I used to belong to a mega church
that boasted it had 30,000 members.
The trouble was you couldn't find them with
a search party of bloodhounds.
They made it awful easy for you to
walk the aisle to join that church.
And it was a big church with about
10,000 members that came on a regular
basis.
I don't know why Baptists are so impressed
and fascinated with numbers, but they are.
Anyhow, I was at that church for a
number of years, and during that time I
came to know hundreds if not thousands of
individuals.
Many of these church members fell into apostasy.
Some were staff ministers.
I taught a Sunday school class that had
over 100 people there every week.
That's bigger than many congregations in Great Britain.
I'd be surprised to learn if any of
them were really born-again individuals.
I know at the time I wasn't, and
I doubt they were either.
Oh, they were a religious bunch and would
tell you how much you needed Jesus.
And they cleaned up pretty good for church
each Sunday, but during the week most of
them lived like the devil.
The devil is a very religious being, and
he can turn himself into an angel of
light.
That's what my Bible says.
Well, these folks at this mega-church had
a mega-dose of religion.
Just enough to be dangerous.
Because if you are unconverted and religious, then
you are a danger to the gospel and
the Christ of the gospel.
The title of my message today, friends, is
The Danger of Religion.
You don't have to go back to foreign
history to see the danger of religion.
The bloody crusades where Christians were lumped together
with Muslims as enemies of the papacy.
All I can say about that sad epoch
is you didn't want the Pope mad at
you back then.
That is, if you didn't want to be
burned to death.
Then we had Bloody Mary who didn't like
Christians either, and she killed them as well
in the name of religion.
But we don't have to worry about losing
our heads here in America for our faith
just yet.
The danger of religion to us is not
a physical one, but a spiritual one.
The scribes and the Pharisees were religious men
who hated Christ as much as the devil
did, and ended up crucifying the Lord of
Glory in the name of religion.
Most folks today have just enough religion to
be dangerous.
If you're a God-called preacher and you
start preaching the unvarnished gospel of the Son
of God to them, and you preach hard
against sin and warn sinners about going to
hell, and you inform them of their duty
of repentance and utter necessity of regeneration to
be saved, then you have a fight on
your hands from the officers of that church
who've never heard the true gospel before.
You start telling nice church folks today that
if they want Christ as a Savior, then
they must have him as their Lord, and
unless they repent, they'll bust hell wide open
when they die.
They'll call you a heretic.
But the real danger of religion is seen
in the lives of individuals who are baptized,
but yet unconverted, because they give you the
impression that you too can be a Christian
and still be full of the world, still
hug your sins, and still sit on the
throne of your life and rule there, even
if you are the chairman of the deacons.
But a danger of religion today is telling
folks they can have Jesus through a decision
and church membership, that they can make themselves
a Christian anytime they want to because they
have the power to do so when they're
good and ready, because a poor, pitiful, impotent
Jesus stands at the door of their heart
waiting to be let in.
Won't you let him in, friend?
In reality, the Lord Jesus is a holy
sovereign who sits on a throne next to
the Father, and he earned that right by
way of a bloody cross, and if you
want him, then you must come to him
there, where he is, throw down your shotgun
of rebellion, and submit to that sovereign.
If you don't, you bust hell wide open
like all the other baptized church folk who
stand with the crowd from my Bible and
holler, we will not have this man reign
over us.
The big danger of religion is having a
religion but no relationship with Christ Jesus.
You don't know him, and even worse, he
doesn't know you.
From the Bible speaks of this unsaved religious
crowd today, many will say to me on
that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied
in thy name, and in thy name cast
out devils, and in thy name done many
wonderful works?
And then I will profess unto them, I
never knew you, depart from me, ye that
work iniquity.