Luke 12:57-59
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel. Our reading is Luke chapter 12,
verses 57 through 59. If you’re using the Pew Bible,
you can find that on page 872. We finish chapter 12 today with
just a couple of verses of some of Jesus’ sayings where he is
alerting his people to the coming of the kingdom, but most especially
the coming of the day of judgment. It seems to me and I would guess
to you that not only have we really in America changed the
gospel to something of prosperity or feeling good or being rich
or something of that nature, we’ve also lost the urgency to
warn people of the coming judgment of God Almighty, because we have
really made salvation something that’s here and now. Be happy
here and now, be wealthy here and now, be well here and now. But there is a then and there.
There’s a new heavens, a new earth. There is a day of judgment.
And Jesus gives his hearers and us today, God willing, a great
jolt, a great punch in the gut, if you will, and reminds us of
what is at stake in this life and the next. Hear the word of
the living God, Luke chapter 12, beginning at verse 57. Jesus
says this, and why do you not judge for yourselves what is
right? As you go with your accuser before
the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way,
lest he drag you to the judge and the judge hand you over to
the officer and the officer put you in prison. I tell you, you
will never get out until you have paid the very last penny. Let us look to our God in prayer,
pray with me. Lord, a few moments ago, we sang that your law is
our delight. Your statutes are faithful, right
and true. And so we ask that you would
confirm your word within our hearts and that we may not from
you depart. We ask for the help and strength
and guidance of your Holy Spirit. May it be so in the name of Jesus.
Amen. It’s the South. And everybody’s
a Christian, right? Well, that’s not so. It might
have used to seem so, but think about some statistics for a moment,
if you will. Compared to 100 years ago, maybe
around the year 1920, we have 60% fewer churches than 100 years
ago. Now, that’s that’s an alarming
decline, isn’t it? 60% fewer churches exist in the
southern United States than did 100 years ago. Now, if that’s
not a staggering enough fact, in the United States, under 20%
of the population attends church. Now I’m talking Catholic, Protestant,
everything. Under 20% in the United States
attends church. I think you’ve heard this statistic
before, and it still seems to be true. The same rate of decline,
it still exists. Church attendance in America
is on a 7% a year decline. Now, I know you all know how
to add. I think you know how to subtract. Keep subtracting
7% from 100%. You eventually get to zero and
it doesn’t take very many years for that rate of decline to empty
out the Lord’s houses. But it’s the South, right? Everybody’s
a Christian. Well, if everybody’s a Christian,
why aren’t they in church? Why aren’t they worshiping the Lord?
Why aren’t they coming to renew covenant with almighty God and
hear his word and be made into disciples by the discipleship
ministry of the church? Well, there’s another staggering
fact. By the year 2050, that’s not very far away. It’s in many
of our lifetimes. By the year 2050, America Even
the South will be a post-Christian culture. Just look across the
pond and see what’s taken place in the UK and other places in
Europe. Some of our missionaries who
come to visit us report that grand old church buildings are
no longer houses of worship, but they have become nightclubs
and pubs and other venues for fellowship. And by the year 2050,
we’ll be there as well, a post-Christian culture. Now think about the
United States of America for a moment. We’re roughly 400 years
old since the first pilgrims came over this way. We have about
400 years of immigrants living in our country. The early immigrants
came for religious freedom. Most recent immigrants come for
opportunity. They come for work and the ability
to live the American dream, but the early immigrants to our country
came for religious freedom and their influence lasted for quite
a while. As I was coming up in the 1970s
and 80s and 90s, I always heard it said, we’re living on the
coattails of the influence of religion in America and having
grown up in the South where everybody’s a Christian, right? You see that
influence more and more. Now, it used to be a hundred
years ago, church attendance was quite high. Not only did
Christians attend church, but decent people, even if they didn’t
love the Lord, attended church. We have on the side of our refrigerator,
a set of rules for working in a drug store in 1854. Listen
to these rules. The store will be open promptly
at 6 a.m. and it will remain open until
9 p.m. Who are you going to get to work
that long these days? It’s the whole year round. The store must not be opened
on the Sabbath day unless absolutely necessary and then for only a
few minutes. Any employee who is in the habit
of smoking Spanish cigars, getting shaved at a barbershop, and going
to dances and other places of amusement will most surely give
his employer reason to suspect his integrity and all around
honesty. How about that? Each employee must attend Sunday
school every Sunday. Boy, you’d get a lawsuit, wouldn’t
you? Man. Men employees are given one evening
of the week for courting purposes. And two if they go to prayer
meeting. regularly. And after 14 hours of work in
the store, the remaining leisure time must be spent in reading
good literature.” That was the culture in our country 150 years
ago. People were decent. They might
not have been Christians, but they were decent. And it’s why
we say in the South, everybody’s a Christian. Well, that’s not
the case. We know and understand. And our culture has become increasingly
secularized. It used to be a hundred years
ago. It used to even be 50 years ago. Some of you remember this
in the 1950s and 1960s, a Christian family went to morning and evening
service. They attended Sunday school together.
