DEER PARK ALLIANCE CHURCH, CONFESSION OF SIN: HABITS (SERMON ANALYSIS 2)

June 2010

Mr. Doeksen, we have decided to tackle another one of your sermons. It would be rash to judge your teaching ministry on the basis of just one. If you listen to and absorb the comments that we make, we have no doubt that it will do you some good. We urge you to appeal to God for support as you read this analysis through.

Mr. Doeksen, Deer Park Alliance, Confession of Sin: Habits.

Summary: There are two works that need to be done: arresting and lifting. The questions I want to leave hanging in your soul are these: Am I for real? Who do I really belong to? Maybe there’s a habit that has reared its ugly head again, and you think, ‘I don’t know if I’m for real. Maybe I’m of the devil.’ In our text, you have people practicing sin and people whose sin is not to practice a law. This last group may have looked religious. These two groups are really of the same crowd. They just don’t hang with each other. (He’s in 1 John 3.) “What do my habits really say about who I think I am—about who I believe I am—about who I believe I belong to.” What it means to be born of God is to be practicing things that look right—that bring wholeness—that care for creation. We are redeemed to this, in Jesus Christ. Jesus died for our sin—for our lack of doing righteousness. He rose to redeem us to the practice of righteousness. He who abides is confessing at every turn. He does not practice sin. He does not want to sin anymore. You say, ‘I keep sinning. Am I born of God?’ Yes you are, for you are not still building this life on the practice of sin. And in your question is this desire not to keep on sinning. Making excuses for sin or ignoring it is to build a life that has more of it. We all begin in the same condition and can only sin until we see a Person who has never sinned. Maybe today’s the day for you to take your first look. “If you have seen Jesus’ life, in part, his death on the cross, and his resurrected life, and you believe it very simply, and want to enter into it, you are a child of God.” But you have not seen him in full. And you go to the Bible to see more of him; you pray, and ask for help. So what can you do to grow? You confess that you are not all that you desire to be. And then you practice acts of obedience. The first act is baptism. (He touches on what that symbolizes.) Then there’s the continual act of Communion. (He touches on what that signifies.) “I’m convinced that no doubt, this morning, as many mornings when we do Communion, there will be those that do this for the very first time because their hearts are awakened to want to be a child of God, and…they experience the Spirit of God in them.”

Remarks: From statements made in this sermon it appears that Mr. Doeksen knows that the gospel concerns the death of Christ for sin. Happily, this sermon contains no long, titillating stories. There is a little conviction in his preaching. And the preaching convicts a time or two. For instance, when addressing professors of faith who may in fact be unbelievers, he says, “When was the last time you stopped and cared for someone even though you were busy.” This is good.

Here are the faults. (1) The text is not really exposited. The several verses he speaks on that regard the commission of sin all come across as meaning the same thing because he does not deal with any verse to the depth that would bring out its distinction from the rest. Usually, when he attempts to unfold a verse, he just ends up repeating himself: “Everyone who makes the practice of sinning—they are really doing sin.” The mere recital and repetition of the words contained in the text is all we get. We could get this without going to church, just by reading. Truly, it would be better and safer to stay at home and read, for when he does attempt to go beyond tautology, he just confuses the text and leaves it in a garbled condition. We don’t know whether to rebuke him or commend him for saying, “Feel free to zone out on what I’m saying if it means that you’re reading this text again because this text will do a work in you just by reading it.” True, we would get more by reading the text than by listening to this sermon. But the teacher is supposed to be able to take us from reading to learning. This is why we have teachers. This is why we come to church.

(2) The teaching is too abstract. When modern pastors do not exposit their chosen text, they usually use it as a springboard to loosely and falsely teach on the theme found there. But when the chosen text is not exposited, and yet the teacher chooses to stay with it, you get abstractions instead of teachings. This is the case here. And the result is this oddity: a sermon that is all theory, yet without any doctrinal content. He promises to show us the textual framework. But we never get to see it because no exposition has been done. He gives us no sense at all of how this text should be divided and classified. And so no wonder that his theory does not connect with the particulars of life. The only part of the skeleton we get to see is the head: confession of sin. He tries to give us the rest. But how can he? He has not seen the rest any more than his listeners have. And so he tries to attach the skeleton to this head without having seen so much as the next bone to be assembled. What can the outcome be but a desperate, clumsy grasping after words? He is like a hummingbird hovering before a feeder without a beak to drink from. We don’t know how a pastor can go on in abstract language for forty-seven minutes without really saying anything. But the main cause is likely the absence of exposition.

(3) The preaching is careless. We’ll mention just one instance. To be anxious about our state may in fact be an indication that we are in a state of grace. To be worried about our sin may indicate that we are born again. But if the states of nature and grace are left undefined or even inadequately defined, then we must assume that the listeners may still be confused about such matters. Therefore, it is risky business to assure any of these anxious listeners that their anxiety is a sign that they are in possession of grace, and therefore safe for heaven. Their anxiety may be misplaced, and therefore constitute no proof whatsoever that they are in a saving state. For instance, suppose that you are anxious about your state, but to you a saving state is the belief that man is ‘resurrected’ to become one with the universe. Does this anxiety point to your being saved in the real biblical sense? Or suppose you are anxious over your sin only because of the physical or even psychical harm it is doing you? Does a selfish anxiety point to any true possession of grace? And so anxiety itself must be defined before we dare assure anxious persons that the anxiety they have is proof that they will be found righteous before the God who will soon judge the world. His teaching has not torn down falsehood nor explained the way to heaven well enough to assure anxious persons of anything except that they must be in danger.

(4) There is no depth. To say that we ought to confess is not enough. We need to be told what confession is and what sins might need to be confessed. And no incentive for confessing is ever given. He could have told us something about the devil that he mentions here and there, or something about an angry God, or something about hell. But we get nothing on these moving truths. The closest he comes to mentioning hell as a possible destiny is when he says something like, “Am I of the devil?” Who is this devil? Why should I not want to be on his side? What’s the difference? He tells us no details. There is absolutely nothing in this message to give a soul a shiver, much less make one tremble. He prays for trembling. But this kind of curtsy preaching will never produce any.

(5) His approach is timid. We’ll go out on a limb (a very short, safe, and sturdy one) and guess that this pastor is called ‘Pastor Carlin’ by the members of his church. In like fashion, the apostle John is called ‘Pastor John’ by Pastor Carlin. If we were to search long enough and hard enough, some praiseworthy preacher might be found identifying the apostle in the exact same way. But if so, we doubt very much that he would do so as a matter of practice. Pet names are for boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives. But regardless of whether Mr. Doeksen is called Pastor Carlin or not, his habitual identification of the apostle as ‘Pastor John’ points to his low opinion of the pulpit. The minister is supposed to be above his members, a person to look up to, a person to emulate. He is not supposed to be just one of the boys. Clearly, Mr. Doeksen is no more holy than his members are. His demeanor does not elicit any desire in us of aspiring to his level of sanctification. When you are not separate from your people, you have no authority, and because of this there will be no power in your message. A man is not likely to reprove his peers. It will be an uncomfortable thing to reprove them of anything. Mr. Doeksen seems to want to humble his people, but without hurting anyone. This is impossible to do. He doesn’t want to warn, and he doesn’t want to command. He tries to make the children of God obey. But any biblical tool he might use to accomplish this must be too awkward or frightening for him to wield. He never comes down to what sins ought to be confessed, except when he swiftly alludes to the habits of gossip and backbiting. And yet he says that the visitors are getting harassed for their lifestyles by this sermon! The whole service is downy and soft. And it lacks the solemnity required by the subject at hand. For example, is it exalting enough to the Lord to say that when he appears he will greet us with ‘a hug and a handshake’? Does this not seem like an underestimate of what will occur? Does a meeting like this not strike us as too familiar and informal? When we meet Jesus, will we not be prostrate before his glorious presence or at least on bended knee? Where in the Bible do we read of Jesus coming back to simply shake our hand and give us a quick hug as if he just returned from a weekend away from his friends? What posture does the Lord’s glorious presence provoke? What does the apostle John, the son of thunder, reveal to us, “The four and twenty elders fall down before him” (Revelation 4.10.) Handshakes are for equals. Worship is for Jesus.

