the elder brother. Why are you preaching on the elder brother? Well, because I've got to preach on both today, right? Got to cover it all now. No, it's because I want to propose to you that most of you anyway have more in common with the elder brother than you have with the prodigal son.

I believe that's true. And why I'm saying that is that the prodigal son was someone who was raised in a Christian home, but when he got to the place of, let's say he was 18 years old or whatever and he didn't have to answer anymore, he left the father's house. He didn't want anything to do with the father, with the father's Christianity or anything else.

He threw himself into a life of sin. He's the sort of person that's all in or all out. That's a prodigal son.

That describes Jordan and myself. You know, there came a time when, well, for me, yeah, I just absolutely, I could not do both. I'm not interested in doing both.

If I can't give all my heart to God, I'm not going to go there. I would rather just live in sin and live for the things of the world. I can't, the half-hearted thing is just, I'm not wired that way, you know.

But a lot of people are wired that way, or at least they're raised in a church setting and they're afraid to go out from the church setting. They want their sin, but they also want to try to be right with God or something. But I just couldn't do that, you know.

I just am not wired that way. The elder brother represents people who stay in the father's house. They remain there.

They're still in church and they're still doing that, but they have a secret life going on that's outside of God. Now, many elder brothers, how do I say this? Many elder brothers are a certain type of personality that went bad. And what I'm referring to is a moderate type person, unlike me.

There is nothing moderate about me. But there are a lot of people. Half the world's population, I believe, are moderate, you know, just more even keel type people.

And this type of person, when he's right with the Lord, he's going to tend to be dutiful and balanced and stable and patient, diplomatic, dependable, orderly, faithful, persevering. That's the kind of person he's going to be if he's right with God. Barnabas in the Bible is an example of that kind of personality who's right with the Lord.

Pastor Ed, for those of you who knew him, he's very much like that. But what we're talking about is beyond just a personality type. We're talking about a dynamic of remaining in the Father's house and yet keeping the sin and doing it in secret.

So that's really what we're talking about. And the only way you can do both of those is to have dead religion. You can't do it with a life with God.

Now, most of your Bibles, you can open up to Luke 15 if you want. We're going to read this passage. Most of your Bibles are going to have a heading that says the parable of the prodigal son or something to that effect.

But I want to propose to you that it really should more accurately say the parable of the two sons. Because even in the first part that's talking about the younger brother, there are things in there that should have applied to the elder brother, such as what happened in the pig pen, for instance. But even in this last section is all about the elder brother.

So this really is a parable of two sons. What they have in common is they're both disconnected from their father and uninterested in their father. They just handled it in different ways.

One went into full-blown rebellion. The other maintained an outward semblance of submission, but his heart really was just as rebellious as his brother's. So let's read this little passage here, Matthew 15, starting with verse 25.

Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house he heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. Excuse me. And he said to him, Your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he's received him back safe and sound.

But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, Look, these many years I have served you and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.

And he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.

And I want to propose to you that really the elder brother was just as dead spiritually as the younger brother. But whatever the case with that, whatever Jesus was thinking, I'm not going to presume to know. But I'm just saying that what I'm referring to here today are people not necessarily spiritually dead, but definitely not full of God's life at the very least.

So I want to talk about three ways the elder brother represents religious Christianity. Number one is the elder brother represents Christianity with little or no relationship with the father. Little or no relationship with the father.

Now, the younger son went out and just threw himself into the party life, and the elder brother remained in the house, remained with his father, and continued outwardly doing the right things. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. But the problem was he lacked intimacy with his father.

There was no real connection with his father. And that's the way religious-minded people are. You could say that they lack the spiritual life that comes from that relationship with the heavenly father.

Their relationship is more based on acquiring biblical information rather than developing intimacy with the father. They want to intellectually absorb biblical information. The misguided thought that the more I learn, the more godly that makes me.

And I'm just telling you that head knowledge cannot make you more godly. Intimacy with God is what makes you more godly. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can change who you are inside.