They went to the Wednesday prayer service. Most of their kids were
in Christian schools and if that were not available to them, they
were certainly raised in a Christian home and they had a family altar. Our denomination has a statistical
report that our elders are required to fill out every January for
the previous year. And I’ve been around in our denomination
long enough to remember when on the statistical report, there
used to be a box where you place the number for how many had family
altar. How many of the homes in your
ARP congregation had regular family worship? And those statistics
have declined and declined and declined. There’s no longer people
going to evening service. There’s the closing of the Wednesday
prayer meeting. The Christian schools are maybe
unavailable to people or largely secular in the competition for
good academics. Christian homes are so busy that
they don’t have time to teach the nurture and admonition of
the Lord. We have seen a rapid secularization of our society,
but it’s far worse than that. We’ve seen a secularization of
the family and even a secularization of the church. And all this began
as we removed prayer from society. We began to teach evolution and
Darwinism. The school system began to indoctrinate
people and all the things it loves to teach. And so schools
and homes and even churches, do I dare say it, have, well,
they’re becoming useless because they can offer nothing that can
turn back the darkness, the darkness of sin, the darkness of a rotting
and dying culture. And so what have Christians turned
to in America? Well, we’ve turned to Let’s get
the right people in office and get the right laws on the books.
And let’s get the right school funding in place. And that’ll
change culture. And friends, that may have a
small effect. It may have some effect, but
it’ll be expensive and turn up to be a failed experiment. What
we need to turn back the darkness is the gospel. What we need to
turn back the darkness and the rot and the secularization of
our culture and society is simply the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Think back through our American
history when things began to get dark like this. God in his
grace brought preachers and there were awakenings. There were awakenings
in local congregations. There were regional awakenings
where thousands upon thousands repented of their sins and in
tears came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and amended their
way of living. The homes were also a central
aspect. of revival in America. And if
all of that is becoming utterly useless in our society, we have
no hope except the gospel re-enter the church, the gospel re-enter
homes, the gospel re-enter society at large. I heard a story recently
where a preacher in Alabama about 100 years ago preached the gospel
in his little rural town so fervently that everybody in the town got
saved. Well, the moonshiners were unhappy. They ran out of
customers. The moonshiners were furious.
Their business dried up. They were out of business. And
so a couple of moonshiners hired a couple of thugs and said, we’ve
got to take care of this. And so they went and waited outside
the church of this one particular preacher. And when service got
over and the people left, they were going to shoot him dead.
He was killing their business. And so they were going to kill
their business killer. Well, they stayed outside the
service and as he preached, They came to faith in the Lord Jesus.
