Can a Goat be a Sheep?

CAN A GOAT BE A SHEEP?

No human is God. None of us can identify who are goats and who are sheep with absolute certainty. “The Lord knows those who are His.” But throughout the New Testament God tells us about many character traits, beliefs, and the life changing effects of being born again into the kingdom of God. And to be sure God did not share those insights with us just for some benign information. In fact God also exhorts all of us to examine ourselves. But He also asks us to warn those who seem religious, or don’t even meet that criteria, and share with them the dire consequences of being religious but not being born again.

And there is a distinct phenomenon which occurs when the church itself becomes compromised by the world’s systems and slowly but surely it begins to wrest the standard from Scripture and move the parameters further and further away from God’s Word. Eventually people are received as true believers with very little if any genuine examination. And although we must avoid being seen as Pharisees, we still cannot shirk from our responsibility to speak what God says. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I hold God’s grace in high esteem, and I am far from being legalistic. But that cannot be used to deceive people by casting a nebulous blanket of redemption upon anyone who attends church or even has been made a member of a local church.

There is not one of God’s true children who are anywhere near perfect. The most pious and dedicated among us have observable feet of clay. In fact it has been my experience that the closer I draw to Christ and the more intimate my relationship with Him becomes, the more clearly I see just how far short I fall. It is quite a phenomenon. Although I can see Christ more clearly, and although the reward is just that in and of itself, one of the residual affects is that I can see myself as standing completely in grace and without one shred of holiness in and of myself. If anything is obvious to us who follow Jesus it is that. We are both children of the Most High God as well as miserable wretches. Another one of God’s glorious mysteries!

But we cannot just stand by and let millions of people be deceived. We must speak the truth in love with that dual emphasis. Evangelical church members throughout America believe they are assured a trip to heaven and yet show no heart for Christ and His Word. But since they attend a local church and since they may even support it financially, the so called shepherds are adverse to preach anything close to a convicting message. In many cases the preacher himself is walking in an elaborate ecclesiastical system and he bears little spiritual fruit as outlined by God’s Word. And so what we have is a self promoting system which captures unsuspecting sinners, teaches them a list of morals, demands they serve the local church structure, gets them baptized, and feeds them a few cardinal doctrines and we pronounce them saved and ready for heaven. And if by chance they should doubt that, we inundate them with assurance.

There. That is the state of the evangelical community in America. Yes, I purposely painted with a broad brush because I believe the situation is wide spread and has seeped into almost all corners and genres of evangelicalism. And when you do not see it you cannot fight against it. When you are presented with a false Christ construct, you falsely believe you are following Him. When you are exhorted to be a good citizen of America, you no longer strive to be a good citizen of heaven. And when the Word of God has been forced to bow to the word of man, then the church begins to walk a journey to nowhere, or more directly, a journey to itself.

And goats are invited to join that journey and they are called sheep. What a tragedy! What a horror! As if our pitiful missions efforts are not enough; as if our lack of Christ demonstrations are not enough; but now we must convince the unredeemed that are part of God’s redemptive family? What greater spiritual treason can there be? And Sunday after Sunday after Sunday the redundant mantras stream from articulate lips that seek to soothe consciences and draw other goats into there particular flock. The spectacle is wonderful to the flesh and most disturbing to the Spirit. Like an assembly line, the church has no passion for repentance, humility, and a genuine and self denying pursuit of Christ.

Millions of unregenerate sinners grace church pews every week and leave feeling good about themselves and good about the church and good about the preacher. Never in the history of the church has there been so many churches and so many members and so many buildings and so many bookstores and so many television programs and so many Bibles, but with so little impact. The evangelical church in America is so powerless that it cannot even elect who it desires, so what can it do in the Spirit? If the church doesn’t even have earthly power, do we really believe it has divine power? I don’t think we can even convince ourselves of that!

But dwelling in those many tens of thousands of chairs and pews are satisfied and well fed goats. They love the “how to” sermons which never mention Christ. They applaud the conservative politics spoken of by politically savvy goat shepherds. They enjoy wonderful and uplifting music. The fellowship is warm, the atmosphere is affirming, and the feeling of belonging blesses their lives. But yet they are lost. This is no trifle. This is life and death, eternity with Christ or eternity separated from Christ. But the church is consumed with the temporal and eternity is only a doctrine which finds no practical application.

The goats are offered spiritual security from the spiritually hollow. The entire atmosphere is designed to manipulate the senses and leave people feeling good. Altars filled with tears? People so under conviction that they cannot leave their seats? Shepherds so concerned for their hearers that they weep behind their pulpits? People openly repenting of secret sins? People arriving at the meeting having spent considerable time in prayer already? No, no. The redundant and predictable scenario marches on every week and every week all things remain the same. And yet no one even questions why?

Oh yes the Spirit can and does sometimes reach a lost sinner and lead him to faith in Christ. But that cannot excuse the spiritual condition of the church. Most churches now have slogans to aid in drawing people to their local fellowship. Most churches grow by either attracting and affirming goats, or by those who are already believers joining. And the criteria for most people for finding a church is the oratorical prowess of the preacher, the children’s program, the geographical location, the music program, the friendliness of the people, or even sometimes the building itself. Like walking through Rooms-to-Go and choosing a bedroom set, such are many people as they peruse the local evangelical landscape looking for a church will fit their needs and wants.

But lurking within these ecclesiastical walls are all kinds of people with all kinds of levels of spirituality including those who are not regenerate but assume a thin veneer of religion. And there seems to be a symbiotic relationship between the church and the goats. The church lures the goats in with soothing and informational messages and many kinds of gimmicks, and when the goats come and join they affect and compromise the church even further. Even some committees are filled with people with very questionable spiritual lives. Money and social standing always play a part as well. And the entire system becomes an organized plant for capturing and processing people and arriving at the desired result - a functioning member of that local assembly.

And with that as the pursuit the western church has been more than successful. The church has bestowed upon people the moniker “Christian” with hardly any discernment or careful and loving discipleship. The entire church concept has morphed into a great machine which operates by the tools learned within the culture and an American competitive spirit which deems that more and bigger are better than less and smaller. And in order to achieve the desired ends, the facilities must be accommodating as well as alluring. Signs and slogans and literature and programs and advertisements and lighting and parking attendants and most everything that makes even a medium sized church a well oiled machine. There are many books that inform churches how to attract people.

And through that machine come goats, untouched, unruffled and received with only slight expectations of change which usually centers around a more pronounced participation in that machine. In essence, when a person embraces and participates within that machine not only is he looked upon as saved, but depending on the level of participation he may even be perceived as mature. And the spiritual condition, to say nothing of the spiritual quality, of church members is hardly questioned since doing so would require the same level of discernment toward the pastor.

This is a dangerous and eternally diabolical situation. How many church members are not born again? How many preachers are hirelings? How many churches are offering factories? How many church members go prayer less and without ever once witnessing for Jesus? I do not say these things from high atop a pinnacle myself. But how can we remain silent when precious souls are being deceived? They are not being led into Mormonism, or the Watchtower, or Christian Science, but let us be painfully frank. They are being led into a cult just as insidious as the ones we love to identify. And because these churches are considered mainstream, their deceptive practices can be even more subtle and eternally dangerous. It will only get worse as time goes on.

Let us examine ourselves, and then nurture and care for others without any earthly agenda.

Let us make disciples rather than church members.