This Church Smells Like Hell

I believe that the Apostle John, in his first epistle, is warning his readers against heresy. For it seems some false prophets were already abounding in his day, and doing all they could to corrupt both Christians and the Word of God. And we all know who is behind false prophets and heresy, and that is Diablo, the deceiver.

John was writing this epistle to Christians who were church members in Asia Minor, and there was an emergence of heretics who were infiltrating the established church and spreading heresy as they denied the key fundamentals of Christianity, much like many churches do today. Notice I use the word emergence of heretics because we have today the same thing going on in the emergent church. I visited one of these emergent churches about three years ago, and I went there for about a month because I was so astonished I couldn't believe what was going on in there, in this so-called church.

The pastor was a sincere young man who had recently graduated from what was once a conservative Baptist seminary. I knew the founder of that seminary, and that man was rock solid as a teacher and preacher of God's Word, and the old boy would be spinning in his grave if he could come back now and take a look at some of his shaved-head graduates who don't even use Baptist in the name of their churches, which are merely serenity clubs. Anyhow, this emergent church placed an emphasis on being casual and inclusive.

Come as you are, and stay as you are, and go to heaven as you are. Everybody dressed sloppily, as so did the pastor, and the pastor's assistant always opened up on prayer, but he never once removed his baseball cap from his head the whole time he was praying. There was a total absence of reverence for God or the things of God.

The pastor made the comment during one of his messages that his favorite pastime was watching the TV reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and I can tell you this, friends, if the Kardashians visited his church, they would feel right at home there, and that was this pastor's objective. He wanted the worldly to feel at home there. This pastor had a men's Bible study that met in a cigar lounge, and the men in the church were encouraged to smoke cigars while they had their Bible study.

Well, I couldn't attend that one because I have asthma, and in the lobby of this church were stacks of books by Mark Driscoll, which you were encouraged to take home and read, and if you went to this church, friend, you were guaranteed to be polluted with the poison of heresy, and the people there were believing that this church was cool, and that God was cool, and that true Christianity was cool like this, and every time this so-called Baptist pastor addressed his congregation, I felt so uncomfortable in there because the whole thing smelled like hell. It was the very fumes of the bit of hell swirling over the Bible and clouding its great doctrines of true Christianity, and in that smoke, there was the twisting of truth to be something it wasn't and calling it Christianity. Now, the apostle John had to deal with much of the same issues we are facing today, friends, and he wrote this letter to tackle these issues head-on.

John wrote this letter while living in the magnificent city of Ephesus, and if you've ever visited those ancient ruins like I have, you know what a captivating city it was. In John's day, Ephesus was the commercial, political, and religious center of Western Asia, and they had a temple of Diana there, which was acclaimed to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and if you recall when the apostle Paul labored in Ephesus for three years, there was a riot because the worship of Diana decreased, and Demetrius the silversmith stirred up a public outcry in the theater where the entire city gathered in chaos and the chanted, Great is Diana! Well, I've stood in that ancient stadium, and it held about 30,000 people. I walked up to the top of the stone bleachers, and I had a friend drop a quarter on the marble floor, and I heard it perfectly in that top bleacher because it was acoustically perfect, and if we think we're so smart today and so advanced today with all our wired technology, the Greeks were a lot smarter than most of us.

When I visited the ruins of Ephesus, I scratched my head in wonder at how accommodating this city was to its inhabitants. There was a fancy, lavish public restroom where you all sat together, and you were fanned with peacock feathers while you sat in there and listened to live music of harps, and you breathed in exotic aromas, which were strategically placed to camouflage the filthy smell of that toilet, and next to this building was one of the best libraries in the ancient world, and right across the street was a government-run brothel. The proceeds supported the city interest.

They made it easy for you to worship your religion there with lavish, expensive, palatial temples, much like some of our big Baptist churches today, and if you lived in Ephesus back then, it was like having all the benefits of New York City and Los Angeles rolled into one. You couldn't wait to get there, and once you did, you didn't want to leave because it was a city of creature comforts. Listen, friends.

We still are the same people today, like those old Ephesians. Our goals are the same. Our interests are the same.

Our desires are the same. Our hearts are the same. They just dressed more conservatively than we do today, and they had less tattoos back then, and they were more cultured than we are today.