And as the crowd emptied and the people left the congregation,
the preacher met these two men at the door and they said, we
came here to shoot you, but we heard your message. We heard
the urgency of salvation through faith in Jesus and we got saved. And dear friends, there’s a time
in our country where we’re ministers, we’re gospel soldiers, where
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re gospel soldiers. I’ve interviewed for a number
of church jobs over the years I’ve been a minister. And there’s
always a question, always a question people ask. And it’s a terrible
question, but it’s a well-meaning one. And they say to the preacher,
what are you going to do to grow our church? is if they expect
you to come in and be the magic bullet that attracts people.
Now, you could do all kinds of things. You could have slick
hair and smoke machines and all the rest, and you can get a crowd
up. But the answer is always this.
We will preach the word of God. We will proclaim the gospel of
God. We’ll make disciples, we’ll baptize, and we’ll keep doing
what the Great Commission says until Jesus comes. The church
may grow and the church may not grow. But we’ll do the work that
God has commissioned us to do in Christ Jesus, and we’ll see
how it grows. But there’s another side to that
coin. We’ve got to be evangelists.
We’ve got to live lives that show that we are saved by grace
and live out of that grace. You might have heard the words
I said in the pastoral prayer. I say it pretty often. I’ve been
around long enough. You’ve probably heard me say it a bunch. I say
something like this, Lord, help us to live such different lives
that people say to us, who are you and where have you come from?
And you get to tell them of the glories of the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, how he makes all things new, how he takes
sinful people and recreates them and gives them new hearts and
removes that heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh.
He teaches them to love and live his word. If you are living a
gospel filled, blessed, changed life, the world that is dark
and dying and it’s getting worse and worse, they will look at
you and say, you’re not from here, are you? Of course not. I’m from heaven. I’m just passing
through. I’m a citizen from above and
I am stuck below here in exile until my savior returns and brings
me home. And so there’s another side to
this growth coin. We need to be an army of gospel
soldiers, certainly a pastor and elders who preach and teach
and compel people to come to the gospel. But we need to live
fragrant lives out in our community so that people will say, you’ve
got something I want. Remember in the story of Abraham in the
book of Genesis, Abimelech came to him and said, Abraham, I know
Yahweh blesses you. I know his favor is upon you.
I know there’s something good about your life because your
God favors you. Let’s make a treaty. And as you
live an attractive life, godless people like Abimelech in the
life of Abraham will come to you and say, I don’t know what
you are drinking. I don’t know what you are eating.
I don’t know what’s on your diet. But it’s producing results. And
I want whatever it is you’ve got. And you can proclaim to
them the glory of the gospel. You can bring them to church. The gospel is to be preached. And we need preachers who preach
the word of God, who take the Bible seriously, who we need
congregations that believe the word of God and preach it and
teach it and love it. We need to know the whole counsel
of God. We need to hear the gospel read
and proclaimed and reminded. It’s why every week we have an
assurance of pardon. We need the gospel every day,
don’t we? We need the gospel every week. It’s why we confess
and God pardons us and we remind ourselves of these truths. It’s
why our hymns are biblical hymns. They’re not full of sentimentality,
but they’re full of the truth of the word of the living God.
Friends, the gospel is powerful. The gospel saves, the gospel
changes and the gospel recreates. But what has become of the church
in America? We have pandered. And somewhere about 50 years
ago, somebody sat down at a table in a church conference room with
a clipboard and they got out their pencil and they said, what
are some things we can do to make more people come to church?
I mean, after all, that was the goal. Let’s fill the church.
Let’s fill the church, not with Christians. Let’s just fill it
with people. And remember, the point of church is what? It’s
a gathering place for Christians to worship and to serve and to
learn and to grow. But it’s also a place where they
can bring non-Christians and they can hear the gospel and
they can come to faith in Jesus if God so moves in their heart
and lives. But whoever sat down at this conference room table
with their pencil and their clipboard said, what can we do to make
people want to come to church? And they strip the church of
reverence. They strip the church of being God-centered. They strip
the church of preaching and proclaiming a message of hope and salvation
through faith in the gospel. And churches become, in most
places, it’s like a nightclub. Churches in a lot of their discipleship
ministry, their preaching ministry, if you would call it that, is
pop psychology. The gospel has been reduced to moralistic, therapeutic
deism. Be good, feel good. And there
is a God who is there. And if you get in hot water,
he’ll come to your rescue. And that’s what church has become
in America. And further than that, we get
the prosperity gospel. You have faith. God will make
you rich. or you’re sick, have faith, God will make you well. And dear friends, we have pandered.