(6) There is no church discipline. For the honor that is due Jesus for his vicarious death, for the protection of sinners, and for the maintenance of purity among saints, Communion is reserved by careful pastors for those who have demonstrated a valid profession of faith. But this pastor invites, without any examination at all, anyone, including visitors, apparently, to participate in this holy ordinance. Is Communion holy when it is no longer set apart for those alone who have appropriated Christ by faith? If any person chancing to come to church on Sunday is permitted by us to join with the saints in holy Communion, then are we not saying that God really makes no difference between saints and heathen? Are we not saying that faith is no more necessary to an admission to God’s privileges than unbelief and irreligion? If Communion is open to all, then there must be no distinguishing holiness about it, for something holy is by definition ‘set apart.’ If Communion is this open, it is no more holy than a pancake breakfast at the rodeo. By such openness we are saying that all persons, regardless of belief or lifestyle, have the sufficiency of Christ’s death to their account—this body and blood of Christ for their present and future hope. And this is not true. This indiscreet, indiscriminate openness is like tossing the body and blood of our Lord to the dogs. Is the Lord’s Supper holy? Then “give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine” (Matthew 7.6.) This pastor might never be so ‘impolite’ as to speak like this. But this speech of our Lord is to be highly valued; and, if not to be copied in conversation, it is at least for the pastor’s practical imitation in the sanctuary. We cannot think of a more apt application of these words than to the ordinance of Communion. It’s as if Jesus is warning his disciples to make a proper memorial of him, set apart from unbelievers, hypocrites, and nosy, unrepentant visitors. The impure treat the priceless jewels of the gospel like a swine would pearls. And this pearl of ours in Communion is all that signifies the holiest deed that was ever done or that ever could be done. Shall we not set apart, then, what has been consecrated by the Lord himself as most holy? Do we love him enough to do this? Do we love him so much as to be ‘impolite’ to others for his sake?

Conclusion: We perceive that the lesson in this sermon comes down to this: You’re not going to see Jesus fully until he comes back; so don’t be too hard on yourself. For lack of exposition, or out of fear, or because of nervousness, this pastor is guilty of mealy-mouthed speaking. What does this mean? By this rude sounding term we mean that the sermon seems to proceed from someone who is “unwilling to express facts or opinions plainly and frankly” (Funk and Wagnalls.) Here is an instance of that to show what we mean. Near the beginning of his sermon he states that his intention is to leave hanging in the listeners’ souls the following questions: Am I for real? Who do I really belong to? But when it comes time to challenge the people to examine themselves, the best he can do is: “What do my habits really say about who I think I am—about who I believe I am—about who I believe I belong to?” You have to go out of your way to speak like this. It is a typical case of mealy-mouthed language. ‘Who I believe I am’ and ‘who I believe I belong to’ speak of my being assured or not, of salvation. But this question of assurance is not the fundamental issue that he said he was going to deal with. More important are the questions, ‘who I am’ and ‘who I belong to.’ But he does not come down to this most basic, vital issue of our actual state because his foremost intention is not to offend anyone. To come right out and question the salvation of anyone is unthinkable to him. He can barely insinuate the possibility of someone being not ‘for real.’ Now this mealy-mouthed behavior comes with a sort of insincerity. It just goes with the territory. But we are convinced that he is sincere in his effort to preach, so long as no one gets hurt. Because of this sincerity we would like to be more positive. But he minces words throughout his whole message; he even does it in the prayer preceding the message. To mince: “diminish or moderate the force or strength of language; to say or express with affected primness or elegance; to alter (an oath, etc.) to a milder or euphemistic form; to walk with short steps or affected daintiness” (Ibid.) Remember this question he uses, ‘Am I for real?’ This is euphemistic language for, ‘Am I really saved from the penalty of sin, which is, ultimately, eternal torment in hell?’ He cannot bring himself to speak plainly, bluntly, and biblically. And so instead he suggests that we ask ourselves, ‘Am I for real?’ or at most, ‘Am I of the devil?’ This is poor preaching indeed. Truly, the summary does not come close to exhibiting the poverty of this sermon. We have been generous, though not dishonest, in our construction of it. Much of his chaos is due to his careless delivery. If he were to simply read cautiously prepared statements in place of extemporizing, much chaos would be avoided. But the harsh truth is that Mr. Doeksen does not have what it takes to make and deliver a good sermon. He doesn’t have the heart, nor the understanding, and perhaps not the will. He certainly doesn’t have the tools. Neither does he have the discernment and discipline required for conducting a holy service. It seems as if he has never once read a single textbook on systematic theology. Neither is there any evidence of his having studied any basic rules for interpreting Scripture. And we should like to apologize for saying so, but it seems like he has never so much as read the Bible through. He probably has. But if so, he’s just not thinking through the sweep of Scripture when he’s preparing his sermon. Something is disconnected. All we can do is to put it as honestly as that. More harm would be done, and no doubt has already been done by others, through flattery.

DEER PARK ALLIANCE CHURCH, ABIDING IN HIS WORD--OBEDIENCE (SERMON ANALYSIS 1)

December 2009

Mr. Doeksen, we found your sermon on the internet. We then listened to it in the spirit of the noble Bereans. Then we came together as a group to discuss our findings. We have put our exercise into the form of this document in order to share our findings with you. We thought you might be interested to know what some very careful listeners gleaned from your sermon. 

Mr. Doeksen, Deer Park Alliance, August 30, 2009, Abiding in his Word—Obedience.

Summary: (He thanks the church for its acts of obedience and asks for the members to consider their role in something called ‘Odyssey Park.’) Elevating Jesus and renewing life are the church priorities. Preparations are underway for the singing Christmas tree, which is a local mission effort. God is at work in us, doing these incredible things. (He prays according to his obedience theme, petitioning God for the visitors to experience a sense of belonging from God and for God to reveal himself to them. Then he asks for God to speak through his Spirit and to soften hearts to listen. After this he gives a list of who we are from something called ‘The Stella Awards,’ Stella being this woman who successfully sued a burger chain for not warning her that the coffee they sold to her was hot. And so he recounts the top seven outrageous suing victories in the ‘Stella’ list.) These awards are a reflection upon ourselves. Our tendency is to look inward when things go right, outward when things go wrong. (He gives examples of how we do this, beginning first with the men, then the women, and finally, the kids.) All of these behaviors have to do with our misunderstanding of faith and obedience and how they fit together—of how God has designed a life for us based on what he has done. It all starts with Jesus and what he has done on the cross. Then we live out the implications. A redefinition of faith comes from 1 John 5.1-12. Verses 4 and 6 are the key verses of this passage. There are two aspects of faith: the acts of faith and the gifts of faith. Confusion comes to our lives when we misapply either one of these: when we look inward for one of them when we should be looking outward. We look outward for the acts of faith. For the gifts of faith we look inward. We need to flip those back and forth. (He tries to show this from the text.) “Faith is done by looking inwardly and answering the call in terms of your responsibility to obey God’s commands.” The commandments are hard but not burdensome. The burdensome tasks are what wear us out. Obeying God is not like that because God is with us in our obedience. By obeying we realize how much God is with us and how much we need him. His commands seem burdensome when we are not doing them. Look inwardly to your responsibility. Look outwardly for the gifts of grace. (He tries to explain the spirit, the water, and the blood from verse 8.) This life of faith— these acts of obedience are gifts we receive. (He tries to explain why John wrote the epistle, then drifts into prayer for God to help as we obey.)

Remarks: Mr. Doeksen seems to be sincere in his attempt to teach. Much of the content is superficial; but he does try to bring a point across. And it feels as though the humor that happens is incidental, not contrived; but the levity that results is really his own fault for choosing the ridiculous ‘Stella Awards’ to preach on. A sermon on obedience looks suspicious when it follows an appeal for contributions. We do not say for sure that there is an agenda here. But the pastor should be careful to avoid the appearance of an agenda.

Here are the main faults. (1) Lack of structure. We don’t get any sense of where the sermon begins or ends. There are no points to the sermon. The pastor drifts in and out of prayer without warning. In other words, there is no distinction between the service and the sermon, or between the sermon and the preliminary remarks about how well the church is doing. The pastor needs to find some model to follow. This should have been taken care of at the seminary level.

(2) Worldly content and atmosphere. The main point of the sermon ends up being this worldly business of the ‘Stella Awards,’ for this is actually woven in throughout the whole message! We shouldn’t even need a textbook to tell us that the anecdote, story, or news item should be made to serve the sermon, not vice versa. It seems unlikely that even today’s seminary would teach a pastor to make a sermon revolve around something like a news article. But this could be the case. The only piece of information that is memorable to us from our listening is this ridiculous award news, for it permeates the message so much as to cast a cloud over everything else. And there is nothing in the Stella story except that which tends to titillate our lust for hearing strange things. But he actually calls this list from the ‘Stella Awards’ “a very important list…this is a profound list that, I think, will shape your life.” Aren’t we supposed to have our lives shaped by Scripture? He probably got this quaint, farcical list from the same place he got his nameless dictionary: the internet. The stories in this list, therefore, might not be anything more than urban legends. We care little, however, for whether the stories are true or untrue. But we care much that these silly facts or yarns form the substance of a sermon! We do not object to a brief news item being brought in to elucidate some truth. But it should never be allowed to take over as if we were bound to exposit the news item instead of Scripture! Anyone familiar with the sermon as the great, moving, truth-filled medium used by holy men called and sent out by God will know what we mean when we say that the glory has left the sanctuary. And we can say, from reading the books of A. B. Simpson, that the glory was probably in the Missionary Alliance at least once.