Knowing stuff, it's not that it's a bad thing, it is a good thing to learn, but it's only like the beginning kindergarten step towards godliness. Yes, learn some things, but if you're not applying them into your daily life, then what good is that? All it does is create a greater degree of culpability, responsibility to live out what you're learning. And the Word of God, rather than becoming a powerful force in this person's life, it becomes nothing more than kind of a college textbook to learn stuff about the Lord and so on.

The elder brother likes it this way because he really doesn't want to have to be dealt with by God. So, you know, in his kind of Christianity, he can keep it all surfacy and just, you know, like I say, just learn a bunch of stuff. He really doesn't want to humble himself.

He doesn't want to give up control of his life. He's ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth because the learning is all in the head. Cerebral learning about the things of God rather than experientially learning by coming into that kind of relationship with the Lord.

You know, God is not an impersonal being up there in space or something. You know, that's not what God is. He is a person, and he is a person with very deep, profound feelings.

He's a passionate person. More passionate than any person you can imagine is our God. And he has deep, deep feelings for you guys.

In fact, he loves you with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind. The question isn't whether God loves you or not. The question is whether you're going to come into that love and reciprocate it to him.

But you know what American Christians do, or at least carnal Christians, they love to hear about the love of God, but what they tell themselves is, that means I can have my way. No, that is not what that means. And you're deceiving yourself if you're telling yourself that.

That great, tremendous love of God is being poured out to you. And he's looking for you to reciprocate and enter into it and give it back to him. He wants a love relationship with you.

And he wants nothing less than that. He wants you to come into that kind of relationship. And I will take it a little bit further, this thing about having a relationship.

I want to say, I want to equate it to faith. Elder brother Christians want faith to be that they believe what the Bible teaches, rather than it being a vital force in their lives that affects them, that impacts the way that they live. They want faith to be obeying a list of do's and don'ts that fit in with the American life.

They want faith to cost them nothing more than going to church on Sunday. That's what they want. That's what they think the Christian faith is.

But the word faith is describing a spiritual connection with God. It's really another way of saying it. And what I want to say, dead-hearted preachers and scholars have turned it into, corrupted it and twisted it into something that is dumbed down to the point of lifelessness.

They just are mental, believing in Christianity. And they want it to be that, so they can justify themselves to live however they want to live. Jesus said as much in John 17 when he said, This is eternal life, that you know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

He went on in that chapter to talk about spiritual unity. You can't come into unity with the Lord without really knowing him. When you know the Lord, it's like a coming together of two people until there is just one person there.

It's spiritual unity is what God is after with people. You cannot be one with him without coming into that kind of relationship. The Sermon on the Mount ends with one of the parables Jesus told.

Maybe it wasn't even a parable, maybe he was just looking into the future and he was actually, as he's talking about this, maybe he's actually seeing something that was taking place. And what he sees is this group of shivering people who are frantically claiming to know him. And they're telling him, you know, Jesus, we did this and we did that.

And we did all these things for you, Lord, Lord, they say. But the words they will hear and take with them into eternity is, I never knew you, depart from me. They knew all the Christian jargon.

They knew all the Christianese. They knew how to talk the talk and look the part. But there was one thing missing, a submissive relationship to God.

You can have religion without relationship. You can, and millions do. But you cannot have saving faith without relationship.

There is no true Christianity apart from a very real relationship with God. All right, number two. The elder brother represents Christianity with little or no spiritual life.

The elder brother represents living the Christian life through his own efforts. Because he's going to stay in control of his life. That means that he's got to work the system through his own efforts.

And what happens is, if he ever did have any real faith or any real life with him, it dies off. If you are a born-again believer, you are going to have the life of God in you. And when there's life, there is growth.

You go out and look at a rock, and if you look at that rock a hundred years from now, it's going to look exactly the same. But anything alive in this world, plant or animal life, starts off tiny and gets bigger. There's a growth process.

