While doing work throughout the internet today, I ran across something which reminded me of one of my favorite Martin Luther quotes. I thought I’d pass that quote along here for any who hasn’t seen it before.

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”
–Martin Luther

Welcome to another installment of the ‘Weekly Word’, our effort to highlight Gospel-centered preaching from Lutheran pulpits.

We are releasing today’s bible study first, then the sermon from today a little later. Again, this is from First Lutheran Church in Lake Elsinore, California. Today’s study is on Isaiah 49.

Enjoy!

Men who thought the best of Dr. Norman Nagel reported how he used to interview new professorial candidates and ask them this question: “If you were to be accused of any heresy, which one would you choose?”

Now, think about that for a moment. Which one would you choose if you were asked such a thing?

The answer he was looking for was ‘antinomianism.’ Why? Because if someone gave that answer, they probably ‘got’ the Gospel.

Now that Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” is now available for free, we’re beginning to get the expected concerns regarding antinomianism. Dr. Rosenbladt is simply being ‘too free’ with the grace, isn’t he?

But think about this for a moment: In our daily lives—at the office, with our spouses, with our children and friends and extended family, with acquaintances or business contacts, even people we meet as we do daily mundane things like running errands, and sadly, even in church—how often do we receive, or expect to receive, any level of grace whatsoever?

In this world, we are simply immersed in law—of all kinds, God’s law as well as civic. And we’re used to it. A little too used to it. We’re used to being fenced in. But on those (tragically rare) occasions when someone finally preaches the Gospel in all its sweetness—”200-proof” as Dr. Rosenbladt calls it—those fences are taken away. The law was completely fulfilled in Christ.

And pouring with a liberal wrist like that typically causes one of two reactions. One kind of person—in our experience, modern-day Pharisees—quickly reacts to this kind of talk with comments like, “Well, you can’t tell people that they’re that free, because they’ll run afoul of it as St. Paul puts in the mouths of his accusers in Romans 6, sinning more in order that grace may abound more! They have to be reined in somehow! You have to bring those fences in a bit to corral the freedom so that their sin doesn’t run amok, even more than before.”

The other kind of person comes from a completely different point of view, that of the “bruised reed” and “smoldering wick”. These are the people with whom we engage regularly. And I will tell you right now that the modern-day Pharisees of whom I just spoke almost never comprehend these bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. The bruised reeds and smoldering wicks have been deeply hurt, spiritually and emotionally, and they’re running very low on hope, on the edge of rejecting Jesus entirely because they just can’t measure up to the requirements set before them. There are more people out there like this than people can imagine. They’re suffering greatly under errant and false teachings. And it is primarily for these people that Dr. Rosenbladt wrote and presented “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church.”

Here’s an interesting question: To those who are worried that teachers like Dr. Rosenbladt may be offering the grace of the Gospel too freely I would ask when was the last time you got up out of your chair and actually spoke to the average guy or gal on the street? When was the last time you had a discussion with someone who was struggling with their lack of “good works” and self-focused (and false) teachings they’ve been receiving and which are driving them to despair? What would your counsel to them be, exactly?

I’ll tell you what I usually hear from these Pharisees. Their response often starts well—that Jesus Christ died for their sins on the cross and was raised from the dead in order that they, too, may have eternal life with Him. But then there’s a follow-through. They can’t leave it there. Their next step is making sure that the hearer knows that from his or her faith that he or she must/should/will produce good works.

The problem lies here not in the statement itself, but in how it is being taught to be applied by the listener. For the correct answer to this, I would simply ask, “Who gets the credit for one’s faith in Christ, according to Scripture?” (“…and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” 1 Cor 12:3) The One who bears the burden of bringing a person to faith is the same One who bears the burden of following through with the good works borne of that faith.

And to those who will say that I am arguing that antinomianism doesn’t exist, or that Christians aren’t bound by God’s law and can willfully sin even more in their faith to receive more grace, or that we don’t need to hear the law preached to us, I say now that the law is good and must be taught and preached, and you do not understand to whom or about what I’m writing. Refer back to my comment about getting out there and talking to people on the street. As Dr. Rosenbladt says, the people who particularly need to hear this message “…need more law like they need a hole in the head.” Heaping more law on top of the mountain of law they’ve already received may very well break the camel’s back and drive him or her out of the faith entirely.

