These sermon topics can get a pastor fired. 

After explaining all the Biblical reasons that we need to give glory to God in Chapter One of The Explicit Gospel, Matt Chandler spends Chapter Two on man’s woefully weak relationship with our Creator.  Christians need to worship God, really give our hearts and minds to God, but we don’t often feel an overwhelming need to do that.  Christians need to give God thanks for all the blessings bestowed upon our lives but we like to take credit for what we have [we are “hard workers”].  Christians act like we are not sinful, fallen creatures when the Bible spells out that we are and we should spend our lives in a struggle to keep sin at bay.  We deserve justice for our failings and God give us undeserved mercy.  We conveniently forget that–how much we need God’s grace.

Then we get to justifiable wrath.  Oh no, not that!  Chandler has hinted he is going there.  He has already described when Jesus is coming back to earth and is going to gather His wheat into the barn.  There He is going to thresh the wheat, letting the chaff fall on the floor to be burned.  That chaff and the burning: that’s a direct reference to hell.  And just in case you don’t understand, the sinners are the chaff.   Earlier in Chapter Two he writes “How can a loving, a just God create and fill a place like hell?” [44]. Many Christians hear words like this and answer, “A loving God would not create Hell.  A loving God would certainly not put me in hell.  I am ok with God [at least in a minimal way].”

The bottom line:  many Christians today don’t want to hear about going to hell at all.  Pastors who address this topic too much [or any at all] can be in danger of losing their pastorate.  Today’s Christians run from a church where the pastor preaches about going to hell.

What brings in the new members?  Here is the most popular message: “God is love and He loves you!  We all sin but God forgives us all!  God is the great benevolent Father in heaven above, nothing to fear there; just go about your lives and everything will be ok because He really cares.”

Is that popular message the “explicit Gospel?”  Chandler writes no, we “belittle” God too much.  “The correct response to the severity of God, then, is not to dismiss, deny and denigrate [His severity] but rather to repent of our self-regard and throw ourselves back into His glorious self-regard” [45].

Then Chandler goes there…

He talks about hell and how we can find ourselves there for eternity.

You know, that place for God’s justifiable wrath…

He begins with a reference to Matthew 18: 8-9.  I can hear Christians say “no, you can’t take that Scripture literally.”  You know this one; the hand or foot causes one to sin, chop it off.  The eye causes you to gaze upon something you know you should not gaze upon, you pluck it out.  That is too harsh, but this Scripture raises the horribly tough question: is it more important to do anything you can to avoid hell or just assume hell does not exist?  If you had to choose between an eye and going to hell, what would you do?  Would Christians today choose to lose an eye?  [I doubt it].  Chandler writes, it is better to avoid anything that will keep us from God’s eternal kingdom than to do sinful things and count on Him to excuse our behavior.

Too many of today’s Christians have forgotten that the bar is high for the Christian life.  God has expectations for us and those expectations do not jive with contemporary “laid back” American culture.

I love what Chandler says about God’s blessings. We should give God the glory for the blessings we receive in life but do we?  In today’s materialistic culture we do everything we can to get the best stuff we can.  Ask the Christian on the street who thinks they own their own stuff.  I suspect very few will reply that God owns it all.  Chandler says it best: “all that we possess was given to us by God, through God and for the glory of God.  When we act like we own these things, like they were given to us by ourselves for the glory of ourselves, we belittle the name of God.”  Then he goes there:  “The universe isn’t Burger King; we don’t get to have everything made our way” [46-47].  When we read in Scripture that we should share our blessings with those less fortunate, are Christians inclined to do this in today’s culture?  I seriously doubt that many know they are supposed to do that.  What if we don’t?

Matthew 25: 41-46:   [Jesus talking]  “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite Me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after Me.’  “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help You?’  “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’  “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

There is that threat of hell again…

Chandler is explaining God’s justifiable wrath.  Focus on the word “justifiable.”  If we behave according to today’s worldly stands, what do we deserve?  We deserve God’s wrath, no matter how many popular preachers sermonize about the awesome nature of God’s mercy for us sinners.  I wonder how many readers stop reading Chandler’s book after pages forty-five to forty-eight.  The news about what will really happen to the Christian who does not follow God’s [Jesus’] teachings is hard to bear, maybe too hard to consider.  We all fall short and Chandler says God will reckon with us in the end. 

There is a famous parable Jesus tells in the Bible about the poor man Lazarus who sits at the gate of the city every day, covered in sores, needing scraps from a rich man’s table in order to survive.  A rich man sees Lazarus in his awful condition and does little to help him even though he could. Lazarus eventually dies and is carried away to eternal life by the angels.  The rich man also dies and is cast down to hell.  The rich man lives eternally in the flames of hell and asks Abraham for help from Lazarus “allow Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water to cool my tongue for I am in anguish in this flame.”  Abraham explains to the rich man when you were alive, you were comforted with your riches and Lazarus had only bad things.  Now you are in anguish and he is being comforted.

People who allow the culture to determine their values [yes there is such a thing as “cultural” Christians] put themselves in jeopardy of eternal separation from God.  The possibility of torment. Life in a place of fire. 

Sermons on this can indeed get a pastor fired.  Writing books like this can hurt a writer’s book sales Matt Chandler.

However, Chandler thinks he is being true to the Word of God…merely explaining The Explicit Gospel.