And if there's not a growth process, let me put it this way. If there's not a spiritual trajectory into a more Christ-likeness in your life, if there's nothing but spiritual stagnation going on in your life, then you have every right to be concerned about your spiritual condition. Because if there has been new life, then there's going to be growth.

And there's going to be change. There's going to be a constant movement towards the things of God. The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

Amen. That is the truth. You know, we had Manny here a couple weeks ago.

I know a bunch of you guys weren't here. Manny grew up in the old-line Amish community. And he came here, I can't remember how many years it was now, 15 years ago or something like that.

And he went through the program and he tried with all his might to do the program and to get this thing down, you know, so he could get the sexual sin out of his life and all that. And after, I think it was four months in the program, he was down on the prayer trail one day and he finally just collapsed in a heap because he knew that he couldn't do it. He could see a vast gulf between himself and the Lord and he was not going to reach it through self-effort.

He couldn't do it and he came to that realization. And that's what he said. He told us, what he said to the Lord is, I can't do it, Lord.

And that was the very sentence that God was waiting for to hear from him. And that was when he collapsed and the Lord came in and took possession of his life. Praise God.

And he's never been the same since then. That's the kind of thing that you want. Paul said, those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Well, how do you know which you have? All you got to do is just look at your thinking. What kind of things do you think about? What predominates your mind throughout any given day? What kinds of things? Are they things that are to do with the flesh or are they things to do with the Spirit and the spiritual life? When Paul uses the word death here, he's just describing lifelessness.

It doesn't necessarily mean either born again or not born again. I think you could probably be born again and be during the stage of infancy. You're not going to have a lot of growth.

You're going to look like you're maybe spiritually dead, but there comes a time when you really should start changing and growing, as I said before. What people have who don't have the spiritual life within them, they have dead religion. That's what they have.

They have a form of godliness, but there's no power. No power. A spiritually minded Christian is someone whose heart and mind are governed by the Holy Spirit.

They're more concerned with communing with God rather than the outward things. They want that kind of interaction going on with the Lord. Theirs is a life of inward conviction, not outward conformity.

Their obedience springs from love for the Lord, not from outward rules or something like that. Christianity for a religious person is more of a system than it is a relationship. It's amazing to me how many people will spend their entire lives in a religious system and never really even know the Lord.

Man, I just can't comprehend it. Because like I said, I'm just not wired that way to be in both camps. I don't understand that, but it's just the fact.

There just are a lot of people who live their lives that way. So what does it look like to have spiritual life, spiritual vitality? In my book here, The Biblical Guide to Counseling the Sexual Addict, I talked about this a little bit. Here's why I was talking about it was because I know that I'm writing a book that is going to be read by Christian counselors and pastors and people like that.

And I just was really the Lord led me in it, and I started talking about what it looks like to be a spiritual person ministering to people in need. And I quoted a few of the old-time godly men. A.W. Robertson said, speaking of spiritually-minded people, they are spiritually led, the spiritual experts in mending souls.

Yeah, that's what you guys need, spiritual experts in mending souls. John Gills described them as such as live and walk in the Spirit and are strong and stand by the power and grace of the Spirit of God. Adam Clark said they have wisdom and experience in divine things.

Albert Barnes wrote that they are those who are under the influences of the Holy Spirit, holy persons. And then this is what I wrote, and this is really what I want to get at here. The inescapable fact is that mere dissemination of facts about sexual addiction will not touch a heart that is hardened by years of sin.

Frankly, if the counselor is not walking in the Spirit, he will not be much help to the man coming to him in deep need. Indeed, he will discover that a Christian leader can only take someone to the same depths he himself has gone to spiritually. Only God has the power to transform a person's heart, and only the godly have the spiritual expertise to offer any real help.

So does that mean that Christian counselors can't help men in sexual sin? No, I'm not saying that. If they are walking in the Spirit, yes, they can help someone, absolutely. Yeah, they can help someone, but my only question is, why don't they go to the Word of God for their answers and solutions instead of psychology books that originate from the writings of atheists? Someone should have said amen right at that moment, right then.

