This is the Scripture-Driven Church broadcast brought to you by Teaching the Word Ministries. The Church of Jesus Christ must be the Scripture-Driven Church, relying on God's inspired and inerrant Word as our sole authority and our infallible critic in every area of life and ministry. And now, here's author, Bible teacher and Teaching the Word president, Dr. Paul Elliott, to introduce today's program. Today's postmodern evangelical church has largely forgotten what it means to be a Protestant. Many evangelical spokesmen are saying that the Reformation was a mistake and that today we need a new kind of Reformation, a counterfeit Reformation that would overturn and repeal the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The basis of this proposed new Reformation is a return to the sad position of the Church in the dark ages before the Reformation, cultivation of biblical illiteracy, reliance on sensory experience, promotion of theological pluralism, and a trust in works rather than faith for salvation. What does God's Word say? It tells us that there is only one true gospel, one true body of doctrine, and one true faith, the Protestant faith that was reclaimed from the darkness of the Middle Ages by Luther, Calvin, Knox, and other stalwarts. This week we present part one of a two-part message focusing on this glorious truth. The title of the message is, What Does It Mean to Be a Protestant? Heavenly Father, Your church, we know, desperately needs to return to the truths that were reclaimed by our forefathers in the faith. We pray for a moving of your spirit among your people to bring about that revival. In the name of our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. Please turn in your Bibles with me to the book of Romans, chapter 11, We'll begin reading at verse 33, reading down through chapter 12, verse 2. These verses do form a continual thought in the Word of God. Let's hear the Word of the Lord together. Romans 11, beginning at verse 33. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments! and His ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Or who has first given to Him, and it shall be repaid to Him? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Our Father, we thank You this morning for the depth of Your wisdom and knowledge, the riches of it. We thank You that as we open Your Word this morning, we open the only supernatural book in all the world. God speaking in His own words to mankind through inspired men. Father, we pray that as we look into Your Word this morning, that Your Holy Spirit would illumine our understanding and guide our thoughts, that Your Spirit would choose the course of our words, and that You would meet each need here this morning, Father, whatever it may be. We thank You in Christ's name, Amen. We hear a lot in our society today about transformations, about makeovers. I seem to remember one time when I was here before about a year ago, somebody mentioned someone in the congregation, whether it was a family member or whatever, they were having an extreme makeover done on a house. I seem to remember that. It used to be called home remodeling, but now it's an extreme makeover for your house. And many women go to a spa these days to get a makeover. Even some men. Wouldn't help me. People go and get a new look. They get a new hairstyle, new makeup, new wardrobe, a makeover, a transformation. And there are a number of passages in the Bible that speak of transformations. the transformation of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, the transformation of our Lord Jesus Christ when He came into the world in a human body. These aren't the kinds of transformations that the marketing gurus of Madison Avenue invent and try to sell us. There are also negative kinds of transformations in the Bible. The Apostle Paul warns against those who transform themselves, who pose as ministers of the gospel, ministers of the truth, when in fact they are messengers of Satan. And he says that their works will prove who they really are. And Paul writes in Romans 1 about the unbeliever who changes the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like various kinds of creatures and worships them. In other words, man tries to do a makeover with God. Man tries to make God over in his own image, not recognizing that it is man who is made in the image of God. But today, and I believe this is something for us to consider on a Reformation Sunday, the evangelical church, even the reformed church today, is getting an extreme makeover. The major movements among evangelicals today say that we need to redefine the church. We need to stop focusing on building up the people who are already in the pews. We need to stop focusing on the saints that we have. Our focus, almost exclusively, needs to be on the unchurched. And it's not that we shouldn't focus on the unchurched. But the focus of this extreme makeover is that we should ask the unchurched, the unbelieving, what the church should look like. what the church should preach, how the church should worship. We need to find out what will please and impress unbelievers, and then we need to give it to them. And the modern makeover movements among evangelicals we know go by various names, the purpose-driven church, the emergent church, new paradigm church, all these names. They're all makeover movements. Forget what the Bible says. Do the things that will bring in greater numbers regardless of the spiritual quality of the effort. And in the last few years, over 400,000 evangelical and Reformed pastors and church leaders have gone to seminars and workshops that tell them how to give their churches this kind of an unbiblical makeover. And in the process, the church's message has gotten an extreme makeover as well. Much of the evangelical church no longer preaches that the Bible is totally accurate in everything that it says. Much of the evangelical church doesn't preach the one true gospel in its fullness anymore, the gospel that truly saves. Much of the evangelical church today doesn't train and instruct people in biblical discernment to test everything against the authority of Scripture. Praise the Lord, it's different here at First Presbyterian Church. Praise God. But what happens when churches do those things? What happens when there's this kind of an extreme makeover? And by the way, often it starts very subtly. It's not that somebody necessarily comes in one day and says, we're going to change everything. It can often be a gradual process, but the results are quite extreme. What happens is that the evangelical church