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. On today's broadcast, we are continuing our series of messages titled, Remembering the Reformation. Today, as we look at a warning that was given by the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth, I want to call your attention to one of the most tragic things that is happening in evangelical churches today. In our time, we are seeing the growing phenomenon of the un-Protestant Church, churches that have forgotten what it means to be Protestant. What has happened, and what must Bible-believing Christians do in response? Stay tuned for the answers as we present Part 1 of a two-part message addressing these vital questions. Heavenly Father, may Your Word be. As the writer to the Hebrews has called it, the infallible critic of our thoughts and intentions. Show us, Father, how the fires of Reformation may once again, by Your Spirit, burst forth among Your people. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let me call your attention this evening to the inspired words of the Apostle Paul that we find in his second epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter 11, beginning of chapter 11 of 2nd Corinthians at verse 1. Paul writes this to the church. Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly and indeed bear with me for I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit which ye have not received, or another gospel which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Let us pray together. Father, as we look into your Word this evening, we pray for the enlightenment of your Holy Spirit, the illumination of your Word by the divine author. We thank you, Father, that you have not only provided us this only supernatural book, but, Father, you have sent the supernatural author, your Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, to live within us so that we have access to his illumination. Open your word for us this evening, I pray, Father, and open our hearts to it. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. When I saw that the series of services that we began this week was going to be called A Celebration of the Reformation, That in itself gave me some cause to think. We certainly commemorate the Protestant Reformation that took place 500 years ago. Praise God that the spiritual darkness that prevailed at that time, the spiritual darkness of this mixture of Christianity and ancient paganism and other philosophies and cultural inputs that had grown up over the centuries, praise God that this was once and for all exposed by the power of God and by the bright light of scripture. Praise God that a portion of the visible church was freed from that satanic bondage. And praise God for men and women who have held on to that heritage during the centuries since. But as we look at the state of what is called the evangelical church in our time, as we saw in our last message, As we look at the state of even what is called the Reformed Church in our time, I submit to you that in many ways we find little to celebrate and much to disturb us. Because with few and precious exceptions, nominally evangelical churches, the nominally Reformed Church, has forgotten what it means to be Protestant. This evening I would like to focus our attention with the passage that is before us as our theological anchor point on this phenomenon that we find far and wide today, and that is the phenomenon of the un-Protestant church, the un-Protestant church. Now, I'd also like to tell you where we're going from here. Subsequently, Lord willing, in another message, I want to focus our attention on the question, how do we respond to the situation that we find before us in our time? Should we? How should we? as individuals respond to it? What things should we do, should we not do, as individuals, as Christ's church? And in order to answer that question, I want to call our attention to a passage from the Psalms in our next message that was clearly on Martin Luther's mind, on his heart, as he went on trial for his beliefs. as he went on trial for his very life, three and a half years after he nailed those 95 theses, those 95 questions to the church door at Wittenberg. And then in our final message, I want to call our attention to the fact that the history of the New Testament, the history of the church in the 2,000 years since Pentecost, shows us how God deals with these situations that may confront us and may disturb us, may bring us down, may burden us, may affect us in other ways, may bring persecution, as is true in many parts of the world today. The fact is that God throughout the history that we find throughout Scripture, especially in the history of the church since Pentecost, God deals powerfully through faithful remnants. And so, the Lord willing, I want to call our attention to the very beginning of the New Testament church the first chapter of the Book of Acts, and I also want to call our attention as a parallel to that, to a modern-day example of Reformation that began with God's calling of a single man, and that man's ministry revolutionized the local church. That church's testimony revolutionized a surrounding community. And as that testimony spread, not many years later, the secular press was saying that this man had been one of the two most responsible for saving the nation from falling into the grip of godless communism. This was something that happened during the 20th century and I'll leave it at that for now. You may be wondering who it is and what that's all about. I hope you'll listen as we consider those things together. But let's focus our attention this evening on the passage that's before us. Much of the church today has fallen into the pattern that we find in the church at Corinth in the time of the Apostle Paul. Corinth was a great city. Corinth was a commercial crossroads city in the Roman Empire. And so you found in Corinth and the surrounding area, people who were living and doing business from all over the Roman Empire, every nationality within the empire, every religion within the empire, every philosophy within the empire, all these things were represented in Corinth. also every kind of immorality imaginable came with that. And the Corinthian Church had begun in this very adverse environment. But the Corinthian Church had begun well. We read in the 18th and 19th chapters of the book of Acts that the Apostle Paul came to Corinth and He helped found the church. We read in Acts 18, verse 9, that the Lord appeared to Paul