Never before have we had so many pastors, Christian influencers, politicians, and celebrities—yet the world keeps growing more corrupt. Something is deeply wrong with modern Christianity.

<p>Never before have we had so many pastors, Christian influencers, politicians, and celebrities—yet the world keeps growing more corrupt. Something is deeply wrong with modern Christianity.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Gems of Truth

Religion, Power, and the Future of America

Vincent Bujor

Your Church Won’t Be the Same

Pastors are Lying to You

You are listening to Religion, Power, and the Future of America, an evangelistic series brought to you by Gems of Truth.

The title of our talk today, as you've already heard, is Pastures Are Lying to You.

Someone who names a presentation like that better have some evidence that come with that.

I guess that some of you might be sitting here this morning thinking, who does this guy think he is?

And you maybe have reasons to be skeptical this morning, that's okay.

Now at the very outset, I want to make something clear about this title.

Let me tell you what this title is not saying, okay?

This title is not saying all pastors are lying to you.

This title is also not saying that pastors are bad people.

And this title is not saying that I'm a better pastor than other pastors because frankly I'm not.

I'm not even working as a pastor right now.

So that's not what the title is saying, okay?

This title friends is based upon something that's written in this book right here.

You could say some pastors are lying to you, or you could say many pastors are lying to you, but I'm not gonna put a number to it this morning, I'm just gonna say pastors are lying to you, and the question obviously is, how are they lying to you?

They lie by not telling you what God says.

By refusing to tell you what's right, by simply avoiding to tell you the truth.

And I want to make it also very clear that there are pastors out there who simply don't know better.

God doesn't take that, He doesn't judge them, and there might be people out there who really just don't know, and they are very genuine in their ministry and all of that spiritual leader who just haven't heard about these things yet that I'm presenting to you this morning.

But I would say that those are probably the minority.

In Jeremiah chapter 2, the priests did not say, where's the Lord?

And those who handled the law did not know me, the rulers also transgressed against me." So this text is talking about priests or spiritual leaders or pastors, okay, that don't know God.

Now verse 13, "'For my people have committed 2 evils.'" How many evils?

"'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, that's the first evil, and then they hewed themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

In other words, they have forsaken the message that God has given them, and then they have made up their own message.

Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord." Last night we talked about people who call themselves Christians, but who don't live like those.

Someone who says that he obeys God, or he loves God, or whatever, but he doesn't really do these things.

They're called hypocrites according to the Greek.

That's an actor, someone who really is acting very nicely when he's praying or reading the Bible or being around others, but then he's turning around doing something else.

Now here, the Bible talks about shepherds, those are people who take care of others in a religious way, right?

Pastors, okay, elders and so on, who are literally destroying and scattering God's people.

We have 2.4 billion Christians in this world today, but the evil and corruption seem to become bigger and more intense every year.

We have more Christian pastors than ever before, more Christian influencers, more Christian YouTubers, more Christian celebrities, more Christian role models, you might say, than ever before.

And yet this world is becoming more and more corrupt.

Our country is a religious nation with so many churches and so many preachers and so many church members.

Why do we have 26% more drug abuse than a decade ago?

Why do we have divorce rates of 40 to 50% today, and in the 1950s they were only 12%.

Why is it possible that cybercrime is a multi-trillion dollar industry?

And how is it possible that human trafficking, you know, 27 million people are affected by human trafficking today.

How is it possible that 1% of the world's population own almost half of the entire wealth?

Apparently we have more and more pastors, but this world is becoming more and more wicked.

There's something rotten about today's Christianity, friends, and you can smell it, it's in the air.

The wickedness and the problems of our society seem to be proof for that.

People today say America is a religious nation, this world is becoming a better place, we have more Christians than ever before, but yet the corruption and the wickedness are in the air and the Bible says, woe to you religious leaders, shepherds who are destroying and scattering my people.

I'm gonna drop the ball right away, head to beginning of the message, okay?

I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag right away.

I'm gonna tell you right now how our pastor is lying to you.

Jesus said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

And in vain, they worship me teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men.

And then he says, they lay aside the commandments of God and they hold traditions of men.

Here's a group of people apparently, they claim to follow God, but they reject his law and they accept man-made traditions.

Ezekiel 22 says, "'Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them saying, thus sayeth the Lord God when the Lord has not spoken.

They say God has said something when God hasn't said anything.

They say God has changed something when God hasn't changed anything.

Now I gotta be very clear here at the beginning of the message.

Some of you are seasoned Christians here and you might have been coming to this church in particular for a long time, and this might not be new for some of you.

And maybe you are perceiving this message as in a little bit different way than people who come here for the first time.

But we really have the responsibility as Christians to share what this book here has to say about this topic with people who have never heard it before.

So this message is especially tailored for those of you sitting here this morning who are not aware of the things that I'm about to share with you.

You see, lately I've started to chuckle when I drove down the 52 down the hill to San Diego and also at 805 you had some construction zones there on both freeways, right?

Lately, and I had to chuckle, cuz I drive through that construction zone, and then you see 55, right?

That's the speed limit here, 55 in construction zones.

And then you have on bold letters, The 2 words, first of all it says 55, right?

And then it says 2 words, strictly enforced.

And when I read that, I immediately let the foot off the gas.

But then I look to the left and to the right and I see people still driving 75 an hour.

And then I'm thinking to myself, huh, it's not that strictly enforced apparently.

Because if it would be, y'all would be getting a ticket.

If we go to some other countries in this world, you know, those numbers that you see on the highways, they actually mean something.

Like in Switzerland, you know, you're allowed to drive 120 kilometers an hour.

That's the speed limit there nationwide for the whole nation of Switzerland.

Now, if you don't drive that, if you drive just a couple of miles more, 16 miles more to be exact, you not only have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars, you literally lose your driver's license for a couple of months.

And you already have to pay after basically driving a few miles more over the speed limit.

Here people drive 16, 20 miles more and no 1 really seems to care.

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Series

Religion, Power, and the Future of America

Pastors are Lying to You

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Your Church Won’t Be the Same

36m

Pastors are Lying to You

45m

Sound Doctrine