A Comfortable Gospel
E.A. Johnston warns against the modern diluted gospel that comforts sin rather than calls for true repentance and salvation.
In this challenging sermon, E.A. Johnston confronts the modern church's tendency to dilute the gospel for comfort and convenience. He passionately calls believers to reject a compromised faith and embrace the true, convicting power of the gospel that leads to genuine repentance and salvation. Johnston warns against the dangers of false assurance and urges the church to awaken from spiritual complacency.
Full Transcript
I bring this message before you today, friends, with a heavy heart, as a voice crying in the wilderness because I believe the gospel is being butchered today in our churches and this country, and nobody seems to care. I believe we're more concerned about who we'll have lunch with today and what we'll watch on TV later than we care about being true to the souls of men. We want a gospel today that soothes our aches and relieves our conscience of sin.
We want a compromised gospel that will look the other way from our compromised lives. We want a comfortable gospel that comforts us on our false foundations while we sin our way into hell and call that religion. The church in the West sleeps soundly today on her pillows of conformity and compromise.
The crimes we have committed in the modern church of our day is a compromised gospel that is easier to swallow because we have diluted it of all things that are offensive to sinful man. We found out long ago it was easier to get folks to walk in now to join our church if we just offered them the opportunity to accept the Savior on a cross to keep us out of hell. And we hand folks our little Jesus who we have shrunken down to our size and who, in his impotence, stands helplessly at the door of our heart with his hat in his hand like an insurance salesman with a free ticket to heaven.
If only you would be gracious enough to let him in. That's the gospel in a nutshell in our day, friends. And if you are one of those millions of church members who swallowed that easy-believed gospel borne out of television crusades and monkeyed by every church in the land, I feel sorry for you.
The chances are you're yet in your natural condition beneath the condemnation of a holy God who hates all iniquity and who will punish sin. For my Bible says, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.
How many, I wonder, have done what the minister told them to do and they joined the church, believing that their physical response to an emotional appeal and church membership was salvation? Vance Havner once said, I could have led a few more folks to the Lord who had not already joined the church. Church folk are the hardest to reach with the gospel because they believe they're already saved. But I believe, friends, the biggest mission field in the world today is the American church who languishes in ease atop her false foundations of carnal security and who in her lost condition is best described by that searching verse from Proverbs 30, 12, which states, there is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness.
Sermon Outline
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I
- The current state of the gospel in modern churches
- The desire for a gospel that soothes rather than convicts
- The danger of a compromised and comfortable gospel
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II
- The consequences of diluting the gospel message
- The false security of church membership without true salvation
- The spiritual condition of many churchgoers today
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III
- The biblical standard for true salvation
- The need for spiritual discernment and repentance
- A call to awaken from complacency and false assurance
Key Quotes
“We want a comfortable gospel that comforts us on our false foundations while we sin our way into hell and call that religion.” — E.A. Johnston
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.” — E.A. Johnston
“The biggest mission field in the world today is the American church who languishes in ease atop her false foundations of carnal security.” — E.A. Johnston
Application Points
- Examine your own faith to ensure it is based on true repentance and not mere church attendance.
- Reject any gospel message that minimizes sin or offers false comfort.
- Commit to seeking spiritual discernment through prayer and Bible study.