The Bible is brimming with passages that can make Christians blush, squirm, and reel with embarrassment—stories and passages that can make us feel uncomfortable. In response, many have opted for a feel-good faith by embracing only the socially-acceptable and non-offensive passages in Scripture. But if we really believe that the Scriptures are God-breathed, holy, and essential for faith and life then we cannot shy away from these passages and recognize that they ultimately point to the holiness of God. May we not be ashamed of the gospel and dare to embrace the entire Bible for a healthy, holy, and joy-filled faith.

The following message is a presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where we're proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. More information about the NCFIC is available at www.ncfic.org. Well, thank you for coming. I know you have a lot of choices this morning, and I appreciate you being here. We'll try to make the most of it and hopefully be beneficial to you.

This, the topic that the the title that they gave me was the inconvenient holiness of the Word of God, and the idea behind it is that there are a number of passages in scripture that we are uncomfortable with, are embarrassed by, that we tend to... Okay I want to use the word we. I'm not necessarily saying you all. In general, American Christians are uncomfortable by and embarrassed by, and so what I realized in my own life, I realized that I do this and also as I researched the American landscape realized that this was a problem that was true across across the church. So this when I started began doing some study in this.

This is this comes after a book that just came out earlier this month called Uncensored Daring to Embrace the Entire Bible and so this was kind of the the reason that Scott asked me to to come and be a part of this and you can get this in the in the whatever hall vendor hall over there. So I want to move fairly quickly through this, but I want to be able to address any questions you have and certainly take some time to go through that. But that's the basic idea, that there are certain passages, and we're going to look at some of those, that are difficult, certain topics that we find offensive, and so we tend to ignore them. And I'd like to say that's not true of me, but I actually came to the discovery of this in my own heart, and so I want to talk about that as well. But here's what we do believe about Scripture just by way of introduction.

We do believe that Scripture is holy, and of course as you've heard throughout this conference, the idea of holiness something that is unique and different and set apart, there's nothing like Scripture. It is God's Word, and it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and of course we've heard about that as well, this being God-breathed, theopneustos, this idea of God breathing out his word. How we believe that Scripture is inerrant in its original autographs, that there it is without error, it is infallible. You know the idea of infallibility, R.C. Sproul talks about the idea of infallibility being actually a stronger term than inerrancy because infallibility says not only is it without error but it cannot err.

It goes to the...it goes beyond the probability to the ability. It cannot err. We believe that scripture is therefore authoritative. If it is breathed out by God, if it is without error, if it is infallible, then it is authoritative. I don't know, can y'all see this over here?

Y'all might need to move this way a little bit if you, I mean it's up to you, whatever. We also believe that Scripture is clear. Now you might think, wait a minute, How could Scripture be clear? Well the essential teachings of Scripture are clear. Even a child can understand the gospel.

A child can understand that Jesus came and died for my sins, and you know Paul talks about there are matters of first importance 1st Corinthians 15 3 there are things that are of first importance and if there are things of first importance there must necessarily be things that are not of first importance. I'm sure that we have in here Baptists and maybe Presbyterians, I'm Presbyterian, but probably a spectrum, a range of folks, but there are things that do unify us and that would be God and the gospel of Jesus Christ and some of those things that we would find of first importance. So in those areas they are clear and those clear portions of Scripture help us to understand some of the more difficult to understand portions of scripture. We also believe that scripture is translatable. Thank the Lord that we're not doing this in Greek right now or Hebrew.

This would make it difficult probably for some of us. And we also believe that scripture is a means of grace, that God by his grace uses his word to both save and to sanctify his people. That's key, that's key, because we're not about gimmicks, we're not about trying to do some kind of other methods that we invent to woo people into the kingdom of God. No, we are called to be faithful to His Word and by His grace He both saves and sanctifies His people. So with that we are called to proclaim the whole counsel of God, not a partial counsel, to embrace all of it, and it is this faith that we are to pass on, this faith that was once and for all delivered into the Saints.