We have pandered to a culture and society that was dead in
their sins and trespasses, and we have not given them the gospel.
And it’s a wonder all those statistics of decline are there. In a hundred
years, church, the number of churches has declined by 60%.
Now, what do we say? There’s a church on every corner.
Well, if there’s still a church on every corner and there may
well be, and there are 60% fewer than they used to be, that’s
a big decline. Or the fact that worship attendance
is declining 7% per year. Or the other statistics are very
alarming. And so what is there for us to do? What can Jesus
teach us? Well, in our passage today in
verses 58 and 59, Jesus puts the urgency of the day of salvation,
the day of judgment back on his disciples. And he says in verse
58, as you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an
effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to
the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer and the
officer put you in prison. And I tell you, you will never
get out until you have paid the very last penny. Do you think Jesus little parable
here in the way he tells of the coming day of judgment would
pass muster in the last 50 to 75 years in American evangelicalism. Do you think the man who is sitting
at the conference room table with his pencil and his clipboard
would have said, let’s tell people there’s a hell and the fires
are stoked and Jesus is coming and he’s going to judge and let’s
give urgency. No, we went to the nightclub mode. We went to
the pop psychology mode. We went to the moralistic therapeutic
deism gospel, the prosperity gospel. And just this morning,
as I was reading through a news feed, I regularly read that the
main headline article posted just this morning said, Can America’s
gospel save us? And my first thought was, no,
it cannot. Prosperity gospel won’t solve
our social issues. Moralistic therapeutic deism
will not solve our social issues. Prosperity gospel and all the
rest pop psychology and nightclub worship services won’t solve
our issues. but an urgency, an urgency that
we are on the way to court. We are on the way to meet the
judge of heaven and earth. And while on the way to court,
we had better get our matter settled is a powerful message
that needs to be preached. I never heard Billy Graham preached.
I know he influenced both my father and my father-in-law greatly.
And, you know, I’ve heard recordings of him preach? And what were
the words he always summoned people with in his messages?
He would very eagerly stand over the pulpit. I’m not outgoing
and whatever enough to do it. But he would he would plead with
people, won’t you come? Won’t you come to Jesus? Won’t
you leave your sin behind and come rest in him alone for your
salvation? Or you think about one of the
most famous sermons ever preached on this continent. Sinners in
the hands of an angry God preached by Jonathan Edwards in the 1700s.
He preached that passage, I think from Chronicles, their foot shall
slip in due time. And he preached with such urgency. He told people that you are walking
in your life across a rotting bridge. And under that rotting
bridge, which you will surely fall through as your foot slips
in due time, you will land in the pain of misery of hell forever. But he would preach with great
urgency that God in Christ had brought salvation to men and
women and boys and girls. And so dear friends, what are
we to think in this age, this era in which we live? What are
we to think about Jesus teaching? Think for just a moment about
the basic story of the Bible. God made the world and everything
in it. He put Adam and Eve in a garden and he made them happy
and holy. And he told them they would remain
happy and holy as long as they didn’t eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. We call it the forbidden fruit.
But we know Satan entered the garden. We call this in theology,
the fall of man. And he tempted and seduced Eve
who tempted and seduced her husband to eat that forbidden fruit.
Their eyes were opened. They were naked. They were ashamed.