(3) The feminist bias and watered-down preaching. Feminism has infected this man and made him scared of the female gender. Mr. Doeksen exhibits a great fear of preaching sin, especially to women. We have no problem with him beginning with the man in his attempted rebuke of sin. But when he comes to the woman, he softens his rebuke with, “You have this husband that is impossible to respect.” And so he mitigates her failure to respect the man by emphasizing how impossible the man is. To be fair, his preaching of sin in this sermon, whether to man or woman, is insubstantial. There is nothing to it. He is more ‘politically correct’ toward the woman, but there is really nothing in his preaching of sin to man either. A sinful fear to preach sin is hazardous to God’s use of a minister. This fear he has extends, not just to those who profess Christianity in his church, but to the visitors too. Or maybe it’s just a sinful niceness he is guilty of here. He prays that God will reveal himself to the curious, the longing, and the undecided. But this is softened and mitigated by his prayer that they will experience belonging. How does God reveal himself to sinners? By convicting the sinners of sin, which is an uncomfortable thing to experience. And so to pray that God would reveal himself and at the same time pray that sinners be comfortable in church is contradictory. This is like the proverbial kingdom divided against itself. The last thing we should want, much less pray for, is for unrepentant sinners to feel as though they belong, for if they feel that way they will be disposed to feel that all is well with their presently condemned souls.

(4) The novel teaching. When a teacher cannot bring his point across it is usually because he does not understand it himself. And this is most likely the case here. Mr. Doeksen has probably had troubling second thoughts concerning the novelty he tries and fails to convey in this sermon. The sermon is frustrating to listen to because the thing he attempts to show from the chosen text cannot be seen there no matter how long we look for it. Part of the problem is that he thinks faith is redefined in 1 John 5. But if faith is redefined there, does this mean we should jettison our former definition? Or does it mean we have more than one? We do not fully know what it is that he attempts to prove from the passage. But when he says that our looking outward for acts of faith and our looking inward for gifts of faith should be ‘flipped back and forth,’ he probably means ‘transposed.’ This agrees with what he says elsewhere: that “faith is done by looking inwardly and answering the call in terms of your responsibility.” He seems to contradict this when he says, “Our ability to survive past earth, in Jesus Christ, comes as we look outwardly to God’s ability to grow us in our feeble acts of obedience.” But the first concept is the one that predominates. And so we can perhaps glean at least this much: he wants us to reach inside ourselves, where faith is, to derive strength to obey. And he probably gets this idea from a false apprehension of what our ‘faith overcoming the world’ means (in 1 John 5.4.) This reaching into ourselves in order to tap into faith’s power is hard to find in Scripture. And it sounds a lot like Quakerism, or even New Ageism. Faith overcoming is a fact. But it is not presented in this verse as a fountain we should attempt to draw from. Mr. Doeksen is trying to teach that we should not expect God to do our obeying for us. But how do we get our faith up to an act of obedience comparable to what a great saint can trust God for? Not by looking or reaching within. Plant good doctrine, like the hatred God has of sin, let God water it, and then the effect will be fruit, or works, which is the outworking of faith: obedience. What was Abraham focused on when he obeyed? “And being fully persuaded that, what he [God] had promised, he [God] was also able to perform” (Romans 4.21.) The strength of his faith (verse 20) came by, then, not looking or digging into himself, not probing into his faith, but meditating on, and reminding himself of, the promise God had made. How is faith done? Not by looking inward, as Mr. Doeksen teaches, but outward, to the promises of God. By getting to know God’s character (he does not lie), we come to trust in his promise. How did Sarah get to the point of obedience? She did it through her faith when “she judged him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11.11.) She looked to God’s character, imitating the behavior of this great husband that she esteemed as lord. How do we set aside sin and run the race? (Hebrews 12.1.) By “looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (verse 2.) In other words, our faith overcomes by our placing faith on the object, or source of faith. How did Jesus accomplish his mission? Not by going into himself (and he was perfect!), but by looking to the promise from God that he would, through this mission, be set forever at God’s right hand (verse 2 again.) Our performance is started, continued, and assured by looking outside ourselves to the promises and character of God. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1.6.) How does this work itself out practically in our lives? By us plucking our eyes out, for instance, which means: by a radical amputation of whatever is causing us to sin, sin being an obstacle to faith. To look into ourselves for the power to obey is to look where there is a mixture of dross and gold, strength and weakness, faith and sin. The object of faith is where we should look, for there is no ‘shadow of turning’ there. Like Spurgeon says, look to Jesus, just look: four letters, and two of them alike!

(5) The confusion regarding the incarnation. If this pastor holds to the orthodox position on the doctrine of the incarnation, then he is unable to communicate it. We hope that the case is no more serious than that, though this is serious enough! But from listening more than once to the portion of his sermon touching on this doctrine, and after reading a printout of that paragraph many times, we can only come to the conclusion that he believes the incarnation happened at Jesus’ baptism, not at conception. He says, “You remember this moment in John’s Gospel when we read of Jesus’ life, when Jesus wades into the waters and asks to be baptized. And at his baptism, as he is dunked under the water, right?—the Spirit testifies, and the Father speaks, ‘This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.’ And there is this moment that wraps up Jesus descending as fully God from heaven, taking on human flesh in the incarnation, and living this perfect life that we could not live.” We have italicized the two uses of the word ‘moment’ to show that the moment the incarnation happened is the moment Jesus was baptized, according to Mr. Doeksen. If we believe in grammar, then we must also believe that this is his teaching. The issue is made all the more confusing because what he communicates is that Jesus was in the water when Jesus descended from heaven as God! Regardless, his meaning must be that the entity we know as the second person of the trinity took on human flesh at the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John. And if his meaning is true, then Jesus was not God until he was baptized. At this baptism, the divine aspect came down to unite with the human aspect. This is what the pastor is attempting to say. And this is false. The incarnation occurred before this baptism, at the conception of the Son of God by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. The ruler in Israel to come out of Bethlehem, says the prophet Micah, originates “from of old, from everlasting” (5.2.) Who came out of Bethlehem but the ‘young child’? (Matthew 2.14.) And so we see that it was as a young child that this person with everlasting origins emerged out of Bethlehem. The union of divinity and humanity had already occurred, then, by the time Jesus came to be baptized by John. And this is why, before the baptism, John was able to say, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1.29.) It seems unlikely that he could have said this if Jesus had been just a man at that point, for a sacrificial Lamb possessing the sufficiency necessary for taking away the sin of the world must own a divine aspect. This ‘young child’ was worshipped by the wise men. They “fell down, and worshipped him” (Matthew 2.11.) If the Child Jesus was not God, then the wise men were not very wise in their worship in this instance, for they were guilty of idolatry. Does the pastor use the Creeds? They were written to save us from heretical errors. The Nicene Creed says, “Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds…for us men and for our salvation…came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary.” This affirms that the incarnation happened in the womb. The Westminster Larger Catechism affirms likewise, “Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary.” What happened at the baptism of Jesus was the public inauguration of Jesus Christ by the first and third persons of the trinity, not the eternal Son taking on human flesh. This is what the Bible teaches and what the orthodox creeds affirm. The union of divinity and humanity happened in the womb, not in the water. This pastor asserts the Docetist teaching on the incarnation to be wrong, which says that the ‘aeon Christ,’ or ‘superhuman being,’ landed on Jesus the man but then departed before the crucifixion took place. But he does not realize that he is still guilty of some kind of Docetism or heresy, if only for the fact that he teaches this part about the incarnation beginning at Jesus’ baptism, not at his conception. What will this pastor do at the foot of this singing Christmas tree? Will he worship Jesus as the Babe without believing that this Holy Child was God? Would this not be to him idolatrous? If he is as sincere as he appears to be, then we expect him to be very uncomfortable when it comes time to oversee and participate in the singing Christmas tree affair. He will be expected to pay homage to the Child whom his teaching asserts to be no more than a human being. But besides anxiety and embarrassment, what are the implications of falsely apprehending the doctrine and fact of the incarnation? We cannot risk saying for sure that salvation depends upon a belief regarding when exactly the incarnation occurred, for a person might be ignorant about the implications of getting the timing wrong. But the Bible is clear enough about when the incarnation did occur. We suspect that there is a worthy theologian somewhere in history who can convince us of at least this: that the mission of Jesus Christ could not have been accomplished if the incarnation occurred no earlier than at his baptism by John the Baptist. Upon discussion about this with a friend, the issue came into the open, and my blind spot was cleared up. The following deductions, then, are unavoidable. If Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, then he must have had a human father instead, and therefore he must have inherited the sin nature, which of course must have disqualified him from saving anyone! A presentation of Jesus receiving his divine aspect at his baptism amounts to a caricature of him, a caricature that, if it were true, would undermine his ability to save. The Jesus in this sermon—Mr. Doeksen’s Jesus—can save no one. In other words, if we understand Mr. Doeksen, and we knowingly place our faith in the sinful Jesus that his teaching necessitates, our faith will be in vain. He certainly intends to teach this false, Docetic-like doctrine. He just doesn’t intend it as a heresy. He’s not aware, obviously, of what he’s guilty of. Nevertheless, this heresy is as serious as any that could be committed, for the Jesus presented to us would not be qualified for the mission of saving men from sin. If we were to place our faith in a sinful Jesus (and this Jesus of Mr. Doeksen’s can be nothing less than this), there could be no salvation through this faith.