We're not to tamper with that message, tweak the message, take away from it, add to it, or simply to pass it on, to proclaim it faithfully. That's our task. Okay, so this is what we believe about it. When I talk about censoring scripture, here's some examples that I saw in my own life. If you were to go to Psalm 139, and in that Psalm you see a number of passages, the verses in there that talk about God's omniscience, his omnipotence, his power, his knowledge, his might.

Most of you also know Psalm 139 also for what kind of topic, maybe. Anybody know? Yeah, fearfully, wonderfully made. It's a well-known text, and in my Bible, it is, there's, it's highlighted, it's underlined, but then I get down to verse 19, and there's no more highlights, no more underlinings there. I mean it's like my pen was just humming along in this ink letting until I hit verse 19.

And verse 19 says, oh that you would slay the wicked, oh God. Ooh, I did underline the last two verses, last part, and lead me in the way of everlasting. That's nice. I like that part. But you see, this is what I discovered.

I just stopped there and I wondered why do I do that? Why is it that I... And I noticed that I do that from Genesis Revelation. You know, I was reading through Revelation 19. Whoa!

This is the same kind of thing with Christ crushing his enemies. And I was like, why do I do that? Why do I seem to want to ignore certain passages that are difficult for me instead of just stopping and camping out and trying to understand them. You know when I was a kid I grew up in a church that was not family integrated and there were nursery lots of nurseries and on the nursery walls there were painted many paintings. Maybe you've seen paintings of Noah's Ark, lots of cute, fluffy animals, all of them smiling.

I guess those animals would be smiling. But we forget the reality of what was taking place, don't we? We want to focus on the nice part of the story and forget the whole event surrounding that story. You know, 2 Kings 2, when I was in seminary, my preaching professor passed around a fish bowl, a clear fish bowl, with all the these difficult texts in it. And he asked me to reach, he asked all the students to reach in and pull out a text, and that would be the text that we'd be preaching on.

And I pulled out this passage from 2 Kings chapter 2. At the end of that chapter it talks about Elisha going to Bethel and these boys coming out and jeering at him saying, go up you bald head, go up you bald head, and it says that he stopped, he turned around, and he curses them in the name of the Lord, and two she bears come out of the woods and tear 42 of the boys. That was my text. I didn't know that was in the Bible, like no one taught that to me in Sunday school. That was not part of, that was not part of my curriculum growing up.

My daughter, she likes the forgiving tree. Berenstain bears the forgiving tree, and about a year ago I opened up the front cover and it had this Bible verse in it from Matthew chapter 6. Well it had the first part. If you forgive others their sins then my Heavenly Father will forgive you your sins. That's what it quoted.

Do you know what it didn't quote? But if you do not forgive others their sins then my Heavenly Father will not forgive you your sins. You see this is what we do all over the all over the place. So I'm come from Chattanooga Tennessee, a suburb of Chattanooga, and in 2014 it was named the most Bible-minded city in America, and it's there's churches everywhere, and there's billboards, Christian billboards everywhere. There's Christian radio just seems to just hover above the streets.

It's this holy haze. It's this Garden of Eden type place, right? But it's all censoring Scripture. The billboards, you know, they quote Bible verses on their Christian radio, but they're not going to quote verse 19 of Psalm 139. They'll quote John 3 16 and other passages like that, but you see that you see this is what we do.

We censor Scripture. A couple years ago the PCUSA, I'm not part of that denomination by the way, They had this committee to vote on new hymns in their new hymnal, and they rejected the hymn in Christ alone. Have you ever heard this hymn in Christ alone? Okay, just sing in here. And in this newer hymn, it talks about the wrath of God being satisfied by Christ on the cross.

