Five or six weeks ago, give or take a week or two (you know how memory works, or sometimes doesn’t work), I had the opportunity to hear a lesson entitled, “Reasons Why People Do Not Obey The Gospel.” The lesson explored a variety of excuses that, according to the speaker, people use to explain or justify their refusal to obey the gospel of Christ. At the end of the lesson, the speaker offered two invitations: [1] to obey the gospel, and [2] to offer suggestions as to additional excuses that could be included in his lesson. Needless to say, with me in the audience, offering the second invitation was probably not the wisest thing to do.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time the past five or so weeks thinking about his lesson and the excuses he suggested that people offer for rejecting the gospel; all of which I had heard before. But, the more I thought about his lesson, the more it began to dawn on me that the primary reason people are not obeying the gospel may simply be because we are not presenting the gospel to them. In fact, the speaker who presented the lesson that prompted this post did not even present the gospel during the course of his message. To say the least, this was quite disappointing and very telling.
So, for today, I would like you to give your thoughts on the following questions: [1] what is the gospel, [2] are we guilty of not presenting the gospel in its purity, [3] what are some of the ways we pervert the gospel, and [4] is your congregation currently experiencing decline or growth in membership?
Then, as the week progresses, I am going to devote a short post dedicated to each of those questions and the thoughts you present.