Conclusion: This sermon and service are so confused with each other that we get no sense of any distinction between the two. The whole meeting sounds like something you would expect to hear at a community hall or a rotary club. Maybe the pastor worked hard at cracking this ‘inner/outward’ code that he believes is contained in 1 John 5. But this ends up being such a confusing and unbiblical teaching that it’s not a stretch to say that a more beneficial sermon might have been had through a novice preaching from memory with a closed Bible in his hand! We must be blunt enough to put it like this because this is the sad truth. We must tell it like it is even if it hurts the pastor’s feelings. This kind of preaching can simply do no good. Since both Jesus and faith were ill defined in this sermon, we do not hesitate to assert that an unbeliever could have preached this message. And since it is so characteristic of ‘the blind leading the blind,’ maybe an unbeliever did preach it! Any Christian possessing basic Bible knowledge ought to admit the fairness of this critical remark. No doubt some members will tap the pastor on the shoulder after a message like this and whisper sweet congratulations in his ear for a job superbly done. But these persons are just being dishonest and sinfully polite. Three of us listened to this sermon. And all three of us remain mystified that this could be the product, not just of a pastor, but of a senior pastor. If we were to accept his interpretation of that passage in question from 1 John 5, we would be more confused than when we first encountered it. This idea of his was entirely read into the text. The text was not exposited at all. Yet the first words we hear from this internet broadcast of this sermon are, “God’s word—let’s be thankful for it…really, God is going to do some teaching for us.” Is the pastor really being thankful for God’s word when, instead of lifting God’s doctrines and lessons from it, he reads his pet theory into the text instead? In his sermon he tells us that we should not expect God to just do our obedience for us. But he is doing something far worse: expecting God to just do his teaching for him! His next words are, “I feel, again, just the weight of it [God’s word, the teaching] and how it’s going to impact our lives for good and for his glory this morning.” The weight that he feels cannot be caused by God pressing him to deliver this message, for this message is Godless. The ‘weight’ he feels is due to nervousness, and nervousness is much the cause of his careless comments, which are thrown in to fill in nervous gaps. Certainly it is not wrong for our hearts to go out to him. We pity any person who thinks he has to stand before people to make a living. It cannot be easy. But the pulpit is the most sacred spot on earth. Every word that is said from a pulpit, therefore, must be scrutinized and taken apart and assessed by the listeners. Then the meat is to be digested and the bones are to be spit out. There is nothing at all to eat in here. Any man alleging to speak a message from God must be held to the highest standard. He must not be allowed to get away with any nonsense, much less heresy. And this sermon contains both. Because we do not want to put anyone down nor discourage, it pains us to have to question the validity of Mr. Doeksen’s calling. If he makes the mistake of sticking to this kind of employment that draws to himself souls who will depend on him for pointing out and explaining the way of salvation from an everlasting hell, he would do well to start from scratch, from the very first principles of how to conduct a service and present a sermon. As for content, he would be wise to put away forever this notion that he has to see some ‘surprise’ in the text he is to preach. From his blog we learn that he likes to read John Piper. I have little doubt that he is trying (maybe it is a subconscious act) to imitate this man, for his outward/inward principle reminds us of Piper’s forward/backward principle, which, incidentally, has been proven false too. Maybe he even got this odd idea of his from Piper. We do not know. The point is that it is unbiblical. It does not come from the Bible. Mr. Doeksen teaches that we should look inwardly for faith, and outwardly for gifts. But the father of faith, Abraham, does not do this. He looks outward, to the promise of God, and thereby his faith is strengthened to obey. To obey, he does not look inward at his faith, but outward to God. In his book called Future Grace, Piper teaches that we must obey by forward-looking faith, not by backward-looking gratitude. But he’s wrong as well, for we are compelled throughout Scripture, notably in the ordinance of Communion, to obey by an exercise of both gratitude and faith. “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11.26.) We have here, gratitude for Christ’s death, which is past; and faith in the Lord to come, which is future. And it is indeed a ridiculous and unbiblical thing to say that faith must be forward-looking, for the faith that saves is backward on the death of our risen Christ! As much as Piper is respected and read by many, he is a risky author to imitate simply because he is trying to imitate Jonathan Edwards, but without the wherewithal to do what that great theologian has done. It is tragic when we go looking for our own novelty to perpetuate, and disastrous when we try to be someone we’re not. Mr. Doeksen needs to learn to be his own man with the old gospel. And if he is to read Christian authors, he ought to delve into those writings that have stood the test of time. Quaffing contemporary theology is like taking the drug that has not been tested by trials. Novelties abound in the books of our day; they are not only misleading, but dangerous. They are by nature unbiblical, for what is a novelty but something new that we cannot find in the old Bible? And we think way too highly of ourselves if we think we’ll be the first to discover some significant truth that has been in there all this time. By preaching the gospel doctrines God has traditionally set his seal of approval on, we will be innovators enough. The only innovation a pastor should seek to develop is the change effected by the Spirit when the gospel is preached. Novelties and innovations may be in fashion; but usually no one understands them and then they get exposed as contradictions to God’s Truth.

Mr. Doeksen, if you really believe that Jesus is real, then we suppose that you maintain, at least in theory, that the principal information that you gather for teaching should come from the Holy Bible. What does the Bible say? Jesus is both Savior and Judge. The destinies of man are both heaven and hell. What makes the difference between these destinies (besides election and sovereignty) is faith or unbelief in Jesus Christ regarding what was accomplished on the cross for man’s benefit. Why then, are you trying to communicate some academic novelty? Do you not realize that both saints and unconverted persons must get their conviction and nourishment from the riches of the gospel? Do you think that Bible basics may be set aside in order to teach some hidden principle by which to obey God? This thing you attempt to do in this sermon is kind of like gnosticism. Please listen to me. Obedience comes through the conviction brought on by the Holy Spirit when the riches of the gospel are delivered from the preacher. Do you not understand that even when morals are preached that they must be coordinated with the unbelievers’ and the believers’ respective standings to law and grace? This means that the thoughts, words, and deeds of man must be measured against the law and nature of God, and consequently the gospel must be brought in, for man stands condemned by the law. For instance, just look at verse 2 of your passage. It says there that we love God and keep his commandments. And so something must have happened to make this so, for these acts of faith are things that sinful man cannot do. To explain this you must learn to distinguish between law and gospel, and then preach each one in turn. After we receive Jesus, then we cannot obey the law perfectly, for we are hindered by the old nature, which still persists. To explain this you must get into the doctrines of sanctification and the advocacy of Christ. But you see that sanctification is the result of being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. And the advocacy of Christ is on account of what he did on the cross. And so the gospel should never be gotten far away from. As a matter of fact, what the churches of today need are detailed sermons on the basics of doctrines like repentance and regeneration. Such doctrines, far from being teachings we put away in favor of practical theology, are the bedrock of our practice. You speak of people making their sandwich in the back of the Winnebago while the Winnebago is on cruise control, careening off the road and into the ditch. But the pastor who preaches novelties is making the biggest sandwich of all in the back of his own Winnebago, a Winnebago full of everlasting souls, and this vehicle is right now running into the most awful ditch of all: the ditch of soul-condemning hell. We plead with you, then, not to take this analysis lightly. God will surely hold you responsible for what you do with that which warns you of wrongdoing, especially when the wrong you do is in the ministerial arena. Souls are under your care. And right now they are not being cared for. They are like sheep without a shepherd. And the wolf is at the door.

STREAMS CHRISTIAN CHURCH, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS (SERMON ANALYSIS 2)

June 2010

Mr. Keys, Streams, We are the Champions.

