There once was a time when men became intoxicated by drink. In drunken stuper inhibitions fail, anger often rages and all sense of consciousness takes leave. In the process of time other agents became our intoxicants. Things like drug abuse, power, and wealth also lured Americans into love affairs that literally have ruined many lives. While this is still true of many today, there has emerged another intoxicant in our society which serves only to further the devastation that alcohol, drug abuse and the rest have already inflicted. Americans have become intoxicated with and addicted to LIBERTY! Evidence of this can be seen in just about every facet of American society:
1. The Judicial System
2. The Brazen Homosexual Agenda
3. Rebellious Out-of-Control Youth
4. A Bloodthirsty Abortion Industry that demands a "woman’s" right to choose death for her pre-born child
5. But the most shocking of all is the Christian Church filled with unregenerate "Christians" who pervert God’s grace by choosing to exercise their free-will at the expense of God’s law!
Our love affair with LIBERTY overpowers our inhibitions, feeds our raging anger and sears man’s consciousness of sin with a pseudo-intellectual enlightenment of the New Age.
How many times have I, as a pastor, warned a member of the church of the consequences of proceeding down the path of known sin only to be reminded that "God, will forgive me, pastor." These unconverted "Christians" of contemporary American churches act as though it’s acceptable to ask forgiveness knowing full well that God has not granted permission. Where God’s law clearly defines transgression God’s children are never to tred upon with the notion that they can easily avoid consequences by saying "their little prayer of confession" out of a flippant attitude.
How Christians use liberty as a pretext to evil:
1. "I know it’s not right, but God will forgive me anyway."
2. "But we are under grace."
These attitudes are born out of a complete misunderstanding of Christian liberty.
How God views this perversion of grace:
1. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." -Gal. 5:1
2. "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." -Gal. 5:13
3. "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" -Rom. 6:1-2
4. "What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness... Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness." -Rom. 6:15.16. 18
What it means:
1. Some exhibit merely an intellectual faith which is not of the heart and leaves them in deception and lost.
2. Some manifest a heart of faith which results in regeneration and a changed life evidencing the faith of the heart.
Those who hide behind the shroud of liberty as a pretext to evil are not servants of righteousness.
In fact, they are not saved at all.
Theirs is a "cheap imitation of righteousness" which is no righteousness at all.
They may have said the sinner’s prayer, but faith that is not of the heart - faith that merely enlightens the mind and has no affect upon the will is dead and powerless to save.
According to George Barna 74% of Americans profess to have ’made a commitment’ to Jesus Christ.
Clearly three quarters of our population does not behave like they’ve been converted from the old man.
Many have been Christianized, but are yet unregenerate and hell bound.
They are the product of several generations of preachers who were not God called nor Heaven sent - men who have been more concerned with performing their agenda than performing the will of God!
As a result, our Christian churches are filled with unconverted sinners who often find it easier to transfer to another church where the preaching is more palatable. What they really need is a transfer to the Book of Life.
Some churches who find themselves under the occasional preacher who has refused to compromise God’s word find it easier to run off the man of God rather than run from sin.
In either case, many "Christians" today are unwilling to submit to God’s authority or the man of God. Deceived they are, but deceived they shall not forever remain. For one day they shall wake up and find themselves in the torments of hell. There the awful reality of their self-deception shall finally and forever be unmasked.
For in hell there is no cloak of any sort that man can hide behind!
