Sermon Central
“Them’s fighting words!”
…Seven sentences that should make every Christian cringe.
How many times have you been in your church’s foyer when a member of your congregation said something so unbiblical that you literally cringed? Or maybe it was in a Sunday school class when that one person (you know who I’m talking about) raises his/her hand and waxes eloquent in an assertion that is so jacked-up theologically that you don’t even know how to begin to respond.
As a traveling preacher/evangelist/trainer, I have these kinds of encounters from coast to coast consistently. As a matter of fact, I started categorizing my list of “fighting words” because I heard them so often from so many “Christians” (both young and old) in so many settings. From arenas full of teenagers attending our Dare 2 Share conferences, to churches full of adults where I happen to be preaching, I have developed a list of lame sentences that make me mad.
But I have to be careful, because sometimes my righteous anger can quickly morph into unrighteous fury. George Whitefield, famed evangelist of the First Great Awakening, used to pray, “God, give me the mixture of the lion and the lamb,” before he dove into a theological debate with someone. I don’t know about you, but I need that same balance. I tend to have more lion than lamb when it comes to defending the truth. My wife has helped me realize the importance and power of loving everyone and communicating with gentleness, even when I’m defending the truth. I don’t always get it right, but with her help and the strength of the indwelling Holy Spirit, I’m improving.
You’ll notice at the end of each point on my list of “fighting words,” I’ve included a link to our “Dare 2 Share Uncensored” podcast (both audio and video). These podcasts reflect the seven-week “Fighting Words” series from Dare 2 Share’s weekly staff chapel services filmed at our D2S headquarters. I’ve also included teaching notes in case you want to use the outlines to preach to your church or use in a Sunday school class or Bible study.
So with that in mind, let’s dive into each of these seven sentences that should make every Christian step into the verbal octagon and engage until someone taps out.
- “Christians shouldn’t debate theology.”
If we want to be like Jesus, then we have to get good at debating theology. It is not un-Christlike to debate. It is un-Christlike to keep your mouth shut when someone shreds a Biblical truth. All you have to do is take a look at Jesus’ three-year ministry. This three-year period was a virtual verbal “fight club.” He debated theology with the Pharisees in Matthew 12, with the Herodians and Sadducess in Matthew 22, and with the Jews in John 8 and 10. And don’t even get me started with the disciples.
How many times was he rebuking them for their perverted view of the kingdom of God, their lack of faith in his omnipotence (“Oh ye of little faith”), their misunderstanding of why Jesus came to the earth to begin with (Matthew 16:21-23)? And the list goes on and on and on. Jesus made a whip and used it on two separate occasions, once toward the beginning of his earthly ministry (John 2:15-17) and once toward the end (Matthew 21:12-13) to make his theological point.
And it doesn’t end there. The disciples carried on the tradition of “earnestly contending for the faith” (Jude 3). The apostle Paul reminds the elders at Ephesus of the importance of fighting for the truth in Acts 20:28-31:
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
Did you know that the word “doctrine” is used 40 times in the New Testament? It is described as something we should apply, obey and defend. As a matter of fact, if you read through the epistles, you’ll see some sort of admonition to fight for this truth in almost every single letter.
Why should we be willing to fight for the truth? Because they are “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68), which makes false teaching “the words of eternal death”!
If you knew your child was about to drink poison, would you stop them? Would you yell at them if you had to? Would you run up and grab it out of their hands and scare the living snot out of them, if need be? Of course! It is unthinkable to stand by while our children poison themselves.
Then why in the world would we allow the spiritual children that God has called us to father in our churches to do the same? Our motive in preventing this spiritual poisoning of the mind of our congregational members should not be hate, theological arrogance or meanness, but love. And as we fight for the truth, we must “be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful….” (2 Timothy 2:24).
So as we defend the truth, we must do our best not to be offensive. We speak the truth in love, not vindictiveness—but we must speak the truth.
(Fighting Words Part 1: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “Every religion ultimately leads to God.”