while he was at Corinth in the night by a vision, and he said, Do not be afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace, for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city. And Paul continued there, we read, for a year and a half, a year and six months, teaching the Word of God among them. But soon after Paul left Corinth, a downgrade began. The Corinthians began to mingle elements of the false religions around them with Christianity. They began to bring in elements of the pagan worldly philosophies that prevailed numerically around them. They were, in effect, attempting to make peace with the darkness out of which the Lord had called them. They were attempting to cultivate an atmosphere of coexistence with that which God condemns and the results were disastrous and it happened quickly. We read in the Corinthian epistles that the worst kind of immorality was tolerated in the church and they were actually proud of it. The Lord's Supper was abused. Preacher worship and factionalism developed. Worldly elements were introduced into the worship of the church. There were serious misunderstandings about the nature and purpose of spiritual gifts. And there was a serious lack of love, agape love, self-sacrificial love. That's why we have that great 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. That was a chapter of reproof to the people of Corinth. There was an epidemic of spiritual pride. There was a serious lack of spiritual maturity in all respects among the members of the church at Corinth. At the end of his second epistle, Paul implores them saying, please do not behave as children, become mature. And so the Apostle Paul, when he found out about these things that were happening, He wrote these two letters to the church at Corinth, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to correct the church. And he began by saying to them, in effect, you have forgotten what it means to be Christians. You have forgotten what it means to be set apart from the world, and its systems, and its ways, and to be set apart from all of these other false religions. And that is the context of the words that we read. This evening in chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians, Paul feared for these people. He feared for their spiritual lives. He feared that some might have already departed permanently from the faith and had gone after, as he says, a Jesus who is not the authentic Jesus. Another spirit that is not the spirit of God, but the spirit of Antichrist. And another gospel that is not the gospel of the new birth. And so Paul said, I am jealous for you, with a godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, Christ, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to him, Christ. But I fear less by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Dear friends, I submit to you. that as we commemorate the Protestant Reformation of 500 years ago, we need to remember that the great reformers, as the Spirit of God enlightened their hearts, these men began to have that same kind of a heart for the church, that same kind of godly protective jealousy, the same kind of godly fear for the spiritual condition and the spiritual destiny of the people. And I submit to you that as we commemorate the Protestant Reformation, we need to take a clear-eyed, scripture-based look at the state of the Church in our time, with that same godly jealousy for the defense of the true faith, and with that same godly fear for the general condition of the Church. And we must not look merely outward. I'm reminded that recently, Within the last few years, a reputedly conservative denomination published a report of a study committee regarding the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And that study committee was erected because there were deep and serious problems within that denomination. There were men in pulpits who were denying the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and they were being permitted to do it. This study committee was erected to provide a report, some hoped, as a corrective. But what did this committee do in this particular denomination? They spent all of their time looking at heresy on the outside, and never once in 90,000 words addressed the heresy in their own midst. We must examine ourselves first. We must make sure that we continue in the faith without fail, without deviation. We must examine ourselves against the only infallible standard of revealed truth, the Word of God alone, Scripture alone. We spoke of the fact in our last message that we hardly ever hear the word Protestant anymore. And when we do, for some, they consider it to be a mark of shame. They consider the Protestant term to be a badge of dishonor because many have come to believe that the Protestant Reformation was a mistake. Why can't we all just get along? Growing numbers see no reason why we cannot cooperate with Rome in various ways. Growing numbers see no reason why we cannot even cooperate with what they mistakenly refer to as the peaceful elements of Islam. Many today simply don't understand what the term Protestant even means. But dear friends, as we look at the history of Scripture, as we look at the history of the Church, even as we look at the history of the people of God before the establishment of the nation of Israel, We find this pattern that I mentioned that God always deals in remnants. God's people have never been a majority, never will be this side of the Lord's return. It hasn't been that way. Even within ancient Israel, there was rarely a time, hardly ever a time, when the people were entirely true to the Lord. When the Lord comes to the point where he condemns them, to go into captivity in Babylon, in Assyria. What does he say? He says, you have been adulterers ever since you were in the wilderness. It never stopped. We need to hear and fear. The nature of true saving faith is that it has always been a narrow way. But there are many seeking a broad way today. The un-Protestant church Why is it that we live in a time of the un-Protestant Church, as I've chosen to call it this evening? Why does present-day evangelicalism seem to be increasingly ineffectual? While societies are deteriorating around the globe, while Islam has become more aggressive, while Roman Catholicism has been undergoing a resurgence, And one of the main places that Roman Catholicism is undergoing a resurgence in America today is in the Bible Belt of the South. Amazing. Secular humanism, the new atheism, a