The broken yet faithful believers in Christ find themselves in the same position as St. Paul himself: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Rom 7:19 – ESV) St. Paul understood that this struggle was the very nature of what it is to be a Christian.

But the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks are not being taught that the Gospel is exactly what should be their comfort in their affliction. They are instead told to “work harder”, “pray harder”, “have more faith” or any other number of hideous teachings, driven by the terrible fear that their faith and eternal salvation is “on the line.” They aren’t hearing that, even in their Christian faith, Christ died for them and their sins. And not just the sins which they committed before they were Christians, but all of them, even the ones which occur in their faith—even the ones they committed on purpose, knowing they were sinning the whole time!

This Gospel of which I speak is what is too often missing in most churches today. But the Gospel is the good news.

Are you torn asunder by the fact that you continue to sin while still believing in Jesus Christ? Did you know that you are lumped in with the saints in that struggle? That struggle between your fallen flesh and your faith in Jesus is the nature of being a Christian! But who is saying that these days? Very few.

So Dr. Rosenbladt puts this presentation out there to those who are not hearing the good news that Christ died on the cross even for sinful Christians like them. Controversial? You bet. But it is the truth. If you aren’t hearing this message anywhere else, please make sure you download Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation for free. Listen to it or read it over and over. Let it sink in slowly. Like sitting in a nice jacuzzi, let it seep into your pores. Enjoy the comfort of the Gospel in all its sweetness. You’ve been fed nothing but law, law, law for so long and your despair and fear are great. You need to marinate in the Gospel for a long time now. Enjoy it like the finest wine. Breathe it in like the best incense. Let it permeate your muscles, down to your bones.

To you bruised reeds and smoldering wicks (and all those Dr. Rosenbladt calls “those broken by the church”) I say this is most certainly true: Christ died for you. And the Spirit will continue the good work He started in blessing you with faith in Jesus. Good works will be and are borne of your faith—whether you are conscious of them at the time or not. (And I suspect that most often, we are not aware of our good works when they happen—“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ Matt 25:37-39) Christ died for sinners. If you are a sinner, you qualify—regardless of whether you’re already a Christian believer or not. Even while you sin in your faith, Christ died for you, and through faith His perfect works are imputed to you as 100% gift.

But don’t take it from me. Dr. Rosenbladt is the maestro to whom I always defer. Let him speak these words of comfort and assurance to you himself. Download “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for free right now.

Welcome to another installment of the ‘Weekly Word, our effort to highlight Gospel centered preaching from Lutheran pulpits.

We missed last weeks’ audio, so we’re doubling up this week. All the audio features Pastor Kevin Kolander from First Lutheran Church in Lake Elsinore, California. Enjoy!

Another great video post by Faith Lutheran Church (FLC). This is a re-recording of one of the presentations Dr. Rosenbladt gave at the recent Mockingbird conference. This is another great ‘don’t miss’ recording by Dr. Rosenbladt.

As with all the new videos coming out of FLC, this is totally free.

This past weekend I had a chance to hear Dr. Rosenbladt give his lecture entitled The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church to a packed house. As Ted and I sat and watched the impact of Dr. R’s words on the audience, I knew it was past time to give it away for free. Both Rod and Ted agreed, and so did the good folks at South Orange County Outreach (SOCO), who funded and recorded the presentation. So we are giving it away.

Feel free to download, make copies and share with others, quote at length, link to, or print and it hand out. The MP3 and both PDF formats are available, and later this year we will be linking to a video version filmed in front of a live audience, including a question and answer session, which will be provided by Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach, California.

This lecture was one of the reasons we created New Reformation Press, and it has been influential in the lives and ministries of many people. It has given hope to literally hundreds of bruised reeds and smoldering wicks barely clinging to faith in churches that have lost their way and lost sight of Christ. Others abandoned church long ago and considered themselves failed Christians. This is another word for them, not of cursing but of blessing.