When my wife and I took our children to Disneyland a few years back, my kids got addicted to the “It’s a Small World” ride. Again and again and again that song played in ride after ride after ride, until I thought my brain was going to explode. Even typing these words has begun the mental record player once again, and I find myself typing the keys harder, trying to stop the music.
The message behind that irritating music is not so bad. It’s that all of us, no matter what our geographic location on Planet Earth, are not so different. We all have hopes and dreams and relationships and families.
The problem is when that “small, small world” philosophy jumps the chasm into our congregation’s theology. People start asking questions like, “What about people in the deepest part of the Amazon who have never heard about Jesus?” or, “What if someone is a sincere follower of Buddhism? Surely God wouldn’t send them to hell, right?”
But it was Jesus who said, “I am the way” (not a way) “and the truth” (not a truth) “and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” It was Jesus who claimed to be the exclusive way to God.
There are an increasing number of postmodern-hip pastors who are philosophizing the words of Jesus away, attempting to repaint the Christian faith as more inclusive and less narrow. The problem is they aren’t just glossing over the words of Jesus in John 14:6; they are using a thick, black paint. It is Jesus himself who makes Christianity the narrow way.
Don’t allow your people to exchange the narrow road of Jesus for the broad road of universalism (because we all know where that leads). Help them find their way to the road less traveled: the road of faith in Christ alone.
As one sage put it, “All roads lead to God, most to his judgment, one to his forgiveness.”
(Fighting Words Part 2: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “If you live a good enough life, you’ll make it to heaven.”
After preaching in countless churches across the nation, I’m convinced that these fighting words are the biggest lie that is still being bought by millions of professing Christians. There is a mentality that “sure Jesus died for me, BUT…” As a matter of fact, I always say that “everyone in hell has got a big BUT”:
“BUT you also have to live a good life.”
“BUT you also have to obey The 10 Commandments.”
“BUT you also have to live by The Golden Rule.”
“BUT you also have to turn, try, seek, surrender…”
The way of work and the way of grace are separate ways. If you seek to earn salvation via the way of work, you have to go the whole way. Jesus laid it out pretty clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus begins the “You have heard…but I say unto you” list of impossible standards, I’m sure that everyone listening wilted. Those present (save Jesus himself) had unjustly been angry at their fellow man and had lusted at their fellow women. And having lusted, they were busted and unable to measure up to the ultimate standard of entrance into heaven: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
If our people dare approach Christianity as a religion, then the standard is impossibly high. To get into heaven, we have to be as good as God himself.
Oops.
That’s why the offering of salvation is the way of grace through faith and not by good deeds (Ephesians 2:8-9). Those ways, according to Romans 11:6, cannot be mixed. “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”
We need to do our best to help all of our people embrace the way of grace for the salvation of their souls. What’s interesting is that, when they do, good works will flow out of grateful hearts that long to please the Father who redeemed them through grace.
(Fighting Words Part 3: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “We can’t really ‘know’ anything for sure, especially when it comes to spiritual truth.”
There are a growing number of Christian influencers who are espousing an epistemology of confusion rather than confidence. In other words, they claim that theological certainty is tantamount to theological arrogance. Under the guise of words like “journey”, they seek to deconstruct theological certainty and exchange it for a fruitless search for the unknowable.
The problem is that at the core of faith is theological certainty. Hebrews 11:1 makes it clear that, “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Abraham, the prime example of Old Testament faith, embodied this unshakable confidence in the person and promise of God:
“Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead - since he was about a hundred years old and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:19-21).Of course we can’t be certain about everything, because we are seeing through a glass darkly right now. Even the very assured apostle Paul conceded this (2 Corinthians 13:12). But there are certain things that we can be certain about. These are the essentials of the historic Christian faith.
Some would call this assertion arrogant. I would call the dismissal of 2,000 years of church orthodoxy as irrelevant for a postmodern generation the most blatant form of arrogance.
(Fighting Words Part 4: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “The red letters of the Bible are more inspired than the black ones.”
When I was a kid, I got a red Bible from my Sunday school teacher. It had black letters, and it had red letters. Even then I thought the red letters were somehow more inspired than the black ones.