Their eyes saw what was good and evil because that fruit was
a delight to their eyes. And they faced the judgment that
God had promised. Remember he told them, you don’t
eat, you’ll live forever, but you do eat, you will surely die. Dear friends, we’re like the
man on the way to see the judge. We have an opponent who has lent
us money and we are in debt to this opponent. We are in debt
with our original sin, which comes to us through Adam. We’re born in Adam. We come with
original sin and from that original sin proceed actual sins. And our debt has mounted up into
the heavens and our opponent is the holy God of Israel who
cannot overlook sin. But sin in his eyes must be atoned
for. It must be paid for. It must
be punished. And there is a hearing. The Bible
tells us it is appointed once and for all for man to die and
then after that to face judgment. And so we are like this debtor
on the way to our hearing. And we will surely be handed
over to the judge and put in debtor’s prison. As Jesus says,
we’ll pay every last penny. What is Jesus telling the disciples?
What is he telling us this day? He is reminding us that the day
of judgment is coming quickly and your guilt is certain. In
fact, you owe such a debt and it is obvious to the world you
owe this debt that when you get in front of the judge, he is
going to lock you up. He is going to throw away the
key and you will never, ever get out because you can never
pay this last penny. Some of you may have seen on
the news this week, the man in Russia, uh, who was accused of
being a spy and he was sentenced to 17 years hard labor. Can you
imagine how he felt unjustly accused, but given a 17 year
sentence, what happens in 17 years? Well, hopefully he’ll
get out. But that’s 17 years. But could
you imagine how hopeless he feels? How distraught is his heart?
The sinking feeling in his stomach, 17 years in a Russian prison. Well, how about hell for eternity? Everlasting damnation, everlasting
pain, everlasting torment, everlasting judgment, everlasting life without
God. And what is Jesus saying? while
on the way to court, settle with your accuser. Well, how is that
done for a sinner? Well, as the gospel goes into
the world, as the gospel is preached and proclaimed and lived and
witnessed to and there’s evangelism and all sorts of efforts, we
need to compel those we know who are not in Christ that the
day is coming of judgment. That night is coming when it
will be too late. We need to preach and teach and
proclaim and evangelize and tell people that while there is still
time to come to terms with the fact that they are sinners in
the sight of God and justly deserve his wrath and his curse and eternal
damnation. There needs to be an urgency
in our lives. We’ll probably leave here today.
And the first thing on our mind will be lunch. And then after
lunch is taken care of, the next thing on our mind will be a nap.
And maybe some of you desperate for sports, you’ll turn on the
NASCAR race in Texas. And maybe you’ll watch a rerun
of a golf tournament and whatever. But what I’m trying to point
out, I’m not saying that any of those things are wrong, we’ll forget what
we heard. And when we look in the faces
of our friends, and our neighbors, and our loved ones, and our coworkers,
or the nurse at the doctor’s office, or anybody with whom
we come into contact over the next week, we may just forget. that we’re saved and they’re
not. And there is a moment of urgency to preach and proclaim
and evangelize and witness and to tell them to come to terms
quickly with the judge of the earth by coming to faith in Jesus
and that he can forgive them of their debt, which would keep
them in prison forever. Notice the first verse of our
passage. I didn’t skip over it. I’m coming back to it. Jesus
says, and why do you not judge for yourselves? what is right. Salvation is an individual thing
when it comes down to it. Yes, God saves families. God
saves churches. God saves groups of people. But
it comes down to you. And scholars disagree over what
Jesus means here. Why do you not judge for yourselves
what is right? There are like seven or eight
things this can mean. But here’s, I think, what the gist of it
is. You’ve got all these voices, all these voices screaming into
your ear day by day, week by week, gadget by gadget. And all
of these voices are telling you how to have a happy life, a good
life, a healthy life, a rich life. And it’s even coming from
the church in America, sadly. And Jesus is saying, listen to
the one voice that matters and for yourself, judge what is right. And so here is the moment of
salvation for each of you. Do you believe yourself to be
a sinner in the sight of God? Do you believe yourself to be
a sinner in the sight of God and that you justly deserve his wrath
and his curse? Had lunch with a pastor last
week after Presbyterian. He said, there’s a man in his
church who is interested in joining. And he does not believe he’s
a sinner. I said, well, you should just welcome him right in and
make him the pastor. Maybe put him on the session because that’s
the kind of guy you need. It’s a joke. This person is lost
and they don’t recognize it. They don’t acknowledge it. The
gospel has attracted him in some way, but it has not saved him.