This lecture was one of the main reasons our friend the InternetMonk, the late Michael Spencer, wanted us to put our ad on his blog, and he recommended it to his readers a number of times. It speaks to many who find themselves in what Michael called the ‘Post Evangelical Wilderness.’

Below is an excerpt from the lecture in which Dr. Rosenbladt describes the entry into Heaven by those who appeared to be failures as a Christian in this life. This past weekend as he read these words with tears in his eyes, members of the audience openly wept.

You can see why we think this lecture is so important.

For a number of years we charged a small fee for the MP3 and the PDF in order to defray our costs and to give a small royalty to Dr. Rosenbladt for letting us put it on our site. After some discussion with him we decided that it was time to give it away to whomever wanted it.

If you have purchased the MP3 or PDF from us in the past, let us know if you decide to purchase something else from our site and we will give you a credit equal to the amount you spent on the The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church.

We know this presentation will be of immense help to many, and ask your help in getting it out to those who need to hear it.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today a friend forwarded me an article by Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today. Entitled ‘The End of Christianity as We Know it’, the article talks about the scientific finding that Psilocybin Mushrooms (known as ‘magic mushrooms’ or ‘shrooms’ on the street) can induce deeply religious and spiritual experiences.  He contrasts this with the modern church’s herculean efforts to create such spiritual experiences through worship services, and concludes,

“From the point of view of experience, it seems it’s impossible to tell the difference between drug-induced and “natural” mystical experiences. Both are powerful. Both enable people to enjoy a transcendent moment. Both seem capable of transforming people so that they feel a greater sense of empathy for and unity with other people—what most people would call love.”

“This sort of thing makes many a Christian nervous, and for good reason. We live in an age in which religious experience is the centerpiece of faith for many, many Christians. We disdain faith that is mere intellectual assent or empty formality. We want a faith that is authentic, that makes us feel something—in particular, one that enables us to experience God. When we describe the one time in the week when we put ourselves in the presence of God, we talk less and less about “worshipping God” and more about “the worship experience.”

“So, to hear that people can have even more powerful religious experiences without Christian faith gives us pause. It’s a lot of work to fast and pray and worship and deny oneself—and even then, experiencing God is a hit or miss proposition! What’s the fuss if we can pop a mushroom and have a nearly guaranteed religious experience?”

And finally,

“But the research suggests a number of consequences for the way we do Christianity in our day. If religious experience is something that a drug can induce even more easily than spiritual ritual and disciplines, it may be time, for example, to rethink what many churches are trying to do on Sunday morning: create a memorable “worship experience.”

So where is the church left when deeply religious experiences that change people’s hearts can be induced chemically? What is the purpose of ‘church’ and of the Christian faith itself? What does the Church offer that we cannot get anywhere else?

Good morality and philosophy can be found in any number of religions.  Christianity has no corner on the market there.

Counseling and Psychotherapy are usually much superior to what can be found in the way of ‘help’ in the average congregation.  AA has a remarkable track record in rescuing those thought to be beyond hope.

You don’t need a church to make friends, find a mate, or fill your social calendar.

Modern self help gurus can help you improve everything from your physical fitness, and your manners, to your career and your desirability to the opposite sex.

Many religions claim to improve the lives of their adherents. They can ‘cure all your ills, and pay all your bills.’

And now, apparently, you don’t need to fast, pray, and worship to induce an encounter with the transcendent and produce deep and lasting ‘spiritual’ change.

The one thing that the Church has that can be found nowhere else is Christ and the forgiveness of our sins.

That’s what the church has to offer a dying world. It can be found nowhere else. God reconciling the world to Himself through a dead and risen Jesus.

Many of us in the Reformation traditions have been banging this drum for a long time. Whether it has been Eugene Peterson, mocking the search for ‘relevance’ and comparing much of contemporary worship (even in liturgical churches) to Baal worship in the Old Testament, or the guys on the White Horse Inn radio program, faithfully placarding Christ in His saving work for us, week after week, or faithful pastors who don’t shrink back from preaching the Gospel to a room full of Christians, the message of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus still goes out.

Any other message can be found somewhere else and usually done better than the church can do it.  If this is the case, why even compete?  Why not concentrate on the one message we have that no one else can lay claim to?