And they didn't like that, so they asked the authors, the writers of this hymn to say the love of God was magnified or something like that and they declined to change the words thankfully and so they rejected the psalm but this is what we we don't like that we don't like the talking about wrath There's a really smiley preacher in Texas of a large church who doesn't like to use the word sin. We'll come back to that in a minute but there's some I've talked to that says you know we'll get into some difficult subject of the Bible and they say you know John 3 16 is all that matters the other stuff is one guy told me is just gravy but I'm concerned about the gravy you know there's a reason that God gave us his word, all of it, the whole counsel of it, and not just one verse. I'm not gonna, I have a red letter edition of a Bible by the way, don't worry, I'm not gonna, it's okay if you have a red letter Bible, but what can it sometimes communicate? What can it communicate sometimes that the red letters, it communicates the idea that those are the only ones that are important, But Jesus himself affirms the black letters.

So we do this, you know, I was at a conference a couple years ago doing a talk on children's discipleship with families and this kind of thing, and I joined in worship with this church, and maybe you're part of a church that stands for the reading of God's Word before a sermon, which I love, we do that at our church, but what I found interesting is we would only stand for certain portions of the Bible, and I understand why, but there's standing for the gospel readings only. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not for any Old Testament, not for any epistle, anything else. I understand why, but it can lead to this idea that I'm going to stand for certain portions of the Bible but not for others. It can communicate something beyond, I think, what they were trying to communicate. I say nine commandments up here because a lot of people are pushing to have ten commandments posted.

I'm a big believer of the ten commandments, but what oftentimes happen is, you know, you ask them about the fourth commandment in particular, which is about what? Yeah, the Sabbath. And there's not any thought to it. It's just a day like any other day. Or the second commandment often comes up of images.

So it's like we like the idea of being biblical. We like the idea of the 10 commandments. But functionally, we are functionally embarrassed by certain portions of the Bible. So what I want to do is give you very quickly seven of the what I what I think are some of the most censored areas in the Bible. Seven of some of the most ignored, looked over, you know, topics in the Bible.

And let's say a couple disclaimers on this. There are many, there are many, and because I've gone through this and people say, well you didn't mention, You know, for example, I don't actually I didn't put homosexuality in here. It's not because I think it is ignored, the scriptures teach on that. But I think right now is becoming such an issue that a lot of people are giving attention to it. I was trying to find areas that are not given as much attention right now.

So that's one of the reasons, but there's a lot of them. Here's just seven that I came to. The first is God. We make God in our image. This is what we're trying to do, and really this might be the most important one, that we are with God's character, his full character, we don't want to consider that he is holy and just and his full attributes and character.

I mentioned out here Home Depot theology. You know, when I was... I did what they call a fixer-upper home, a handyman special, that's what they called it, and my wife through many tears agreed to purchase this home, and so I went to work and Home Depot became my saving grace. We were there all the time. They should they should send us thank-you letters I think and And at the time there had this little jingle, I don't know if you remember this, You Can Do It, We Can Help.

I don't know if you remember this, but that was kind of their slogan for a little while. And I was thinking, well this is, I was thinking, it's kind of a bad day when the church begins to take their theology from a home improvement store. You can do it, God can help. And the message is, it's really about you, your work, your efforts, your life, and God is there to assist when needed. This is what we call moralistic therapeutic deism.

Maybe you've heard of that before, MTD, Christian Smith, soul-searching. The idea of moralistic therapeutic deism is the religion in America. I think not just among teenagers, but I think among adults as well. The idea that if I'm good enough I'll go to heaven. This is broadly American religion.

If I'm good enough I'll go to heaven. But if I'm in trouble, therapeutic. He's there to help me. Our thoughts and prayers are with you when bad things happen. And deism is what?

God is watching you from, there's a song like this, from a distance. God is watching you. And he's observing, but he's not involved in your life at all. He got things going, the divine clockmaker got things going, but he's not involved in your life. But you can do it.

God can help. This is what the Reformers might have talked about with solo bootstrap you. You can do it by your bootstraps alone. But he is not your co-pilot. He doesn't just take the wheel when you hit that patch of ice, he is the eternal God who is self-sufficient, who is self-existent, he is complete in himself from all eternity, and he does not need me and he does not need you.

That's a sobering reality. He chooses to use us because he loves us. There's a sobering reality that he is not dependent upon us. He's not lucky to have me on his team. I think a lot of times the way we think about God in America is like Santa, although if you think about it, it's a little creepy, the whole Santa thing.