Summary: (He opens after the worship team ends. He speaks about the great encounters they had with God the previous Sunday nite. And he mentions that there have been prophetic words of late in his church.) “A Goliath always stands at the door of promotion.” A champion wins more than he loses, and wins the final game. (He gives a football anecdote.) Christians, we have to realize that we have the Spirit of a champion living in us. (Examples of victory from the life of Jesus are given.) His Spirit, the Spirit of a champion, lives in you. “We are what we contain. Therefore we are the champions of the world.” Greater is the champion in us than any champion in the world. No one is a born winner or loser. We are born choosers. (1 Samuel 17 is the text. Here he makes a joke about an Old Testament giant.) Goliath’s motives: to steal, kill, and destroy. The weapons: disease, fear, shame, addiction, control. His strategy: He’ll wait until you’re in the valley, and then he comes. His strategy: to intimidate, separate, and annihilate. We look at the enemy’s champion, and say, “I don’t know if I can win…Nobody understands. My Goliath is bigger than your Goliath.” That’s the Saul attitude. You have to be a David. Some, you’re bullied by past mistakes. Or you feel beaten this week. You can lose the battle and still win the war. Paul was a champion. “I know that Christ won the war,” he said. He knew he would win in the end. (He quotes Romans 8.35-37.) Even the greatest champions can struggle. Just go to Romans 7. But then Paul reminds himself that he was meant to win. After the crucifixion the demons discussed that Jesus was now in the tomb. But the Spirit was waiting. The same Spirit that raised Christ up lives in you today, the Spirit of a champion. If the Holy Spirit can raise up a corpse, he can raise you up. David, that little runt, faced down a nine foot giant. (He makes a joke here about Goliath.) How could David face the giant? By the anointing he received from Samuel. That anointing is the same anointing we’re talking about today. He was anointed with the Spirit of a champion. David’s reference to Goliath as uncircumcised was to point out that Goliath was out of covenant with God. He did not have the Spirit of a champion in him. He did not deserve to be called a champion. (Here he screams out some biblical victories and speculates about why David chose five stones. Then the worship team comes on because the pastor wants to do some warfare.) “The God of David is here, so let’s go.” (The pastor drifts into prayer as the worship team meanders along. He prays over addictions and fears, etc. He prepares to anoint people. A woman reads from Isaiah 42. Music proceeds while the anointing goes on.)

Remarks. He did not stray from his topic. The content in the sermon is okay. And it is preached a little, not just taught. But Mr. Keys is guilty quite often of screaming instead of preaching. A scream should not be used in place of an argument. ‘That’s just the way it is’ is not a satisfactory, logical way to present an opinion or truth for acceptance. No one should be expected to receive a proposition on the ground of a scream. The speculation about why David chose five stones is tolerable because of the valuable lesson drawn from it: David planned to kill more giants after this, and so should we. Goliath was well used as a figure of what the Christian must combat. But our Goliaths do not always meet us in the valley. Perhaps most often they meet us when we’re on the mountaintop. No one is a born winner or loser, he says. But who is a bigger loser than fallen man? Man is born in sin and condemned to die. We’re all born losers. This is why Jesus says we must be born again. The comment about us being what we contain is not true; otherwise the Christian, who contains the Holy Spirit, would be God. This proposition is probably a slip, not something Mr. Keys actually believes. But this slip shows the danger of this preoccupation with the truth that Christians possess the Holy Spirit. It is easy, if we are not careful, to stumble into the New Age belief that the God within is really our Self.

The major faults are these. (1) The pastor’s disposition. He is more like a coach than a preacher. And too often he is a joker. But more serious than these defects are the pride and affectation that the sermon is delivered with. Clearly, Mr. Keys is thinking much of himself while delivering this message. This is apparent not so much in what he says but in how he says it. There is more self-promotion here than humility. Mr. Keys gets his ego fed by the feedback he summons. He puts himself, instead of Jesus, in the spotlight. He is the centerpiece, not Christ. He should imitate the apostle Paul, whose presence was weak but whose words were weighty. But it seems as if he’s attempting to be charismatic in some televangelist sense. And this is a form of religion that has more swagger than might. It will be difficult for this pastor to give up the mere show of religion, for this kind of charismatic spectacle is what the multitudes want; also, he will be slow to give up the show because of the effort he has put in to get this far and because of the progress he has made. This progress, though, is a regress in the eyes of God. Unless this pastor decreases in order that Jesus Christ may increase, his fruit and treasure will amount to, in the end, nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble.

(2) The worship style. The praise has little content and theology, but a lot of beat, noise, and repetition. The sound, the mood, and the feel remind us of American Indian spirit worship or the performances of drug-induced aborigines. The climb of the music to a hyper point and the trance-effecting rhythm and repetition are the same characteristics you find in mindless jungle exhibitions. And because of the absence of theology, we cannot assume that the god worshiped with the praise at Streams is any different from that which is worshiped by shamans and their devotees. Phrases like ‘we’re not backing down’ and ‘Jesus’ and ‘alleluia’ are not tied to any interpretation because the lyrics consist of nothing but these phrases. This kind of praise is not biblical because there is no theology in it. Compare the lyrics, if you can call them that, to what the Psalms contain, for instance. Without theological teaching, the mind is not directed to any truth. And these pointless phrases are chanted in the face of the vain repetition that is condemned in the Bible. The people in this church are trying to be heard by their words often repeated. This is a form of worship not accepted by Jesus. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6.7.) If vain repetition is not a biblical means by which to get God’s ear, then it is wrong to do it both in prayer and in praise. Vain repetition is more dangerous in praise than in prayer because of the element of music that can carry the mind away. Expressions like, ‘spirit rise in this place’ and garbled phrases (probably some form of ‘tongues’) are repeated over and over as if by persons in altered states. When worship is not instructive, just emotive, it is not true worship, for God will have his people worship ‘in spirit and in truth.’ It is obvious that the music, when combined with the pastor’s manner of yelling out verses of Scripture, aims at getting the people up to a frenzied pitch. People are worked up by the screaming and the music until the scene comes to a crescendo. They are very emotional then, and ripe for receiving whatever the pastor proposes. They will come forward to be anointed, thinking nothing except that this might impart some kind of mystical strength to fight and beat the enemy. Obviously, all of this is flesh, not spirit, and certainly not the Holy Spirit. When you’ve become informed on what true worship is and is not, even the words ‘praise God’ will feel spooky to you in this milieu, for this reason: although this praise is a work of the flesh, there is a sort of spirit at work in it, a spirit of iniquity, a demonic factor. One of the mantras used in this worship service is, ‘Shower us like rain, God.’ But the worship feels more like, ‘Shower us like rain-god.’ Of course, the people there do not realize this. And we must allow for the possibility that a few sincere souls are able to focus through the mist of this pagan atmosphere to get up to God. But the spirit of this worship service feels like, and bears the marks of, not Jesus, Truth, and Order, but demons, paganism, and chaos. This may seem hard to believe, especially since the sermon contained no intended heresy. But we would direct anyone who doubts the matter to the following podcasts: True Melody, parts one and two on a program called, Living Grace; and the Crosstalk broadcast of March 25, 2009, called, Biblical Approach to Music. There is a lot of people display in this church, and lots of smoke and mirrors. One gets the impression that if you have no magic trick to contribute, then you can’t be part of the elite at Streams. The whole debacle reminds us of the scribes who put themselves on display by their pretentious prayers and their modified garments. “Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes…and for a shew make long prayers” (Luke 20.46, 47.) This worship seems to be coming from a people who “love greetings…the highest seats…and the chief rooms” (verse 46.) This is what we have to say if we would give an honest opinion. Not every person there is guilty. We must be careful to emphasize this. It is mainly the pastor and the worship team. How must this sermon and service strike the naïve seeker who comes to church to inquire about God? A visiting unbeliever should be ill at ease during a sermon, and in awe at the worship given to God by Christians. But we think he would have been quite comfortable hearing, We are the Champions, and amazed and bewildered at the mad kind of worship unleashed in this strange service. The Old Testament speaks of strange fire being offered to God. The fire at Streams on this day is a modern-day equivalent.

(3) The focus on ‘the Spirit that is in you.’ He gets this from 1 John 4.4: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” This expression is a fact, not a direction. The pastor seems to focus on these words as if to direct us to a power within. But even though the Spirit of God may be in us, we are not directed in Scripture to appeal there for any victory. Jesus instructed his inquiring disciples to pray unto the Father in his name. If we want victory, we must be careful to appeal outside ourselves for help, for this is how we are commanded to do it. The element of pride can easily take over in focusing on the Spirit within simply because of the fact that the Spirit is contained by the Self. We tend to get proud about a fact like that. Mr. Keys is very proud about it, and errs because of this pride. If we appeal within instead of appealing up, then we are apt, because of our sinful love of Self, to end up depending on nothing but our own strength. Therefore we appeal to where Self is not, up in heaven where the throne of grace is. There is another danger to this inner focus. An unbeliever, if he were to judge by this sermon, just might get the impression that for salvation all he’s got to do is bring this champion out from inside himself. And this is pretty close to what the New Age crowd already believes.

Conclusion. When the Spirit is said to be inside the Christian, it behooves the pastor to tell us how this takes place and why. Mr. Keys tells us nothing about these things. The champion theme should have pointed, ultimately, to the conquering life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But it is the service, not the sermon, that causes us so much concern. In his other sermon, The Devil’s got your Address, Mr. Keys says that we do not debate the devil. But this ‘Champion’ service was exactly that, a debate with the devil. When we chant, ‘we’re not backing down,’ this is what we’re doing. We’re debating the devil. Indeed, the service was devil-centered, and Mr. Keys lost the debate. Far from being the dummies that Mr. Keys says they are, the demons were smart enough to gain control of the worship in this service, and wise enough to make the people believe their devilish praise was pleasing God. If more attention were given to preaching the grand, sobering doctrines of the Bible, like the inability of fallen man to procure the favor of an angry God, the pastor and his people might have some chance at getting humbled enough to listen for his voice instead of playing with the bells and whistles of religion. And may the grace of God open the eyes of the blind and perform this sovereign work, for this worship service resembles voodoo more than Christianity! When you can find no ‘dust and ashes’ mingled in the praise somewhere, be on your guard for a counterfeit form of worship. But the problem in this church is basically a theological one, for sound worship stands on the platform of solid preaching. Worship is really a reflection of what we believe and what our priorities are. It is a reflection of what we have learned from the sermon. The pastor and his people are failing to learn from the texts of Scripture preached from. And the pastor is leading the way into a form of anarchic, sub-Christian praise. In fact, it would not be wrong to call it anti-Christian. If we were to hear the praise portion of this service without knowing it came from a church and without hearing the sermon preceding the praise, we could easily mistake it for a native Indian ceremony or a witch doctor’s meeting. You have to hear it to believe it. It’s hard to believe that a church could stray so far from the standard of holy, thoughtful praise that you find in the Bible. In this church you have noise and vain repetition; in the Bible you have thoughtful verses prepared for musical accompaniment. But we are confident that this worship team intends no evil. Probably, it is a victim more than anything else. It is a victim of what’s in vogue and it is convinced that the spirit communicated with by its commotion is the biblical God. But think about it. We have praise without design, and mantras instead of lyrics. In other words, we have confusion and heathenism. This kind of worship is not recommended by God in the Bible. Therefore we have no reason to believe this is the kind of worship the only true God receives. What spirit is being tapped into here? And what spirit, if any, is animating the worship team? We foolishly and perilously deceive ourselves if we imagine that God is in what he condemns. And he certainly does condemn confusion and heathen worship. From what we hear in what precedes and follows the sermon, there is a lot going on in this church that we cannot glean from a podcast. For instance, we worry when we hear, “The ways that you can encounter God. It’s so varied…last Sunday night…It was loud. It was crazy. It was warfare…I am wearing shoes today….” We’re afraid of what might be discovered by actually attending there.    

STREAMS CHRISTIAN CHURCH, THE DEVIL'S GOT YOUR ADDRESS (SERMON ANALYSIS 1)

October 2009

A few of us have listened to the following sermon you put on the internet. Now we have also discussed it and drawn up an analysis of it. We thought you would like to see the pros and cons of this sermon you delivered. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Mr. Keys, Streams, The Devil’s got your Address.

Summary: (He begins with a story, and speaks generally on the kingdom of God.) You should be ashamed if the devil doesn’t know your address. When he has your address, you can expect some hate mail. (The text is 2 Kings 18. He gives a little history to set the context. He’s on the topic of Hezekiah and Sennacherib.) “Sennacherib—sounds like a fast food, doesn’t it? I’ll have one sennacherib and a side of fries.” Sennacherib set his eyes on Jerusalem. (He quotes Byron here.) The devil had Hezekiah’s address. He had a message for him. (He reads from the chosen text.) Paul says these Old Testament stories are for examples to us. Sennacherib means ‘man of sin.’ He is a picture of our enemy, the devil. Hezekiah is like the Christian in the kingdom. The devil will oppose the Christian. He will tempt, slander, rob, and afflict. Don’t blame the devil for things you do to yourself. “If you live on hamburgers, don’t blame the devil for your heart attack.” But when you become a reformer, like Hezekiah, the enemy will come against you. He that is in you is greater. We need to be aware of the devil’s schemes. Messages the devil will send us when things get tough: (A) He will try to shake your confidence in God (verse 19.) Jesus said you would have tribulation in this world. And so when that happens, the devil will send you a message. When you lose your job, or get sick, your confidence will be under attack. The devil will then say that you can’t trust God; your faith is useless; you might as well give up. The devil’s native tongue is the lie. He has liarera. It’s okay to laugh. ‘I have overcome the world,’ says Jesus. (B) He’ll tell you that God is the cause of your troubles (verse 25.) You’ve blown it, so God is doing this to you. “He sent you cancer so you can grow. Christians have been swallowing that one, hook, line, and sinker for years.” The devil sends this message so you’ll distance yourself from God. (C) He’ll brag about others that he has taken down (verses 32, 33.) Look at the televangelists and marriages I’ve brought down. I’ll do this to you. (D) When intimidation doesn’t work, he’ll cut you a deal (verse 31.) A little lie can get you out of this financial mess. Just tone it down, and I’ll leave you alone. “If you come out and meet him halfway, before you know it he’s slapped the shackles on you, and you’re on your way to Nineveh.” (He summarizes and recapitulates.) What do you do when you receive messages like these from the devil? (2 Kings 19.14-16.) When times get tough, and your enemy has your address, you lay it all out before God. He wants you to show that you trust him. Don’t just grumble. God has written you letters too. And these are for confronting the devil’s letters to you. You don’t debate the devil. Jesus said, ‘It is written.’ It helps to know what is written. (He quotes some verses that are full of God’s love to his people and their victory through his love and power.) Christians, stop reading the devil’s hate mail. Read God’s love letters. Who’s report are you going to believe? What report will you believe about your circumstance? What report will you believe about your relationship with God? (2 Kings 19.21-23.) God takes it personally when the enemy attacks you (verses 27, 28.) In other words, return to sender (verses 32-37.) Whatever the devil has sent you, it’s not too big for God. He uses one angel to put down all these hell-inspired soldiers. (He quotes some verses that speak of deliverance.) God is able to deliver you. (Worship team comes on, begins to play, while he mentions that his family is facing cancer. He speaks of prophesying over himself in song.) “You need to prophesy over yourself…Would you begin to prophesy now?”

Remarks. He has a good delivery and clear enunciation; but there is an atmosphere of pride in his address. The sermon does not take us very deep; but it is for the most part, biblical. The sermon feels like a commentary; but Mr. Keys manages to preach it a little. That said, he sometimes gets into a pitch that sounds like a scream. The outline coincides well with the title. His four points are all lifted from his text. He summarizes and recapitulates well. Many verses of Scripture are read. Listeners are challenged to read the Bible. And the quote from Byron is unexpected and fitting. 

Here are the major faults. (1) Lack of sobriety. Mr. Keys does not come to the pulpit with that sobriety of mind the Bible demands of him. “When I was a child, I spake as a child…but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13.11.) Lack of sobriety is a hindrance to the Holy Spirit’s use of a man. Uttering expressions commonly used by celebrity figures is inappropriate. Illustrating God flicking his finger seems juvenile. And comparing King Sennacherib to a piece of fast food is nothing but humor for humor’s sake. It does nothing but make the people comfortable in a worldly way. There is a kind of humor that builds up. This is not it. But we can give an example of the use of humor for edification from the ministry of John MacArthur. During a sermon he compared Christian Science to Grape-Nuts (the cereal): Grape nuts has neither grapes nor nuts; and Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific. This piece of humor was instructive. And he did not labor the point. It was a memorable lesson, not just a memorable joke.

(2) Misinterpretation of Scripture. The devil may try to make you believe that God is against you when he’s not (2 Kings 18.25.) This is true. But then Mr. Keys pours his own opinion into the text, which opinion is easily shown, by a few examples, to be false. The devil might say that God is against you when God is really for you. But does God being for you preclude the possibility of a cancer being sent to you from God? Of course it doesn’t. God was for Jacob, but he injured his thigh; God was for Miriam, but he struck her with leprosy; God was for David, but he smote his offspring; God was for his only begotten Son, but it was by God’s determinate counsel that Jesus was crucified (Acts 4.28.) With all due respect to the family of Mr. Keys in their battle with cancer, it is wrong to dogmatically assert that God does not put disease upon his people. The Bible shows that sometimes he does this, and not necessarily through any agency but his own hand, which seems the case when Miriam was made leprous. “Behold, Miriam became leprous” (Numbers 12.10.) If God did not appoint this event, he at least must have permitted it. Everything that happens must be, at the very least, permitted by God, or else God is not sovereign, which only a heretic or a pagan will maintain. Even that which is permitted by God is somehow sent by him, for a sovereign God could prevent it. So even when the devil afflicts a saint, the will of God is somehow in it. The case of Job is proof enough. God was for Job, but gave the devil permission and power to afflict him. No matter what happens, and no matter by whom, it must be by God’s appointment or permission. And so Mr. Keys is wrong when he says that cancer is never sent by God. In some sense, it is always sent by God. Mr. Keys then quotes Isaiah 61.13 in support of his opinion that disease is never sent by God. And so beauty, joy, and praise are of God, while ashes, mourning, and heaviness are not. But this is untrue. There is a heaviness that is of God. There is a mourning that is of God. This is why Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are they that mourn.” Does the devil compel us to mourn over sin? No, but God does. This is why there is a blessing in it, or a godly happiness in it. In the Christian life, joy and mourning are not exclusive. There can be no Christian joy apart from this mourning over sin. And such mourning is by the Holy Spirit, who is God.

(3) Missed opportunities. When speaking on the devil trying to shake our confidence, here the way is open for the preacher to press the listeners to test that confidence of ours. Is it confidence in Jesus to save us from sin and hell? Or is it a sham confidence we have convinced ourselves of for the sake of fitting in with the church crowd? When speaking on the devil’s accusation that God is the cause of our troubles, here the way is open for telling us how God does allow or send bad things to get our attention, especially if we think we are saved but are not. When speaking of the devil bragging about who he has brought down, the way is open to suggest a self-examination to prevent a similar fall. When speaking of the devil wanting to cut us a deal, the way is open to ask us with whom we have dealt. Have we cut a deal with the devil to continue in sin? Or have we entered into covenant relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ? This sermon could easily have been more Christ-centered.     

Conclusion. This is a clear, simple sermon whose points follow in good order and are easily retained. The message is not clogged with extraneous matter. The wisecracking is a hindrance, but limited to few instances. The misinterpretations are probably due to suppositions commonly held among Pentecostals. Happily, these are not dwelled upon. We do not mean by singling out his missed opportunities that we expect that every sermon should be a preaching to the lost. What we maintain is that a preacher should always be aware that unbelievers creep into churches and that false professors abound and that he therefore should fold in some preaching to the lost when he can. And this would have been entirely possible here without disturbing the flow of the sermon. What he means by ‘prophesying over yourself’ is unclear. If he means that we should remind ourselves of what God’s word says, this is proper. If he means that we should speak positive things over our lives, then this is to the purpose of empowerment by some kind of wish. And this is to treat our words, or the words in a song, as if they have inherent power to create, when we should be praying to God through his word instead. We don’t know what he means by it. And so we won’t guess what side he is on regarding the ‘word of faith’ heresy.

Mr. Keys, we confess that your sermon is better than we anticipated. We are hoping that you are humble enough to admit that you could do even better. With godly mortification, you will no doubt realize more of your potential. We do not judge your sermon except by the command of God and the example of Scripture. If you like, you may contact us about anything we have said.

LIVING STONES CHURCH, THE DIFFERENCE JESUS MAKES (SERMON ANALYSIS 2)

April 2010

Mr. Vallee, as you can see, this is another analysis of one of your sermons. Permit us to point out that you say that you want to be outside your comfort zone—‘outside the box.’ If these words of yours are sincere, then you will carefully look over this analysis of the sermon you said these things in, will you not? Once we state that we want to be challenged and that we want to grow, do we not have to follow through and prove ourselves honest? Are we correct in guessing that your sermons do not receive a lot of examination? You would certainly be outside your box by perusing this exercise of ours. We believe that if you are an honest man, you will scrutinize your sermon and our analysis of it in light of Scripture in a prayerful, humble spirit toward God, and that your prayer to God will include asking him to show you what we, as weak as we are, are trying to show you.  

Mr. Vallee, Living Stones, The Difference Jesus Makes.

Summary: (He begins with a prayer concerning what difference our lives make as Christians. Then he follows with a story of tragedy that begs the question, ‘Why?’) His text is Luke 7. His theme is the difference Jesus makes in four areas of our lives. (A) Sickness. We all have an appointed time. We have to have a vision beyond this life. (Anecdotes of terminal illness follow.) The centurion in Luke 7: “We would describe him today as a non-believer, if I can use that term, right?” Merit does not attain anything in the kingdom of God. The centurion said, “I do not deserve….” He recognized that Jesus had authority over disease. Some people are healed; some are not. It’s about more than just faith, and faith is about more than results. (He reads a little from Hebrews 11.) We must put our faith in God regardless of outcomes. (The example is the faith of three Hebrew boys before king Nebuchadnezzar.) Bring your crisis to Jesus, not because of what you have done, but because of who he is. (B) Sorrow. This happens to all of us. Then we ask God, “Where are you?” We get angry with God. Sorrow shatters our image of who we think God is. When we suffer, God’s heart goes out to us just as Jesus’ heart went out to the woman at the funeral of her son. Here we have the author of life encountering death. There is hope beyond this life. Jesus conquered death for us. We will be reunited with our loved ones. Life is not a right, but a gift. (Anecdotes follow.) In our darkest times, Jesus is with us. (C) Personal Struggle. John the Baptist went through this. “John is telling people to straighten their lives out, and Jesus is hanging out with sinners…John is telling them to repent, and Jesus is hangin’ with them.” God’s ways are not our ways. God asks one to do this, another to do that. It is so dangerous for us to be critical. John the Baptist needed to be encouraged. Jesus sent the disciples to him to explain. Job became a better man after his tests. Job declared to God that he didn’t know what he was up to but that he was going to trust God anyway. We can’t understand the mind of God. We need personal affirmation. Jesus affirmed John’s ministry. When we see no results, we get discouraged. If you’re struggling, the word for you today is, ‘Stand firm.’ Our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Our lives make a difference. How do I know this? Because the Bible says you are greater than John the Baptist. Why are you greater? Because you’re in the kingdom of God. (D) Sin. (He references G. Campbell Morgan.) This woman in Luke 7 who washed Jesus’ feet went from sin to worship. I like what Michael Wilcott points out, “The formal religion of the Pharisees had no answer to the problem of sin, and could only respond with disapproval and condemnation.” (Vallee): “Sometimes we become Pharisaical when we look upon other people disapprovingly and condemningly.” Jesus could actually do away with sin and bring salvation and peace. He doesn’t disapprove and condemn. He forgives. “Have you, like the centurion, discovered life as a gift of grace? Do you realize, like the widow of Nain, that Jesus is the author of life? Have you ever wondered, like John, what Jesus was doing in your life, because it didn’t match your expectations? Wherever you are, the issue is how you respond to him: in worship, like the woman with the tarnished past whose sins were forgiven, or in a distant, self-righteous mode like Simon, who had no idea that God was at his house. And he was totally indifferent to him. What difference does Jesus make? I think he makes all the difference in the world. He can deal with whatever situation you’re faced with today.” We should never be critical. People are all different. They do things differently. We could be children of God, and be coming at it from a totally different angle. Sometimes we’re very harsh with each other. Say this, “I want God to do some exciting things in my life. I want God to open the play-book.” He wants to do it anyway. He’s going to do it anyway. You’re just opening yourself up.

Remarks. The title and division of this sermon suit the text. On the first point, sickness is presented as something faith cannot always remedy; and healing is always undeserved. Faith is not just about results, and it should be applied regardless of outcomes. On the second point, sorrow is presented as that which all will experience, and as that which shatters our image of who we think God is. On the third point, personal struggles are presented as tests that make better people out of us and that happen regardless of our obedience. On the fourth point, sin is presented as that which Jesus forgives and takes away. This is all good, as far as it goes. Facts like these are lost on many pastors today, sad to say. But this presentation of Luke 7, even with such excellent facts, is not that enlightening nor convincing. The difference Jesus makes is not made very clear, and therefore it is not very memorable. And, if we may be bold enough to risk saying so, the pastor comes off just a little self-righteous because of his oft mentioning all the good that is done behind the scenes by the staff in his church. Also, many of his expressions seem calculated to generate a chummy relationship with his listeners. Because of this, the atmosphere is no doubt unbecoming of a pulpit space.