Hear me when I say that I am not discouraging spiritual experiences, worship, prayer and the like.  These things will be natural outgrowths of pursuing Christ and His finished work on the cross for us, but to start with ‘worship experiences’  to build our churches and draw a crowd is to put the ‘cart before the horse’, so to speak, and will lead us down the path to spiritual ruin.

To start with anything except Christ and Him crucified is to build our foundation upon the sand. (Matt 7:24-27) We sell people on some concept or benefit they will receive by being a Christian, and then they find out the church can’t deliver it, or they can find a better version of the same thing outside the church, and they become disillusioned and often bitter.

Brethren, these thing ought not be.  There is a better way, and that is to embrace the one needful thing, Christ and His work on our behalf, and to preach and teach this with an unquenchable fervor and an iron-like determination.

I would like to make a few of my own comments about the video which Pat posted recently, “Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media.

I’ve been seeing some comments in entries on other blogs regarding this video, and I find them rather telling.

…how sad. Packaged and served just like fast food. That’s what religion is today. And that’s how people like it.

Really? We do? People prefer feel-good-isms and content-less entertainment thinly veiled behind the disguise of church? In our sinful states, yes, we do.

As fallen people, we always desire the new shiny bobble. A part of us never outgrows that infantile desire to grab at the shiny new thing we’ve never seen before, drop the boring old one we’ve been playing with up until now, and put the brand new one in our mouths and ogle its wonderful glitzy qualities. This will never change this side of heaven.

I can say for certain that right now, through technological advances, we are now able to produce shininess that has never been seen by former generations. I mean, put on the sunglasses, spread on your SPF 1000 sunblock and hold on to your seats levels of shininess. And still we get bored. Why? Because that it is an idol that does not save.

Yet unfortunately, too often this is how we view the choices:

would i want to go to a church like that?
no.

But if the only other option was my grandma’s church…well…

and I remember that the model in the video was born out of a time when that was the case.

Let me digress for a moment. I had written something completely different for this entry, but after last Sunday I have decided to mostly start over.

I visited Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach, California last Sunday and was reminded of the changes they’ve been going through. (Please bear with them, the website is currently going through a complete overhaul.) Faith is a church which has both a traditional liturgical service as well as a hybrid service which is a blend of a contemporary worship sound and feel, but which retains the text of the traditional liturgy and the same Law/Gospel sermon which is preached in the traditional service.

(Go here to listen to the sermon I heard while I was there on May 16.)
(You can find the text here for the hymn which Pastor Hodel mentions in his sermon.)

Faith has been growing by leaps and bounds. That traditional service is packed out. I mean, it’s standing room only every single week, even after a recent refurbishment and expansion of the sanctuary. But why?

The reason they’re so packed is that Faith is being inundated with ex-evangelicals, ex-contemporary worship service goers and others who are looking for a worship service with substance. When talking to these people, I’ve learned that it isn’t a decision they’ve made lightly. They are extremely passionate about what they’ve done. They uniformly feel like they’ve been rescued from some kind of hopeless nightmare. I won’t recount the details of the stories I’m hearing, but trust me when I say some are pretty dark.

And that’s what Christ-less and Gospel-less teaching will do to you!

Something else that I find very interesting is that these folks who are leaving their contemporary worship service-based churches to arrive at the traditional liturgy at Faith did not first attend the hybrid service which Faith offers. They’re coming directly from one to the other without the layover. And they’re loving it! They’re so passionate about the traditional liturgy, in fact, that if any ‘contemporary-sounding’ elements accidentally slip in there, as can happen sometimes, they’re very upset. I heard words spoken almost at a yell about some contemporary-sounding elements accidentally making it into one of the traditional services I attended there months ago.