He sees you when you're sleeping. Anyway, I think we think about God like that, or like a we want God to be this cute, cuddly grandpa. I know there's grandpas in here, and we want God to be like that. But this is not the God that we see in Scripture. And the four attributes that I see most often attacked and ignored are his sovereignty, his holiness, his justice, and his self-sufficiency.

They're either attacked or they're outright ignored. We don't like the idea of a just and holy God, so we want to make God in our image. A second one is creation. We, so I was, I have on here as you see Books a Million, I was at a Books a Million not too long ago and I was walking down the religion aisle and I was looking at all these and I actually had a decent selection of books, I was surprised. But then right across on the other side of the aisle, anybody guess what was on the other side of the aisle?

Science. You had Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the science world. And I was like caught in the middle in this deadly duel. I felt that they were just looking at each other across the aisle as if they don't get along. And you and I both know that that is not the case, that there is some wonderful work being done in the area of Christian science and so it's great, but what we typically for a lot of Christians, self-professing Christians, they will look at Genesis and they say, you know, this is not what I heard in my public school, government-funded, middle school biology class, And this is what I know is to be true.

I mean it had to be evolution So I don't so I'm gonna go with that and then I'm gonna go to scripture trying to make scripture conform To that you see you the starting place the starting place is not scripture the starting place is quote science and when we do that then we start shifting and shaping Genesis to fit our mold and I think there's some good reasons to take by the way Genesis just as a straight account of the creation, not only because of the historical narrative nature of it, and it is important to note the genre of a text. Is Genesis poetry? Genesis 1 to 11, those first chapters that especially Genesis 1 and 2 that deal with creation, is that just, or three, with poetry, is Adam just a poetic figure? Because if you start to take away and remove the first Adam and the reality of the fall, what happens? The whole biblical theology falls apart.

The last Adam, not just the second Adam, but the last Adam, the need for a Savior. So I think we're embarrassed, we don't want to look foolish in the eyes of the world to affirm creation as it as it is given to us. It's another area I think that we're trying to ignore and censor. A third is sin. I mentioned the smiling preacher from Texas, it doesn't like to use the word sin.

And I also think that we're we like to replace the word sin with kind of this psychoanalytical mistakes, messiness, brokenness, We don't want to use the word sin. We don't want to call it for what it really is. LifeWay poll, 51% of self-identified evangelicals believe that humanity is basically good. That's the majority. The humanity is the evangelicals, self-identified evangelicals, that say that humanity is basically good.

That has enormous implications on our theology, on our preaching. If you're basically good, you're not therefore dead in sin. You're not following the ways of this world, the prince of the power of the air. You are not by nature Children of wrath before you come to Christ. It has enormous implications on how we minister.

75% of mainline Protestants, the Roman Catholics, believe the same. 54% of evangelicals believe that we contribute works to our salvation. 54%. Is that surprising? In some ways, maybe.

Otherwise not. And if you look at the New York Times bestsellers, your best life now, becoming a better you. It's all about empowering you. It's just getting a little better from what you already are by nature. You understand, you see that, you see what's going on with that.

And even children are born with a sin nature. I have a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a two-month-old, and my three-year-old last about a year and a half ago, He was eating his yogurt and he was hit his high chair. And he at one point held his big cup of yogurt over the side of the high chair and he looked at me smiling. I said, Garrett, do not drop, he knew what I was talking, he could understand, do not drop that yogurt. He was smiling and then it looked like what Stay Puft, is that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

It was like slime everywhere all over the place. He I didn't teach him that I promise I didn't teach him to do that you know you say don't touch the wet paint and What do they do? Like by nature, you know, I sometimes talk about this with relation to a shopping cart. You ever go to a grocery store and there's a shopping cart with a bad wheel on it? And talking about, and it's so frustrating, right?

You try to push the shopping cart and every time what does it want to do? Just veer off, right? And if you were to push it on its own free will what would happen? Every time Yeah, it'd veer right unless the wheel is replaced unless the heart is replaced every time we veer. We're prone that way, okay?