But as I grew older and studied all the letters of Scripture, I began to realize that this was a mistake of Biblical proportions (quite literally). Paul makes it clear in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God breathed….” And if all Scripture is breathed out by God then all Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, should be written in red letters. Why? Because they all come from the same source: God himself.
It seems to me that many are more attracted to the red letters of Jesus because his words seem easier to manipulate for their own philosophical, theological or political gain. Jesus was purposely ambiguous with his teaching during much of his earthly ministry (Matthew 13:10-17). Some seize upon his parabolic language and insert their own theological agendas into his message.
But Jesus himself assured his disciples that “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:12-13).
The Spirit of God guided the mostly confused disciples into all truth after Jesus ascended into heaven. The results are the epistles of the New Testament. I’m convinced that the words of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and the words of Jesus as revealed in the rest of the New Testament (as His Spirit guided the writers) are one and the same. In other words, we are all called to be red-letter Christians; every word of Scripture should be colored red, because they all come from Jesus.
(Fighting Words Part 5: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “I refuse to believe that a God of love would send people to hell.”
Of the eleven times the word “hell” (aka “Gehenna”) is mentioned in the New Testament, eleven are mentioned by Jesus himself. Jesus always describes hell as a literal place of fire, pain, suffering and “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth” (six times in the book of Matthew alone!).
The mistake that many Christians in our churches make is that they think of God as just a God of love. But he is not just a God of love; he is a just God as well. His justice demands hell for anyone who violates his standard of perfection. But his unfathomable love sent his only Son to the cross to absorb all of his anger for all of our sin so that we wouldn’t have to go to hell.
This realization should make us serve our God with a sense of awe and gratefulness. Our God is not to be trifled with or underestimated. He refuses to be conformed to our preconceptions or platitudes. He is who he is. He is the God of fire and brimstone and the God of ultimate love—at the same time. What may sound bipolar to us is no contradiction. But it is beyond our finite minds to even begin to grasp.
(Fighting Words Part 6: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
- “The gospel of Jesus is not a set of propositions.”
There are those who say that the gospel is not a set of propositions. They try to make a case that it is an incarnational relationship with Jesus that we enter into, not a creedal message that we believe. Actually, the result of the gospel is this relationship with God. We are no longer his enemies but have become his heirs (Titus 3:3-7). How did all this happen? When we believed the propositional message of the gospel of Jesus. Paul put it this way in Galatians 3:2: “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?”
The word “gospel” actually means “good news.” It is the good news (propositional message) that Jesus died on the cross, was buried and rose again (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) and that by faith in him we have eternal life (John 6:47). This eternal life is not just a ticket to heaven, but immediate entrance into a personal, permanent relationship with the God of the universe (John 17:3).
Too many Christians are ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we must not be ashamed of that propositional message, because imbedded in it is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
The gospel of Jesus is a set of propositions that, if truly and fully believed, results in a relationship with Jesus that is eternal.
(Fighting Words Part 7: Video, Audio, Teaching Notes)
I conclude this article with the words of Charles Spurgeon to a group of preachers in a sermon entitled, “The Greatest Fight in the World,” his final manifesto:
My topics have to do with our life-work, with the crusade against error and sin in which we are engaged. I hope that every man here wears the red cross on his heart, and is pledged to do and dare for Christ and for his cross, and never to be satisfied till Christ's foes are routed and Christ himself is satisfied. Our fathers used to speak of ‘The Cause of God and Truth’; and it is for this that we bear arms, the few against the many, the feeble against the mighty. Oh, to be found good soldiers of Jesus Christ!Fight well, brothers and sisters. Fight well.
Greg Stier serves as President for Dare 2 Share Ministries (D2S) in Arvada, Colorado, a ministry committed to energizing and equipping teenagers to know, live, share and own their faith in Jesus. D2S produces various curriculum pieces and hosts national youth evangelism-training conferences annually, where thousands of teens participate in an outreach experience in their own backyards. Dare 2 Share has also formed a strategy called “Deep and Wide Youth Ministry”, and many youth groups are seeing multiplication through implementing the discipleship and evangelism trainings from this approach. For more information about D2S, please visit dare2share.org.