It Is Enough

In case you haven't noticed lately, the world is obsessed with sex. It's everywhere - movies, TV shows, billboards and magazines. In advertising, it's used to sell everything. It used to be that you could shield your children from it by filtering what shows they were allowed to watch. But now the advertisements are as bad if not worse than the shows themselves. As bad as that is, that's the world and I really shouldn't expect anything better from it.

What really bothers me is that lately it seems the church is trying to use this obsession with sex for it's own purposes. Let me just give you a couple of quick examples:

1. The Revered Ed Young, an author, a television host and the pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church, issued his call for a week of “congregational copulation” among married couples on Nov. 16, while pacing in front of a large bed. Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/us/24sex.html

2. Sexually themed billboards have shocked some drivers traveling on Blanding Boulevard in Clay County. They show four bare feet sticking out from the end of a bed in what is clearly a reference to sexual relations. But more surprising than the billboards themselves is what they're advertising -- a church. The pastor of New Life Fellowship, Bob Morro, said the billboards promote a series of sermons at the church concerning the role of sex in Christian life.

http://www.local6.com/news/15109415/detail.html

Trust me, that's just a couple of examples, but there are plenty more out there. What bothers me is that these churches are using sex to titillate and intrigue in order to draw people in. Just because the actual sermons may not be graphic in nature does not mean that the churches are not knowingly using sex to sell themselves. What's the difference between what they are doing and any other company or business using similar imagery to sell their wares?

Now some people may say "Well, you have to use new methods to reach the young people of today". Really? Well, pardon me while I disagree. Why is it that churches feel like the truth of the Word of God is not enough anymore? Why are we reduced to cheap gimmicks like putting a bed on the stage or using a billboard with four bare feet sticking out from the end of the bed?

Let me state something as emphatically as I know how:

The Message of the Cross is Enough!

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

A cross. Wood and nails. Torture device. Blood. Thorns. Broken Legs. A spear. Soldiers. Casting lots. Place of the Skull. King. Mocking. Sour wine. Criminals. Paradise. Darkness. Earthquake. Veil. Tomb. Three days. Angels. Resurrection.

God knows men's hearts. He knows the message that we need to hear and he put His Word together with the express purpose of revealing Himself to us. We may think other methods are more exciting and more marketable, but God promises His Word will not return void. It will accomplish its purpose. We need to preach "Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2)".

Foolishness? No, power!

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.