I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
(1 Corinthians 2:2)
One would be hard pressed to find any past period in American history where the majority of its people were more ignorant of Biblical theology as today. We are hearing a great deal from churches and pastors about the moral decline in the nation, but those arguments are nonsensical unless those same churches and pastors are standing on the solid ground of Christ and true biblical theology. “It is a lie”, wrote Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), “to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling…And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it.”
“Christianity” in America has become laissez-faire, which is no Christianity. In these days when people are confused and stumbling around in spiritual darkness, it is not the time for people to get together and sit around swapping stories on how dark it is. There is only one solution to darkness and that is light – the light of the glorious gospel of Christ and the doctrines associated with Him, (the Fall of Man, Sin, His Person and work, Redemption, Sanctification, His Second Coming, Judgment, Glorification, Heaven, @#!*% , etc.).
It is a time when pastors in particular must step up to the plate and begin in detail to instruct their people in the major doctrines of the Bible. Those doctrines proclaimed in Scripture must be the foundation of our thinking. Like the foundation of a building is strong and connected, so should our doctrine be; neither a building’s foundation nor our biblical doctrine can be strong and useful if it is not solid and connected. What use is it for the blocks of a foundation to be scattered and disorganized.
Pastors must become so convicted of the truths of the Biblical doctrines that their hearts burn within them to teach the people at every and all opportunities including Sunday morning, Sunday evenings, Wednesday evenings and any other time the Lord is pleased to open a door. Pastors must leave the side streets and get back on Main Street – this is what true Christians are hungering for, and must have to be equipped for life and the spiritual battle before them.
The doctrines associated with the Person and work of Christ is Main Street, anything else is a side street, Paul said, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). That is Main Street!
Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843), a prince among preachers said, “Some…slumber all their days under a worldly ministry. When God, in judgment, takes away the pure preaching of the Word, and sends a famine of the bread and water of life, their souls grow up quite hard and un-awakened. They grow proud, and cannot bear to hear the preaching of Christ. They stop their ears and run – they hate, they detest it. These souls often pass through life without the least awakening, and never know, till they are in @#!*% , that they are lost souls.”
Is there any hope for America and the churches of America? Only if God, in His sovereign will, chooses to raise up preachers like many in the past who were possessed with studying, preaching and teaching the Person and work of Christ to a doctrineless and Christless generation. Let us be on our knees crying out to Him Who alone can save. History and power are His. Lord, send us some men who are obsessed with Christ; the Christ of the Bible!
“Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching – where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)
The lives of Christians are the transcripts of their doctrine.” (Richard Allestree)
“Assurance is the result of a competent spiritual knowledge of the person and work of Christ as revealed in the gospel, and a consciousness of dependence on Him and His work alone for salvation.” (John Newton)