The Unsaved Christian Series

The Unsaved Christian

If you would, open your Bible to Matthew 7. During a Sunday school lesson, a child learned about how God created human beings. The child became especially focused when the teacher explained how Eve was created from Adam’s ribs. Later in the week, the boy’s mother saw him lying down on the floor, so she asked him what was wrong. His reply was priceless: “Mom, I have a pain in my side—I think I’m getting a wife.” For the next couple of weeks, we are going to look at the state of many Christians today. This 4-week series will have the following:

The Unsaved Christian

The Spiritually Dead Christian

The Lazy Christian

The Burned Out Christian

Today, we will be looking at The Unsaved Christian. A problem that is throughout the United States, especially in the South. Let us look at Matthew 7 starting in verse 21.

READ MATTHEW 7:21-23

Here we see the saddest words ever said in human history. Can you imagine going

before the king of kings and you are fully expecting to walk the streets of gold in

Heaven and God looks at you and says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

Sadly, these are the words that many will hear when that day comes, and it is the

reason we are looking at it today. The battle between Cultural Christianity and

Biblical Christianity. The number one religion in the Southern United States is

Cultural Christianity and Cultural Christianity is nothing more than a religion that leads to hell.

Cultural Christianity can be defined as nonreligious persons who adhere to

Christian values and appreciate Christian culture. This kind of identification may

be due to numerous factors such as family background, personal experiences, and the social and cultural environment in which they grew up. Basically, Cultural Christianity is a religion full of people who have more than likely attended church for most or all their life. They are people who have spent every Sunday at church for as long as they can remember. A lot of them even serve in some capacity in the church. The difference between a Cultural Christian and a Biblical Christian is that a Cultural Christian has a lot of head knowledge about God where a Biblical Christian has a lot of heart knowledge about God.

Did you know the largest mission field in the United States is in the south? Not up North full of unbelievers. Not out west where many have never heard the Gospel, but in the land called the Bible Belt. Back when I first started as the Youth Pastor here, I took the youth on a trip to Orange Beach for a summer conference. At the conference, the speaker Dean Inserra, who is the author of this book, told a story he experienced as he was leaving the seminary he attended as he was about to head to plant and pastor his first church. He was in the parking lot of the seminary, and he was loading his stuff into his car and one of his friends was packing up getting ready to head to northern California to pastor a church there. Dean said he remembers feeling so guilty because he was going to Tallahassee, Florida right below the Georgia state line and not too far away from Alabama and was right in the heart of the Bible Belt while his friend was going to a place like California that was full of unbelievers. Dean began talking to his friend about going to California where his friend looked at him and said, “It is much more difficult to pastor a church in the Bible Belt than it is in California.” He said “In California, it is simple. Either you are a Christian or you are not. In the Bible Belt, many people think they are a Christian, but have no concept of the severity of their sin, necessity of repentance, message of grace, or the overall message of the gospel. They think they are just fine with God and God is fine with them because they are not atheists and have been to church before as a kid or have been to church most of their lives.”

I want y`all to let that story sink in. The Bible Belt is full of people who never missed VBS as a kid and even faithfully took their kids or grandkids to VBS every summer, people who never miss a Sunday morning service, and people who are even sometimes involved in the church, but it is the hardest place in America to pastor a church or preach the Gospel. That is because of what I mentioned earlier. Cultural Christianity. It sounds Christian on the service, but it is nothing but Christian by culture rather than Christian by conviction. The true gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be found anywhere in the equation. In fact, Cultural Christians are not atheists at all. They would even get offended if they were called or labeled that. They do not oppose Christian beliefs. They believe in God. They take their Christian traditions seriously like prayer in school, nativity scenes, against abortion, and Linus reciting the story of the birth of Jesus Christ during A Charlie Brown Christmas. Songs like “Amazing Grace” are known from memory, but why grace is amazing or what grace even is, is something that cannot be explained. With Cultural Christians, God is often referred to as “the man upstairs.” Billy Graham once said this: