Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: This is what this theology is. It’s not just a pretty picture on the wall; this is what it looks like in real life. I’m going to pick that up here in Ephesians chapter 4. If you have your Bibles open, if not, you just have to listen very carefully. I’ll read slow.

Therefore, I, Paul, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other. This does not include your spouse—oh, that's not in there, I'm sorry. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Did Paul just say I had a fault? He did. He just said I have a fault. Wow. So, be making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.

Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. He’s talking to the church here. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope in the future. So, this is Paul’s message to the church at Ephesus. He goes, "Listen, I’m a prisoner of the Lord. I want you to be humble and gentle with each other, patient with each other, allow each other to be human."

If I can paraphrase it that way, just knowing that you’re sitting next to other human beings that have weaknesses and faults and fears and insecurities and losses in their life. No one’s perfect. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. So, the first thing that we need to—I believe the evangelical church, that seven to eight percent—these are the things I think are important. There’s other things I don’t think are that important. I’m going to talk more about the non-important things, but here are some things I think we've got to agree on, what one person called essential doctrines.

These are doctrines that unite us, don’t divide us. These are the things we all agree on. We might not all agree when the rapture of the church is coming, but we can all agree on these things. We can all agree that the Bible is the word of God, worthy to be trusted. We can all agree with that. If you’re Pentecostal, you’re going to agree with that. If you’re Baptist, you’re going to agree with that. If you’re Methodist, you’re going to agree with that. If you’re Lutheran, you can agree with that.

These are the things that make us evangelical. We believe in the Trinity—the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We believe in the depravity of man because Christ told us that. We believe in the substitutionary atonement, a theological term for Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. That’s all that means. We believe in Christ's complete humanity. He is very God and very man. The theologians like to call that the hypostatic union. What's that mean? Go ask a theologian.

We believe in the complete deity and in the sufficiency and exclusivity of Christ’s work. We believe that we all have a need for a personal relationship with Christ. We believe in the inspiration of Scripture. Those are the things that unite us. Those are the things that keep us together. Now, non-essential doctrines—I’m not going to go through all of them, there’s too many—and I’m not saying they’re not important, but I’ll say this: some very good, Bible-believing people disagree on them.

I have a library full of commentaries, thousands of books, and I read them. It’s funny how this guy who is brilliant disagrees with this guy who’s brilliant. So, what do I do? I just find the thing that makes most sense to me and that’s what I believe. Am I going to die on a hill on that? No. That’s baptism of the Holy Spirit, gifts of the Spirit—non-essential doctrines. Nothing that should divide us. Calvinism is a big one today, Arminianism versus Calvinism. Calvinism has a resurgence today. I’m not Calvinistic; I’m dispensational. Some of these terms probably have absolutely no idea to you, and that’s okay.

That’s why they’re not important. I have books in my library from Calvinists. I have books in my library from Arminians. I have books in my library from dispensationalists. I just don’t use the parts I don’t use and I use the parts that I think are good, that’s all. I’m not going to make issues out of it. We co-labor with other churches. We have chaplains' groups here. I have dear friends, a Wesleyan pastor up in Pinellas Park, Pastor Phil, one of my dearest friends. The Ferrises are some of my dearest friends. I have relationships with other men that may not share my faith, or at least my doctrine. They share my faith, but not my doctrine, and those things just don’t matter to us.

We’re not going to let things separate us that don’t need to separate us. But those same men I mentioned, they believe in the core tenets of our faith. So, there are essential doctrines that unite us, they don’t divide us, and that’s important that we go forward that way. Now, one of the biggest reasons I feel that the church has fallen behind the culture—lots of reasons for this, we’ll talk more about them coming up—but one of them is we have mixed our Christianity with our "Churchianity."

That’s sometimes a very fine line that people don’t always see. Christianity and its message has changed the world. Just go back 2,000 years and look at the world then and look at the world now. Christianity and its message has changed the world. The Christian church, however, has not always reflected the Christian message to the world or even to each other. And trust me, the world sees that. Our Churchianity is often made of issues of things that have no biblical value to them.

I’m going to get a little rough with some of us here the next couple services. Our worship preferences in Churchianity were guarded. "This is what I like," and we go in our churches and we divide our churches over music. And we think somehow that one type of Christian music is more spiritual than another type of Christian music and we elevate the hymnal to the same level as the Bible. That is wrong. You have a preference in Christian music. I know for a fact God loves Southern Gospel because He likes what I like.

But we don’t do a lot of Southern Gospel here because a lot of people don’t necessarily like Southern Gospel music. I know in heaven you’re going to have the singing angels, the heavenly choir, and Bill Gaither is going to be part of that. I know that. But you guys might not feel the same way as me. And you know what? I don’t really care because it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t think my way is the best way. It’s just what I like. So, I’m not going to let my Churchianity divide and interfere with my Christianity.

I’m not going to love my style of music more than I love human souls. Some of us have been so dogmatic in protecting how we do church that you don’t care about the people across the street. I talked to a dear waitress in Chili’s a while ago, now a few years ago. And she went to a particular church. She knew I was a pastor. She goes, "I went to this church." She was not a believer, but she goes, "I wanted to check this church out. I walked into this church and I felt like I was walking down the aisle to get a seat and I felt a tap on my foot."

"There was somebody with a cane sitting in the front row tapping my leg with a cane saying, 'You've got to put on a longer skirt.' So, I walked out," she said. That was her experience with church. See how Churchianity can really invade our Christianity? Instead of seeing a soul, she didn't know that person, first time she ever stepped in that church. She was more concerned about the length of her skirt than she was her soul. Her soul wasn't even on her radar screen.

We make non-biblical issues as important as real biblical issues. Now, listen to what Jesus said about this because this is cool. Matthew chapter 23. He is talking to the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the spiritually elite of the day. They had it down. They tithed everything. Even they got spices in the market, they’d give 10 percent to God. They’d stand on the street corner and fast and let everyone know they’re fasting too. They’d go through and pray and they were the most respected people in the community, the Pharisees. These guys were the Navy SEALs of spirituality. That's who they were.

Listen to what Jesus said about them. This is God talking to the religious Churchianity people of the day. Read Matthew 23; the whole thing is pretty compelling. Verse 3: "So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example." He’s talking to the disciples. "Don’t follow these guys' example, for they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden." I’m reading in the New Living Translation.

"Everything they do is for show. On their arms, they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside and they wear robes with extra long tassels. What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law, you Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell than you are yourselves." Jesus is just brutal. This is as brutal as any passage in the New Testament and in the Gospels.

And it’s not directed towards the woman caught in adultery. It’s not directed towards the people that’s doing crazy things. It's not talking to prostitutes. He’s talking to the religious people, the professional Churchianity people. Verse 23: "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things."

"Blind guides," He calls them. "You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law, you Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy, full of greed and self-indulgence. Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness." That’s what Jesus felt about Churchianity.

The church that proclaims moral holiness on Sundays but on Mondays they live like the rest of the world—that hypocrisy has probably done more to damage our input in the world than anything else. We hold up our placard of being a member of this church or that church, or we go to church, whatever church it is, but from Monday to Saturday we live just like the rest of everyone else. There is no humility, there is no meekness, there is no love, there is no acceptance, and in some cases, there is no honesty and integrity in business.

If I put a little fish on my business card, I would expect that you would live up to that reputation, even to your own hurt. In 30 years of pastoring, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen Christians take advantage of other Christians and Christians take advantage of people in the world. And we wonder why our influence has diminished because they don’t see anything but somebody who goes to church on Sunday but is just like them the rest of the week. Hypocrites. We make the road to hell a lot easier for people when we act like that.