And friends, that is a predicament that you cannot get out of unless
Christ, by his word and grace and spirit, opens your eyes to
see that you are in chains and that you are lost and without
hope. And so today is the day of salvation. While on the way
to the court date, you need to make a decision to rest in Jesus
alone for your salvation. I used to be able to say until
several years ago, I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket, but
now I’ve gotten quite a few, maybe two or three. Not the most
recent one in my household though. But a couple of years ago, I
ran a red light. Somewhere in the Asheville area and we had
come from West Tennessee driven 10 hours. We had a baby in the
back of the car. We strung through Chick-fil-a
and Morganton or somewhere. And we were pulling out of Chick-fil-A.
I had my drink, had my fries, had my sandwich. It was probably
about 9, 9.30 at night. We had a couple hours still to
drive back towards Charlotte, where we lived. And I eased onto
the interstate by turning right. Well, I’m used to just easing
onto the interstate. Well, apparently, there was a red light. And at
the red light, it said, no right turns on red. Well, I didn’t
see it, because I had my sandwich, drink, fries. And it was 9.30
at night, driven all day, and all the rest. Well, highway patrolman
stopped me. And I couldn’t talk my way out
of it. Had the food in my lap, danger to society, all the rest.
So I got the ticket. And on that ticket was a fine.
But also on that ticket was a court date. And so there was a day
appointed for me to go to court and for me to stand trial for
doing what this officer said I had done. It was me versus
him. Now, what’s the risk with a ticket?
I mean, you can go to court and fight it yourself. You might
get the book thrown at you. Your car insurance goes up in
lots of trouble. It’s on your record to get another
when you’re in big trouble. Or you can hire an attorney. And
you know, before you even get home from a traffic stop, about
seven lawyers have sent you a letter in the mail. I hear laughter.
Y’all got tickets. I know. You just don’t know what
the outcome is going to be. Let me tell you some good news.
When you come to faith in Jesus, and when you receive him and
rest in him alone for your salvation, there is still a court date where
you will die and face judgment. But when you have faith in Jesus,
you are justified, you are declared righteous. And that justification
is a judicial decision made at the moment you have faith in
Jesus. And so when you face a court date with Almighty God in the
future, at your death or at the second coming, you know the outcome
already. The book will not be thrown at
you because it was thrown at Jesus and on the cross for those
who rest in him by faith alone, your sins were paid for. And
the judge of the earth cannot convict you of sin already paid
for. You are already righteous and
you face this great throne of judgment with confidence because
your advocate, your lawyer, your attorney, your representation
is none other than Jesus. And so today is the day of salvation. If you want that assurance, you
need to heed the warning of Jesus. You will pay every last penny. Unless you make an arrangement
with your opponent on the way to court and Jesus is ready to
do business with you, I hope that you are ready to do business
with him. Let’s pray together. Lord, we
forget how serious it is to be an offender in your holy sight. We’ve known Christianity, we’ve
known religion, we’ve known Because it’s been our culture,
it’s been our life. We’ve just always been in church, many of
us. So put eternity in our hearts front and center today to love
you, to receive you, to rest in you alone for our salvation.
Help us to see others as needy ones who are on their way to
hell unless they meet with their accuser and make the arrangement. that Christ makes possible for
us through salvation. Make us good evangelists. May
our culture and our society get stronger and better as we see
more men and women and boys and girls realize the urgency of
the day of salvation and be changed by your gospel and by your church
and by the word. Lord, we make this our prayer
and we want to see your church more full in this dark and dying
world as we serve this community. Hear us, help us, make our prayer
so in the strong name of Jesus, amen. We want to sing of the
glorious gospel call using number 444, come to the waters, and
we’ll stand and sing together.