Ok, yes, there is more than one question you should ask when picking a church to call your home church. But there is one big one that should be asked immediately.
“What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?”
J. Gresham Machen posed that question to make a major theological point. The church exists to principally and continually preach and teach good news, not good advice, exhortations, and directions. And how far so many churches are from meeting that standard.
When looking for a church you need to ask quickly, “Because what I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me, will this church give me the Good News week after week? That is the question that I ask of this church. I know their exhortations will not help me save me. They won’t even change my heart to sanctify me. But if anything has been done to save me, will it tell me the facts?”
Many, many churches today preach and teach primarily about…you. They preach about what you should be doing, what you can do to improve, why you’re not more mature, what you can do to get free, and how you should leave. The test of how good a sermon is centers on how much it “challenges” and “convicts” you and how much it exhorts you to grow in the Christian life. Do we need to be challenged, convicted, and instructed in the Christian life. Of course! But challenges, laws, exhortations not only can’t save us, they can’t even change our hearts to empower us to change. Like a stop sign, they tell us what to do but do not even give us the desire to do them. Something else is needed for that.
That something else is the Gospel, the knowledge of how God has saved us, the good news. The good news is not meant to be heard one time in order to get you in the kingdom and after that it’s time to hear primarily the Law, exhortations, challenges, and directions. The Gospel is meant to be heard over and over again. It is the central, repetitive message of the Bible. It’s counterintuitive but what gets you moving in the right direction in the Christian life is hearing again that God has completely justified you through faith in Christ. In Christ, you are totally forgiven, you are free, the work is done.
