This Sunday a major slice of Christians in America will attend church at an evangelical church and what they will hear in the sermon is now fairly predictable. The typical evangelical sermon today contains three major points and often must include one major caveat due to those points. It might be helpful to outline the typical Sunday sermon because it may reveal why you still feel stressed, anxious, tired, and/or depressed as a Christian. It may also reveal why you’ll leave church “fired up” again, not having hit the stressed-anxious-tired-depressed part.
The typical evangelical sermon begins with the first major point of how you ought to live. Usually a Bible-character or command of Scripture is highlighted to reveal the ideal way of living. “Don’t do what David did”, “do what Daniel did”, “pray like this Psalmist”, “do what the Bible tells you to do in this passage”. Typically, some clear ideal is given to listeners. That’s point number one. This is where you may sit neutral or may even get excited about the possibility of living in more accordance with God’s Law.
Point number two is where the ideal is applied to your life and the sermon calls you out and challenges you to identify ways in which you are not living up to the ideal. “You keep doing what David did and need to stop”, “you’re not living like Daniel”, “you’re not praying like the Psalmist”, or “you’re not fulfilling this command”. This is the point in the sermon where you are confronted with just how far short you are falling. You think, “I wish I was more like Daniel,” “I wish I prayed with greater fervency,” or “I wish I would finally stop disobeying that law.”
At this point in the sermon it’s time for the major caveat, the part that makes it “evangelical”. At this point, the preacher is sometimes aware that he is heavily preaching God’s Law, convicting everyone in the room with the Word of God. He worries you might think he’s a legalist and not “gospel-centered”. In order to make clear that he is not preaching self-righteousness he pauses to remind everyone, “Now, I’m not saying we are saved by works. I’m not saying you need to do better to get God to love you.” This caveat is enough in many churches to justify calling the sermon or the church “gospel-centered”.
Once the caveat is done, it’s time for the final point of the sermon, the point that it’s time to get to work. “Now, I’m not saying we are saved by works. I’m not saying you need to do better to get God to love you. But I am saying you keep doing what David did and need to stop. Now, here are three ways you can progress and improve this week.” And most of the time in the typical evangelical church the way to progress and improve boils down to one thing: practice your spiritual disciplines in a highly specific way. “Pray before your feet hit the ground, read the Bible before breakfast, pray at this time and for these things, and attend a small group.”
The sermon is now over and you feel deeply one of two things. First, if you haven’t listened to this kind of preaching for very long and especially if you are fairly young (young in age or young in your faith), you might be fired up. “Yes! That’s what I need to do! This week is going to be huge for my progress!” However, if you have put some miles on your Christian journey you are probably feeling differently. You probably leave church feeling deeply distressed, tired, anxious, and maybe even clinically depressed. But why?
You feel that way probably because you are basically only hearing God’s Law each and every Sunday. You feel that way not because what you’ve heard about yourself isn’t true. You feel that way because it is. You are falling short, still, as a Christian. And you feel that way because the minor caveat in the weekly sermon that “we are not saved by works” isn’t the major emphasis.
What you primarily experience at church and what you primarily hear is about…your works. We might not be saved by works but we are apparently sanctified and sustained on the Christian journey by works and effort. Sermon after sermon you are, essentially, given more of yourself. “You need to…You ought to…You should…You can…”. You are turned back in on yourself once again. All that matters is that you follow the preacher’s example and get better. And of course, don’t trust yourself for salvation. But trust yourself for everything else. And if you trust yourself for everything else, who knows, perhaps you will fall so far behind in the Christian journey you find yourself outside the faith completely. That’s what you’re unintentionally led to believe.
The underlying theology that develops in you is a view of God that he is stressed out. He’s stressed about your Christian development. He’s stressed about your lack of progress. He’s waiting for you to make the right move, open yourself up, surrender more, and listen to His still small voice. After all, He can’t take you where He wants you to go without you doing your part. The preaching in many evangelical churches implies that God is stressed out about you, which. stresses you out even more.
The reason typical evangelical sermons unfold like this is because we do not really think the Bible centers around what Jesus has done for us. Sure, we might think it centers on what Jesus calls us to do (Law), so He’s involved in the matter, but it doesn’t center on Jesus Himself, who He is and what He has done for us. While sermons may use language like “it’s all about Jesus” and “gospel-centered”, we still think the Bible is ultimately “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. Like good self-centered sinners, we still think the Bible is ultimately about us. Like good self-trusting sinners, we still think the Bible teaches that our sanctification is ultimately up to us.
Here’s the freeing Good News: the Bible is not about you. God isn’t stressed out about you. He isn’t trusting you to do your part to make sure you become who He wants you to become. He isn’t trusting you to do your part to make sure you get to the place where He wants you to go. He didn’t wait on you to contribute to your justification before justifying you and He isn’t waiting on you to contribute to your sanctification to sanctify you. Find a church that understands that. Find a preacher that understands that to the point that sermon after sermon communicates that. In other words, find a church that weekly preaches the Gospel not merely as a caveat but as the main point.