becomes the church unplugged. The church disconnects itself from its source of power and authority, the Word of God. And the church unplugged, the church that's disconnected itself from the true source of power and authority, soon becomes uncertain what it believes. We see that today. It becomes ineffectual in the genuine mission, its Christ-given mission of preaching the gospel to all the world and building up the saints in sound doctrine. And the church unplugged from the Word of God becomes ill-equipped to do battle because it no longer wields the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. And it finds itself retreating in the battle against the enemies of truth many times. The church unplugs itself from the wisdom of the Word of God, the wisdom that we find only in His Word, and instead plugs into human wisdom, the wisdom of this fallen world. And the church that reinvents itself in that way may indeed attract hundreds or even thousands of people, tens of thousands. But for the most part, it doesn't truly lead them to Christ because it no longer has a gospel message to offer. It's offering something else. And while it's seeking to please the unchurched and cater to the dictates of the unchurched. It's neglecting the saints. The saints aren't fed. The saints aren't being built up in sound doctrine. And a church that adopts this new paradigm really places itself in a deadly downward spiral. Here's what happens, and you can see it in evangelical churches across America today, as the church caters more and more to the way unbelievers want the church to look and feel and sound. what it preaches. The percentage of unsaved people in the congregation continually goes up. At the same time, the percentage of genuine Christians in the congregation continually moves toward zero. And within a surprisingly short time, I saw this happen in a church that my wife and I were in a number of years ago. Within a surprisingly short time, the thinking and practices of an unsaved supermajority come to dominate the church. Notice, notice, though, that thus far this morning I've talked about the evangelical church. I haven't used the word Protestant this morning. Not yet. First time. I've done that deliberately because much of the Evangelical Church, even much of the Reformed Church, has forgotten what it means to be Protestant. The Church is going back to the pre-Reformation position. What characterized the pre-Reformation position in the 15th century, the century before the Reformation? Let me briefly name four things. And there are parallels today. First, the pre-Reformation position was built on biblical illiteracy. It wasn't built on the depth of the riches of the knowledge of God. Before the Protestant Reformation, the Bible was untranslated into the common language. The Bible was literally chained to the pulpit. People couldn't read the actual Word of God in their own language. And what do we find today? We find something very interesting. The modern movements among evangelicals today are also built on biblical illiteracy. And it happens in two ways. The first way is through the deception of Bible paraphrase. The modern church makeover movements encourage biblical illiteracy by using and promoting what are called Bible versions, but they're really not faithful translations of the Word of God. They're man-centered paraphrases, often written by one individual. And one that's become quite popular through the modern church makeover movements is called The Message, The Bible in Contemporary Language. Some of us may be familiar with it. It's actually not a Bible at all. It's a paraphrase. And the author of this Bible paraphrase is a man who, Twenty-nine years was a pastor of a liberal church actually not far from here in Bel Air, Maryland. That's the first way that the modern church makeover movements are encouraging biblical illiteracy, which is in effect a return to the pre-Reformation position. They're giving people something to read that says Bible on the cover, but what's inside is not the Word of God. The way these makeover movements encourage biblical illiteracy is through their attitude towards Scripture. The man who wrote the message, the Bible in Contemporary English, he was interviewed and he said this, I'm quoting now, Christians should be studying the Bible less, not more. You just need enough to pay attention to God." Christians need to study the Bible less, not more. Biblical illiteracy. You wonder, how can you pay attention to God unless you read His authentic Word? Well, the modern makeover movements say that you pay attention to God by going to a church service that's not a worship service, but a staged experience. And that brings us to the second way the Church is returning to the pre-Reformation position. The pre-Reformation position before the Protestant Reformation emphasized going to church as an experience. In effect, a sight and sound experience. That was the focus. In the 15th century, it had to do with the pomp, the ceremony, the robes, the ornate altars, the processions, the banners, all of that, the beautiful statuary. But in the 15th century, you didn't hear the word of God preached. You didn't really worship the true and living God, but you had what you thought was a spiritual experience. Well, today, the church is going back to that pre-Reformation position of emphasizing church experience. Today, going to many evangelical churches is going to a carefully produced and staged and choreographed show. The emphasis is on performed music rather than congregational singing. The emphasis is on stage setting, lights, the sound system, special effects even. There's a magazine that I get every month because it's free called Church Production. Church Production. Monthly magazine. It's pretty thick. And it tells churches how to do this. And there's going to be a convention next month in November in Houston where thousands of evangelical pastors are going to go and spend a week finding out how they can do it in their churches, how they can make over their churches, make over their church services into a multimedia entertainment production. Experience the pre-reformation position. I might also add that more and more reformed churches are adding the trappings of Rome back to their services. The robes, the altars, the incense, the banners, the processions, all of that. So there are two kinds of things happening. Two extremes of extreme makeover, if you will. The 21st century experience is different from the 15th century experience, but the emphasis is once again on experience, not on the preached