And this is what we don't realize about sin. And people often often talk about, well, as far as the penalty of sin, I mentioned David Platt's quote here. He says, The penalty for sin is determined by the magnitude of the one who is sinned against. So if, and he gives this example, if I were to go slap my best friend in the face, what would he do? He might slap me back maybe.

Question, what are you doing? If I did that to a police officer, any police officers in here? Okay, if I did that to a police officer, what might happen to me? They might arrest me, right? Different, same, Same act, different consequence.

What if I went to the king of Saudi Arabia, slapped him in the face? Yeah, the penalty for sin is determined by the magnitude of the one who has sinned against a holy and righteous God. It's not the smallness of the sin, it's the greatness of God. It's important I think for us to understand about the reality of sin. Consequences, I think that we begin to feel that we deserve health, wealth, and prosperity.

We deserve these things. We're entitled to them. We become embarrassed by God's justice, and then we mask a need for a Savior. If you lower the reality of sin, then there is no need for a Savior. And this is one of the major problems.

We are masking the reality of sin. Number four. What time do we end? 9 30? Okay, well I have some time for questions too.

Number four, turning a blind eye to suffering. We're embarrassed, I think, by the Bible's teaching on suffering. We believe that God is sovereign, right? Not only part of the time, but all of the time. We affirm that he is good and omnipresent.

All three of those must be true. Oftentimes people don't notice the omnipresent, that he is everywhere present, but all three of those must be true for a consistent view of God in suffering. He is good. People oftentimes say, well it's either He's good or He is sovereign, but He can't be both. But all three of these are true of our God.

I was thinking through some of how our world and how certain atheists are giving the answer to the why of suffering. And here's the best that I think they could come up with. This is a guy named Richard Dawkins. Maybe some of you have heard of him. He says, the total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.

Some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and he won't find any rhyme or reason to it. The universe is nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." Another famed atheist, Bertrand Russell, he called the fundamental reality of our lives unyielding despair. I think it was Sartre that one that one time said that the only question that he could not answer was why he didn't kill himself. So this is the answer of some of the greatest quote-unquote atheists to suffering. You're lucky, it's pitiless, indifference, unyielding despair, and that'll put wind in your sails.

I mean this is, but we don't know where to turn. We're embarrassed by a God who is sovereign in suffering. You think about the story of Joseph, right? Joseph sold into slavery, accused, you know, accused wrongly, put into prison, right, and his brothers come to him. And in Genesis 50, what does he tell his brothers?

What you meant for evil, God meant for good. He overruled their evil for his greater purpose and for believers. God works all things, right, together for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Do you believe that? You know, and I think when we come to consider Christ, that God delivered up his son according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and this is, here we, I think we are taken aback by the scandal of the cross the only righteous one who ever walked this earth we kill so why suffering here's the big picture the big picture of why of suffering is obviously it is under the banner of his glory all things are for his glory do we believe that do we do we exclude suffering from that no all things are for his glory are for him through him to him and so judgment if the idea of suffering calms it is suffering is a fruit in the curse of the fall, that's why it's here, but it is here and God uses it for judgment against the unbelieving world.

So suffering comes upon the unbelieving world as raw effects of his judgment in part in this life and in fullness in the life to come. But for those whom he loves in Christ, they are paternal discipline, chastisement. God disciplines those whom he what? Loves. Therefore our good and sanctification.

If you were holding on to something in this world and God and His providence and His wisdom sees fit to take that away from you, whether it is a loved one or a possession that you treasure, can you still say, God, you're enough for me? I think we're embarrassed by a truly biblical view of suffering. I think one of the great tragedies of American Christianity is that we have lost a theology of suffering and we don't prepare for suffering anymore. There's a great book by John Flavell, a Puritan, Preparations for Suffering. You wouldn't see that today.

Preparations for Suffering. Number five, hiding the horrors of hell. We love the idea of heaven. You notice the New York Times bestseller list? I have a few of them up here.