Alan, you should have said amen. I was looking to you, man, you didn't come through for me. Amen.

Another thing about spiritually minded people is that the power of God is going to be at work in their lives. In fact, there's going to be the miraculous going on around them. It just has to be, because you have a miracle-working God living within them.

You know? You guys saw the testimonies, you heard the testimonies the other night. Those are miracles that have happened, the greatest miracles that have happened in this place. And I could sit here, if I had a memory anyway, I could sit here and spend an hour or two just talking about all the miracles that have happened in this ministry down through the years.

Miracles of provision, when there was no way we could accomplish something and all of a sudden, out of this just clear blue, the Lord would come in and all of a sudden take care of a situation. Or be in dire financial need and the Lord just comes through at the last second. I mean, just so many kinds, all kinds of different miracles.

People being powerfully affected in this place, just down on the prayer trail by themselves, and have an encounter with the living God out there, nothing to do with us. Just that God's in this place, His hand is on this work. And people's lives get affected because of that.

And that is the greatest miracle, is when God can take a hard-hearted sinner, someone who's full of themselves, someone who's just living for self, prideful, and has no desire to change, and take that person and create a revolution inside them and turn them into a godly person who loves the Lord and loves the things of God. That is the greatest miracle that can happen in this place. And it does happen here, guys.

It should be happening for you. At some point, you should be coming into that. That's why God brought you here.

Paul, describing the apostate church of the end days, said they would have a form of godliness, but deny the power of God. Say no to it. I don't want the power of God at work inside me.

I want my form of godliness. You know, the only difference between an outright pagan and a hypocrite is a form of godliness. Because the same deadness inside, spiritually, is there for both of them.

You know, a pagan is just like a prodigal son. He's just out living for the things of the world, makes no pretense about it. But a hypocrite continues on with the outward semblance, the image, the facade of Christianity, but still just is dead inside.

You know, this is one of the sad, sad things about the American evangelical church. It is perfectly acceptable to be powerless as long as you maintain a form of godliness. Heaven help us.

So you can have religion without spiritual life, but you cannot have saving faith without spiritual life. There is no true Christianity apart from spiritual life. Okay, number three.

We're getting right through this message, aren't we? The older brother represents Christianity with little or no love for God. The older brother remained in the house and at least outwardly kept the rules. He just didn't have a love for his father.

That's really the bottom line. He just didn't really love his father. He was just trying to do the outward thing that was expected of him.

He's basically a resentful insider with no deep attachment to the father. And he represents people who go through the motions of Christianity without a real love for God. They're not compelled by love.

They're not driven by love. It isn't love for the Lord that makes them want to obey him and makes them want to know his will and pursue his will and follow his will. They don't have that strong attachment in that way.

What elder brothers are good at is keeping the rules. They're careful to dot all the I's and cross all the T's because they don't want anyone to find fault with them. That is the biggest concern they have, is to maintain that outward semblance of Christianity so no one can criticize them.

And think about your lives before you came here, men. That really describes what you did. You maintained a facade, an image with those around you because you were terrified of them finding out about your secret life, finding out that you weren't what you were presenting yourself to be.

Elder brothers are good at keeping the rules. You know, they like everything spelled out. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it.

They feel most comfortable in a religious system where they know the rules and then they can just kind of obey the rules and follow the rest of the crowd and what they're doing. Whatever may be going on in their hearts, one thing's for sure, their outward behavior is going to be proper and religiously correct because they don't want to stand out as people in rebellion or whatever. But you know something? With all their rule keeping, they've missed, overlooked the greatest law of all, that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

That is the greatest law, the greatest commandment, Jesus said. Now Christianity must never be built on emotions. That's not what we're after.

We don't want a Christianity that has all these highs and lows and that sort of thing. You lived your life by your feelings before you came here. That's not what we're looking to do is just kind of amp up and pump you up emotionally or something.