Having said that, here are the major faults. (1) His misrepresentations. About the doubts that John the Baptist entertained, he says, “John is telling people to straighten their lives out, and Jesus is hanging out with sinners…John is telling them to repent, and Jesus is hangin’ with them.” But were the Baptist’s doubts really because Jesus treated sinners differently than he had? Why did Jesus praise John, then? In light of what seems like a subtle attempt to contrast the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptist in an unbiblical way, what Mr. Vallee’s position amounts to is that John the Baptist must have been wrong to preach as strongly as he did, and that Jesus did not preach like him at all. John the Baptist preached repentance. But Jesus hung out with sinners. This is what Mr. Vallee communicates. Maybe he doesn’t mean to, but this is what is communicated. This idea that Jesus hung out with sinners connotes a very different Jesus than the New Testament reveals. It is irreverent language. And it is no exaggeration to say that this sort of language borders on blasphemy. It gives the impression that Jesus did not reprove sinners, but just hung out with them, forgiving without warning or commanding, and maybe even participating in some of their sins to make them feel comfortable. That’s the kind of image we get from the phrase, ‘hanging out.’ No one can blame us for seeing this image because participating in sin is what people who ‘hang out’ do. Lazy people hang out. Immoderate sinners hang out. People who gossip hang out. People who ‘walk in the counsel  of the ungodly’ hang out. People who ‘stand in the way of sinners’ hang out. People who ‘sit in the seat of the scornful’ hang out. This is the kind of Jesus communicated in this sermon: someone who hung out with sinners the way we see vagrants hang out downtown near the library. But we do not accuse Mr. Vallee of this misrepresentation of Jesus solely on the ground of his use of the phrase ‘hanging out.’ This is not just a case of using unguarded, careless language. The tendency of this sermon is to present a ‘non-judgmental’ Jesus who just loved and forgave and never accused anyone of anything. To bolster his misrepresentation, Mr. Vallee misrepresents the case of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears in Luke 7. Jesus did not disapprove or condemn in this instance. This is true. But what Mr. Vallee fails to mention is that Jesus, unlike anyone else, knew her heart, and that this woman was approved and commended because she was repentant. And so the disapproving attitude we should no longer have toward sinners is not, as Mr. Vallee presents it, toward all sinners, but only those who are repenting. Because people do things differently, or are coming at it from different angles, we should never be harsh with each other, Mr. Vallee says. It is difficult to know what he means by statements like this one because he does not qualify. But the tenor of his message is that we should not criticize people even if they are continuing in lifestyles of sin. This must be it, because with Mr. Vallee, it’s all about forgiveness, but nothing on what should be repented of in order to the blessing. This is a gross caricature of the method of salvation, and no one can be saved by it. We’ve got to wonder on what basis Mr. Vallee says to his listeners that they can hope to be reunited with their loved ones hereafter. How can they unless they repent to be forgiven? And for all we know, assuming these loved ones died under the ministry of this church, they might not even be in heaven to be reunited with! It is blunt and uncommon to draw a deduction like this, but is it not a logical one? It worries me when this pastor speaks about his obligation to be ‘outside the box.’ The tone and content of his message indicate that this means that he thinks he’s supposed to become less and less critical of sin and more and more accepting of unrepentant sinners. Messages pervaded with this kind of uncritical mood and manipulation of Scripture can only result in a church more and more filled with hypocrites. Mr. Vallee fears that he and his congregation might take on a Pharisaical spirit by a disapproval of sinners. But a Pharisee is not one who simply disapproves and condemns. God sometimes disapproves and condemns. Christians are commanded to do the same when necessary (Galatians 1.8.) Therefore it is not always wrong to disapprove and condemn. A Pharisee is a professing child of God who disapproves and condemns others for not obeying his own superfluous commands or additions to the law and who does so even while he himself remains unrepentant. And the unrepentant hypocrite is just the sort of person Mr. Vallee can expect to create by not preaching, as Jesus and John the Baptist both did, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ This is the sad truth. And it is not a pleasant thing to have to point out. Though Mr. Vallee is wrong to classify the centurion as a ‘non-believer,’ it is revealing of his fearful unwillingness to sound like a ‘condemning’ preacher that he apologizes for having to call him that. A message of forgiveness without any command to repent is not the gospel, but a heresy of the most dangerous kind. Heresies result in hypocrites. A hypocrite is a Christian in profession and name only, who has not repented and yet assumes he is forgiven. And so what heresy will more greatly tend to make hypocrites than this omission of having to repent in order to be forgiven? How does this pastor know that the labors of his members are not in vain? Not by being convinced of the state of their souls as a result of sound preaching, faithful, instructed lives, and spiritual fruit. No, but because the Bible says they are greater than John the Baptist! What ‘greater than John the Baptist’ means, at least, is that those referred to are in a saved condition. But should Mr. Vallee just assume that all his listeners are saved? He assures them of a reward even while he undermines the doctrines by which they must be saved in order to any reasonable prospect of reward! Mr. Vallee may not be attempting to deceive. We will not even assert that his misrepresentations are from his own mind. Maybe he borrowed them. We’ll give him the benefit of doubt. But deception must be the effect of such lukewarm preaching. Sinners will be deceived all the way to hell by preaching like this. And we cannot warn of such a thing too severely. Mr. Vallee is obviously shy of preaching sin and repentance. This is our best guess as to why he misrepresents as he does. For instance, consider his misrepresentation of that passage about John having come to neither eat nor drink, while Jesus came eating, drinking, etc. This passage is about John the Baptist and Jesus both being rejected and caricatured by faultfinders just for fulfilling their respective missions. But Mr. Vallee uses this passage, not to warn against judging sinfully or hypocritically, but to warn against judging at all. Paul says to Timothy to ‘preach the word’ and he tells Titus to ‘speak the things which become sound doctrine.’ Mr. Vallee preaches a softened word, a word without teeth, an emasculated word that falls far short of sound, solid doctrine. When he mentions the various duties fulfilled by Jesus Christ in his mission (see Luke 7.22), it is no surprise that he leaves out his preaching the gospel to the poor. This is the very aspect that Mr. Vallee is most shy of.

(2) His coercion. It might seem like a contradiction that a pastor could be timid and coercive at the same time to the same people. But Mr. Vallee is coercive in spite of his timid spirit because he seeks a response from his listeners. Why he seeks this response is an open question. Maybe he suspects his listeners are not saved after all, even though he’s just treated them as if they were. Maybe he thinks they can be saved even by his watered down gospel and modern methods. Maybe he’s looking to add numbers to his church, not saved souls, but numbers. We just don’t know. What he’s doing is just what is in vogue in evangelicalism today. Near the end of his sermon, he starts to speak in a very orchestrated, scripted manner. And then the background music begins to play while he coaxes the people to ‘open up’ to God. This is a manipulation of the emotions and wills of the people, especially considering that their intellects have just been misinformed and deceived. And because the minds of these people have not been properly instructed on how salvation is obtained, any response elicited is liable to be an emotional response merely, without any genuine repentance to speak of. Instead of commanding repentance, Mr. Vallee coaxes the people to adopt the following approach to God, “I want God to do some exciting things in my life. I want God to open the play-book.” Is this preaching? No, this is psychological jargon that manipulates instead of saves. And this kind of language teaches people to be vague in their approach to God. It is indefinite, indeterminate language that people use who do not want to commit and sanctify. This pastor’s behavior is quite contradictory. On the one hand, he assumes the people are in a state of salvation, while on the other hand, a watered down gospel is given by which to be saved; and on the one hand, he asserts that God will do everything anyway, while on the other he goes so far as to manipulate emotions to elicit a response. Why is this sermon not convicting? Because there needs to be a preaching of sins to sinners for that to occur. It is useless for the pastor to try to manufacture a response like he does at the end. The Holy Spirit will induce his own response according to his own will. But for any hope of this happening, the pastor must preach rightly, then stand back and trust the Spirit to move sinners to repent.

Conclusion. Mr. Vallee thinks that preaching sin and exposing sinners is wrong. This would be too ‘disapproving’ and ‘condemning.’ Mr. Vallee would have us believe that Jesus cultivated a buddy relationship with sinners that John the Baptist was too hard on. But the Bible shows that both John and Jesus disapproved of sin and that sinners are under condemnation. To preach the fact of condemnation is not condemnatory in any sinful sense. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world. But he said, “He that believeth not is condemned already” (John 3.18.) If it’s so wrong to speak like this, why did Jesus do it? And since Mr. Vallee’s preaching is that which tends to make sinners into hypocritical professors, the perilous probability is that instead of approving and affirming these people deceived by Mr. Vallee, Jesus will instead address them as vipers just as appointed to hell as the Pharisees of old. And the pastor guilty of being the blind man leading others into the ditch of hell will receive the greater damnation. It may sound unfriendly and even combative to say these things. But it is the loving thing to do, for souls, including the pastor’s, are in danger. If the apostle Paul blurted out his own condemnation at the mere thought of not preaching the gospel, then should every pastor not fear? No one who understands even a bit about what Jesus is truly like and how deadly his judgment will be, will maintain for a second that these warnings are unwarranted or overly sharp. Any sermon that aims to show Jesus as an indulgent fellow who forgives without demanding repentance must be regarded as an abominable heresy that the devil takes advantage of to deceive souls into hell. Strong warnings are therefore necessary.