word of God. So that's the second way the church is returning to the pre-reformation position. The third way is that the pre-reformation position was pluralistic. The Roman church was and is today the great chameleon, easily changes its colors depending on the environment. Over the centuries, even today, Rome is really willing to adjust its methods, its message to bring even pagan practices into the church in order to get people under the authority and influence of the church. Just one example today, Roman Catholic churches in Indonesia and other parts of the Muslim world, when the Mass is celebrated, they willingly use, in many places, the name Allah in the Mass instead of God or Jesus Christ. The goal is to gain numbers, to gain influence, so they do that quite comfortably. Today, the evangelical church is going back to this pre-Reformation position of inclusivism. The church is bringing all sorts of worldly practices in just to get people to come. The evangelical makeover movement is pluralistic about beliefs. Today, 57%, nearly two-thirds, of all evangelicals do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life. That's been confirmed by a number of surveys now. Fourth, The pre-reformation position emphasized deeds instead of doctrine. Deeds instead of doctrine. The 15th century position was that good works and penance will get you to heaven. So don't worry about doctrine, just do what we tell you to do. And once again, the evangelical church is returning to a pre-reformation position. I'd like to quote one man he's acknowledged as the worldwide leader of the purpose-driven church movement. And he says this, I'm quoting, You know, 500 years ago, the first Reformation with Luther and then Calvin was about creeds. The new Reformation that we're bringing about through the Purpose Driven Church is about deeds. The first one was about what the Church believes. This one will be about what the Church does. The Reformation actually split Christianity into dozens and then hundreds of different segments. This new Reformation is actually going to bring them together. Now you're never going to get Christians of all their stripes and varieties to agree on all of the different doctrinal disputes and things like that. But what I'm seeing them agree on are the purposes of the church. And I find them uniformly in the fact that I see this happening all the time. Last week, this was in 2005, he said, last week I spoke to 4,000 pastors at my church in Southern California. who came from over 100 denominations in over 50 countries. Now that's widespread. We had Catholic priests. We had Pentecostal ministers. We had Lutheran bishops. We had Anglican bishops. We had Baptist preachers. They're all there together. And you know what? I'd never get them to agree on communion or baptism or a bunch of stuff like that, but I could get them to agree on what the church should be doing in the world. This is advocacy of a return to the pre-reformation position. One church under one head, the head not being the Lord Jesus Christ. The evangelical church has largely forgotten what it means to be Protestant. And today's focus is on man's power to transform things. But this morning, the passage that we have before us talks about God's power to transform. And this is power of an entirely different kind. It was this kind of transforming power that by which God took men from among those who had been conformed to the Roman Catholic pattern for centuries, the pattern of the world, the pattern of false religion. And he took these men, the reformers, and he renewed their minds by the power of the Holy Spirit. And through these men, Calvin, Luther, Beza, Zwingli, Knox, all the rest, through these men God kindled the flames of reformation throughout Europe and brought a faithful people to himself, to the truth. Well friends, we're going to present the rest of this message on our next program. We're going to take up this vital question. What does Paul mean when he says that we need to stop being conformed to this world and be transformed by the renewing of our minds? How does that statement truly define what it means to be a Protestant? I hope you'll join us next time as we look at the answer. I want to remind you again today about our latest free book offer. As I've told you before, I believe this is one of the best and most useful books that we've ever offered on the Scripture Driven Church broadcast. The title of the book is Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure, and the author is one of the greatest pastors and preachers of the 20th century, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. In this book he takes us back to the Bible for the answers to many issues Christians face today, including these. lack of a foundation in Christ, lack of clarity in our thinking, placing too much confidence in emotions, inability to receive forgiveness for all of our sins, inability to move beyond past failures, fear of the future, bondage to legalism, failure to recognize false teachers, weariness, bitterness, lack of discipline, lack of contentment, failure to face trials in God's power, failure to respond correctly to God's chastening. You'll find this book to be an excellent resource to guide you in your study of God's Word on these and many other challenges in the Christian life. Once again, the title of the book is Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. The normal price of this 300-page book is $24.95 including shipping. but right now we're offering it free and postage paid while supplies last to anyone who requests it. Here's how to receive your copy. You can call us toll-free 24 hours a day in the United States at 888-804-9655. Once again that's 888-804-9655 or you can go to our website teachingtheword.org and click the contact link. Once again that's the contact link at teachingtheword.org, or you can write to us at Box 2533, Westminster, Maryland, 21158USA. Once again, our mailing address is Box 2533, Westminster, Maryland, 21158USA, and our toll-free number is 888-804-9655. And don't forget to ask for the book, Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure, by Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones. On our next program, we're going to present the second half of the message titled, What Does It Mean to Be a Protestant? Until then, may God richly bless your personal study of His inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word. This weekly program, the Scripture-Driven Church, is brought to you by the faithful friends and supporters of Teaching the Word Ministries.