Church Stuck in Bog of Sin

When a church ceases to be a lifeboat that exists to rescue the perishing and instead becomes a showboat that exists to entertain its members, then the world goes to hell on a rollercoaster. Sin no longer shocks us because we have become desensitized to sin. The worst thing that ever happened to us was a television in our living rooms.

R-rated movies have become X-rated and church members can watch cable TV programming with nudity and sex without blushing. People ask me what is our biggest problem in the church today. The biggest problem in the church today is pornography.

Half the members are addicted to it, including ministers. If a church is knee-deep in sin, how can it function on any spiritual level? But the bible declares in Proverbs, can a man take a fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Of course not. But somewhere in our personal lives, we have compromised ourselves and lost our testimony to a lost world as we have lowered our standard and lost our spiritual vitality.

Like a morgue, we send forth a chilly blast because we are cold and lifeless. A church in this sad condition will gather each week to merely socialize, laugh and talk sports. There is little difference today between a ballroom and a sanctuary.

If the biggest problem in the church today is sin and its members, then what is the biggest problem in society today? The biggest problem in society today is a church who has lost her voice of authority because she has lost her sense of sin. And when we lost our sense of sin, we lost our consciousness of God. The church goes from being a moral compass to a nation because she has lost direction herself.

Instead of being a house of prayer, we have become houses of entertainment. I've never seen a day, friends, where we need revival more than we do now. God must come and clean house and restore a sense of his majesty and prominence and preeminence again.

Jesus will not come back for a dirty bride. Holiness today has been thrown out the window. The church must return to her first love, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He must have first call, first place and first priority over all else in our lives if we are to have any hope of reaching a lost world with the power of the gospel. But the church today is stuck in a bog of sin. We have no power in prayer because we have no appetite for prayer.

We are knee-deep in mire and only Christ can pull us out to safety. I am reminded of a story Stephen Offord once told me. Born in Africa to missionary parents, Stephen Offord grew up in the African bush in a humble little cottage.

It was Christmas, and young Stephen decided to sneak out of the cottage early that morning to go bag a wild goose for Christmas dinner. Before daylight, he left his parents home quietly so not to awaken them. Into the darkness he walked with his rifle beneath his arm.

Making his way to the gate, he unlatched it, but it made a squeak. He kept going into the dark bush to a distant field where he knew wild geese would be. Slowly he moved in the darkness, but unfortunately his next step landed him in a treacherous bog of mire.

There he was, sinking in the mirey bog as he held his rifle above his head with one hand while frantically trying to extricate himself with the other. He realized he was in grave danger and sinking to his death. But unknown to him, the native servant of his father's house was awakened by the squeak of the gate, and this African had followed him in the darkness without his knowledge.

There stood the African as the morning sun began to break over the field. He was attired in a colorful robe of silk which was wrapped around his naked body. Quickly the native began to unfold his cloak about him.

It unfolded into one long piece of material, and as he unfolded it, he reached the garment over to the desperate Stephen Oldford. Stephen grabbed it and hung on for dear life as he was pulled to safety. Dr. Oldford would relate that this action of the African was like the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus stepped out of the glories of heaven to come to earth to save lost man who was sunk in the mire of sin. Jesus saves us from our sins. Well, I hope this little story today, friends, will help us see Christ with a renewed passion, with a deeper purpose for the reality of God in our daily living, so a lost world can see vitality in the members of the body of Christ once again.

It is my prayer in the strong name of Christ Jesus. Amen.