growing number of spiritual plagues within churches that were once sound. While all of these things are happening, why is it that the present day evangelical church seems to be increasingly ineffectual and impotent? I believe the answer is quite straightforward. We have it as we look at the example of the Church of Corinth. We see it in the history of lengthening periods of apostasy, punctuated by very short periods of reformation and revival within the history of Judah and Israel. And we see the same pattern in our own times, with few and precious exceptions. Three things today characterize the nominally evangelical and reformed churches. First of all, The church today is the church unplugged from its source of power and authority, the Word of God. And the church unplugged has become the church uncertain of what it believes and unable to articulate and defend even the core truths of the faith. And the church unplugged and uncertain has become the church ineffectual, unarmed, and unarmored. for spiritual warfare against the enemies of truth, and unprepared to carry out Christ's Great Commission. Now, I realize that this is quite an indictment of the Church in our time, and it sounds like a very dark picture. And with few and precious exceptions in our time, it is true. It's increasingly true of churches and of Christian colleges and seminaries. Many of them that were once on fire for God and self-consciously Protestant have grown lukewarm and even cold and are self-consciously seeking compromise with the world and even with false religions. There's compelling evidence to support this point of view, to support this picture. Let me briefly give you some of that evidence. According to reliable surveys, self-described Bible-believing churches today, in those churches, only one adult out of every six reads the Bible even once or twice a week outside of a church service. And many of them admit that they aren't reading the Bible at all. 35% never open a Bible outside of a church service. And many of them aren't even reading the Bible in church services because they're not given the opportunity. Scripture reading has been eliminated or minimized so that we can increase entertainment and other things in the church. One commentator a few years ago in a magazine article put it this way. He said that the Bible in the evangelical church has become the greatest story never read. Now this may sound unbelievable, but it is not unbelievable when we consider the fact that systematic Chapter by chapter, verse by verse, exposition of the Word of God has mostly disappeared from many evangelical churches today. Biblical preaching has given way to a topical approach that's geared toward the felt needs of an audience. All you have to do is turn on the television to see that today. Visit most nominally evangelical churches in any area. Not only in the United States, but in other parts of the world today, and you'll find this. We get letters in our ministry, emails in our ministry all the time from people in the Philippines, in South Africa, in Australia, in Germany, in Central Africa. And they're telling us these things are happening in their churches. And the sad thing is that America has exported this to the world. The church that follows this kind of a pattern falls into a deadly trap. When the church neglects the Word of God, it creates a spiritual vacuum. And what happens if you have a bottle that's sealed with a cap and there's a vacuum inside that bottle? What happens when you unscrew the cap? The outside rushes in. And that's what's happening in the church. The worldly mindset rushes in to fill that spiritual vacuum. Man, not God, becomes the source of authority. And as a result, man's word, not God's word, shapes the church's agenda. If a church does not teach the word of God, it teaches the word of man. There is no third alternative. And that was the problem that was growing in the church at Corinth. And that is the problem in much of the church today. Here once again is Dr. Paul Elliott with some closing comments. Well dear friends I hope that you will join us on our next broadcast as we conclude this message and let me remind you that during this series of messages we are offering a free book that calls the people of God back to Reformation thinking about the authority of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, of God the Holy Spirit, and the written Word of God. The title of the book is simply Authority, and we would be happy to send a free copy to anyone who requests it anywhere in the world. You can obtain your copy of the book called Authority by going to our website teachingtheword.org and clicking the contact link on our homepage. Once again, that's the contact link on our homepage at teachingtheword.org. Just let us know that you would like to receive the free book called Authority, and be sure to give us your complete name and mailing address. If you're listening in North America, you can call us toll-free anytime 24 hours a day at 888-804-9655. Once again, our toll-free number for listeners in North America is 888-804-9655. If you hear a recorded message when you call, please leave a voicemail message letting us know that you would like to receive the book called Authority and how we can contact you and we will return your call as soon as possible. or you can request the book called Authority by writing to us at Teaching the Word Ministries, Box 2533, Westminster, Maryland, 21158 USA. Once again our mailing address is Teaching the Word Ministries, Box 2533, Westminster, Maryland, 21158 USA. And once again the book called Authority is free to anyone who requests it, anywhere in the world, as our gift to you. When you visit our website, we also encourage you to explore our fully searchable broadcast archive. You can search the archive of the Scripture Driven Church broadcasts by date, by topic, or by scripture passage. And with each recorded message, you will also find a full transcript that you can read online or download for printing. We also invite you to visit the Bible Knowledge Base on our website, where you will find thousands of pages of teaching articles on contemporary subjects, on the Christian life, on the Church, and many other issues and topics. Thanks for listening today. I hope that you will join us again next time as we continue our series, Remembering the Reformation. Until next time, may God richly bless your personal study of His inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word. of God.