There are some in today’s church who say that we should not display the cross in the sanctuaries of our churches or on the outside of our church buildings because there are people who find it offensive. They say that the Book of Revelation should not be the subject of sermons because it is “too negative and depressing.” They believe that teaching about sin and Hell turn people away, and that talking about the existence of a real being named Satan scares people off. Some of these false teachers pastor large churches, and they say that the secret to their success is offering “seekers” a sort of religious self-help club with programs for all age groups that are “relevant” to today’s world. What Did Jesus say?
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 ESV)
That is what we are supposed to be doing.
Since when, friends, did the world get the power to dictate to the church what should, or should not, be offered to people who need God? The church must hold out the Holy Bible to a humanity that is perishing. It contains the things that are part of the greatest message of love, redemption, and restoration ever given to wayward and decadent people.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)
For example, some among us are saying that the church should avoid teaching about the blood of Jesus because people find talk about blood offensive. The Bible, however, says that the shedding of His blood is an integral part of our salvation. As the old hymn says, “There is power in the blood.” Jesus said that those who refuse the gift of the blood that He shed for us have no part in Him. (John 6:22-59)
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11 NKJV)
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:11-14 ESV)
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1John 1:6-7 ESV)
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Ephesians 1:7-10 ESV)
Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:18-28 ESV)
… remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:12-13 ESV)
Friends, we must stand with God and not the world. Jesus is The Word incarnate. (John1:1-5) If we do not hold out the Word - all of it - to the unsaved, we cannot offer them the truth or the way of salvation. (John 14:6)
Acknowledgements: https://biblehub.com/
Jack Van Impe
Ministries, “Enemies of the Cross”
C & D International, “God’s
Answers for Living” (1982)
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