GRACE FOR TODAY Radio Message #461

“Let’s March For Jesus”

Pastor Don Fortner

Grace Baptist Church of Danville

2734 Old Stanford Road

Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438

Last Saturday in our town, and in many others around the nation, religious people from many diverse denominational backgrounds had a big religious parade. Boys and girls, moms and dads, grandmothers and grandfathers, Sunday School teachers, preachers, and preacher want-a-bes joined hands, smiled, sang and cried, as they marched down Main Street as witnesses for Jesus.

Let me ask you a question. Do you really think that has anything to do with biblical Christianity? Can you imagine Christ or his Apostles having a Jesus march? Do you really think that such tom-foolery is witnessing for the Son of God? Nonsense! Such utter idiocy can only be found in religious people.

If you read Matthew chapter six, you will find that the Lord Jesus Christ gave very specific instructions to his disciples forbidding the outward show of religion. He strictly forbids all who follow him of doing anything to call attention to themselves. He commands us not to do our alms, say our prayers, or perform any act of worship and service to him before men, in the market places, or on the street corners. If our acts of worship and religious service are designed to call attention to ourselves, they are not done for Christ, but for us.

Would to God men and women who claim to be worshippers of God would simply read the Book of God! Churches and religious people these days have invented every imaginable scheme of religious entertainment and excitement to make sinners feel good while they lead them to hell. These are not trivial matters. The souls of men, the glory of God, and the gospel of his grace and glory in Christ are at stake.

In the New Testament, men and women gathered wherever they could with their families to worship God. Today, churches have celebration services. In the New Testament, those who led the churches were gospel preachers. Today, those who lead our churches are good promoters. In the Scriptures, God’s churches sang psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs to praise, extol and magnify the triune God. Churches today hire entertainers to come sing to the people. In days of old, preachers were prophets who preached the Word of God. These days, preachers are pacifiers who preach exactly what they know the people want to hear.

Rather than proclaiming the message of Christ’s incarnation, churches today have silly plays and candlelight vigils. Hell must roar with laughter as they watch grown men and women walking around dark buildings with little candles in their hands, calling it the worship of God! Instead of preaching the doctrine of the resurrection, churches have Easter sunrise services in graveyards, around dead men’s bones!

The religion and religious practices of this apostate generation are as foreign to the Word of God and New Testament Christianity and voodooism and witchcraft! If you are really interested in worshipping God and witnessing for Christ, if you really want to honor Jesus Christ, you are going to have to separate yourself from it. Our Lord Jesus Christ commands us to come out of the corrupt system of the world’s religion.

If you care for your soul, the souls of your families, and the glory of God, find a place where you can worship God with his saints, where you can sit in the house of God and hear a man sent from God boldly declare to you the Word of God. Such a man will incessantly tell you, in the plainest terms possible what a worthless, hell deserving, helpless sinner you are. And he will incessantly tell you what an effectual, all-glorious, almighty, Savior Jesus Christ is. He will tell you of your foulness and Christ’s fullness, your ruin and Christ’s redemption, your filth and Christ’s cleansing, your guilt and God’s grace, your spiritual nakedness and Christ’s robe of righteousness.

Marching for Jesus costs nothing, amounts to nothing, and does nothing. Living for him, walking with him, and worshipping him is everything. May God give you grace to know the difference.

AMEN.