Talk about refreshing! And these people are no dummies. They are quickly getting up to speed theologically, or are already knowledgeable about Scripture, but finally getting solid Christ-centered teaching. They can recount many details of the kinds of Christless teaching they’ve been receiving at their former church and what effect it has had on them, often with tears in their eyes. They feel like they’ve been delivered. The sermons and the teaching are big parts of the reason why, but clearly they also love the traditional liturgy. They love the confession and absolution at the beginning. They love the chanted Psalms. They love the hymns. They love the Lord’s Prayer and the creeds spoken amongst one another. They love the communion, eating the body and drinking the blood of our Lord Christ while hearing that these elements are given for their sins. They’ve come from the ‘new’ to deeply appreciate something which is hundreds of years old.

We at NRP are trying to tie in with Faith more and more as they work like crazy to get the unadulterated message of Christ’s death and resurrection for the sins of the world out to the masses. (In our catalog you will see more and more recordings produced by South Orange County Outreach, or SOCO, affiliated with Faith Lutheran Church.) People are starving for it. I know this to be true because they’re telling me face to face how they have been quietly and privately languishing in their current contemporary church, not knowing (because they’re not hearing) the message of the Gospel. A very common phrase on the lips of these newcomers when they arrive is something resembling, “What is this strange new teaching?”

I wanted to tell this story because, clearly, not all want a contemporary service. Some are beginning to reject it. They no longer want something subjective and based on their feelings. They want something objective which comes from outside of them. They want to hear about Jesus Christ, the God-man, coming down from heaven to rescue them from eternal damnation. This is serious stuff, and these converts mean business.

Let me wrap this up with a little bit of a response I recently wrote to a commenter on the recent post in which we shared the video. He mentioned that we should have more respect for what he considers a “modern liturgy”, referring to the contemporary worship service, and signed off with this line – “What we really need to do in the body of Christ is recognise, appreciate and celebrate diversity, not mock it.”

We all need to be where these ex-evangelicals have come to. That is, they’ve been languishing and they know what matters: Christ crucified and resurrected. That is all that matters. If the preachers and teachers out there, of any denomination in any church, are not preaching and teaching Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins week in and week out, not only is it useless crap, but it is false teaching and dangerous. What value is this to anyone? Removing Christ from the preaching and teaching in the church is not ‘diverse’, it’s just us once again offering false gods in replacement.

To the churches which have a contemporary worship service and do preach every week the true depth of our sin and the sacrifice Christ made in His death and resurrection in order to rescue us, I say, “Good on you!”. We can argue the differences between the contemporary service and traditional liturgy separately once we have covered the only point that really matters – keeping Christ at the center of it.

What we need is simply Christ crucified for our sins, every week – don’t accept anything less. Your faith and salvation are on the line.

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

…And what I do I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.
(2 Cor 11:3-4, 12-15)

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
(1 Tim 1:15)

At work today I saw a lady wearing a lanyard for her keys and some sort of ID badge, and printed on it were the words “I love Jesus” but instead of the word ‘love’ there was a heart.  I have seen bumper stickers like that too.

To be honest, it made me a little uncomfortable.  Not that I doubt her love or devotion to Jesus, but often have questioned my own.

I trust Jesus, but to say ‘I love Him’ …  well I do, but it’s a constantly changing thing.  More often than not I can identify with Peter, who when asked by Jesus if he loved Him replied, basically, “I like you a lot.”

Maybe that is one reason that I have been uncomfortable with many contemporary worship songs that have the congregation professing an ardent, almost romantic love for the Savior. I have never been one to have what the culture calls a ‘man crush’ on anyone.

There are men that I can say I love; my dad, my grandfather, and some friends and mentors. (One friend calls this non-homosexual male philia.) I can say there are times when I feel like that towards Jesus.

It also seems like a private thing to me. I gladly and publicly confess to being a Christian or a follower of Christ, but my love, devotion and personal feelings are just that; personal. (So here I am writing about it. Yeah, I know.)

The church at large might benefit by looking into this subject especially in regard to why more men don’t attend worship, instead of adopting wholesale feminine categories of intimacy and love in our worship services.

Anyway, these are one man’s thoughts on the matter, FWIW.

Welcome to another installment of the ‘Weekly Word, our effort to highlight Gospel centered preaching from Lutheran pulpits.

The first sermon is by Pastor Bill Cwirla of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, Ca. and the next one is by Pastor Kevin Kolander of First Lutheran Church in Lake Elsinore, Ca.