“Threat #2: COMPROMISE (2 Timothy 4:1-5)” | 1/17/2021

2 Timothy 4:1-5 | 1/17/21 | Will DuVal

As I was mapping this series out, I posted the question to Facebook: “What do YOU see as the greatest threat to the 21st c. American Church?” The response was overwhelming, even if some of the answers weren’t. Some of your answers were excellent. But the thing that struck me about so MANY of the responses: 

  • White supremacy; Racism

  • NO IT’S Critical Race Theory

  • It’s Political Correctness

  • NO IT’S The blending of religion and politics

  • It’s False Teaching

  • Cultural Secularism

What they ALL share in common, is that they’re ALL just SYMPTOMATIC of a much deeper problem. Well, a FEW different problems. We discussed one of them last week: ignorance. Critical race theory does not itself pose a massive threat to the Church; the problem is our ignorance: we don’t know what GOD’S WORD says about it, so we are unequipped to respond properly TO it, from a biblical worldview. 

And this morning, we’re going to discuss another one of those deeper issues: COMPROMISE

Compromise of course CAN be a wonderful thing: Polly wants to watch “Downton Abbey”; I want to watch “The Office” (for the third time); so we compromise on “Everwood”. Good show. 

But Compromise, in the sense that I’ll be using it this morning, can also be defined as “an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims or principles; a dishonorable or shameful concession” (dictionary.com). 

And in that sense, when God’s Church adjusts HER “opposing claims and principles” to be in better “agreement” with the surrounding CULTURE, that is INDEED a “dishonorable, shameful concession”. 

In fact, compromise is even worse than ignorance, as God’s word tells us: “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” (Ja 4:17). The only thing worse than not knowing what God’s word says, is KNOWING it and failing to DO it, for the sake of compromise with the world. Ignorance of God is bad; IGNORING God is worse.

Remember how Jesus warned those in Capernaum: “if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”” (Mt 11:23-24) Capernaum: You have no excuse! You witnessed my miracles personally! SODOM may be able to claim ignorance, but not you.

This is why the Bible claims that “judgment begins at the household of God” (1 Pet 4:17); brother and sisters: we know too much! We have no excuse, not to obey the Lord. The apostle Paul says, “What have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church[b] whom you are to judge? God judges[c] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”” (1 Cor 5:12-13)

That was another common theme of my FB poll: many of you rightfully commented that the greatest threat to the church is… THE CHURCH! But I replied: you’re gonna have to be more specific! All SEVEN of the threats we’re gonna cover in this series are more internal than they are external. We don’t have to look OUT THERE for our biggest dangers, church: we need to look in the MIRROR! As Os Guinness says, our problem is NOT “wolves at the door, but termites in the floor”. (A Free People’s Suicide)

Let me try and explain how this happens, how a church compromises its biblical worldview over time. Let’s say you’re planting a church, and your vision is to “reach all of St. Louis with the good news of Jesus.” That seems pretty biblical, right? 

But what you’ll discover pretty quickly, is that all of St. Louis doesn’t WANT to hear about Jesus, but what they MAY join you for is… really good live music. A really funny, engaging, positive message. A sense of community - a place to make friends. But you’ll ALSO discover that there are certain things, certain TOPICS, that the Bible may speak to, but that a LOT of these folks REALLY aren’t interested in hearing about; in fact, if you bring them UP, it may actually be a STUMBLING BLOCK to them attending, and hearing the gospel. So you ask yourself: “What do they HAVE to know about Jesus and salvation, and what’s all the OTHER stuff in Scripture that’s really just getting in the WAY of that. Tripping people up. And you may not literally rip PAGES out of your Bible, but there develops this sort of de facto “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with many of those passages and topics

And what happens is that over time, as the surrounding culture becomes more and more ANTI-biblical - Jesus said, “The world (is supposed to) HATE you, because you are not OF the world; I’ve chosen you OUT OF the world” (Jn 15:18-19) - but as the church instead makes concession after concession, for the sake of relevancy and supposed witness TO the world, over time the church becomes virtually indistinguishable FROM the world. The church compromises SO many of its principles and values and convictions that eventually, it can’t remember what it stood for in the FIRST place. A church that stands for nothing will fall for anything. And now you’ve got TONS of people coming, we’re reaching “all of St. Louis” - but what were we supposed to reach them WITH, again?

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“Threat #3: DIVISION (John 17:20-26)” | 1/24/2021

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“Threat #1: IGNORANCE (John 17:6-19)” | 1/10/2021