I used to be speaking men's groups across the country, and it was so just, discouraging isn't strong enough. It was just so difficult because I'd see, like there were times, I'm just thinking of this one big men's event I spoke at in Louisville. This was 20 years ago, and the guy right before me came out, and all he did was hyped everyone up.

He roused the crowd and got them all to this fever pitch of being, you are men of God and you're going to live for God and all this nonsense. And I had a message of repentance that I had to bring that day, and it was like the whole thing just deflated. It was really hard because who wants to hear that you have sin in your heart and in your life and you need to deal with it before God? Who wants to hear a message about that after just hearing this rousing, emotional, pumped-up thing? But there's a lot of different ways emotionalism is traded for the real thing in the church.

Like there are many mega churches, especially, where they have these powerful, quote, powerful worship performances and basically, practically rock stars up there, and they lead the people into this just tremendous pitch of emotion. And they leave that place and they're chattering about how awesome that was, how powerful that was. But if you were to follow them around in life without them seeing what's really... without them realizing you're seeing what's going on, I think what you would find for most of those people are carnal, worldly-loving people.

And they go to church to get pumped up once a week, and then they go right back to their worldly mindset. That's mostly what you would find. Or there are some churches that it is like... Kathy and I were in a little church about, I don't know, a few years ago.

I mean, they were practically swinging off the chandeliers. It was kind of enjoyable. I liked it.

I actually kind of enjoyed it. I mean, they didn't know who we were. We're just in the church, you know, so that was nice.

But it was enjoyable, but same deal. It's like, is there anything of reality of God in this place? And I didn't... I can't say I felt anything like that. A lot of emotion.

Now, emotion has its place, okay? Love is an emotion. But here's how it works in a spiritual setting. God is a spiritual being.

We are spiritual beings. And the way it happens is when you are born again, there becomes a connection between two spiritual beings. And out of that connection, when that happens, when that really happens, what comes out of that is spiritual health.

And when you're spiritually healthy, you can't help but to fall in love with God. You know, more and more so as time goes on, you don't just immediately love Him with all your heart, soul, and mind. That is built up over time as you begin to see what He's really like.

How good He is. How merciful He is. And all the wonderful attributes of God.

As time goes on, you just fall deeper and deeper in love with Him. Elder brother Christians are experts at religion. They just don't love God.

That's the problem. They just don't really love Him. Earlier I said, I mentioned being diplomatic as one of the traits of a moderate personality.

But that same trait with someone who isn't right with God becomes compromise. That's what it becomes. They're not the sort of person that is going to be filled with a zeal for God.

If they're not right with God, of course. When Jesus told the Laodiceans, would that you were either cold or hot, please be one or the other. He was referring to their love for Him.

And He said that He spit them out of His mouth. I mean, everyone in here, I'm sure, has had the flu. And you know what it's like when you have something inside you and your gut is just churning.

I don't know, it feels like a rock in there or something. And it's just, I mean, there's only one thing, that thing has to come out of you, because you can't tolerate it. And that's almost how Jesus felt for people who lived this life of acting as though they were walking with Him.

And He's seeing inside their heart, He's seeing the reality of the utter lack of love for Him. And it was nauseating to Him. John MacArthur wrote this blurb.

Let me read this blurb. It's worth hearing. Talking about Laodicea.

The church was lukewarm, and we may with perfect accuracy render the word tepid. No emotion, no enthusiasm, no urgency, no passion, no compassion. There is infinitely greater chance for someone who is cold than for someone who is lukewarm.

Better abandon all profession of interest in sacred things than to pretend to believe them and sing about them and yet be lukewarm. We work far more harm to our age by tepid character than by open denial of Christ. It is not the people who are frozen, utterly indifferent, but the people who pretend to love Christ, half-hearted, indifferent, vacillating, and in spiritual matters perhaps also nominal.