Why, they had the best public speakers to listen to on the deepest philosophies of life. My, there was nothing that could touch the wonders of ancient Ephesus as a city of pleasure. But the whole time the apostle John labored in that wicked city, he had a fight on his hands with heresy, as it was infiltrating the early church.

Nothing has changed, friends. It's the same battle we're fighting today. Only we are losing ground.

Many churches today will teach some parts of biblical truth and mix it with error, and they'll do it so subtly you won't recognize it at first. Listen to me, friends. If you are part of a local church that looks suspicious to you in much of what it seems, and what they're doing is so different from what's found in the pages of your Bible, then take a big whiff and see if you don't smell something that stinks.

Turn to your family and say, we're getting out of here because this smells like hell. And that's the title of my message today, friends. This church smells like hell.

My text can be found in the first epistle of John in chapter 2. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verses 15 through 17. And here in John's letter, he's laying the groundwork to distinguish truth from error.

This is from a man who had lain his head on the very bosom of Christ Jesus, and he was no manby-pamby either. Jesus called him and his brother sons of thunder. You better believe, friends, that when the apostle John preached, he thundered.

John was a man's man who knew what it was like to earn his living by his hands and the sweat of his brow. He was no wimp, and he was a fighter when it came to defending the gospel of the Son of God. Now, we could spend the next few hours together in this little power-packed epistle, but I want to focus on one area today.

And I believe this one area has done the most harm in our churches today. It's pernicious and sneaky, and we can sit smugly in church and nod our heads in agreement with this passage, and then go right out the front door of the church and be guilty of its dire warning. And how we live our lives.

You see, friends, when each of us became worldly, we thought the best way to reach the world was to invite the world into our church and make it comfortable there. And that's where we are today. Did you know that a rattlesnake can hole up in a tree stump in cold weather? Because it's in brumation.

Not hibernation, but brumation. They are still awake, but less active. So you can be out in the woods and walking around, and you see an old tree stump, and it looks like a good place to sit down and rest a while.

Do you know that the heat you generate by sitting on that stump will make that snake more lively? And if that snake felt threatened while you were sitting on that stump, what do you think he'd do? He'd bite you good and hard. And that is what's taking place in many churches today, where unsuspecting folks sit in pews and feed on heresy long enough to where it poisons them like being bit by a rattlesnake. Well, let's look at our text at this time, friends.

Here now is the word of God, and may God be pleased to attend the reading of His holy word. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Let me pause here, friends. This is frank talk from the Apostle John, because he was addressing his congregation, who many of whom had both feet in the luxuries of Ephesus. It was hard to be separate from the world back then as it is today.

No, they didn't have television, but they all went to the theater every day, and the actors back then actually had talent. They pampered themselves with expensive items, which they bought at the local mall, which was the Agora, and some rode in pretty fancy chariots on their way to church each week, and the wives' hairdos were impeccable and to be envied. Now I'm telling you, it's no different today.

If the Apostle John were to come back as an evangelist today, he'd preach the very same message to the worldly church of our day. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world. Oh, whoa, he just described America today, friends.

America is one big Ephesus. We have our malls and our sports and entertainments, and we eat to our heart's content and drink like fishes, and we pamper and indulge ourselves literally to death, and then we spend a small fortune on a big fancy funeral as we're laid in our grave, the big three here. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is how many live as church members today.

We not only want as much as we can grab in life for ourself, we want what the person next to us has as well. And the more things you own to display your wealth and success in life is how you'll more than likely climb the ladder of your church and make it to become the chairman of the deacons. Then you'll have all the power of the church in your hands as well.

You'll be the ramrod everybody looks up to and comes to for advice. But look at what John says about all this worldliness in the church. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.

But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. I believe it is here, friends, in this last verse of our text today that separates true vital Christianity from the false. When we examine ourselves, is our motive for serving in church to be noticed and recognized and appreciated by man? Then it's all of the world, and our works smell like hell.

But if we are serving God by doing his will for his glory, we are practicing the kind of Christianity John is talking about here. Now we have to face two issues. We have to answer two questions and be honest with ourselves for the sake of our families.

Does our church smell like hell? Maybe we are in the wrong church for our family in. If we don't leave, we'll all be snakebit together. And if the church smells like hell, is it because we ourselves are so entangled with the world that we smell like hell ourselves? Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

If any man, any pastor, any deacon, or elder, or church worker, loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Next time you go to church, friend, take a good whiff around. Let us pray.