Heaven is for real. Proof of heaven. 90 minutes in heaven. There's a lot about heaven. I couldn't find many on hell.

In 2004, I think it was, I was having a debate over a lunch with a guy named Bart Campolo at Samford University and I was trying to be careful because Robbie Zacharias one time said, you know, you got to be careful when you start throwing mud at each other because your hands get dirty and you lose a lot of ground. But he said as we were debating this in front of others, He was arguing that you don't need to tell people about Jesus, you just need to be nice basically, love them to heaven. And I was saying, well I actually believe that faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of Christ, and so we're having this disagreement. Well, this last year he left Christianity, I put left in quotes, and is now the Humanist Chaplain at the University of Southern California, And of his struggle with Christianity this past year, he said, I became very open about the fact that I would ignore certain Bible verses and underline others. Ouch.

His father, Tony Campolo, maybe you've heard of him, he was a spiritual advisor to Bill Clinton, responded publicly and he says, you know me, I'm not afraid you're going to hell because the God I believe in doesn't send people to hell for eternity for having the wrong theology. This is what we call inventing religion. This is not Christianity at all. Now it's interesting because the New Testament writers didn't seem to have this embarrassment of hell that we do. And certainly they had many family members and friends that were on the road to hell because we don't want to talk about it because we have close loved ones, right?

So we just avoid it altogether. But Jesus himself talks about it more than anybody else about the reality of hell. And we should have a right fear of God. I mean Jesus and Jesus teaches that you know don't fear the one who can kill the body, right? But fear the one who can cast both body and soul to hell.

So the reality of hell should point us to the reality and heinousness of sin. We deserve death and hell forever. Number six, going after gimmicks. Quote, success in the entertainment church. We are embarrassed to fail in ministry.

How many of you are church leaders, pastors, ministry leaders? Several of you. There is a pressure on pastors. Please do not continue this pressure on your pastor by always asking how many came, how many people, how big is your church, how big is your budget? We call these the three B's, building budget and bodies.

And when you go to pastors conferences, people always ask, you know, it's like this one-upmanship or something. So how big is your church? How big is your budget? I hear this all the time. Because we're driven toward ministry success.

We want big numbers. We want big numbers. This success is a problem, and it minimalizes God's work. And I think it's because we have a fear of man. We are embarrassed to fail.

You know, I was, I served, yes, in my former life in, in, in youth ministry. And we would resort to all sorts of gimmicks to get people into the church, swallowing goldfish, doing iPod giveaways, uh, high paying high price bands, you name it. And then when we're finished with it, got a lot of people coming, next week what are we gonna do? That was cool. All right, now what?

And it was just this continual, I mean, when you do that, when you compare yourself to someone else, it either leads to pride or despair. So some days I'll be like, oh great, a lot of people came, I feel great about myself. Other days no one came and no one's going to come next week either or done with this. So it can drive you to that and this is what we talk about the difference between faithfulness and success in ministry. It's not success driven, It is faithfulness driven.

My task is simply to plant and water the gospel of Jesus Christ And we look to God to provide the growth in his way and his timing What a freeing idea that is when I come to the end of the day and people are running away from me because of a certain doctrine it's kind of like Jesus in John chapter 6 he started teaching you know no one come to come to the Father unless come to me unless the Father draws him And it says that after this many of his disciples turned and no longer followed him You know the whole win friends and influence people. This was not the strategy It was simply I want to be faithful to the message come what may if people come we praise God if people leave we praise God Our task is to be faithful to Him. And we, I see this in like Acts chapter two, in verse 42 to 47, it says that the early disciples, they devoted themselves to certain things. Apostles teaching, prayer, the breaking of the bread, fellowship. They were serving one another.

And in verse 47, it says, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. And we call this means of grace ministry. Thank you for listening to this presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. We invite you to visit our website at www.ncfic.org where you can keep up to date on what is new as well as find articles, videos, audio sermons and much more at no charge. The NCFIC exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both Church and family life.

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