They are the ones who bring great harm to the cause of Christ. If you guys haven't repented over that, you really should. Who knows the effect you had in the body of believers that you came out of? Who knows? I don't know if you've ever sat and really thought about that.

Loveless Christianity leads to the dead formalism of organized religion. It was organized religion that put Jesus on the cross. It was organized religion that threatened to rip the early church apart.

It was organized religion that persecuted Luther and Tyndale and Wycliffe, the Moravians, and many others. It was organized religion that would stand in the way of every revival that's ever occurred in the history of the church. And it will be organized religion that will one day hunt down true believers.

It'll be professing Christians whose love for God, if they ever had any, has grown ice cold, who will be hunting us down. The great danger for elder brothers is deceiving themselves into thinking because they keep the outward rules of Christianity that all is well with God. That is a great danger.

You can have religion without love, but you cannot have saving faith without love. Jesus said that loving God is the greatest commandment. There is no true Christianity apart from love.

All right, so I want to begin to wrap this up. In fact, just come on up, Josh. You know you've been an elder brother if you've had little or no relationship with the Father, if you've had little or no spiritual life with the Father, if you've had little or no love for the Father.

In other words, you've had religion without God. So let me just ask you, what say you? Do you want to keep a religion that allows you to live without conviction, be able to make your own decisions in life, have as much of the world as you want, keep your beloved sin, is that what you want? Because religion will let you have all of that. You can have your own life.

You don't have to submit to God. No one's going to make you submit. Or do you want a real relationship with the Lord, a real life in God, a real love for Him? That's the question, man.

And at some point in this program, you're going to have to come to grips with that and make a decision. So I want to at least give you the opportunity this morning. If what I've been describing describes what you've been like, what you are like, and you want to make that consecration to come out of that, then I'm going to invite you to come to the altar this morning.

Yeah, you guys might want to move back. The Lord has all that you need, man. You're not going to have spiritual victory without a real spiritual life.

It's just not going to happen. You're not going to stay in control, go through this program and just make your own rules and do your own thing and go home and have victory. You're going to go home and be the same person that you were before you came here.

Something has to change. Let's all stand up. You know, I don't always have altar calls.

Just sometimes some messages are more conducive than others to it. I think today's one of those times. So I'm just going to open the altars right now.

If the Lord's speaking to you, I want you to come down here, get before him, pour your heart out to him, and then I'm going to pray for you. But you better be sincere with him. No more games.

You better mean business with him. Pour your heart out. Tell him what you've been like.

Tell him the reality. He sees it anyway. He knows what's going on inside you.

Lord, I pray that you'll look down from your mighty throne with great compassion and pity on these men, Lord. They've strayed far from your house, Lord. Even though they remained in the house, their hearts were far from you, God.

And I pray, Lord, that you will work the kind of miracle, the supernatural transformation that will bring them into your kingdom, into your family once and for all, Lord. No more facades, no more fake living. But to have a true life in God.

Come to them, Lord. They are hopeless without a work of the Holy Spirit. They can't do it themselves, Lord.

Even as Manny said, they can't conjure it up. They can't just continue on going through the motions, Lord. They need a miracle.

And I ask you for it. God, create miracles here this morning. You are a miracle-working God.

And we're asking you to do for them what they cannot do for themselves, Lord. Meet them, Lord. Meet them halfway.

They are reaching out to you, asking, pleading, knocking. Respond, Lord. I know it's in your heart to do that.

Meet them, God, and change their lives in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

You guys just stay with the Lord. Just stay. Stay.

Stay with Him. Talk with Him. Communicate.

Converse with Him. If this is your moment, don't treat it cheaply, like you can't wait to bounce up and get on with Sunday. Nothing's going to happen for you if that's where your heart's at.

I'm not trying to tell you to give you some kind of specified amount of time to be down here. I'm just saying, if you want something real, you have to fight for it. To ask Him for it.

You all are dismissed. Let's just save our talking and fellowship for the student center or whatever. God bless you all.